19 ideas
| 22024 | Fichte's subjectivity struggles to then give any account of objectivity [Pinkard on Fichte] |
| Full Idea: For Fichte 'subjectivity' came first, and he was then stuck with the (impossible) task of showing how 'objectivity' arose out of it. | |
| From: comment on Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 06 | |
| A reaction: The best available answer to this problem (for idealists) is, I think, Nietzsche's perspectives, in which multiple subjectivities are summed to produce a blurred picture which has a degree of consensus. Fichte later embraced other minds. |
| 22017 | Normativity needs the possibility of negation, in affirmation and denial [Fichte, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: To adopt any kind of normative stance is to commit oneself necessarily to the possibility of negation. It involves doing something correctly or incorrectly, so there must exist the possibility of denying or affirming. | |
| From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 05 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the key idea for understanding Hegel's logic. Personally I think animals have a non-verbal experience of negation - when a partner dies, for example. |
| 22018 | Necessary truths derive from basic assertion and negation [Fichte, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Fichte thought that everything that involves necessary truths - even mathematics and logic - should be shown to follow from the more basic principles involved in assertion and negation. | |
| From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 05 | |
| A reaction: An interesting proposal, though I am struggling to see how it works. Fichte sees assertion and negation as foundational (Idea 22017), but I take them to be responses to the real world. |
| 22064 | Fichte's logic is much too narrow, and doesn't deduce ethics, art, society or life [Schlegel,F on Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Only Fichte's principles are deduced in his book, that is, the logical ones, and not even these completely. And what about the practical, the moral and ethical ones. Society, learning, wit, art, and so on are also entitled to be deduced here. | |
| From: comment on Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Friedrich Schlegel - works Vol 18 p.34 | |
| A reaction: This is the beginnings of the romantic rebellion against a rather narrowly rationalist approach to philosophy. Schlegel also objects to the fact that Fichte only had one axiom (presumably the idea of the not-Self). |
| 22032 | Fichte's key claim was that the subjective-objective distinction must itself be subjective [Fichte, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Fichte's key claim was that the difference between the subjective and the objective points of view had to be itself a subjective distinction, something that the 'I' posits. | |
| From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 09 | |
| A reaction: This seems to lock us firmly into the idealist mental prison and throw away the key. |
| 22020 | We only see ourselves as self-conscious and rational in relation to other rationalities [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: A rational creature cannot posit itself as such a creature with self-consciousness without positing itself as an individual, as one among many rational creatures. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794], p.8), quoted by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 05 n25 | |
| A reaction: [1796 book about his Wissenschaftlehre] This is the transcendental (Kantian) approach to other minds. Wittgenstein's private language argument is similar. Hegel was impressed by this idea (I think). |
| 22060 | The Self is the spontaneity, self-relatedness and unity needed for knowledge [Fichte, by Siep] |
| Full Idea: According to Fichte, spontaneity, self-relatedness, and unity are the basic traits of knowledge (which includes conscience). ...This principle of all knowledge is what he calls the 'I' or the Self. | |
| From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Ludwig Siep - Fichte p.58 | |
| A reaction: This is the idealist view. He gets 'spontaneity' from Kant, which is the mind's contribution to experience. Self-relatedness is the distinctive Fichte idea. Unity presumably means total coherence, which is typical of idealists. |
| 22066 | Novalis sought a much wider concept of the ego than Fichte's proposal [Novalis on Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Novalis aimed to create a theory of the ego with a much wider scope than Fichte's doctrine of knowledge had been able to establish. ....Without philosophy, imperfect poet - without poetry, imperfect thinker. | |
| From: comment on Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Novalis - Logological Fragments I vol.3 p.531 | |
| A reaction: [in his 'Fichte Studies] Since this is at the heart of early romanticism, I take the concept to embrace nature, as well as creative imagination. There is a general rebellion against the narrowness of Fichte. |
| 22016 | The self is not a 'thing', but what emerges from an assertion of normativity [Fichte, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Fichte said the self is not a natural 'thing' but is itself a normative status, and 'it' can obtain this status, so it seems, only by an act of attributing it to itself. ...He continually identified the 'I' with 'reason' itself. | |
| From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 05 | |
| A reaction: Pinkard says Fichte gradually qualified this claim. Fichte struggled to state his view in a way that avoided obvious paradoxes. 'My mind produces decisions, so there must be someone in charge of them'? Is this transcendental? |
| 22019 | Consciousness of an object always entails awareness of the self [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: I can be conscious of any object only on the condition that I am also conscious of myself, that is, of the conscious subject. This proposition is incontrovertible. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794], p.112), quoted by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 05 | |
| A reaction: [from the 1797/8 version of Wissenschaftslehre] Russell might be cross to find that his idea on this was anticipated by Fichte. I still approve of the idea. |
| 22061 | Judgement is distinguishing concepts, and seeing their relations [Fichte, by Siep] |
| Full Idea: For Fichte, to judge means to distinguish concepts from one another and to place them in relationship to one another. | |
| From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Ludwig Siep - Fichte p.59 | |
| A reaction: This idea of Fichte's seems to be the key one for Hegel, and hence (I presume) it is the lynchpin of German Idealism. It seems to describe mathematical knowledge quite well. I don't think it fits judging whether there is a snake in the grass. |
| 16383 | Puzzled Pierre has two mental files about the same object [Recanati on Kripke] |
| Full Idea: In Kripke's puzzle about belief, the subject has two distinct mental files about one and the same object. | |
| From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (A Puzzle about Belief [1979]) by François Recanati - Mental Files 17.1 | |
| A reaction: [Pierre distinguishes 'London' from 'Londres'] The Kripkean puzzle is presented as very deep, but I have always felt there was a simple explanation, and I suspect that this is it (though I will leave the reader to think it through, as I'm very busy…). |
| 4125 | Hare says I acquire an agglomeration of preferences by role-reversal, leading to utilitarianism [Hare, by Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: In Hare's theory I apply a "role-reversal test", and then acquire an actual agglomeration of preferences that apply to the hypothetical situation. The result is utilitarianism. | |
| From: report of Richard M. Hare (Moral Thinking: Its Levels,Method and Point [1981]) by Bernard Williams - Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: It hits that traditional stumbling block, of why I should care about the preferences of others. Pure reason and empathy are the options (Kant or Hume). I may, however, lack both. |
| 4126 | If we have to want the preferences of the many, we have to abandon our own deeply-held views [Williams,B on Hare] |
| Full Idea: Hare's version of utilitarianism requires an agent to abandon any deeply held principle or conviction if a large enough aggregate of contrary preferences, of whatever kind, favours a contrary action. | |
| From: comment on Richard M. Hare (Moral Thinking: Its Levels,Method and Point [1981]) by Bernard Williams - Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: This nicely attacks any impersonal moral theory, whether it is based on reason or preferences. But where did my personal ideals come from? |
| 4127 | If morality is to be built on identification with the preferences of others, I must agree with their errors [Williams,B on Hare] |
| Full Idea: If there is to be total identification with others, then if another's preferences are mistaken, the preferences I imagine myself into are equally mistaken, and if 'identification' is the point, they should remain mistaken. | |
| From: comment on Richard M. Hare (Moral Thinking: Its Levels,Method and Point [1981]) by Bernard Williams - Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: Yes. The core of morality must be judgement. Robots can implement universal utilitarian rules, but they could end up promoting persecutions of minorities. |
| 22483 | A judgement is presciptive if we expect it to be acted on [Hare] |
| Full Idea: We say something prescriptive if and only if, for some act A, some situation S and some person R, if P were to assent (orally) to what we say, and not, in S, do A, he logically must be assenting insincerely. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Moral Thinking: Its Levels,Method and Point [1981], p.21), quoted by Philippa Foot - Does Moral Subjectivism Rest on a Mistake? p.190 | |
| A reaction: Foot offers this as Hare's most explicit definition. The use of algebra strikes me as ludicrous. In logic letters have the virtue of not shifting their meaning during an argument, but that is not required here. |
| 22023 | Fichte's idea of spontaneity implied that nothing counts unless we give it status [Fichte, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Fichte placed emphasis on human spontaneity, on nothing 'counting' for us unless we somehow bestowed some kind of status on it. | |
| From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 06 | |
| A reaction: This idea evidentally arises from Kant's account of thought. Pinkard says this idea inspired the early Romantics. I would have thought the drive to exist (Spinoza's conatus) would make things count whether we liked it or not. |
| 4360 | By far the easiest way of seeming upright is to be upright [Hare] |
| Full Idea: By far the easiest way of seeming upright is to be upright. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Moral Thinking: Its Levels,Method and Point [1981], Ch.11) | |
| A reaction: Yes. This is the route which takes us from enlightened self-interest to a vision of true morality. Virtue is found to be its own reward, thought that is not how we became virtuous to begin with. |
| 22065 | Fichte reduces nature to a lifeless immobility [Schlegel,F on Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Fichte reduces the non-Ego or nature to a state of constant calm, standstill, immobility, lack of all change, movement and life, that is death. | |
| From: comment on Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Friedrich Schlegel - works vol 12 p.190 | |
| A reaction: The point is that Fichte's nature is a merely logical or conceptual deduction from the spontaneous reason of the self, so it can't have the lively diversity we find in nature. |