10 ideas
| 6806 | Do not multiply entities beyond necessity [William of Ockham] |
| Full Idea: Do not multiply entities beyond necessity. | |
| From: William of Ockham (works [1335]) | |
| A reaction: This is the classic statement of Ockham's Razor, though it is not found in his printed works. It appears to be mainly aimed at Plato's Theory of Forms. It is taken to refer to types of entities, not numbers. One seraph is as bad as a hundred. |
| 22132 | Species and genera are individual concepts which naturally signify many individuals [William of Ockham] |
| Full Idea: In his mature nominalism, species and genera are identified with certain mental qualities called concepts or intentions of the mind. Ontologically they are individuals too, like everthing else, ...but they naturally signify many different individuals. | |
| From: William of Ockham (works [1335]), quoted by Claude Panaccio - William of Ockham p.1056 | |
| A reaction: 'Naturally' is the key word, because the concepts are not fictions, but natural responses to encountering individuals in the world. I am an Ockhamist. |
| 23903 | When we admire a work, we see ourselves as its creator [Weil] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible to admire a work of art without thinking oneself, in a way, its creator and without, in a sense, becoming so. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Letters [1940], 1940-03c) | |
| A reaction: This rings true for me. You almost see yourself making the brush strokes, or writing the phrase, or penning the chords. It is engagment which is essential for artistic experience. So all art lovers want to be artists? |
| 23901 | Relationships depend on equality, so unequal treatment kills them [Weil] |
| Full Idea: I conceive human relations solely on the plane of equality; therefore, so soon as someone begins to treat me as an inferior, human relations between us become impossible in my eyes. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Letters [1940], 1936-03) | |
| A reaction: Love that. This is precisely where equality starts. I fear that the problem is that people who don't treat others as equals don't want relationships with them, which particularly occurs in a competitive or hierarchical culture. |
| 22824 | Magna Carta forbids prison without trial, and insists on neutral and correct process [-, by Charvet] |
| Full Idea: The Magna Carta forbids the King to imprison indefinitely without trial, and also binds the King to follow due process in his courts and not allow the justice provided to be for sale. | |
| From: report of - (Magna Carta [1215]) by John Charvet - Liberalism: the basics 02 | |
| A reaction: Very exasperating for a medieval monarch. In current times British law is exceedingly slow (so long imprisonment before trial), and the necessary effective advocates cost vastly too much for all but a tiny minority. So it's going badly. |
| 19381 | The past has ceased to exist, and the future does not yet exist, so time does not exist [William of Ockham] |
| Full Idea: Time is composed of non-entities, because it is composed of the past which does not exist now, although it did exist, and of the future, which does not yet exist; therefore time does not exist. | |
| From: William of Ockham (works [1335], 6:496), quoted by Richard T.W. Arthur - Leibniz 7 'Nominalist' | |
| A reaction: I've a lot of sympathy with this! I favour Presentism, so the past is gone and the future is yet to arrive. But we have no coherent concept of a present moment of any duration to contain reality. We are just completely bogglificated by it all. |
| 8010 | William of Ockham is the main spokesman for God's commands being the source of morality [William of Ockham] |
| Full Idea: The most notable philosopher who makes God's commandment the basis of goodness, rather than God's goodness a reason for obeying him, is William of Occam. | |
| From: William of Ockham (works [1335]), quoted by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.9 | |
| A reaction: Either view has problems. Why choose God to obey? Obey anyone who is powerful? But how do you decide that God is good? How do we know the nature of God's commands, or the nature of God's goodness? Etc. |
| 16679 | Even an angel must have some location [William of Ockham, by Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Ockham dismisses the possibility of non-location out of hand, remarking that even an angel has some location. | |
| From: report of William of Ockham (works [1335]) by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 14.4 |
| 23904 | The cruelty of the Old Testament put me off Christianity [Weil] |
| Full Idea: I have always been kept away from Christianity by its ranking the Old Testament stories, so full of pitiless cruelty, as sacred texts. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Letters [1940], 1941-01) | |
| A reaction: After 1938 she was a devout and intense Christian, but of a highly individual and platonist kind. Her religion is dominated by love and beauty. |
| 23902 | I attach little importance to immortality, which is an undecidable fact, and irrelevant to us [Weil] |
| Full Idea: You attach great importance to the reasoning about immortality. I myself attach little. It is a factual question, which cannot be decided in advance by any reasoning. And what does it matter to us? | |
| From: Simone Weil (Letters [1940], 1937-04c) | |
| A reaction: I love 'what does it matter to us?'. The idea that our future bliss or misery depends on how we live now is an utterly wicked fiction, which derails attempts to live a proper life. |