18 ideas
| 5896 | Speak the truth, for this alone deifies man [Pythagoras, by Porphyry] |
| Full Idea: Pythagoras advised above all things to speak the truth, for this alone deifies man. | |
| From: report of Pythagoras (reports [c.530 BCE]) by Porphyry - Life of Pythagoras §41 | |
| A reaction: Idea 4421 (of Nietzsche) stands in contrast to this. I am not quite sure why speaking the truth has such a high value. I am inclined to a minimalist view, which is just that philosophy is an attempt to speak the truth, as fishermen try to catch fish. |
| 3051 | Pythagoras discovered the numerical relation of sounds on a string [Pythagoras, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Pythagoras discovered the numerical relation of sounds on a string. | |
| From: report of Pythagoras (reports [c.530 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 08.1.11 |
| 21829 | Philosophy aims to understand how things (broadly understood) hang together (broadly understood) [Sellars] |
| Full Idea: The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term. | |
| From: Wilfrid Sellars (Philosophy and Scientific Image of Man [1962], p.3), quoted by Owen Flanagan - The Really Hard Problem 1 'Vocation' | |
| A reaction: I'm happier with broad things than broad hanging together, but to me this sounds about right. |
| 7485 | For Pythagoreans 'one' is not a number, but the foundation of numbers [Pythagoras, by Watson] |
| Full Idea: For Pythagoreans, one, 1, is not a true number but the 'essence' of number, out of which the number system emerges. | |
| From: report of Pythagoras (reports [c.530 BCE], Ch.8) by Peter Watson - Ideas Ch.8 | |
| A reaction: I think this is right! Counting and numbers only arise once the concept of individuality and identity have arisen. Counting to one is no more than observing the law of identity. 'Two' is the big adventure. |
| 6550 | Reduction requires that an object's properties consist of its constituents' properties and relations [Sellars] |
| Full Idea: The 'Principle of Reducibility' says if an object is a system of objects, then every property of the object must consist in the fact that its constituents have such and such qualities and such and such relations | |
| From: Wilfrid Sellars (Philosophy and Scientific Image of Man [1962], p.27), quoted by William Lycan - Consciousness | |
| A reaction: This sounds to me a more promising attitude to reduction than all this talk of Ernest Nagel's 'Bridge Laws'. If we ask HOW a higher level property arises because of a lower level property, we can describe a mechanism rather than a law. |
| 22709 | We should first decide what are the great works of art, with aesthetic theory following from that [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: Our aesthetic must stand to be judged by great works of art which we know to be such independently. …So let us start by saying that Shakespeare is the greatest of all artists, and let our aesthetic be the philosophical justification of this judgement. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sublime and the Good [1959], p.205) | |
| A reaction: She offers this view in specific contradiction of Tolstoy, which says we should first have a theory, and then judge accordingly. I take Murdoch to be entirely right, but it means that our aesthetic theory will shift over time. |
| 22715 | Great art proves the absurdity of art for art's sake [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: The work of the great artists shows up 'art-for-art's-sake' as a flimsy frivolous doctrine. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sublime and the Good [1959], p.218) | |
| A reaction: She keeps referring to tragedy (as the greatest art), but it is hard to see how we learn love and morality from a great pot or a great abstract painting. Wilde makes the doctrine frivolous, but I think it contains a degree of truth. Music. |
| 22714 | Because art is love, it improves us morally [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: It is of course a fact that if art is love then art improves us morally, but this is, as it were, accidental. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sublime and the Good [1959], p.218) | |
| A reaction: Is an enhancement of one's love necessarily a moral improvement? Love is a fine feeling, but how does it motivate? Has no wickedness ever been perpetrated in the name of love? 'All's fair in love and war'. |
| 22712 | Art and morals are essentially the same, and are both identical with love [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: Art and morals are (with certain provisos) one. Their essence is the same. The essence of both of them is love. Love is the perception of individuals. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sublime and the Good [1959], p.215) | |
| A reaction: The idea that art, morals and love are all just a single thing seems unhelpful. What about satire? What about duty without love? What about pure abstract painting? What about Stravinsky's highly formal view of his music? |
| 3053 | Pythagoras taught that virtue is harmony, and health, and universal good, and God [Pythagoras, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Pythagoras taught that virtue is harmony, and health, and universal good, and God. | |
| From: report of Pythagoras (reports [c.530 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 08.1.19 | |
| A reaction: I like the link with health, because I consider that a bridge over the supposed fact-value gap. Very Pythagorean to think that virtue is harmony. Plato liked that thought. |
| 22713 | Love is realising something other than oneself is real [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sublime and the Good [1959], p.215) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that this is a necessary condition for love, but not the thing itself. The realisation she describes may not be love. You would attain her realisation if you shared a prison cell with a terrifying psychopath. |
| 5244 | For Pythagoreans, justice is simply treating all people the same [Pythagoras, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Some even think that what is just is simple reciprocity, as the Pythagoreans maintained, because they defined justice simply as having done to one what one has done to another. | |
| From: report of Pythagoras (reports [c.530 BCE], 28) by Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics 1132b22 | |
| A reaction: One wonders what Pythagoreans made of slavery. Aristotle argues that officials, for example, have superior rights. The Pythagorean idea makes fairness the central aspect of justice, and that must at least be partly right. |
| 375 | When musical harmony and rhythm were discovered, similar features were seen in bodily movement [Pythagoras, by Plato] |
| Full Idea: When our predecessors discovered musical scales, they also discovered similar features in bodily movement, which should also be measured numerically, and called 'tempos' and 'measures'. | |
| From: report of Pythagoras (reports [c.530 BCE]) by Plato - Philebus 17d |
| 638 | Pythagoreans define timeliness, justice and marriage in terms of numbers [Pythagoras, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The Pythagoreans offered definitions of a limited range of things on the basis of numbers; examples are timeliness, justice and marriage. | |
| From: report of Pythagoras (reports [c.530 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1078b |
| 553 | Pythagoreans think mathematical principles are the principles of all of nature [Pythagoras, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The Pythagoreans thought that the principles of mathematical entities were the principles of all entities. | |
| From: report of Pythagoras (reports [c.530 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 985b |
| 554 | Pythagoreans say things imitate numbers, but Plato says things participate in numbers [Pythagoras, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Pythagoreans said that entities existed by imitation of the numbers, whereas Plato said that it was by participation. | |
| From: report of Pythagoras (reports [c.530 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 987b |
| 644 | For Pythagoreans the entire universe is made of numbers [Pythagoras, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: For Pythagoreans the entire universe is constructed of numbers. | |
| From: report of Pythagoras (reports [c.530 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1080b |
| 7467 | The modern idea of an immortal soul was largely created by Pythagoras [Pythagoras, by Watson] |
| Full Idea: The modern concept of the immortal soul is a Greek idea, which owes much to Pythagoras. | |
| From: report of Pythagoras (reports [c.530 BCE]) by Peter Watson - Ideas Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: You can see why it caught on - it is a very appealing idea. Watson connects the 'modern' view with the ideas of heaven and hell. Obviously the idea of an afterlife goes a long way back (judging from the contents of ancient graves). |