Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Reportatio', 'Whitehead: process and cosmology' and 'On Recent German Literature. Fragments'

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4 ideas

1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 3. Metaphysical Systems

15390	Metaphysics attempts to give an account of everything, in terms of categories and principles [Simons]
	Full Idea: Metaphysics, the noblest of philosophic enterprises, is an attempt to give an account of everything. ...Its job is to provide a universal framework (of categories and principles) within which anything whatever can take its place.
	From: Peter Simons (Whitehead: process and cosmology [2009], 'Speculative')
	A reaction: Bravo! I take metaphysics to be entirely continuous with science, but operating entirely at the highest level of generality. See Westerhoff on categories, though. The enterprise may not be going too well.

1. Philosophy / F. Analytic Philosophy / 5. Linguistic Analysis

20947	Thoughts are learnt through words, so language shows the limits and shape of our knowledge [Herder]
	Full Idea: If it is true that we cannot think without thoughts, and that we learn to think through words: then language gives the whole of human knowledge its limits and outline.
	From: Johann Gottfried Herder (On Recent German Literature. Fragments [1767], p.373), quoted by Andrew Bowie - Introduction to German Philosophy
	A reaction: Deomonstrating that Frege's famous 1884 'linguistic turn', immortalised by Dummett, was actually the continuation of a long focus on language in German philosophy. Non-verbal animals very obviously think.

28. God / A. Divine Nature / 3. Divine Perfections

9111	God is not wise, but more-than-wise; God is not good, but more-than-good [William of Ockham]
	Full Idea: God is not wise, but more-than-wise; God is not good, but more-than-good.
	From: William of Ockham (Reportatio [1330], III Q viii)
	A reaction: [He is quoting 'Damascene'] I quote this for interest, but I very much doubt whether Damascene or William knew what it meant, and I certainly don't. There seems to have been a politically correct desire to invent super-powers for God.

28. God / C. Attitudes to God / 4. God Reflects Humanity

9112	We could never form a concept of God's wisdom if we couldn't abstract it from creatures [William of Ockham]
	Full Idea: What we abstract is said to belong to perfection in so far as it can be predicated of God and can stand for Him. For if such a concept could not be abstracted from a creature, then in this life we could not arrive at a cognition of God's wisdom.
	From: William of Ockham (Reportatio [1330], III Q viii)
	A reaction: This seems to be the germ of an important argument. Without the ability to abstract from what is experienced, we would not be able to apply general concepts to things which are beyond experience. It is a key idea for empiricism.