5 ideas
| 7083 | Highest reason is aesthetic, and truth and good are subordinate to beauty [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: I am now convinced that the highest act of reason, which embraces all ideas, is an aesthetic act, and that truth and goodness are brothers only in beauty. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Oldest System Prog. of German Idealism [1796]), quoted by Simon Critchley - Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro Append | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the distinctive value framework of the romantic movement and the nineteenth century, where art is destined to replace religion. However, Plato in the Symposium is an interesting ally. Aim for beauty, and the rest follows? |
| 3900 | Maybe experience is not essential to perception, but only to the causing of beliefs [Armstrong, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Armstrong has argued that experience, as normally understood, is not necessary to perception. To perceive is to acquire beliefs, through a causal process. | |
| From: report of David M. Armstrong (Belief Truth and Knowledge [1973]) by Roger Scruton - Modern Philosophy:introduction and survey 23.4 |
| 4253 | Externalism says knowledge involves a natural relation between the belief state and what makes it true [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Externalist accounts of non-inferential knowledge say what makes a true non-inferential belief a case of knowledge is some natural relation which holds between the belief state and the situation which makes the belief true. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Belief Truth and Knowledge [1973], 11.III.6) | |
| A reaction: Armstrong's concept is presumably a response to Quine's desire to 'naturalise epistemology'. Bad move, I suspect. It probably reduces knowledge to mere true belief, and hence a redundant concept. |
| 16713 | Philosophers are the forefathers of heretics [Tertullian] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers are the forefathers of heretics. | |
| From: Tertullian (works [c.200]), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 20.2 |
| 6610 | I believe because it is absurd [Tertullian] |
| Full Idea: I believe because it is absurd ('Credo quia absurdum est'). | |
| From: Tertullian (works [c.200]), quoted by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason n4.2 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a rather desperate remark, in response to what must have been rather good hostile arguments. No one would abandon the support of reason if it was easy to acquire. You can't deny its engaging romantic defiance, though. |