111 ideas
| 22659 | It is wisdom to believe what you desire, because belief is needed to achieve it [James] |
| Full Idea: Clearly it is often the part of wisdom to believe what one desires; for the belief is one of indispensable preliminary conditions of the realisation of its object. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.43) | |
| A reaction: Roughly, action is impossible without optimism about possible success. This may count as instinct, rather than 'wisdom'. |
| 20866 | Wise men participate in politics, especially if it shows moral progress [Stoic school, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: The wise man participates in political life, especially in the sort of governments which show some moral progress. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 2.11b | |
| A reaction: Nowadays this would probably involve belonging to a political party which offered moral progress. |
| 20854 | Wise men are never astonished at things which other people take to be wonders [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: The wise man is astonished at none of the things which appear to be wonders, such as the caves of Charon or tidal ebbs or hot springs or fiery exhalations from the earth. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.123 | |
| A reaction: This seems to me to be correct. Wise people will have thought more extensively about what is possible, and when something they had never imagined occurs, they have the humility to recognise their own limitations. |
| 20815 | No wise man has yet been discovered [Stoic school, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: According to the Stoics the wise man is hitherto undiscovered. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') 2.133 | |
| A reaction: This could plausibly be axiomatic for the whole of philosophy, since the subject is the 'love of wisdom', and not its acquisition. The subject is the pursuit of wisdom, which would be pointless if we already had it. |
| 22657 | All good philosophers start from a dumb conviction about which truths can be revealed [James] |
| Full Idea: Every philosopher whose initiative counts for anything in the evolution of thought has taken his stand on a sort of dumb conviction that the truth must lie in one direction rather than another, and a preliminary assurance that this can be made to work. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.40) | |
| A reaction: I would refer to this as 'intuition', which I think of as reasons (probably good reasons) which cannot yet be articulated. Hence I like this idea very much, except for the word 'dumb'. It is more like a rational vision, yet to be filled in. |
| 20806 | Stoic physics concerns cosmos, elements and causes (with six detailed divisions) [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics divide physics into topics on bodies, principles, elements, gods, limits, place and void. The general division is into three topics, concerning the cosmos, the elements and causal explanations. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.132 | |
| A reaction: Apart from the gods, not much has changed. |
| 20839 | Ethics studies impulse, good, passion, virtue, goals, value, action, appropriateness, encouragement [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoic divisions of ethics: on impulse, on good and bad things, on passions, on virtue, on the goal, on primary value, on actions, on appropriate actions, and on encouragements and discouragements to action. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.84 | |
| A reaction: A substantial part of this is covered by modern Action Theory, rather than by ethics. This describes later stoicism, from Chrysippus onwards. I like the study of 'appropriate actions', which could do with some modern analysis. |
| 20867 | True philosophising is not memorising ideas, but living by them [Stoic school, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: It is not the man who listens eagerly and memorises what philosophers say who is prepared for philosophising, but the man who is prepared to carry into action what is pronounced in philosophy and to live by it. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 2.11k | |
| A reaction: Hence stoicism was seen more as a way of life, and less as theorising. I aim to combine the two. There is a way of life which centres on theorising about life while living it. A life without enquiry is not worth living. |
| 22647 | A complete system is just a classification of the whole world's ingredients [James] |
| Full Idea: A completed theoretic philosophy can never be anything more than a completed classification of the world's ingredients. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.23) | |
| A reaction: I assume this is not just the physical ingredients, but must also include our conceptual scheme - but then we must first decide which is the best conceptual scheme to classify, and that's where the real action is. [He scorns such classifation later]. |
| 21675 | Some facts are indispensable for an effect, and others actually necessitate the effect [Stoic school, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics declare that there is a difference whether a thing is of such a kind that something cannot be effected without it, or such that something must necessarily be effected by it. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On Fate ('De fato') 16.36 | |
| A reaction: This points out that causal preconditions can be either necessary or sufficient for their effect. Because it is a very perceptive point, I surmise that it originated with Chrysippus. |
| 15663 | Adorno and Horkheimer subjected the Enlightenment to 'critical theory' analysis [Adorno/Horkheimer, by Finlayson] |
| Full Idea: Adorno and Horkheimer's analysis of Enlightenment sets the agenda for the subsequent development of critical theory. | |
| From: report of T Adorno / M Horkheimer (Dialectic of Enlightenment [1944]) by James Gordon Finlayson - Habermas Ch.1:07 |
| 21810 | The Stoics distinguished spoken logos from logos within the mind [Stoic school, by Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics distinguished between logos prophorikos ('uttered reasoning') and logos endiathetos ('reason stored within'). | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Plotinus - The Enneads 5.1.03 n7 | |
| A reaction: These seems required, since logos is often the 'giving of an account', but it is also the rational principle that rules nature. |
| 20775 | Stoics study canons, criteria and definitions, in order to find the truth [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: They include the study of canons and criteria in order to discover the truth. This is to straighten out the differences among the presentations. And they also include the definitional part for the purposes of recognising the truth. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.42 | |
| A reaction: Might we call this categorisation, justifications and definitions? This is part of the study of logos, which comes first in the stoic view of philosophy. |
| 21393 | Stoics believed that rational capacity in man (logos) is embodied in the universe [Stoic school, by Long] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics believed the faculty in man which enables him to think, to plan and to speak - which they called 'logos' - is literally embodied in the universe at large. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by A.A. Long - Hellenistic Philosophy 4 Intro | |
| A reaction: This is the stage where logos becomes something dramatically more grand than the logos found in Plato's 'Theaetetus' (but see Heraclitus). It is what is meant by St John's 'In the beginning was the logos' (which is straightforward stoicism). |
| 22648 | A single explanation must have a single point of view [James] |
| Full Idea: A single explanation of a fact only explains it from a single point of view. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.23) | |
| A reaction: I take this to imply that multiple viewpoints lead us towards objectivity. The single viewpoint of an expert is of much greater value than that of a novice, on the whole. |
| 22644 | Our greatest pleasure is the economy of reducing chaotic facts to one single fact [James] |
| Full Idea: Our pleasure at finding that a chaos of facts is the expression of single underlying fact is like a musician's relief at discovering harmony. …The passion for economy of means in thought is the philosophic passion par excellence. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.21) | |
| A reaction: We do, though, possess an inner klaxon warning against stupid simplistic reductions. Reducing all the miseries of life to the workings of the Devil is not satisfactory, even it it is economical. Simplicities are dangerously tempting. |
| 20776 | Dialectics is mastery of question and answer form [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Dialectical knowledge is about conversing correctly in speeches of question and answer form. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.42 | |
| A reaction: The whole of ancient Greek philosophy seems to be aimed at speaking well. |
| 20849 | Falsehoods corrupt a mind, producing passions and instability [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Corruption afflicts the intellect because of falsehoods, and from such a mind there arise many passions and causes of instability. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.110 | |
| A reaction: In Dec 2017 this ancient wisdom perfectly fits the current President of the USA. |
| 20823 | The truth bearers are said to be the signified, or the signifier, or the meaning of the signifier [Stoic school, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: Some located the true and the false in the thing signified (Dion himself), some located it in the utterance ('Dion'), and some in the motion of the intellect (what foreigners do not undestand when they hear 'Dion').. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Mathematicians 8.11 | |
| A reaction: [View is attributed to Dogmatists, which also includes Epicureans] I love the definition of what we might call 'meaning' as what foreigners fail to understand when they hear it. I don't think the debate has got any further today. His example is one word. |
| 20778 | Stoics like syllogisms, for showing what is demonstrative, which corrects opinions [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say the study of syllogisms is extremely useful; for it indicates what is demonstrative, and this makes a big contribution toward correcting one's opinions; and orderliness and good memory indicate attentive comprehension. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.45 | |
| A reaction: The stoics also developed propositional logic. The main point is that they liked formal logic, which is not true of all the ancient schools. |
| 21400 | Stoics avoided universals by paraphrasing 'Man is...' as 'If something is a man, then it is...' [Stoic school, by Long] |
| Full Idea: Stoics reduced universals to thoughts or concepts, ...so in order to make universal statements which would not conflict with their metaphysics, they rephrased sentences of the form 'Man is...' as conditionals: 'If something is a man, then it is...' | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by A.A. Long - Hellenistic Philosophy 4.3.3 | |
| A reaction: [reference to Sextus, Adv Math 9.8] Predicate logic handles this with ease. It is something like the strategy of Ramsey sentences, for eliminating metaphysical properties. |
| 20788 | The contradictory of a contradictory is an affirmation [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: A double contradictory is the contradictory of a contradictory, for example, 'It s not the case that it is not day'. It posits that it is day. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.69 | |
| A reaction: Seems like common sense to the stoics, but verifying the double negative may be a different procedure to verifying the affirmative. 'Are you happy?' 'Well ….I'm not unhappy'. 'Is it day yet?' 'Well, it's not night'. |
| 21594 | Stoics applied bivalence to sorites situations, so everyone is either vicious or wholly virtuous [Stoic school, by Williamson] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics were prepared to apply bivalence to sorites reasoning, and swallow the consequences. ...For example, they denied that there are degrees of virtue, holding that one is either vicious or perfectly virtuous. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Timothy Williamson - Vagueness 1.2 | |
| A reaction: Williamson sympathises with this view, but the virtue example suggests to me that it is crazy. One of my objections to traditional religion is the sharp (and wickedly unjust) binary judgement between those who go to heaven and those who go to hell. |
| 22649 | Classification can only ever be for a particular purpose [James] |
| Full Idea: Every way of classifying a thing is but a way of handling it for some particular purpose. Conceptions, 'kinds', are teleological instruments. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.24) | |
| A reaction: Could there not be ways of classifying which suit all of our purposes? If there were a naturally correct way to classifying things, then any pragmatist would probably welcome that. (I don't say there is such a way). |
| 20824 | Stoics have four primary categories: substrates, qualities, dispositions, relative dispositions [Stoic school, by Simplicius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics reduce the number of primary categories, some of them new. They divide them into four: substrates [underlying things], qualities [qualified things], dispositions [things in a certain state], and relative dispositions [with respect to something]. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Categories' 1b25 8.66.32 | |
| A reaction: [a precious rare quote on stoic categories] Not sure of the status of the glosses in square brackets. I very much like 'dispositions' as a basic category. Substrates are elusive beasts. Is this list 'objects, qualities, dispositions, relations'? |
| 20817 | Platonic Forms are just our thoughts [Stoic school, by Ps-Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics said that the Ideas [Platonic forms] are our own thoughts. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Pseudo-Plutarch - On the Doctrine of the Philosophers 882a | |
| A reaction: That's Plato deftly kicked into touch. I'm with the Stoics. |
| 6037 | Stoics say matter has qualities, and substance underlies it, with no form or qualities [Stoic school, by Chalcidius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics distinguish matter and substance; they say that matter is that which underlies those things which have qualities; however, the primary matter of all things or their most primeval foundation is substance, which is without qualities and unformed. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Chalcidius - Commentary on Plato's 'Timaeus' 290 | |
| A reaction: In this account, substance begins to sound like Kant's 'noumenon', which is a theoretical concept which has retreated beyond all experience. Stoics were under pressure to cover everything for which the Atomists offered explanations. |
| 20826 | How is separateness possible, if separated things are always said to be united? [Alexander on Stoic school] |
| Full Idea: How could one avoid the inconsistency of saying that adjacent objects that can easily be separated are all the same united with each other, being coherent and never able o be separated from each other without division? | |
| From: comment on Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Alexander - On Mixture 2.2 | |
| A reaction: In general my sympathies are with Alexander on this. If you abandon all principles of unity apart from unrestricted mereological composition, you save yourself a lot of bother, but you abandon the most useful concepts in ontology. |
| 20825 | How is divisibility possible, if stoics say things remain united when they are divided? [Alexander on Stoic school] |
| Full Idea: How could the divisibility of bodies be preserved if division is the separation of what is united, and according to them all things stay united with each other, all the same even when they are divided? | |
| From: comment on Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Alexander - On Mixture 2.2 | |
| A reaction: Evidently the stoics were committed to unrestricted mereological composition (that any parts make a whole, no matter how scattered). Alexander points out that this makes the concept of 'division' of an entity meaningless. |
| 20872 | Stoics say wholes are more than parts, but entirely consist of parts [Stoic school, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say the wholes are not the same as their parts, for a human being is not his hand, nor are they other than their parts, for they do not exist without the parts. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Outlines of Pyrrhonism 3.170 | |
| A reaction: 'A human being is not his hand' is not much of a reason. Surely some holistic claim is needed here? The conflict of these two ideas was spotted by Plato. |
| 20790 | A proposition is possible if it is true when nothing stops it being true [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: That proposition is possible which admits of being true, if external factors do not prevent it from being true, for example, 'Diocles is alive'. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.75 | |
| A reaction: Well that's different. So every unprevented possibility will occur tomorrow. Any possibility that does not occur tomorrow must have been prevented in some way. Whatever does occur prevents innumerable other things from occurring. Your turn… |
| 20789 | Conditionals are false if the falsehood of the conclusion does not conflict with the antecedent [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: A conditional is true if the opposite of the conclusion conflicts with the antecedent, and false if it doesn't conflict. Thus 'If it is day, Dion is walking' is false, because 'Dion is not walking' does not conflict with 'It is day'. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.73 | |
| A reaction: For the two to conflict there must be some connection in subject matter, which is not the case if the mere falsehood of the conclusion (from a true premise) falsifies the conditional. This seems like a rather good account. |
| 20783 | Knowledge is a secure grasp of presentations which cannot be reversed by argument [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Knowledge itself, say the stoics, is either a secure grasp or a disposition in the reception of presentations not reversible by argument. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.47 | |
| A reaction: Helpful, but not enough. Fools hold secure grasps which cannot be refuted, as far as they are concerned. Consensus needed. Falsification? The truth-bearer is a 'presentation' (an appearance), which is different from modern accounts. |
| 20868 | Two sorts of opinion: either poorly grounded belief, or weak belief [Stoic school, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: There are two kinds of opinion: one is assent to something which is not graspable; the other is weak belief. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 2.11m | |
| A reaction: Strong belief usually qualifies as knowledge. The Greek 'opinion' and 'belief' don't exactly map onto the modern words. This idea covers both the subjective aspect of belief (its strength) and its objective aspect (its grounding). |
| 20784 | There are non-sensible presentations, which come to us through the intellect [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say some presentations are sensible, some non-sensible. Those received through the sense organs are sensible; non-sensible are those which come through the intellect, for example, presentations of incorporeals and other things grasped by reason. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.51 | |
| A reaction: The a priori used to be metaphysics (a world of truths), and in modern times is epistemology (a mode of justification), but here it is just a mode of experience, which is not, it seems, necessarily true. |
| 20803 | Stoics say we are born like a blank sheet of paper; the first concepts on it are sensations [Stoic school, by Ps-Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics say when a human being is born, the leading part of his soul is like a sheet of paper ready for being written on. On this he inscribes every one of his conceptions. The first manner of writing on it is through the senses. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Pseudo-Plutarch - On the Doctrine of the Philosophers 900a | |
| A reaction: This may not be dogmatic empiricism, because later inscriptions on the sheet could be purely a priori. |
| 6025 | At birth the soul is a blank sheet ready to be written on [Stoic school, by Aetius] |
| Full Idea: When a man is born, the Stoics say, he has the commanding-part of his soul like a sheet of paper reading for writing upon; on this he inscribes each one of his conceptions. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Aetius - fragments/reports 4.11 | |
| A reaction: This appears to be the origin of the concept of the 'tabula rasa', which resurfaces in empirical thought, in Locke and elsewhere. Notice that 'he' inscribes on the paper, rather than raw experience doing the job. The natural light of reason can do it. |
| 20781 | Non-graspable presentations are from what doesn't exist, or are not clear and distinct [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: The non-graspable presentation is either not from an existing object or from an existing object but not in accordance with it; it is neither clear nor well stamped (i.e. distinct). | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.46 | |
| A reaction: This sounds exactly like Locke's account of secondary qualities, at least as interpreted by Peter Alexander. That is, they are genuine qualities of things, but misleading, in a way that primary qualities are not. |
| 20792 | Stoic perception is a presentation to which one voluntarily assents [Stoic school, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics did not make sense-perception consist in presentation alone but made its substance depend on assent; for perception is an assent to a perceptual presentation, the assent being voluntary. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.49.25 | |
| A reaction: [Stobaeus cites Porphyry's De Anima] Thus you only perceive a hallucination if you do not realise that it is false. This is more subjective than I would want to be. If you only think you perceive, but you are wrong, then I say you don't perceive. |
| 20805 | All our concepts come from experience, directly, or by expansion, reduction or compounding [Stoic school, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: In general one can find nothing in our conceptions that is not known to oneself in direct experience. For it is grasped either by similarity to what is revealed in direct experience, or by expansion or reduction or compounding. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Mathematicians 8.58 | |
| A reaction: Although the stoics allow for purely a priori knowledge, this quotation sounds comprehensively empirical. |
| 20782 | Dialectic is a virtue which contains other virtues [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Dialectic itself is necessary, and is a virtue which contains other virtues. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.46 | |
| A reaction: Presumable the virtues which are 'contained' are the whole panoply of other intellectual virtues. These will be virtues of intellectual character (Zagzebski), not virtues of processes (Sosa). |
| 1772 | For Stoics knowledge is an assertion which never deviates from the truth [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics define knowledge as an assertion or safe comprehension or habit, which, in the perception of what is seen, never deviates from the truth. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.1.25 | |
| A reaction: Sounds somewhere between Nozick's 'tracking the truth' and Goldman's 'reliable source'. If the world is a flux, then presumably it is right that knowledge should fluctuate too. |
| 22655 | Scientific genius extracts more than other people from the same evidence [James] |
| Full Idea: What is the use of being a genius, unless with the same scientific evidence as other men, one can reach more truth than they? | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.40) | |
| A reaction: This is aimed at Clifford's famous principle. He isn't actually contraverting the principle, but it is a nice point about evidence. Simple empiricists think detectives only have to stare at the evidence and the solution creates itself. |
| 20779 | Demonstration derives what is less clear from what is clear [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Demonstration is an argument which by means of things more clearly grasped concludes to something that is less clearly grasped. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.45 | |
| A reaction: In Aristotle demonstration seems to concern physical sciences, but this stoic account makes it sound like pure logic proof. This is why all logic tends to start from atomic sentences, because they are clearest. |
| 22658 | Experimenters assume the theory is true, and stick to it as long as result don't disappoint [James] |
| Full Idea: Each tester of the truth of a theory …acts as if it were true, and expects the result to disappoint him if his assumption is false. The longer disappointment is delayed, the stronger grows his faith in his theory. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.42) | |
| A reaction: This is almost exactly Popper's falsificationist proposal for science, which interestingly shows the close relationship of his view to pragmatism. Believe it as long as it is still working. |
| 22654 | We can't know if the laws of nature are stable, but we must postulate it or assume it [James] |
| Full Idea: That nature will follow tomorrow the same laws that she follows today is a truth which no man can know; but in the interests of cognition as well as of action we must postulate or assume it. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.39) | |
| A reaction: The stability of nature is something to be assessed, not something taken for granted. If you arrive in a new city and it all seems quiet, you keep your fingers crossed and treat it as stable. But revolution or coup could be just round the corner. |
| 22656 | Trying to assess probabilities by mere calculation is absurd and impossible [James] |
| Full Idea: The absurd abstraction of an intellect verbally formulating all its evidence and carefully estimating the probability thereof solely by the size of a vulgar fraction, is as ideally inept as it is practically impossible. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.40) | |
| A reaction: James probably didn't know about Bayes, but this is directed at the Bayesian approach. My view is that full rational assessment of coherence is a much better bet than a Bayesian calculation. Factors must be weighted. |
| 22646 | We have a passion for knowing the parts of something, rather than the whole [James] |
| Full Idea: Alongside the passion for simplification …is the passion for distinguishing; it is the passion to be acquainted with the parts rather than to comprehend the whole. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.22) | |
| A reaction: As I child I dismantled almost every toy I was given. This seems to be the motivation for a lot of analytic philosophy, but Aristotle also tended to think that way. |
| 23251 | The Stoics think that soul in the narrow sense is nothing but reason [Stoic school, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics think that we are exclusively moved by reason, because the soul in a narrow sense is nothing but reason. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Michael Frede - Intro to 'Rationality in Greek Thought' p.8 | |
| A reaction: Presumably that means that desires and perceptions are not part of the 'narrow' soul. This is the culmination of Socratic intellectualism. |
| 22652 | The mind has evolved entirely for practical interests, seen in our reflex actions [James] |
| Full Idea: It is far too little recognised how entirely the intellect is built up of practical interests. The theory of evolution is beginning to do very good service by its reduction of all mentality to the type of reflex action. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.34) | |
| A reaction: Hands evolved for manipulating tools end up playing the piano. Minds evolved for action can be afflicted with boredom. He's not wrong, but he is risking the etymological fallacy (origin = purpose). I take navigation to be the original purpose of mind. |
| 20809 | Eight parts of the soul: five senses, seeds, speech and reason [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: The stoics say there are eight parts of the soul: the five senses, the spermatic principle is us, the vocal part, and the reasoning part. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.155 |
| 23321 | Division of the soul divides a person, reducing responsibility for the nonrational part [Stoic school, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: According to the Stoics, the division of the soul threatens the unity of the person and obscures the responsibility we have for our supposedly nonrational desires. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Michael Frede - A Free Will 3 | |
| A reaction: Does this imply the concept of a 'person', if it places great store by unity? Disagreement over mental unity is one of the great threads running through philosophy. See Nietzsche on 'drives' for the rival view. |
| 23267 | Stoics say the soul is a mixture of air and fire [Stoic school, by Galen] |
| Full Idea: The Stoic view is clear: the substance of soul comes about through some mixture of air and fire. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Galen - The soul's dependence on the body Kiv.4.784 | |
| A reaction: Most accounts seem to neglect the role of air (whatever that might be). |
| 22651 | Dogs' curiosity only concerns what will happen next [James] |
| Full Idea: A dog's curiosity about the movements of his master or a strange object only extends as far as the point of what is going to happen next. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.31) | |
| A reaction: Good. A nice corrective to people like myself who are tempted to inflate animal rationality, in order to emphasise human evolutionary continuity with them. It is hard to disagree with his observation. But dogs do make judgements! True/false! |
| 20785 | Our conceptions arise from experience, similarity, analogy, transposition, composition and opposition [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Some conceptions are conceived on the basis of direct experience, some on the basis of similarity, some on the basis of analogy, some on the basis of transposition, some on the basis of composition, and some on the basis of opposition. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.52 | |
| A reaction: These are examples of what I think of as 'philosophical faculties', probably not mentioned by either psychologists or neuro-scientists, but seen by philosophers as necessary preconditions for certain basic operations of thought. |
| 7502 | For Stoics the true self is defined by what I can be master of [Stoic school, by Foucault] |
| Full Idea: For the Stoics, the true self is defined only by what I can be master of. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Michel Foucault - On the Genealogy of Ethics | |
| A reaction: Interesting. This ties the self to the will - indeed, it almost identifies the self with the will. Why is the self the parts that are mastered, rather than the part that does the mastering? I master my shoes, but they are not me. |
| 23327 | Stoics expanded the idea of compulsion, and contracted what counts as one's own actions [Stoic school, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: With Stoics, and in its wake, we get an enormous expansion of what counts as being forced [biazesthai] or compelled or made to do something, and correspondingly an enormous contraction of what counts as an action of one's own. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Michael Frede - A Free Will 5 | |
| A reaction: The key idea seems to be setting the bar higher for being in control, which eventually leads to the idea of free will. Frede says this does not contract responsibility, because what controls us can be our own fault. |
| 7672 | The free will problem was invented by the Stoics [Stoic school, by Berlin] |
| Full Idea: The free-will problem was invented by the Stoics. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Isaiah Berlin - The Roots of Romanticism Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: Compare Ideas 6018 and 7814. There is no sign of the problem in Book 3 of Aristotle's Ethics. This is crucial, since I consider the problem to be totally bogus. |
| 23315 | The nearest to ancient determinism is Stoic fate, but that is controlled by a sympathetic God [Stoic school, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: The doctrine of antiquity nearest to physical determinism was the Stoic doctrine of fate. But their fate is the work of an agent, and is predetermined in part with regard to us, and even seems be contingent on anticipated human choices. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Michael Frede - A Free Will Intro | |
| A reaction: [compressed] The gist is that this is the most determinist the ancients ever get (e.g. the swerve of Epicurus), and it is not very determinist at all, in comparison with modern Laplacean physical determinism. Late antiquity determinism was stronger. |
| 4014 | Stoics classify passions according to the opinion of good and bad which they imply [Stoic school, by Taylor,C] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics classified the passions according to the implicit (and erroneous) opinions about the good and bad that they contained. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Charles Taylor - Sources of the Self §8 | |
| A reaction: This doesn't sound very promising, since nearly all emotions can be put to either a good or a bad use |
| 23988 | There are four basic emotions: pleasure or delight, distress, appetite, and fear [Stoic school, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics named four basic emotions: pleasure or delight, distress, appetite, and fear | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - Tusculan Disputations iv.13-15 | |
| A reaction: 'Distress' sounds too vague to do the job of explaining anything. Getting them down to four suggests an extreme desire to simplify such things. |
| 22650 | How can the ground of rationality be itself rational? [James] |
| Full Idea: Can that which is the ground of rationality in all else be itself properly called rational? | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.25) | |
| A reaction: This is the perennial problem in deciding grounds, and in deciding what to treat as primitive. The stoics see the whole of nature as rational. Cf how can the ground of what is physical be itself physical? |
| 22643 | It seems that we feel rational when we detect no irrationality [James] |
| Full Idea: I think there are very good grounds for upholding the view that the feeling of rationality is constituted merely by the absence of any feelings of irrationality. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.20) | |
| A reaction: A very interesting proposal. Nothing is more basic to logic (well, plausible versions of logic) than the principle of non-contradiction - perhaps because it is the foundation of our natural intellectual equipment. |
| 6594 | Stoics said that correct judgement needs an invincible criterion of truth [Stoic school, by Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Stoic epistemologists held that to judge correctly, one must be in possession of a proper criterion of truth - a test that provides invincible evidence of the truth of some belief. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: It seems that the Stoics were the first to 'set the bar too high', and inevitably drew the sceptical response that there is no such criterion. The polarisation might go further back, to Parmenides' One (known for certain by reason) and Heraclitus's Flux. |
| 20804 | Concepts are intellectual phantasms [Stoic school, by Ps-Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: A concept is a phantasm of the intellect of a rational animal. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Pseudo-Plutarch - On the Doctrine of the Philosophers 900c | |
| A reaction: No doubt they assume that the brutes are devoid of all concepts, but that makes it hard to explain their behaviour. |
| 20786 | Predicates are incomplete 'lekta' [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics place predicates among the incomplete 'lekta'. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.63 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the modern Fregean logician's concept of a predicate. |
| 23322 | Humans have rational impressions, which are conceptual, and are true or false [Stoic school, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: For Stoics, all human impressions differ from animals in that they are rational. …They are impressions that something is the case, and hence are true or false. Their formation involves the use of concepts, and are thus also called 'thoughts' [noeseis]. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Michael Frede - A Free Will 3 | |
| A reaction: This is a pretty accurate account of my notion of a 'proposition'. Since many animals make judgements, I take them to entertain non-verbal propositions. I assume there are also propositions which are more internal, and thus not 'impressions'. |
| 20777 | Rhetoric has three types, four modes, and four sections [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say rhetoric is tripartite. Part is deliberative, part forensic, part encomiastic. It is divided into invention, diction, organisation, and delivery. Rhetorical speech is divided into the introduction, exposition, counterargument and conclusion. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.42-3 | |
| A reaction: The last bit is quite a good guide for a philosophical paper. |
| 23323 | Earlier Stoics speak of assent, but not of choice, let alone of a will [Stoic school, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: Stoics [before Epictetus] have a notion of assent, and hence the appropriate notion of a willing, but we do not yet have a notion of a choice [prohairesis], let alone of a will. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Michael Frede - A Free Will 3 | |
| A reaction: The assent is just giving in to a desire, which is either rational or irrational. Choice implies a second-level thinking, of weighing the two desires. The will would then be a faculty which can do this (which seems to be the invention of Epictetus). |
| 23305 | Stoics said responsibility depends on rationality [Stoic school, by Sorabji] |
| Full Idea: It is the Stoics who made responsibility depend on rationality. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Richard Sorabji - Rationality 'Ethical' | |
| A reaction: Aristotle's account of responsibility in 'Ethics' needs a high degree of rationality, far beyond even a rational non-human animal. And no one thinks small children are responsible. |
| 1907 | Stoics use 'kalon' (beautiful) as a synonym for 'agathon' (good) [Bury on Stoic school] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics used 'kalon' [fair, i.e. beautiful] as a synonym for 'agathon' [good] | |
| From: comment on Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by R.G.Bury - notes on Sextus Empiricus 69:245 | |
| A reaction: I consider this to be a very important idea, which has been lost in modern moral philosophy - even in modern virtue theory. I've seen the suggestion that the best translation of 'kalon' is 'Wow!'. Imagine deeds that elicit 'Wow!'. |
| 22757 | Stoics say that folly alone is evil [Stoic school, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics say that folly alone is evil. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Ethicists (one book) II.90 | |
| A reaction: This is Socrates' intellectualist view of weakness of will. Is the evil in the succumbing to a temptation, or in the intellectual error that leads to it? 'Folly' in English is stupid action, not just stupid belief. |
| 20572 | De Sade said it was impossible to rationally argue against murder [Adorno/Horkheimer] |
| Full Idea: De Sade trumpeted far and wide the impossibility of deriving from reason any fundamental argument against murder. | |
| From: T Adorno / M Horkheimer (Dialectic of Enlightenment [1944], p.118) | |
| A reaction: [They focus on 'Juliette'] This is a big problem for utilitarians, because murdering an unhappy person may maximise happiness. Presumably a maniac could will universal carnage, and thus thwart Kant. |
| 22660 | Evolution suggests prevailing or survival as a new criterion of right and wrong [James] |
| Full Idea: The philosophy of evolution offers us today a new criterion, which is objective and fixed, as an ethical test between right and wrong: That is to be called good which is destined to prevail or survive. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.44) | |
| A reaction: Perceptive for its time. Herbert Spencer may have suggested the idea. James dismisses it, because it implies a sort of fatalism, whereas genuine moral choices are involved in what survives. |
| 20846 | Prime values apply to the life in agreement; useful values apply to the natural life [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say one sort of value is a contribution to the life in agreement, which applies to every good. Another is an intermediate potential or usefulness (such as wealth or health) contributing to the life according to nature. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.105 | |
| A reaction: Assessing value by what it contributes to is interesting. There is also the appraiser's value. |
| 20847 | The appraiser's value is what is set by someone experienced in the facts [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Another sense of value is the appraiser's value, which someone experienced in the facts would set, as when one says that wheat is exchanged for barley with a mule thrown in. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.105 | |
| A reaction: No relativist nonsense here. Conventional values are set by experts, not by hoi polloi. |
| 20870 | The goal is to live consistently with the constitution of a human being [Stoic school, by Clement] |
| Full Idea: More recent stoics defined the goal as to live consistently with the constitution of a human being. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Clement - Stromates 2.21.129.6 | |
| A reaction: This sounds more Aristotelian than the classic stoics. The obvious problem is the nasty side of human nature. At least Aristotle adds something like 'when it is functioning well, particularly in social situations'. |
| 22238 | Stoics said health is an 'indifferent', but they still considered it preferable [Stoic school, by Pormann] |
| Full Idea: For the Stoics bodily health belongs in the 'indifferent [adiaphoron]' category: it does not matter if one is healthy. And yet, they created a subcategory of the 'preferable indifferent [adiaphoron proegmenon]', under which health falls. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Peter E. Pormann - Medical Conceptions of Health pre-Renaissance p.45 | |
| A reaction: You have to be pretty tough to consider ill-health as an indifferent. The only good may be virtue, but the platonic tradition says virtue is a sort of mental health. |
| 20861 | The health of the soul is a good blend of beliefs [Stoic school, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: The health of the soul is a good blend of the beliefs in the soul. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 2.05b04 | |
| A reaction: When I write my great book, this may well be its epigraph. I presume it means 'wisdom is the health of the soul'. |
| 3553 | Stoic morality says that one's own happiness will lead to impartiality [Stoic school, by Annas] |
| Full Idea: Stoics begin ethics with concern for one's own happiness, and end up claiming that in morality one will be indifferent between one's own interests and those of 'the remote Mysian'. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Julia Annas - The Morality of Happiness 2.7 | |
| A reaction: Makes sense, if pursuing our own happiness is doomed, and the best we can manage is indifference. |
| 20851 | Virtuous men do not feel sexual desire, which merely focuses on physical beauty [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Sexual love is a desire which does not afflict virtuous men, for it is an effort to gain love resulting from the appearance of physical beauty. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.113 | |
| A reaction: That is a surprising interpretation of the slogan 'live according to nature'. I would have thought it was factually incorrect, since many objects of human lust rank fairly low in the scale of beauty. Sex is a tough duty if you don't desire it. |
| 7499 | Stoicism was an elitist option to lead a beautiful life [Stoic school, by Foucault] |
| Full Idea: Stoicism offered a personal choice for a small elite. The reason for making this choice was the will to live a beautiful life, and to leave to others memories of a beautiful existence. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Michel Foucault - On the Genealogy of Ethics p.254 | |
| A reaction: This resurfaces in the late nineteenth century aesthetic movement ("Forget living - our servants can do that for us"). I see no reason why this should not be an ideal held up for all human beings, though pleasure-seekers will probably reject it. |
| 20843 | Final goods: confidence, prudence, freedom, enjoyment and no pain, good spirits, virtue [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say that confidence and prudence and freedom and enjoyment and good spirits and freedom from pain and every virtuous action are final (as opposed to instrumental) goods. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.96 | |
| A reaction: An interesting and unusual list. I've never seen 'confidence' or 'good spirits' mentioned. 'Freedom' is also unusual, but probably just means not being enslaved. |
| 22753 | Happiness for the Stoics was an equable flow of life [Stoic school, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: Happiness is defined by Zeno and Cleanthes and Chrysippus as 'an equable flow of life'. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Ethicists (one book) II.30 | |
| A reaction: These are the great Stoics. Sounds a bit dull. The old Chinese curse: 'may you live in interesting times'. An equable life could be achieve by never attempting anything, and never getting involved in anything. I don't agree with this idea. |
| 20865 | Happiness is the end and goal, achieved by living virtuously, in agreement, and according to nature [Stoic school, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say that being happy is the goal for the sake of which everything else is done, for the sake of nothing else; and this consists in living according to virtue, in living in agreement, and (which is the same thing) in living according to nature. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 2.06e | |
| A reaction: The best summary I have found of the main stoic goal. Stoics are eudaimonists. The full stoic story must explain how virtue, agreement and nature fit together into a coherent whole. |
| 20840 | Stoics say pleasure is at most a byproduct of finding what is suitable for us [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say that pleasure is, if anything, a byproduct which supervenes when nature itself, on its own, seeks out and acquires what is suitable to the animal's constitution. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.86 | |
| A reaction: It would be nice if pleasure were just an indicator that you are successfully living according to nature. Human refinement of alcohol and opium have rather undermined that view (but note 'on its own'). Note also the parenthetical 'if anything'. |
| 20852 | Rapture is a breakdown of virtue [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Rapture is a breakdown of virtue. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.114 | |
| A reaction: I take rapture to be judged as the highest good by many romantics. Could rapture be confined and ring-fenced by virtue? Does rapture include great art? |
| 6895 | If humans are citizens of the world (not just a state) then virtue is all good human habits [Stoic school, by Mautner] |
| Full Idea: If, as in Stoic and later systems, human beings are regarded as citizens of the world and not only of a city-state, general justice will include all the habits and dispositions of a good human being. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Thomas Mautner - Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy p.289 | |
| A reaction: I like this a lot, because it addresses the key problem of virtue theory, the problem of 'the Nazi virtues'. The Nazis might be seen (by some) as 'good' Germans, but they were obviously appalling Europeans, and that is what matters. |
| 20848 | An appropriate action is one that can be defended, perhaps by its consistency. [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: An appropriate action, say the stoics, is that which, when done, admits of a reasonable defence, such as what is consistent in life, and this extends also to plants and animals. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.107 | |
| A reaction: I love [Zeno's] word 'appropriate' here, since that strikes me as greatly clarifying the Aristotelian doctrine of the mean. In fact I love the whole of this idea. Appropriate actions can be defended. Cf T.Scanlon. Consistency is a good defence. |
| 20844 | Honour is just, courageous, orderly or knowledgeable. It is praiseworthy, or functions well [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Four forms of the honourable: just, courageous, orderly, knowledgeable. The honourable means what makes it possessor praiseworthy; or what is naturally suited for its function; or what adorns its possessor, since we say only the wise man is honourable. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.100 | |
| A reaction: Thus we honour successful judges, soldiers, administrators and scholars. Oh, and footballers. Paul Macartney said 'show me someone famous, and I'll show you someone who is good at their job. |
| 4012 | The Stoics rejected entirely the high value that had been placed on contemplation [Stoic school, by Taylor,C] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics broke with both Plato and Aristotle by rejecting altogether the value of contemplation. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Charles Taylor - Sources of the Self §6.3 | |
| A reaction: Interesting. This affects the status of philosophy, and rejects the aspiration of humans to become like gods. |
| 5073 | Stoics do not despise external goods, but subject them to reason, and not to desire [Taylor,R on Stoic school] |
| Full Idea: Unlike the Cynics, the Stoics did not carry their indifference to conventional goods to outright scorn and rejection of them. They only insisted that such goods should not be the object of desire, since desire is something opposed to reason. | |
| From: comment on Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Richard Taylor - Virtue Ethics: an Introduction Ch.8 | |
| A reaction: The Stoic view would appear to be derived from Aristotle, who only wants external goods insofar as they can support the life of virtue (as in needing money to be generous). Perhaps the Cynics made the Stoics a bit more puritanical than Aristotle. |
| 20862 | Crafts like music and letters are virtuous conditions, and they accord with virtue [Stoic school, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: Stoics call 'practices' the love of music, letters, horses, hunting and crafts. They are not knowledge, but virtuous conditions, and they say that only the wise man is a music lover and a lover of letters. Crafts lead to what accords with virtue. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 2.05b11 | |
| A reaction: I like the distinction between virtue and 'virtuous conditions'. It might correspond to the eighteenth century idea of good taste, or the later idea of having a liberal education. |
| 5072 | For Stoics, obligations are determined by social role [Taylor,R on Stoic school] |
| Full Idea: In keeping with what was generally assumed in their culture, Stoics thought obligations are determined by role or function. | |
| From: comment on Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Richard Taylor - Virtue Ethics: an Introduction Ch.8 | |
| A reaction: We still recognise our obligations as partly in what-we-are-paid-to-do, but that is a contractual obligation. We also accept obligations arising from a family role, such as 'parent'. We are merely no longer impressed by traditional aristocratic hierarchy. |
| 21396 | Man is distinguished by knowing conditional truths, because impressions are connected [Stoic school, by Long] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say man differs from irrational animals because of internal speech ...and in virtue of impressions created by inference and combination. Because of this man grasps 'signal', of the form 'If this, then that', which follows from the nature of man. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by A.A. Long - Hellenistic Philosophy 4.3.1 | |
| A reaction: [In Sextus, Adv.Math 8.275-] This is unusual. The distinctive feature of humans is their ability to assert conditionals (because they see connections - or associations - among their impressions). Nice thought. |
| 1781 | Stoics favour a mixture of democracy, monarchy and aristocracy [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say the best political constitution is a mixed one, combined of democracy, and kingly power, and aristocracy. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.Ze.66 |
| 21384 | The Stoics saw the whole world as a city [Stoic school, by Long] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics conceived of the world itself as a kind of city. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by A.A. Long - Hellenistic Philosophy 1 | |
| A reaction: Interesting. Not the same as a cosmopolitan acceptance of a multitude of varied cultures. The most remote and unusual culture is seen as a distant suburb of our culture. |
| 20859 | The best government blends democracy, monarchy and aristocracy [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say the best form of government is a blend of democracy and monarchy and aristocracy. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.131 | |
| A reaction: Sounds like nineteenth century Britain, when democracy was more limited, and the aristocracy richer and more influential. Presumably they want rule by an elite, but with some democratic restraints. |
| 3561 | Stoics originated the concept of natural law, as agreed correct reasoning [Stoic school, by Annas] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics are the originators of one of the most influential concepts in political philosophy, that of natural law. …It is simply correct moral reasoning, thought of as being prescriptive. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Julia Annas - The Morality of Happiness 13.3 |
| 3046 | Stoics say a wise man will commit suicide if he has a good enough reason [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say that a wise man will very rationally take himself out of life, either for the sake of his country or of his friends, or if he suffers from bitter pain, mutilation or incurable disease. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.1.66 |
| 20858 | Suicide is reasonable, for one's country or friends, or because of very bad health [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: The wise man will commit suicide, for a good reason, both on behalf of his fatherland and on behalf of his friends, and if he should be in very severe pain or is mutilated or has an incurable disease. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.130 | |
| A reaction: Being in a state of despair or depression doesn't seem to figure on the list. Suicide for friends, but not for family? |
| 3556 | Stoic 'nature' is deterministic, physical and teleological [Stoic school, by Annas] |
| Full Idea: 'The nature of things' matters for the Stoics because they hold strong theses about the way things are: they are determinists, physicalists, teleologists. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Julia Annas - The Morality of Happiness Ch.5 |
| 22743 | Unlike Epicurus, Stoics distinguish the Whole from the All, with the latter including the void [Stoic school, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: The Stoic school say that the Whole is the Cosmos, whereas the All is the external void together with the Cosmos, so the Whole is limited but the All is unlimited. (Epicurus gives the two names indifferently to both). | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Physicists (two books) I.332 | |
| A reaction: Epicurus needed the void as part of the Cosmos, into which the atoms can move. Presumably the Stoic void is infinite, but how far does the Stoic Cosmos extend? |
| 22645 | Understanding by means of causes is useless if they are not reduced to a minimum number [James] |
| Full Idea: The knowledge of things by their causes, which is often given as a definition of rational knowledge, is useless unless the causes converge to a minimum number, while still producing the maximum number of effects. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.21) | |
| A reaction: This is certainly the psychological motivation for trying to identify 'the' cause of something, but James always tries to sell such things as subjective. 'Useless' to one person is a subjective criterion; useless to anyone is much more objective. |
| 13296 | The cosmos has two elements - passive matter, and active cause (or reason) which shapes it [Stoic school, by Seneca] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say there are two elements in the cosmos, cause and matter. Matter lies inert and inactive, a substance of unlimited potential, but destined to remain idle if no one sets it in motion; it is cause (the same as reason) that fashions matter. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 065 | |
| A reaction: [compressed] It take this to be anti-essentialist, because the point of a scientific essence is to be the source of the activities and structures of the matter. Seneca must think matter lacks essence, in order to be moulded like this. Note 'unlimited'. |
| 20827 | The cosmos is regularly consumed and reorganised by the primary fire [Stoic school, by Aristocles] |
| Full Idea: At certain fated times the entire cosmos goes up in flames and then is organised again. And the primary fire is like a kind of seed, containing the rational principles and cause of all things and events, past, present and future. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Aristocles - works | |
| A reaction: [in Eusebius] I wonder why the stoics thought this? Is it just spring cleaning? So is each cycle different? Does that mean that the primary fire was different at each seminal event? What made it different? Or is it eternal recurrence? |
| 7815 | Early Stoics called the logos 'god', meaning not a being, but the principle of the universe [Stoic school] |
| Full Idea: Logos was also called 'god' or 'Zeus' by the early Stoics, but they did not think of this deity as a separate being, but as a principle of organization of things. As the soul is the principle of an individual life, so 'god' is the soul of the universe. | |
| From: Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]), quoted by A.C. Grayling - What is Good? Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: This sounds not too far from Spinoza's pantheism. Interestingly, the Stoics were making God more impersonal, and it is Jesus who reverts to the much more popularly appealing personal image. |
| 6038 | Stoics say god is matter, or an inseparable quality of it, or is the power within it [Stoic school, by Chalcidius] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics say that god is that which matter is or that god is the inseparable quality of matter and that he moves through matter just as semen moves through the genital organs. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Chalcidius - Commentary on Plato's 'Timaeus' 294 | |
| A reaction: This actually offers three different theories - of identity, of supervenience, and of omnipresence. It certainly seems close to pantheism. Such theories invite Ockham's Razor, which would shift talk to 'nature', and leave out 'god'. |
| 22653 | Early Christianity says God recognises the neglected weak and tender impulses [James] |
| Full Idea: In what did the emancipating message of primitive Christianity consist but in the announcement that God recognizes those weak and tender impulses which paganism had so rudely overlooked. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.36) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche says these are the virtues of a good slave. Previous virtues were dominated by military needs, but the new virtues are those of large cities, where communal living with strangers is the challenge. |
| 20829 | Virtuous souls endure till the end, foolish souls for a short time, animal souls not at all [Stoic school, by Eusebius] |
| Full Idea: They say the soul of the virtuous man lasts until the breakdown of everything into fire, but that of fools only for a certain length of time. But the souls of the imprudent and irrational animals ae destroyed with their bodies. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Eusebius - Preparation for the Gospel 15.20.6-7 | |
| A reaction: We are half way to the Christian heaven as the reward for the good life. We just need to add hell…. |
| 6039 | Stoics say virtuous souls last till everything ends in fire, but foolish ones fade away [Stoic school, by ] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics say the soul of the virtuous man lasts until the breakdown of everything into fire, but that of fools only for a certain length of time. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by - fr 39 | |
| A reaction: This implies the existence of divine justice (such as King Lear hoped for). It is a shame that rational philosophers just invent doctrines because they would be rather nice. It brings out the logical positivist in me. |