5 ideas
| 14665 | We can call the quality of Plato 'Platonity', and say it is a quality which only he possesses [Boethius] |
| Full Idea: Let the incommunicable property of Plato be called 'Platonity'. For we can call this quality 'Platonity' by a fabricated word, in the way in which we call the quality of man 'humanity'. Therefore this Platonity is one man's alone - Plato's. | |
| From: Boethius (Librium de interpretatione editio secunda [c.516], PL64 462d), quoted by Alvin Plantinga - Actualism and Possible Worlds 5 | |
| A reaction: Plantinga uses this idea to reinstate the old notion of a haecceity, to bestow unshakable identity on things. My interest in the quotation is that the most shocking confusions about properties arose long before the invention of set theory. |
| 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. |
| 16006 | Either Abraham rises higher than universal ethics, or he is a mere murderer [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Either Abraham was a murderer, or we confront a paradox higher than all mediation. His story therefore contains the teleological suspension of the ethical, and he becomes higher than the universal. If not, he is not a tragic hero or the father of faith. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling [1843], p.49) | |
| A reaction: A nice dilemma for Christian thinkers who want to reconcile reason and morality with religion. [SY] |
| 7577 | Abraham was willing to suspend ethics, for a higher idea [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: The story of Abraham (and Isaac) contains a teleological suspension of the ethical. ...In his action he overstepped the ethical altogether, and had a higher idea outside it, in relation to which he suspended it. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling [1843], Prob I) | |
| A reaction: My immediate response is to find this proposal very sinister. I can't remotely understand what Abraham's (or God's) 'higher' idea could be that could justify this crime. Maybe ethics is suspended if you are on the beach and a tidal wave arrives? |