67 ideas
| 13773 | For the truth you need Prodicus's fifty-drachma course, not his one-drachma course [Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates: If I'd attended Prodicus's fifty-drachma course, I could tell you the truth about names straightway, but as I've only heard the one-drachma course, I don't know the truth about it. | |
| From: Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Cratylus 384b |
| 7421 | A philosopher is one who cares about what other people care about [Socrates, by Foucault] |
| Full Idea: Socrates asks people 'Are you caring for yourself?' He is the man who cares about the care of others; this is the particular position of the philosopher. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Michel Foucault - Ethics of the Concern for Self as Freedom p.287 | |
| A reaction: Priests, politicians and psychiatrists also care quite intensely about the concerns of other people. Someone who was intensely self-absorbed with the critical task of getting their own beliefs right would count for me as a philosopher. |
| 1649 | Socrates opened philosophy to all, but Plato confined moral enquiry to a tiny elite [Vlastos on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: To confine, as Plato does in 'Republic' IV-VII, moral inquiry to a tiny elite, is to obliterate the Socratic vision which opens up the philosophic life to all. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.18 | |
| A reaction: This doesn't mean that Plato is necessarily 'elitist'. It isn't elitist to point out that an activity is very difficult. |
| 5842 | Philosophical discussion involves dividing subject-matter into categories [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: Self-discipline and avoidance of pleasure makes people most capable of philosophical discussion, which is called 'discussion' (dialegesthai - sort out) because people divide their subject-matter into categories. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 4.5.12 | |
| A reaction: This could be the original slogan for analytical philosophy, as far as I am concerned. I don't think philosophy aims at complete and successful analysis (cf. Idea 2958), but at revealing the structure and interconnection of ideas. This is wisdom. |
| 648 | Socrates began the quest for something universal with his definitions, but he didn't make them separate [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Socrates began the quest for something universal in addition to the radical flux of perceptible particulars, with his definitions. But he rightly understood that universals cannot be separated from particulars. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1086b |
| 164 | It is legitimate to play the devil's advocate [Socrates] |
| Full Idea: It is legitimate to play the devil's advocate. | |
| From: Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Phaedrus 272c |
| 1647 | In Socratic dialogue you must say what you believe, so unasserted premises are not debated [Vlastos on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates' rule of "say only what you believe"….excluded debate on unasserted premises, thereby distinguishing Socratic from Zenonian and earlier dialectics. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.14 |
| 115 | Socrates was pleased if his mistakes were proved wrong [Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates: I'm happy to have a mistaken idea of mine proved wrong. | |
| From: Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Gorgias 458a |
| 22099 | The method of Socrates shows the student is discovering the truth within himself [Socrates, by Carlisle] |
| Full Idea: Socrates tended to prefer the method of questioning, for this made it clear that the student was discovering the truth within himself. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 7 | |
| A reaction: Sounds like it will only facilitate conceptual analysis, and excludes empirical knowledge. Can you say to Socrates 'I'll just google that'? |
| 5844 | Socrates always proceeded in argument by general agreement at each stage [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: When Socrates was setting out a detailed argument, he used to proceed by such stages as were generally agreed, because he thought that this was the infallible method of argument. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 4.6.16 | |
| A reaction: This sounds right, and shows how strongly Socrates perceived philosophy to be a group activity, of which I approve. It seems to me that philosophy is clearly a spoken subject before it is a written one. The lonely speculator comes much later. |
| 11389 | Socrates sought essences, which are the basis of formal logic [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is not surprising that Socrates sought essences. His project was to establish formal reasoning, of whose syllogisms essences are the foundations. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1078b22 | |
| A reaction: This seems to reinforce the definitional view of essences, since definitions seem to be at the centre of most of Socrates's quests. |
| 19079 | For idealists reality is like a collection of beliefs, so truths and truthmakers are not distinct [Young,JO] |
| Full Idea: Idealists do not believe that there is an ontological distinction between beliefs and what makes beliefs true. From their perspective, reality is something like a collection of beliefs. | |
| From: James O. Young (The Coherence Theory of Truth [2013], §2.1) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't seem to me to wholly reject truthmakers, since beliefs can still be truthmakers for one another. This is something like Davidson's view, that only beliefs can justify other beliefs. |
| 19076 | Coherence theories differ over the coherence relation, and over the set of proposition with which to cohere [Young,JO] |
| Full Idea: Coherence theories of truth differ on their accounts of the coherence relation, and on their accounts of the set (or sets) of propositions with which true propositions occur (the 'specified set'). | |
| From: James O. Young (The Coherence Theory of Truth [2013], §1) | |
| A reaction: Coherence is clearly more than consistency or mutual entailment, and I like to invoke explanation. The set has to be large, or the theory is absurd (as two absurdities can 'cohere'). So very large, or very very large, or maximally large? |
| 19077 | Two propositions could be consistent with your set, but inconsistent with one another [Young,JO] |
| Full Idea: It is unsatisfactory for the coherence relation to be consistency, because two propositions could be consistent with a 'specified set', and yet be inconsistent with each other. That would imply they are both true, which is impossible. | |
| From: James O. Young (The Coherence Theory of Truth [2013], §1) | |
| A reaction: I'm not convinced by this. You first accept P because it is consistent with the set; then Q turns up, which is consistent with everything in the set except P. So you have to choose between them, and might eject P. Your set was too small. |
| 19078 | Coherence with actual beliefs, or our best beliefs, or ultimate ideal beliefs? [Young,JO] |
| Full Idea: One extreme for the specified set is the largest consistent set of propositions currently believed by actual people. A moderate position makes it the limit of people's enquiries. The other extreme is what would be believed by an omniscient being. | |
| From: James O. Young (The Coherence Theory of Truth [2013], §1) | |
| A reaction: One not considered is the set of propositions believed by each individual person. Thoroughgoing relativists might well embrace that one. Peirce and Putnam liked the moderate one. I'm taken with the last one, since truth is an ideal, not a phenomenon. |
| 19084 | Coherent truth is not with an arbitrary set of beliefs, but with a set which people actually do believe [Young,JO] |
| Full Idea: It must be remembered that coherentists do not believe that the truth of a proposition consists in coherence with an arbitrarily chosen set of propositions; the coherence is with a set of beliefs, or a set of propositions held to be true. | |
| From: James O. Young (The Coherence Theory of Truth [2013], §3.1) | |
| A reaction: This is a very good response to critics who cite bizarre sets of beliefs which happen to have internal coherence. You have to ask why they are not actually believed, and the answer must be that the coherence is not extensive enough. |
| 19083 | How do you identify the best coherence set; and aren't there truths which don't cohere? [Young,JO] |
| Full Idea: The two main objections to the coherence theory of truth are that there is no way to identify the 'specified set' of propositions without contradiction, ...and that some propositions are true which cohere with no set of beliefs. | |
| From: James O. Young (The Coherence Theory of Truth [2013], §3.1/2) | |
| A reaction: The point of the first is that you need a prior knowledge of truth to say which of two sets is the better one. The second one is thinking of long-lost tiny details from the past, which seem to be true without evidence. A huge set might beat the first one. |
| 19075 | Deflationary theories reject analysis of truth in terms of truth-conditions [Young,JO] |
| Full Idea: Unlike deflationary theories, the coherence and correspondence theories both hold that truth is a property of propositions that can be analyzed in terms of the sorts of truth-conditions propositions have, and the relation propositions stand in to them. | |
| From: James O. Young (The Coherence Theory of Truth [2013], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is presumably because deflationary theories reject the external relations of a proposition as a feature of its truth. This evidently leaves them in need of a theory of meaning, which may be fairly minimal. Horwich would be an example. |
| 639 | Socrates developed definitions as the basis of syllogisms, and also inductive arguments [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Socrates aimed to establish formal logic, of whose syllogisms essences are the foundations. He developed inductive arguments and also general definitions. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1078b |
| 8525 | Relations need terms, so they must be second-order entities based on first-order tropes [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: Because there cannot be relations without terms, in a meta-physic that makes first-order tropes the terms of all relations, relational tropes must belong to a second, derivative order. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §8) | |
| A reaction: The admission that there could be a 'derivative order' may lead to trouble for trope theory. Ostrich Nominalists could say that properties themselves are derivative second-order abstractions from indivisible particulars. Russell makes them first-order. |
| 8518 | Events are trope-sequences, in which tropes replace one another [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: Events are widely acknowledged to be particulars, but they are plainly not ordinary concrete particulars. They are best viewed as trope-sequences, in which one condition gives way to another. They are changes in which tropes replace one another. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §3) | |
| A reaction: If nothing exists except bundles of tropes, it is worth asking WHY one trope would replace another. Some tropes are active (i.e. they are best described as 'powers'). |
| 8513 | Two red cloths are separate instances of redness, because you can dye one of them blue [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: If we have two cloths of the very same shade of redness, we can show there are two cloths by burning one and leaving the other unaffected; we show there are two cases of redness in the same way: dye one blue, leaving the other unaffected. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §1) | |
| A reaction: This has to be one of the basic facts of the problem accepted by everyone. If you dye half of one of the pieces, was the original red therefore one instance or two? Has it become two? How many red tropes are there in a red cloth? |
| 8514 | Red could only recur in a variety of objects if it was many, which makes them particulars [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: If there are a varied group of red objects, the only element that recurs is the colour. But it must be the colour as a particular (a 'trope') that is involved in the recurrence, for only particulars can be many in the way required for recurrence. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §1) | |
| A reaction: This claim seems to depend on the presupposition that rednesses are countable things, but it is tricky trying to count the number of blue tropes in the sky. |
| 8522 | Tropes solve the Companionship Difficulty, since the resemblance is only between abstract particulars [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: The 'companionship difficulty' cannot arise if the members of the resemblance class are tropes rather than whole concrete particulars. The instances of having a heart, as abstract particulars, are quite different from instances of having a kidney. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §6) | |
| A reaction: The companionship difficulty seems worst if you base your account of properties just on being members of a class. Any talk of resemblance eventually has to talk about 'respects' of resemblance. Is a trope a respect? Is a mode an object? |
| 8523 | Tropes solve the Imperfect Community problem, as they can only resemble in one respect [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: The 'problem of imperfect community' cannot arise where our resemblance sets are sets of tropes. Tropes, by their very nature and mode of differentiation can only resemble in one respect. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §6) | |
| A reaction: You arrive at very different accounts of what resemblance means according to how you express the problem verbally. We can only find a solution through thinking which transcends language. Heresy! |
| 8524 | Trope theory makes space central to reality, as tropes must have a shape and size [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: The metaphysics of abstract particulars gives a central place to space, or space-time, as the frame of the world. ...Tropes are, of their essence, regional, which carries with it the essential presence of shape and size in any trope occurrence. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §7) | |
| A reaction: Trope theory has a problem with Aristotle's example (Idea 557) of what happens when white is mixed with white. Do two tropes become one trope if you paint on a second coat of white? How can particulars merge? How can abstractions merge? |
| 1652 | Socrates did not consider universals or definitions as having separate existence, but Plato made Forms of them [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Socrates did not regard the universals or the objects of definitions as separate existents, while Plato did separate them, and called this sort of entity ideas/forms. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1078b30 |
| 8521 | Nominalism has the problem that without humans nothing would resemble anything else [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: The objection to nominalism is its consequence that if there were no human race (or other living things), nothing would be like anything else. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §6) | |
| A reaction: Anti-realists will be unflustered by this difficulty. Personally it strikes me as obvious that some aspects of resemblance are part of reality which we did not contribute. This I take to be a contingent fact, founded on the existence of natural kinds. |
| 8515 | Tropes are basic particulars, so concrete particulars are collections of co-located tropes [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: If tropes are basic particulars, then concrete particulars count as dependent realities. They are collections of co-located tropes, depending on these tropes as a fleet does upon its component ships. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §2) | |
| A reaction: If I sail my yacht through a fleet, do I become part of it? Presumably trope theory could avoid a bundle view of objects. A bare substratum could be a magnet which attracts tropes. |
| 8519 | Bundles must be unique, so the Identity of Indiscernibles is a necessity - which it isn't! [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: Each individual is distinct from each other individual, so the bundle account of objects requires each bundle to be different from every other bundle. So the Identity of Indiscernibles must be a necessary truth, which, unfortunately, it is not. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §5) | |
| A reaction: Clearly the Identity of Indiscernibles is not a necessary truth (consider just two identical spheres). Location and time must enter into it. Could we not add a further individuation requirement to the necessary existence of a bundle? (Quinton) |
| 4033 | Two pure spheres in non-absolute space are identical but indiscernible [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: The Identity of Indiscernibles is not a necessary truth. It fails in possible worlds where there are two identical spheres in a non-absolute space, or worlds without beginning or end where events are exactly cyclically repeated. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §5) | |
| A reaction: The principle was always very suspect, and these seem nice counterexamples. As so often, epistemology and ontology had become muddled. |
| 1650 | For Socrates our soul, though hard to define, is our self [Vlastos on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: For Socrates our soul is our self - whatever that might turn out to be. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.55 | |
| A reaction: The problem with any broad claim like this is that we seem to be able to distinguish between essential and non-essential aspects of the self or of the soul. |
| 23252 | Socrates first proposed that we are run by mind or reason [Socrates, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: It would seem that historically the decisive step was taken by Socrates in conceiving of human beings as being run by a mind or reason.. …He postulated an entity whose precision nature and function then was a matter of considerable debate. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Michael Frede - Intro to 'Rationality in Greek Thought' p.19 | |
| A reaction: This is, for me, a rather revelatory idea. I am keen on the fact the animals make judgements which are true and false, and also that we exhibit rationality when walking across uneven ground. So pure rationality is a cultural construct! |
| 8512 | Abstractions come before the mind by concentrating on a part of what is presented [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: An item is abstract if it is got before the mind by an act of abstraction, that is, by concentrating attention on some, but not all, of what is presented. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §1) | |
| A reaction: I think this point is incredibly important. Pure Fregean semantics tries to leave out the psychological component, and yet all the problems in semantics concern various sorts of abstraction. Imagination is the focus of the whole operation. |
| 19074 | Are truth-condtions other propositions (coherence) or features of the world (correspondence)? [Young,JO] |
| Full Idea: For the coherence theory of truth, the truth conditions of propositions consist in other propositions. The correspondence theory, in contrast, states that the truth conditions of propositions are ... objective features of the world. | |
| From: James O. Young (The Coherence Theory of Truth [2013], Intro) | |
| A reaction: It is obviously rather important for your truth-conditions theory of meaning that you are clear about your theory of truth. A correspondence theory is evidently taken for granted, even in possible worlds versions. |
| 19082 | Coherence truth suggests truth-condtions are assertion-conditions, which need knowledge of justification [Young,JO] |
| Full Idea: Coherence theorists can argue that the truth conditions of a proposition are those under which speakers tend to assert it, ...and that speakers can only make a practice of asserting a proposition under conditions they can recognise as justifying it. | |
| From: James O. Young (The Coherence Theory of Truth [2013], §2.2) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This sounds rather verificationist, and hence wrong, since if you then asserted anything for which you didn't know the justification, that would remove its truth, and thus make it meaningless. |
| 195 | No one willingly commits an evil or base act [Socrates] |
| Full Idea: I am fairly certain that no wise man believes anyone sins willingly or willingly perpetrates any evil or base act. | |
| From: Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Protagoras 345e |
| 1653 | Socrates did not accept the tripartite soul (which permits akrasia) [Vlastos on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Xenophon indirectly indicates that he does not associate Socrates in any way with the tripartite psychology of the 'Republic', for within that theory akrasia would be all too possible. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.102 |
| 5843 | People do what they think they should do, and only ever do what they think they should do [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: There is no one who knows what they ought to do, but thinks that they ought not to do it, and no one does anything other than what they think they ought to do. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 4.6.6 | |
| A reaction: This is Socrates' well-known rejection of the possibility of weakness of will (akrasia - lit. 'lack of control'). Aristotle disagreed, and so does almost everyone else. Modern smokers seem to exhibit akrasia. I have some sympathy with Socrates. |
| 5253 | Socrates was shocked by the idea of akrasia, but observation shows that it happens [Aristotle on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates thought it a shocking idea that when a man actually has knowledge in him something else should overmaster it, ..but this is glaringly inconsistent with the observed facts. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics 1145b24 | |
| A reaction: Aristotle seems very confident, but it is not at all clear (even to the agent) what is going on when apparent weakness of will occurs (e.g. breaking a diet). What exactly does the agent believe at the moment of weakness? |
| 199 | The common belief is that people can know the best without acting on it [Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Most people think there are many who recognise the best but are unwilling to act on it. | |
| From: Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Protagoras 352d |
| 5839 | For Socrates, wisdom and prudence were the same thing [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: Socrates did not distinguish wisdom from prudence, but judged that the man who recognises and puts into practice what is truly good, and the man who knows and guards against what is disgraceful, are both wise and prudent. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 3.9.3 | |
| A reaction: Compare Aristotle, who separates them, claiming that prudence is essential for moral virtue, but wisdom is pursued at a different level, closer to the gods than to society. |
| 5867 | For Socrates, virtues are forms of knowledge, so knowing justice produces justice [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Socrates thought that the virtues were all forms of knowledge, and therefore once a man knew justice, he would be a just man. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Eudemian Ethics 1216b07 | |
| A reaction: The clearest possible statement of Socrates' intellectualism. Aristotle rejected the Socrates view, but I find it sympathetic. Smokers who don't want to die seem to be in denial. To see the victims is to condemn the crime. |
| 5069 | Socrates was the first to base ethics upon reason, and use reason to explain it [Taylor,R on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates was the first significant thinker to try basing ethics upon reason, and to try uncovering its natural principles solely by the use of reason. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Richard Taylor - Virtue Ethics: an Introduction Ch.7 | |
| A reaction: Interesting. It seems to me that Socrates overemphasised reason, presumably because it was a novelty. Hence his view that akrasia is impossible, and that virtue is simply knowledge. Maybe action is not just rational, but moral action is. |
| 5836 | All human virtues are increased by study and practice [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: If you consider the virtues that are recognised among human beings, you will find that they are all increased by study and practice. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 2.6.41 | |
| A reaction: 'Study' is the intellectualist part of this remark; the reference to 'practice' fits with Aristotle view that virtue is largely a matter of good habits. The next question would be how theoretical the studies should be. Philosophy, or newspapers? |
| 5840 | The wise perform good actions, and people fail to be good without wisdom [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: It is the wise who perform truly good actions, and those who are not wise cannot, and, if they try to, fail. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 3.9.6 | |
| A reaction: The essence of Socrates' intellectualism, with which Aristotle firmly disagreed (when he assert that only practical reason was needed for virtuous actions, rather than wisdom or theory). Personally I side more with Socrates than with Aristotle on this. |
| 185 | Socrates despised good looks [Socrates, by Plato] |
| Full Idea: Socrates despises good looks to an almost inconceivable extent. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Plato - The Symposium 216e |
| 5070 | Socrates conservatively assumed that Athenian conventions were natural and true [Taylor,R on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates' moral philosophy was essentially conservative. He assumed that the principles the Athenians honoured were true and natural, so there was little possibility of conflict between nature and convention in his thinking. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Richard Taylor - Virtue Ethics: an Introduction Ch.8 | |
| A reaction: Taylor contrasts Socrates with Callicles, who claims that conventions oppose nature. This fits with Nietzsche's discontent with Socrates, as the person who endorses conventional good and evil, thus constraining the possibilities of human nature. |
| 5838 | A well-made dung basket is fine, and a badly-made gold shield is base, because of function [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: A dung-basket is fine, and a golden shield contemptible, if the one is finely and the other badly constructed for carrying out its function. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 3.8.6 | |
| A reaction: This is the basis of a key idea in Aristotle, that virtue (or excellence) arises directly from function. I think it is the most important idea in virtue theory, and seems to have struck most Greeks as being self-evident. |
| 5837 | Things are both good and fine by the same standard [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: Things are always both good and fine by the same standard. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 3.8.5 | |
| A reaction: This begs many questions, but perhaps it leads to what we call intuitionism, which is an instant ability is perceive a fine action (even in an enemy). This leads to the rather decadent view that the aim of life is the production of beauty. |
| 3017 | The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance [Socrates, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: There is only one good, namely knowledge, and there is only one evil, namely ignorance. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.4.14 | |
| A reaction: Ignorance of how to commit evil sounds quite good. |
| 1646 | Socrates was the first to put 'eudaimonia' at the centre of ethics [Socrates, by Vlastos] |
| Full Idea: Socrates' true place in the development of Greek thought is that he is the first to establish the eudaimonist foundation of ethical theory, which became the foundation of the schools which sprang up around him. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.10 | |
| A reaction: I suspect that he was the first to fully articulate a widely held Greek belief. The only ethical question that they asked was about the nature of a good human life. |
| 1663 | By 'areté' Socrates means just what we mean by moral virtue [Vlastos on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates uses the word 'areté' to mean precisely what we mean by moral virtue. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.200 |
| 4323 | Socrates is torn between intellectual virtue, which is united and teachable, and natural virtue, which isn't [PG on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates worries about the unity and teachability of virtue because he is torn between virtue as intellectual (unified and teachable) and virtue as natural (plural and unteachable). | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: Admittedly virtue could be natural but still unified and teachable, but Socrates clearly had a dilemma, and this seems to make sense of it. |
| 8003 | Socrates agrees that virtue is teachable, but then denies that there are teachers [Socrates, by MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Socrates' great point of agreement with the sophists is his acceptance of the thesis that areté is teachable. But paradoxically he denies that there are teachers. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: This is part of Socrates's presentation of himself as 'not worthy'. Virtue would be teachable, if only anyone knew what it was. He's wrong. Lots of people have a pretty good idea of virtue, and could teach it. The problem is in the pupils. |
| 126 | We should ask what sort of people we want to be [Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates: What sort of person should one be? | |
| From: Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Gorgias 487e |
| 4111 | Socrates believed that basically there is only one virtue, the power of right judgement [Socrates, by Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: Socrates believed that basically there is only one virtue, the power of right judgement. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Bernard Williams - Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: Which links with Aristotle's high place for 'phronesis' (prudence?). The essence of Socrates' intellectualism. Robots and saints make very different judgements, though. |
| 7808 | Socrates made the civic values of justice and friendship paramount [Socrates, by Grayling] |
| Full Idea: In Socrates' thought, the expressly civic values of justice and friendship became paramount. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by A.C. Grayling - What is Good? Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This is the key move in ancient ethics, away from heroism, and towards the standard Aristotelian social virtues. I say this is the essence of what we call morality, and the only one which can be given a decent foundational justification (social health). |
| 23907 | Courage is scientific knowledge [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Socrates thought that courage is scientific knowledge. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Eudemian Ethics 1230a06 | |
| A reaction: Aristotle himself says that reason produces courage, but he also says it arises from natural youthful spirits. I favour the view that there is a strong rational component in true courage. |
| 7585 | Socrates emphasises that the knower is an existing individual, with existence his main task [Socrates, by Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: The infinite merit of the Socratic position was precisely to accentuate the fact that the knower is an existing individual, and that the task of existing is his essential task. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Søren Kierkegaard - Concluding Unscientific Postscript 'Inwardness' | |
| A reaction: Always claim Socrates as the first spokesman for your movement! It is true that Socrates is always demanding the views of his interlocutors, and not just abstract theories. See Idea 1647. |
| 5841 | Obedience to the law gives the best life, and success in war [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: A city in which the people are most obedient to the laws has the best life in time of peace and is irresistible in war. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 4.4.15 | |
| A reaction: This is a conservative view, with the obvious problem case of bad laws, but in general it seems to me clearly right. This is why it is so vital that nothing should be done to bring the law into disrepute, such as petty legislation or prosecution. |
| 1661 | Socrates was the first to grasp that a cruelty is not justified by another cruelty [Vlastos on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates was the first Greek to grasp the truth that if someone has done a nasty thing to me, this does not give the slightest moral justification for doing anything nasty to him. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.190 |
| 5846 | A lover using force is a villain, but a seducer is much worse, because he corrupts character [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: The fact that a lover uses not force but persuasion makes him more detestable, because a lover who uses force proves himself a villain, but one who uses persuasion ruins the character of the one who consents. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Symposium 8.20 | |
| A reaction: A footnote says that this distinction was enshrined in Athenian law, where seduction was worse than rape. This is a startling and interest contrast to the modern view, which enshrines rights and freedoms, and says seduction is usually no crime at all. |
| 8517 | Causal conditions are particular abstract instances of properties, which makes them tropes [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: The conditions in causal statements are usually particular cases of properties. A collapse results from the weakness of this cable (not any other). This is specific to a time and place; it is an abstract particular. It is, in short, a trope. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §3) | |
| A reaction: The fan of universals could counter this by saying that the collapse results from this unique combination of universals. Resemblance nominalist can equally build an account on the coincidence of certain types of concrete particulars. |
| 8516 | Davidson can't explain causation entirely by events, because conditions are also involved [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: Not all singular causal statements are of Davidson's event-event type. Many involve conditions, so there are condition-event (weakness/collapse), event-condition (explosion/movement), and condition-condition (hot/warming) causal connections. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §3) | |
| A reaction: Fans of Davidson need to reduce conditions to events. The problem of individuation keeps raising its head. Davidson makes it depend on description. Kim looks good, because events, and presumably conditions, reduce to something small and precise. |
| 1657 | Socrates holds that right reason entails virtue, and this must also apply to the gods [Vlastos on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: It is essential to Socrates' rationalist programme in theology to assume that the entailment of virtue by wisdom binds gods no less than men. He would not tolerate one moral standard for me and another for gods. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.164 |
| 1662 | A new concept of God as unswerving goodness emerges from Socrates' commitment to virtue [Vlastos on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Undeviating beneficent goodness guides Socrates' thought so deeply that he applies it even to the deity; he projects a new concept of god as a being that can cause only good, never evil. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.197 |