7 ideas
7068 | If infatuation with science leads to bad scientism, its rejection leads to obscurantism [Critchley] |
Full Idea: If what is mistaken in much contemporary philosophy is its infatuation with science, which leads to scientism, then the equally mistaken rejection of science leads to obscurantism. | |
From: Simon Critchley (Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro [2001], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: Clearly a balance has to be struck. I take philosophy to be a quite separate discipline from science, but it is crucial that philosophy respects the physical facts, and scientists are the experts there. Scientists are philosophers' most valued servants. |
7075 | To meet the division in our life, try the Subject, Nature, Spirit, Will, Power, Praxis, Unconscious, or Being [Critchley] |
Full Idea: Against the Kantian division of a priori and empirical, Fichte offered activity of the subject, Schelling offered natural force, Hegel offered Spirit, Schopenhauer the Will, Nietzsche power, Marx praxis, Freud the unconscious, and Heidegger offered Being. | |
From: Simon Critchley (Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro [2001]) | |
A reaction: The whole of Continental Philosophy summarised in a sentence. Fichte and Schopenhauer seem to point to existentialism, Schelling gives evolutionary teleology, Marx abandons philosophy, the others are up the creek. |
7069 | The French keep returning, to Hegel or Nietzsche or Marx [Critchley] |
Full Idea: French philosophy since the 1930s might be described as a series of returns: to Hegel (in Kojčve and early Sartre), to Nietzsche (in Foucault and Deleuze), or to Marx (in Althusser). | |
From: Simon Critchley (Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro [2001], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: An interesting map. The question might be why they return to those three, rather than (say) Hume or Leibniz. If the choice of which one you return to a matter of 'taste' (as Nietzsche would have it)? |
5963 | Some say emotion is a sort of reason, and others say virtue concerns emotion [Plutarch] |
Full Idea: Some philosophers make the emotions varieties of reason, on the ground that all desire and grief and anger are judgments, while others declare that the virtues have to do with emotions, as when fear is the province of courage. | |
From: Plutarch (68: Generation of the soul in 'Timaeus' [c.85], 1025d) | |
A reaction: The second idea comes from Aristotle, but the second is interesting, and corresponds to the views coming from modern neuroscience, where even the most basic thought seems to involve emotion. What could be the motivation for 'pure' reason? |
7067 | Food first, then ethics [Critchley] |
Full Idea: Food first, then ethics. | |
From: Simon Critchley (Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro [2001], 8857) | |
A reaction: This is not a dismissal of philosophy, but a key fact which ethical philosophers must face up to. See Mr Doolittle's speech in Shaw's 'Pygmalion. It connects to the debate c.1610 about whether one is entitled to grab someone's plank to avoid drowning. |
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. |