Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro' and 'The Principles of Art'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts

---

9 ideas

1. Philosophy / G. Scientific Philosophy / 3. Scientism

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.

1. Philosophy / H. Continental Philosophy / 1. Continental Philosophy

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 Kojève 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)?

21. Aesthetics / B. Nature of Art / 4. Art as Expression

20420	The emotion expressed is non-conscious, but feels oppressive until expression relieves it [Collingwood]
	Full Idea: The emotion expressed is one of whose nature the person feeling it is no longer conscious. As unexpressed, he feels it in a helpless and oppressed way; as expressed, the oppression has vanished. His mind is somehow lightened and eased.
	From: R.G. Collingwood (The Principles of Art [1938], p.110), quoted by Gary Kemp - Croce and Collingwood 1
	A reaction: It sounds like the regular smoking of cigarettes. This is Collingwood answer the doubts I felt about Idea 20419. I would have thought the desire of Picasso was to create another painting, but not to express yet another new oppressive feeling.

21. Aesthetics / B. Nature of Art / 7. Ontology of Art

20421	Art exists ideally, purely as experiences in the mind of the perceiver [Collingwood, by Kemp]
	Full Idea: For Collingwood (and Croce) the work of art is an ideal object; …they are things that exist only in the mind, that is, only when one perceives. …The physical work exists to make this experience available.
	From: report of R.G. Collingwood (The Principles of Art [1938]) by Gary Kemp - Croce and Collingwood 2
	A reaction: This means that the paintings in a gallery cease to be works of art when the gallery is shut, which sounds odd. I suppose 'work of art' is ambiguous, between the experience (right) and the facilitator of the experience (wrong).

21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 6. Value of Art

20406	Art clarifies the artist's mind and feelings, thus leading to self-knowledge [Collingwood, by Davies,S]
	Full Idea: Collingwood suggests art should be thought of not as product or artifact but as an act or process of expression through which the artist clarifies her initially vague emotions and states of mind. As such, it is a source of self-knowledge.
	From: report of R.G. Collingwood (The Principles of Art [1938], Ch.6) by Stephen Davies - The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) 8.4
	A reaction: I might believe this of writing novels, but not much else.

22. Metaethics / B. Value / 1. Nature of Value / f. Ultimate value

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.

25. Social Practice / E. Policies / 5. Education / b. Education principles

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.

27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / d. Time as measure

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.