21 ideas
| 7662 | Romanticism is the greatest change in the consciousness of the West [Berlin] |
| Full Idea: Romanticism seems to me the greatest single shift in the consciousness of the West that has occurred. | |
| From: Isaiah Berlin (The Roots of Romanticism [1965], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Far be it from me to challenge Berlin on such things, but I think that the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century (though acting more slowly and less dramatically than romanticism) may well be more significant in the long run. Ideas filter down. |
| 12268 | Contradiction is impossible [Antisthenes (I), by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Antisthenes said that contradiction is impossible. | |
| From: report of Antisthenes (Ath) (fragments/reports [c.405 BCE]) by Aristotle - Topics 104b21 | |
| A reaction: Aristotle is giving an example of a 'thesis'. It should be taken seriously if a philosopher proposes it, but dismissed as rubbish if anyone else proposes it! No context is given for the remark. |
| 602 | Some fools think you cannot define anything, but only say what it is like [Antisthenes (I), by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There is an application of that old chestnut of the cynic Antisthenes' followers (and other buffoons of that kind). Their claim was that a definition of what something is is impossible. You cannot define silver, though you can say it is like tin. | |
| From: report of Antisthenes (Ath) (fragments/reports [c.405 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1043b |
| 7665 | Most Enlightenment thinkers believed that virtue consists ultimately in knowledge [Berlin] |
| Full Idea: What is common to most of the main thinker of the Enlightenment is the view that virtue consists ultimately in knowledge. | |
| From: Isaiah Berlin (The Roots of Romanticism [1965], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: I have always found this view (which seems to originate with Socrates) rather sympathetic. What is so frustrating about cheerful optimists who smoke cigarettes is not the weakness of will or strong desires, but their apparent failure of understanding. |
| 2705 | How can intuitionists distinguish universal convictions from local cultural ones? [Hare] |
| Full Idea: There are convictions which are common to most societies; but there are others which are not, and no way is given by intuitionists of telling which are the authoritative data. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.454) | |
| A reaction: It seems unfair on intuitionists to say they haven't given a way to evaluate such things, given that they have offered intuition. The issue is what exactly they mean by 'intuition'. |
| 2712 | You can't use intuitions to decide which intuitions you should cultivate [Hare] |
| Full Idea: If it comes to deciding what intuitions and dispositions to cultivate, we cannot rely on the intuitions themselves, as intuitionists do. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.461) | |
| A reaction: Makes intuitionists sound a bit dim. Surely Hume identifies dispositions (such as benevolence) which should be cultivated, because they self-evidently improve social life? |
| 2706 | Emotivists mistakenly think all disagreements are about facts, and so there are no moral reasons [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Emotivists concluded too hastily that because naturalism and intuitionism are false, you cannot reason about moral questions, because they assumed that the only questions you can reason about are factual ones. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.455) | |
| A reaction: Personally I have a naturalistic view of ethics (based on successful functioning, as indicated by Aristotle), so not my prob. Why can't we reason about expressive emotions? We reason about art. |
| 2709 | Prescriptivism sees 'ought' statements as imperatives which are universalisable [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Universal prescriptivists hold that 'ought'-judgements are prescriptive like plain imperatives, but differ from them in being universalisable. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.457) | |
| A reaction: Sounds a bit tautological. Which comes first, the normativity or the universalisability? |
| 2704 | If morality is just a natural or intuitive description, that leads to relativism [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Non-descriptivists (e.g. prescriptivists) reject descriptivism in its naturalist or intuitionist form, because they are both destined to collapse into relativism. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.453) | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear from this why prescriptism would not also turn out to be relativist, if it includes evaluations along with facts. |
| 2703 | Descriptivism say ethical meaning is just truth-conditions; prescriptivism adds an evaluation [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Ethical descriptivism is the view that ethical sentence-meaning is wholly determined by truth-conditions. …Prescriptivists think there is a further element of meaning, which expresses prescriptions or evaluations or attitudes which we assent to. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.452) | |
| A reaction: Not sure I understand either of these. If all meaning consists of truth-conditions, that will apply to ethics. If meaning includes evaluations, that will apply to non-ethics. |
| 2707 | If there can be contradictory prescriptions, then reasoning must be involved [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Prescriptivists claim that there are rules of reasoning which govern non-descriptive as well as descriptive speech acts. The standard example is possible logical inconsistency between contradictory prescriptions. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.455) | |
| A reaction: The example doesn't seem very good. Inconsistency can appear in any area of thought, but that isn't enough to infer full 'rules of reasoning'. I could desire two incompatible crazy things. |
| 2708 | An 'ought' statement implies universal application [Hare] |
| Full Idea: In any 'ought' statement there is implicit a principle which says that the statement applies to all precisely similar situations. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.456) | |
| A reaction: No two situations can ever be 'precisely' similar. Indeed, 'precisely similar' may be an oxymoron (at least for situations). Kantians presumably like this idea. |
| 2711 | Prescriptivism implies a commitment, but descriptivism doesn't [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Prescriptivists hold that moral judgements commit the speaker to motivations and actions, but non-moral facts by themselves do not do this. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.459) | |
| A reaction: Surely hunger motivates to action? I suppose the key word is 'commit'. But lazy people are allowed to make moral judgements. |
| 1664 | I would rather go mad than experience pleasure [Antisthenes (I)] |
| Full Idea: I would rather go mad than experience pleasure. | |
| From: Antisthenes (Ath) (fragments/reports [c.405 BCE]), quoted by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 06.3 | |
| A reaction: Did he actually prefer pain? If both experiences would drive him mad, it seems like a desire for death. I cannot understand why anyone is opposed to harmless pleasures. |
| 21385 | Antisthenes said virtue is teachable and permanent, is life's goal, and is like universal wealth [Antisthenes (I), by Long] |
| Full Idea: The moral propositions of Antisthenes foreshadowed the Stoics: virtue can be taught and once acquired cannot be lost (fr.69,71); virtue is the goal of life (22); the sage is self-sufficient, since he has (by being wise) the wealth of all men (8o). | |
| From: report of Antisthenes (Ath) (fragments/reports [c.405 BCE]) by A.A. Long - Hellenistic Philosophy 1 | |
| A reaction: [He cites Caizzi for the fragments] The distinctive idea here is (I think) that once acquired virtue can never be lost. It sounds plausible, but I'm wondering why it should be true. Is it like riding a bicycle, or like learning to speak Russian? |
| 7676 | If we are essentially free wills, authenticity and sincerity are the highest virtues [Berlin] |
| Full Idea: Since (for romantics) we are wills, and we must be free, in the Kantian sense, controllable motives count more than consequences, and the greatest virtue of all is what existentialists call 'authenticity' and what romantics called 'sincerity'. | |
| From: Isaiah Berlin (The Roots of Romanticism [1965], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: The case of the sincere or authentic Nazi shows the problems with this. However, I agree that sincerity is a key virtue, perhaps the crucial preliminary to all the other virtues. It is hard to imagine a flow of other virtues from an insincere person. |
| 7664 | The Greeks have no notion of obligation or duty [Berlin] |
| Full Idea: There is an absence among the Greeks of a notion of obligation, and hence of duty, which is difficult to grasp for people who read the Greeks through spectacles partly affected by the jews. | |
| From: Isaiah Berlin (The Roots of Romanticism [1965], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't quite fit early section of 'Republic', in which morality is a mutual agreement not to do harm. Presumably the Greek word 'deon' refers to what needs to be done, rather than to anyone's obligation to do it(?). Contracts need duty? Cf. 4133 |
| 2710 | Moral judgements must invoke some sort of principle [Hare] |
| Full Idea: To make moral judgements is implicitly to invoke some principle, however specific. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.458) |
| 7677 | Central to existentialism is the romantic idea that there is nothing to lean on [Berlin] |
| Full Idea: The central sermon of existentialism is essentially a romantic one, namely, that there is in the world nothing to lean on. | |
| From: Isaiah Berlin (The Roots of Romanticism [1965], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: He tracks this back to Kant's view that our knowledge of the world arises out of our own minds. So what is there to lean on? Rational consistency? Natural human excellence? God? Pleasure? Anonymous duty? I like the second one. |
| 2631 | Antisthenes says there is only one god, which is nature [Antisthenes (I), by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Antisthenes says there is only one god, which is nature. | |
| From: report of Antisthenes (Ath) (fragments/reports [c.405 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') I.32 |
| 7663 | Judaism and Christianity views are based on paternal, family and tribal relations [Berlin] |
| Full Idea: The notion from which both Judaism and Christianity to a large degree sprang is the notion of family life, the relations of father and son, perhaps the relations of members of a tribe to one another. | |
| From: Isaiah Berlin (The Roots of Romanticism [1965], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: He compares this with Plato's mathematical view of reality. Key stories would be Abraham and Isaac, and Jesus being the 'son' of God, which both touch the killing of the child. Berlin means that the universe is explained this way. |