7 ideas
| 12732 | Some necessary truths are brute, and others derive from final causes [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: There is a difference between truths whose necessity is brute and geometric and those truths which have their source in fitness and final causes. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Remond de Montmort [1715], 1715.06.22/G III 645), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 6 | |
| A reaction: The second one is a necessity deriving from God's wisdom. Strictly it could have been otherwise, unlike 'geometrical' necessity, which is utterly fixed. |
| 19438 | Our large perceptions and appetites are made up tiny unconscious fragments [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Our great perceptions and our great appetites of which we are conscious, are composed of innumerable little perceptions and little inclinations of which we cannot be conscious. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Remond de Montmort [1715], 1715 §2) | |
| A reaction: I think this is a wonderfully accurate report of how the mind is, in comparison with the much more simplistic views presented by most philosophers of that era. And so much understanding flows from Leibniz's account. |
| 19415 | Passions reside in confused perceptions [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The passions of monads reside in their confused perceptions. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Remond de Montmort [1715], 1715) | |
| A reaction: He thinks perceptions come in degrees of confusion, all the way up to God, who alone has fully clear perceptions. He blames in on these confused perceptions. |
| 22395 | Moral judgements are hypothetical, because they depend on interests and desires [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Moral judgements are hypothetical imperatives in the sense that they give reasons for acting only in conjunction with interests and desires. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Reply to Professor Frankena [1975], p.177) | |
| A reaction: This is a splendid claim, which points to a more sensibly naturalistic ethics. There seem to be occasions for moral behaviour where I have no interests or desires, such as when a stranger asks me for a favour and I'm feeling tired. |
| 13304 | Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius] |
| Full Idea: In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes. | |
| From: Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]), quoted by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 078 | |
| A reaction: These remarks endorsing the infinite superiority of the educated to the uneducated seem to have been popular in late antiquity. It tends to be the religions which discourage great learning, especially in their emphasis on a single book. |
| 20820 | Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: Posidonius defined time thus: it is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed and slowness. | |
| From: report of Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42 | |
| A reaction: Hm. Can we define motion or speed without alluding to time? Looks like we have to define them as a conjoined pair, which means we cannot fully understand either of them. |
| 19439 | God produces possibilities, and thus ideas [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: God is the source of possibilities and consequently of ideas. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Remond de Montmort [1715], 1715 §8) | |
| A reaction: A wonderfully individual conception of the nature of God. He produces the possibilities from which creation is chosen, and ideas and concepts are of everything which is non-contradictory, and thus possible. It all makes lovely sense! |