8216
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Deconstruction is not neutral; it intervenes [Derrida]
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Full Idea:
Deconstruction, I have insisted, is not neutral. It intervenes.
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From:
Jacques Derrida (Positions [1971], p.76)
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A reaction:
This, I think, is because there is in Derrida, as in most French philosophers, a strong streak of Marxism, and a desire to change the world, rather than merely understanding it. Idea 8213 shows the sort of thing he wants to change.
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8213
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I try to analyse certain verbal concepts which block and confuse the dialectical process [Derrida]
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Full Idea:
I have tried to analyse certain marks in writing which are undecidables, false verbal properties, which inhabit philosophical opposition, resisting and disorganising it, without ever constituting a third term, withour ever leaving room for a solution.
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From:
Jacques Derrida (Positions [1971], p.40)
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A reaction:
[I have simplified his sentence!] Much of Derrida seems to be a commentary on the Hegelian dialectic, and the project is presumably to figure out why philosophy is not advancing in the way we would like. Interesting...
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16066
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Additional or removal of any part changes a thing, so people are never the same person [Epicharmus]
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Full Idea:
If you add or take away a pebble, the same number does not remain. If you add to a length or cut off from it, the former measure does not remain. So human beings grow or waste away. Both you and I were, and shall be, other men.
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From:
Epicharmus (comedies (frags) [c.470 BCE], B02), quoted by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 03.12
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A reaction:
[The original is in dialogue form from a play. The context is a joke about not paying a debt.] Note the early date for this metaphysical puzzle. My new favourite reply is Chrysippus's Idea 16059; identity actually requires change.
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5845
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Niceratus learnt the whole of Homer by heart, as a guide to goodness [Xenophon]
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Full Idea:
Niceratus said that his father, because he was concerned to make him a good man, made him learn the whole works of Homer, and he could still repeat by heart the entire 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey'.
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From:
Xenophon (Symposium [c.391 BCE], 3.5)
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A reaction:
This clearly shows the status which Homer had in the teaching of morality in the time of Socrates, and it is precisely this acceptance of authority which he was challenging, in his attempts to analyse the true basis of virtue
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