73 ideas
| 20801 | A wise man's chief strength is not being tricked; nothing is worse than error, frivolity or rashness [Zeno of Citium, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Zeno held that the wise man's chief strength is that he is careful not to be tricked, and sees to it that he is not deceived; for nothing is more alien to the conception that we have of the seriousness of the wise man than error, frivolity or rashness. | |
| From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - Academica II.66 | |
| A reaction: I presume that this concerns being deceived by other people, and also being deceived by evidence. I suggest that the greatest ability of the wise person is the accurate assessment of evidence. |
| 1771 | When shown seven versions of the mowing argument, he paid twice the asking price for them [Zeno of Citium, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: When shown seven species of dialectic in the mowing argument, he asked the price, and when told 'a hundred drachmas', he gave two hundred, so devoted was he to learning. | |
| From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.Ze.20 | |
| A reaction: Wonderful. I have a watertight proof that pleasure is not the good, which I will auction on the internet. |
| 20770 | Philosophy has three parts, studying nature, character, and rational discourse [Zeno of Citium, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: They say that philosophical theory is tripartite. For one part of it concerns nature [i.e. physics], another concerns character [i.e. ethics], and another concerns rational discourse [i.e. logic] | |
| From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.39 | |
| A reaction: Surely 'nature' included biology, and shouldn't be glossed as 'physics'? And I presume that 'rational discourse' is 'logos', rather than 'logic'. Interesting to see that ethics just is the study of character (and not of good and bad actions). |
| 23183 | Different abilities are needed for living in an incomplete and undogmatic system [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There is an entirely different strength and mobility to maintaining oneself in an incomplete system, with free, open vistas, than in a dogmatic world. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[025]) | |
| A reaction: This is like Keats's 'negative capability' - the ability to live in a state of uncertainty. I'm a fan of attempts to create a philosophical system, but dogmatism would seem to be the death of such a project. How would you live with your system? Nice. |
| 23188 | Bad writers use shapeless floating splotches of concepts [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Bad writers have only shapeless floating splotches of concepts in their heads. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[083]) | |
| A reaction: Under 'conceptual analyis' not because he analyses concepts, but because he recognises their foundation importance in philosophy. I get more irritated by unchallenged concepts than by drifting concepts. Writer must know and challenge their key concepts. |
| 23212 | A text has many interpretations, but no 'correct' one [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The same text allows innumerable interpretations: there is no 'correct' interpretation. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 1[120]) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to defend a 'correct' interpretation, but I think it is obvious to students of literature that some interpretations are very silly, such as reading things allegorically when there was no such intention. |
| 23199 | What is the search for truth if it isn't moral? [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What is searching for truth, truthfulness, honesty if not something moral? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 35[05]) | |
| A reaction: Feels right to me. It might be an effect of the virtue of respect. If you respect a person you tell them the truth (assuming they want the truth). Lying to someone is a sort of contempt. |
| 23202 | Like all philosophers, I love truth [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I, too, love truth, like all philosophers. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 37[02]) | |
| A reaction: Please pay attention to this remark! His perspectivalism is not a denial of truth. It is an epistemological phenomenon, not a metaphysical one. The perspectives are the nearest we can get to truth. Humanity therefore needs teamwork. |
| 6022 | Someone who says 'it is day' proposes it is day, and it is true if it is day [Zeno of Citium, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Someone who says 'It is day' seems to propose that it is day; if, then, it is day, the proposition advanced comes out true, but if not, it comes out false. | |
| From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.65 | |
| A reaction: Those who find Tarski's theory annoyingly vacuous should note that the ancient Stoics thought the same point worth making. They seem to have clearly favoured some minimal account of truth, according to this. |
| 23196 | Logic is a fiction, which invents the view that one thought causes another [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The model of a complete fiction is logic. Here a thinking is made up where a thought is posited as the cause of another thought. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[249]) | |
| A reaction: He could almost be referring to Frege's Third Realm. Most hard core analytic philosophers seem to think that propositions have tight logical relationships which are nothing to do with the people who think them. |
| 23186 | Numbers enable us to manage the world - to the limits of counting [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Numbers are our major means of making the world manageable. We comprehend as far as we can count, i.e. as far as a constancy can be perceived. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[058]) | |
| A reaction: I don't agree with 'major', but it is a nice thought. The intermediate concept is a 'unit', which means identifying something as a 'thing', which is how we seem to grasp the world. So to what extent do we comprehend the infinite. Enter Cantor… |
| 7555 | Zeno achieved the statement of the problems of infinitesimals, infinity and continuity [Russell on Zeno of Citium] |
| Full Idea: Zeno was concerned with three increasingly abstract problems of motion: the infinitesimal, the infinite, and continuity; to state the problems is perhaps the hardest part of the philosophical task, and this was done by Zeno. | |
| From: comment on Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by Bertrand Russell - Mathematics and the Metaphysicians p.81 | |
| A reaction: A very nice tribute, and a beautiful clarification of what Zeno was concerned with. |
| 20860 | Whatever participates in substance exists [Zeno of Citium, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: Zeno says that whatever participates in substance exists. | |
| From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 2.05a | |
| A reaction: This seems Aristotelian, implying that only objects exist. Unformed stuff would not normally qualify as a 'substance'. So does mud exist? See the ideas of Henry Laycock. |
| 23211 | Events are just interpretations of groups of appearances [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There is no event in itself. What happens is a group of appearances selected and summarised by an interpreting being. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 1[115]) | |
| A reaction: Since innumerable events are nested within one another, such as the events at a carnival, this is obviously true. A primitive 'Kim event' (an object changes a property) might have objective existence. Carnivals happen, though. |
| 21397 | Perception an open hand, a fist is 'grasping', and holding that fist is knowledge [Zeno of Citium, by Long] |
| Full Idea: Zeno said perceptions starts like an open hand; then the assent by our governing-principle is partly closing the hand; then full 'grasping' is like making a fist; and finally knowledge is grasping the fist with the other hand. | |
| From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by A.A. Long - Hellenistic Philosophy 4.3.1 | |
| A reaction: [In Cicero, Acad 2.145] It sounds as if full knowledge requires meta-cognition - knowing that you know. |
| 20799 | A grasp by the senses is true, because it leaves nothing out, and so nature endorses it [Zeno of Citium, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: He thought that a grasp made by the senses was true and reliable, …because it left out nothing about the object that could be grasped, and because nature had provided this grasp as a standard of knowledge, and a basis for understanding nature itself. | |
| From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - Academica I.42 | |
| A reaction: Sounds like Williamson's 'knowledge first' claim - that the basic epistemic state is knowledge, which we have when everything is working normally. I like Zeno's idea that a 'grasp' leaves nothing out about the object. Compare nature with Descartes' God. |
| 23201 | The 'I' does not think; it is a construction of thinking, like other useful abstractions [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I do not grant to the metaphysicians that the 'I' is what thinks: on the contrary I take the I itself as a construction thinking, of the same rank as 'material',' thing', 'substance', 'purpose', 'number': therefore only as a regulative fiction. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 35[35]) | |
| A reaction: Ah. I have always defended the Self, the thing that is in charge when the mind is directed to something. I suddenly see that this is compatible with the Self not being the thinker! It is just the willer, and the controller of the searchlight. Self = will? |
| 23207 | Appearance is the sole reality of things, to which all predicates refer [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Appearance as I understand it is the actual and single reality of things - that which first merits all existing predicates. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 40[53]) | |
| A reaction: This is the view espoused by John Stuart Mill (a fact which would shock Nietzsche!). Elsewhere he laughs at the concept of the thing-in-itself as a fiction. |
| 23197 | Memory is essential, and is only possible by means of abbreviation signs [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Experience is only possible with the help of memory; memory is only possible by virtue of an abbreviation of an intellectual event as a sign. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[249]) | |
| A reaction: My memory of a town is not formed as a sign, but as a bunch of miscellaneous fragments about it. I think mental files gives a better account of this than do 'signs'. |
| 20797 | If a grasped perception cannot be shaken by argument, it is 'knowledge' [Zeno of Citium, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: What had been grasped by sense-perception, he called this itself a 'sense-perception', and if it was grasped in such a way that it could not be shaken by argument he called it 'knowledge'. And between knowledge and ignorance he placed the 'grasp'. | |
| From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - Academica I.41 | |
| A reaction: This seems to say that a grasped perception is knowledge if there is no defeater. |
| 21398 | A presentation is true if we judge that no false presentation could appear like it [Zeno of Citium, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: I possess a standard enabling me to judge presentations to be true when they have a character of a sort that false ones could not have. | |
| From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - Academica II.18.58 | |
| A reaction: [This is a spokesman in Cicero for the early Stoic view] No sceptic will accept this, but it is pretty much how I operate. If you see something weird, like a leopard wandering wild in Hampshire, you believe it once you have eliminated possible deceptions. |
| 23206 | Schematic minds think thoughts are truer if they slot into a scheme [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There are schematic minds, those who hold a thought-complex to be truer if it can be sketched into previously drafted schemata or categorical tables. There are countless self-deceptions in this area: nearly all the great 'systems' belong here. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 40[09]) | |
| A reaction: Why 'nearly all'? Aristotle might be a candidate for such a person. Leibniz, perhaps. Nietzsche identified with Becoming and Heraclitus, as opposed to Being and Parmenides. |
| 23209 | Each of our personal drives has its own perspective [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: From the standpoint of each of our fundamental drives there is a different perspectival assessment of all events and experiences. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 1[058]) | |
| A reaction: Revealing. Perspectives are not just each individual person's viewpoint, but something more fine-grained than that. Our understanding and response are ambiguous, because we ourselves are intrinsically ambiguous. Super-relativism! |
| 23184 | The mind is a simplifying apparatus [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The intellect and the senses are above all a simplifying apparatus. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[046]) | |
| A reaction: Very plausible, and not an idea I have met elsewhere. There's a PhD here for someone. It fits with my view as universals in language (which is most of language), which capture diverse things by ironing out their differences. |
| 23190 | Consciousness is our awareness of our own mental life [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We have a double brain: our capacity to will, to feel and to think of our willing, feeling, thinking ourselves is what we summarise with the word 'consciousness'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[087]) | |
| A reaction: Pretty much the modern HOT (higher order thought) theory of consciousness. Higher order thought distinguishes us from the other animals, but I think they too are probably conscious, so I don't agree. Why is level 2 conscious of level 1? |
| 23191 | Minds have an excluding drive to scare things off, and a selecting one to filter facts [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: In our conscious intellect there must be an excluding drive that scares things away, a selecting one, which only permits certain facts to present themselves. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[131]) | |
| A reaction: I like this because he is endorsing the idea that philosophy needs faculties, which may not match the views of psychologists and neuroscientists. Quite nice to think of faculties as drives. |
| 23213 | The greatest drive of life is to discharge strength, rather than preservation [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Something that lives wants above all to discharge its strength: 'preservation' is only one of the consequences of this. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 2[063]) | |
| A reaction: This seems to fit a dynamic man like Nietzsche, rather than someone who opts for a quiet and comfortable life. |
| 1770 | When a slave said 'It was fated that I should steal', Zeno replied 'Yes, and that you should be beaten' [Zeno of Citium, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: When a slave who was being beaten for theft said, 'It was fated that I should steal', Zeno replied, 'Yes, and that you should be beaten.' | |
| From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.Ze.19 |
| 3799 | A dog tied to a cart either chooses to follow and is pulled, or it is just pulled [Zeno of Citium, by Hippolytus] |
| Full Idea: Zeno and Chrysippus say everything is fated with the following model: when a dog is tied to a cart, if it wants to follow it is pulled and follows, making its spontaneous act coincide with necessity, but if it does not want to follow it will be compelled. | |
| From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by Hippolytus - Refutation of All Heresies §1.21 | |
| A reaction: A nice example, but it is important to keep the distinction clear between freedom and free will. The dog lacks freedom as it is dragged along, but it is still free to will that it is asleep in its kennel. |
| 23210 | That all events are necessary does not mean they are compelled [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The absolute necessity of all events contains nothing of a compulsion. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 1[114]) | |
| A reaction: I like to look for necessity-makers behind necessities. So if the event is not necessary because of its cause, where does it come from? Is it that the whole sequence is a unified necessity? |
| 21402 | Incorporeal substances can't do anything, and can't be acted upon either [Zeno of Citium, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Zeno held that an incorporeal substance was incapable of any activity, whereas anything capable of acting, or being acted upon in any way, could not be incorporeal. | |
| From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - Academica I.11.39 | |
| A reaction: This is substance dualism kicked into the long grass by Zeno, long before Descartes defended dualism, and was swiftly met with exactly the same response. The interaction problem. |
| 20816 | A body is required for anything to have causal relations [Zeno of Citium, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Zeno held (contrary to Xenocrates and others) that it was impossible for anything to be effected that lacked a body, and indeed that whatever effected something or was affected by something must be body. | |
| From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - Academica I.39 | |
| A reaction: This seems to make stoics thoroughgoing physicalists, although they consider the mind to be made of refined fire, rather than of flesh. |
| 23189 | Concepts are rough groups of simultaneous sensations [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Concepts are more or less definite groups of sensations that arrive together. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[086]) | |
| A reaction: I like this because I favour accounts of concepts which root them in experience, and largely growing unthinking out of communcal experience. Nietzsche is very empirical here. Hume would probably agree. |
| 23192 | Concepts don’t match one thing, but many things a little bit [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: A concept is an invention that doesn't correspond entirely to anything; but to many things a little bit. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[131]) | |
| A reaction: This seems to cover some concepts quite well, but others not at all. What else does 'square' correspond to? |
| 23187 | Whatever their origin, concepts survive by being useful [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The most useful concepts have survived: however falsely they may have originated. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[063]) | |
| A reaction: The germ of both pragmatism, and of meaning-as-use, here. The alternative views must be that the concepts are accurate or true, or that they are simply a matter of whim, maintained by authority. |
| 1773 | A sentence always has signification, but a word by itself never does [Zeno of Citium, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: A sentence is always significative of something, but a word by itself has no signification. | |
| From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.Ze.28 | |
| A reaction: This is the Fregean dogma. Words obviously can signify, but that is said to be parasitic on their use in sentences. It feels like a false dichotomy to me. Much sentence meaning is compositional. |
| 23205 | Thought starts as ambiguity, in need of interpretation and narrowing [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: A thought in the shape in which it comes is an ambiguous sign that needs interpretation, more precisely, needs an arbitrary narrowing-down and limitation, until it finally becomes unambiguous. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 38[01]) | |
| A reaction: This is exactly my view of propositions, as mental events. Introspect your thinking process. Track the progress from the first glimmer of a thought to its formulation in a finished sentence. Language, unlike propositions, can be ambiguous. |
| 23198 | Aesthetics can be more basic than morality, in our pleasure in certain patterns of experience [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Some of the aesthetic valuations are more fundamental than the moral ones e.g. the pleasure in what is ordered, surveyable, limited, in repetition. The logical, arithmetical and geometrical good feelings form the ground floor of aesthetic valuations. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 35[02]) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche's originality is so striking because his novel suggestions are always plausible. Lots of modern philosophers (especially, I fear, in the continental tradition) throw out startling ideas which then fail on closer inspection. |
| 21233 | The beautiful is whatever it is intrinsically good to admire [Moore,GE] |
| Full Idea: The beautiful should be defined as that of which the admiring contemplation is good in itself. | |
| From: G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903], p.210), quoted by Graham Farmelo - The Strangest Man | |
| A reaction: To work, this definition must exclude anything else which it is intrinsically good to admire. Good deeds obviously qualify for that, so good deeds must be intrinsically beautiful (which would be agreed by ancient Greeks). We can't ask WHY it is good! |
| 8039 | Moore tries to show that 'good' is indefinable, but doesn't understand what a definition is [MacIntyre on Moore,GE] |
| Full Idea: Moore tries to show that 'good' is indefinable by relying on a bad dictionary definition of 'definition'. | |
| From: comment on G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: An interesting remark, with no further explanation offered. If Moore has this problem, then Plato had it too (see Idea 3032). I would have thought that any definition MacIntyre could offer would either be naturalistic, or tautological. |
| 22151 | The Open Question argument leads to anti-realism and the fact-value distinction [Boulter on Moore,GE] |
| Full Idea: Moore's Open Question argument led, however unintentionally, to the rise of anti-realism in meta-ethics (which leads to distinguishing values from facts). | |
| From: comment on G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by Stephen Boulter - Why Medieval Philosophy Matters 4 | |
| A reaction: I presume that Moore proves that the Good is not natural, and after that no one knows what it is, so it seems to be arbitrary or non-existent (rather than the platonic fact that Moore had hoped for). I vote for naturalistic ethics. |
| 11056 | The naturalistic fallacy claims that natural qualties can define 'good' [Moore,GE] |
| Full Idea: The naturalistic fallacy ..consists in the contention that good means nothing but some simple or complex notion, that can be defined in terms of natural qualities. | |
| From: G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903], §044) | |
| A reaction: Presumably aimed at those who think morality is pleasure and pain. We could hardly attribute morality to non-human qualities. I connect morality to human deliberative functions. |
| 8033 | Moore cannot show why something being good gives us a reason for action [MacIntyre on Moore,GE] |
| Full Idea: Moore's account leaves it entirely unexplained and inexplicable why something's being good should ever furnish us with a reason for action. | |
| From: comment on G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.18 | |
| A reaction: The same objection can be raised to Plato's Form of the Good, but Plato's answer seems to be that the Good is partly a rational entity, and partly that the Good just has a natural magnetism that makes it quasi-religious. |
| 8032 | Can learning to recognise a good friend help us to recognise a good watch? [MacIntyre on Moore,GE] |
| Full Idea: How could having learned to recognize a good friend help us to recognize a good watch? Yet is Moore is right, the same simple property is present in both cases? | |
| From: comment on G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.18 | |
| A reaction: It begins to look as if what they have in common is just that they both make you feel good. However, I like the Aristotelian idea that they both function succesfully, one as a timekeeper, the other as a citizen or companion. |
| 11050 | Moore's combination of antinaturalism with strong supervenience on the natural is incoherent [Hanna on Moore,GE] |
| Full Idea: Moore incoherently combines his antinaturalism with the thesis that intrinsic-value properties are logically strongly supervenient on (or explanatorily reducible to) natural facts. | |
| From: comment on G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by Robert Hanna - Rationality and Logic Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: I take this to be Moore fighting shy of the strongly Platonist view of values which his arguments all seemed to imply. |
| 23726 | Despite Moore's caution, non-naturalists incline towards intuitionism [Moore,GE, by Smith,M] |
| Full Idea: Although Moore was reluctant to adopt it, the epistemology the non-naturalists tended to favour was intuitionism. | |
| From: report of G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by Michael Smith - The Moral Problem 2.2 | |
| A reaction: Moore was presumably reluctant because intuitionism had been heavily criticised in the past for its inability to settle moral disputes. But if you insist that goodness is outside nature, what other means of knowing it is available? Reason? |
| 23208 | Caesar and Napoleon point to the future, when they pursue their task regardless of human sacrifice [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: In nature's such as Caesar and Napoleon we intuit something of a 'disinterested' laboring on one's marble, regardless of any sacrifice of human beings. The future of the highest human beings lies on here: to bear responsibility and not collapse under it. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 1[056]) | |
| A reaction: Hideous. Nietzsche at his absolute worst. You would think there was some wonderful higher good to which they were leading the human race, when they just strike me as people who liked fighting, and adored winning. |
| 23193 | Napoleon was very focused, and rightly ignored compassion [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: With Napoleon only the essential instincts of humanity came into consideration during his calculations, and he had a right not to take notice of the exceptional ones e.g. of compassion. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[131]) | |
| A reaction: Napoleon was notoriously indifferent to casualties, and I find it depressing that Nietzsche supports him. Napoleon brought misery to Europe for nearly twenties, mainly because he loved winning battles. Nothing über about that. |
| 20841 | Zeno said live in agreement with nature, which accords with virtue [Zeno of Citium, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Zeno first (in his book On Human Nature) said that the goal was to live in agreement with nature, which is to live according to virtue. | |
| From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.87 | |
| A reaction: The main idea seems to be Aristotelian - that the study of human nature reveals what our virtues are, and following them is what nature requires. Nature is taken to be profoundly rational. |
| 1774 | Since we are essentially rational animals, living according to reason is living according to nature [Zeno of Citium, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: As reason is given to rational animals according to a more perfect principle, it follows that to live correctly according to reason, is properly predicated of those who live according to nature. | |
| From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.Ze.52 | |
| A reaction: This is the key idea for understanding what the stoics meant by 'live according to nature'. The modern idea of rationality doesn't extend to 'perfect principles', however. |
| 18676 | We should ask what we would judge to be good if it existed in absolute isolation [Moore,GE] |
| Full Idea: It is necessary to consider what things are such that, if they existed by themselves, in absolute isolation, we should yet judge their existence to be good. | |
| From: G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903], §112) | |
| A reaction: This is known as the 'isolation test'. The test has an instant appeal, but looks a bit odd after a little thought. The value of most things drains out of them if they are totally isolated. The MS of the Goldberg Variations floating in outer space? |
| 20863 | The goal is to 'live in agreement', according to one rational consistent principle [Zeno of Citium, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: Zeno says the goal of life is 'living in agreement', which means living according to a single and consonant rational principle, since those who live in conflict are unhappy. | |
| From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 2.06a | |
| A reaction: If there is a 'single' principle, is it possible to state it? To live by consistent principles sets the bar incredibly high, as any professional philosopher can tell you. |
| 11057 | It is always an open question whether anything that is natural is good [Moore,GE] |
| Full Idea: Good does not, by definition, mean anything that is natural; and it is therefore always an open question whether anything that is natural is good. | |
| From: G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903], §027) | |
| A reaction: This is the best known modern argument for Platonist idealised ethics. But maybe there is no end to questioning anywhere, so each theory invites a further question, and nothing is ever fully explained? Next stop - pragmatism. |
| 5925 | The three main values are good, right and beauty [Moore,GE, by Ross] |
| Full Idea: Moore describes rightness and beauty as the two main value-attributes, apart from goodness. | |
| From: report of G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by W. David Ross - The Right and the Good §IV | |
| A reaction: This was a last-throw of the Platonic ideal, before we plunged into the value-free world of Darwin and the physicists. It is hard to agree with Moore, but also hard to disagree. Why do many people despise or ignore these values? |
| 5902 | For Moore, 'right' is what produces good [Moore,GE, by Ross] |
| Full Idea: Moore claims that 'right' means 'productive of the greatest possible good'. | |
| From: report of G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by W. David Ross - The Right and the Good §I | |
| A reaction: Ross is at pains to keep 'right' and 'good' as quite distinct notions. Some actions are right but very unpleasant, and seem to produce no real good at all. |
| 5903 | 'Right' means 'cause of good result' (hence 'useful'), so the end does justify the means [Moore,GE] |
| Full Idea: 'Right' does and can mean nothing but 'cause of a good result', and is thus identical with 'useful', whence it follows that the end always will justify the means. | |
| From: G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903], §089) | |
| A reaction: Of course, Moore does not identify utility with pleasure, as his notion of what is good concerns fairly Platonic ideals. Would Stalin's murders have been right if Russia were now the happiest nation on Earth? |
| 2662 | Zeno saw virtue as a splendid state, not just a source of splendid action [Zeno of Citium, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Zeno held that not merely the exercise of virtue, as his predecessors held, but the mere state of virtue is in itself a splendid thing, although nobody possesses virtue without continuously exercising it. | |
| From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - Academica I.10.38 |
| 21395 | One of Zeno's books was 'That Which is Appropriate' [Zeno of Citium, by Long] |
| Full Idea: Zeno of Citium wrote a (lost) book entitled 'That Which is Appropriate'. | |
| From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by A.A. Long - Hellenistic Philosophy 4.1 | |
| A reaction: I cite this because I take it to be about what in Aristotle called 'the mean' - to emphasise that the mean is not what is average, or midway between the extremes, but what is a balanced response to each situation |
| 5964 | Zeno says there are four main virtues, which are inseparable but distinct [Zeno of Citium, by Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Zeno (like Plato) admits a plurality of specifically different virtues, namely prudence, courage, sobriety, justice, which he takes to be inseparable but yet distinct and different from one another. | |
| From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1034c | |
| A reaction: In fact, the virtues are 'supervenient' on one another, which is the doctrine of the unity of virtue. Zeno is not a pluralist in the way Aristotle is - who says there are other goods apart from the virtues. |
| 5907 | Relationships imply duties to people, not merely the obligation to benefit them [Ross on Moore,GE] |
| Full Idea: Moore's 'Ideal Utilitarianism' seems to unduly simplify our relations to our fellows. My neighbours are merely possible beneficiaries by my action. But they also stand to me as promiser, creditor, husband, friend, which entails prima facie duties. | |
| From: comment on G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by W. David Ross - The Right and the Good §II | |
| A reaction: Perhaps it is better to say that we have obligations to benefit particular people, because of our obligations, and that we are confined to particular benefits which meet those obligations - not just any old benefit to any old person. |
| 23214 | For the strongest people, nihilism gives you wings! [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: In the hands of the strongest every kind of pessimism and nihilism becomes only one more hammer and tool with which one mounts a new pair of wings on oneself. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 2[101]) | |
| A reaction: Not sure how this works. Why is great strength needed? Strength implies forceful overcoming. The wings come from rejecting nihilism, but why does that need strength? Aren't there people with wings who never even thought of nihilism? |
| 23203 | The great question is approaching, of how to govern the earth as a whole [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It is approaching, irrefutably, hesitatingly, terrible as fate, the great task and fate: how should the earth as a whole be governed? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 37[08]) | |
| A reaction: Two issues have accelerated the question, though we have yet to properly face it. One is the incredible increase in military destructiveness, and other is the damage to the planet caused by the relentless pursuit of wealth. |
| 23200 | The controlling morality of aristocracy is the desire to resemble their ancestors [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The foundation of all aristocracies …is to resemble the ancestors as much as possible, which serves as the controlling morality: mourning at the thought of change and variation. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 35[22]) | |
| A reaction: This makes sense of the permanent residence of the family, full of portraits and family trees. Aristocrats preserve records of their predecessors, in a way that most of us don't, going back before grandparents. |
| 23194 | People feel united as a nation by one language, but then want a common ancestry and history [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: People who speak one language and read the same newspapers today call themselves 'nations', and also want much too eagerly to be of common ancestry and history. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[203]) | |
| A reaction: This sort of nationalism is still with us, as white supremacy, and as history as mythology. But we can't just shake off a sense of which gene pools we come from, and which lines of history are our personal inheritance. |
| 23204 | To be someone you need property, and wanting more is healthy [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Property owners are to a man of one belief: 'you have to own something to be something'. But this is the oldest and healthiest of all instincts: I would add 'you have to want more than you have in order to become more'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 37[11]) | |
| A reaction: An odd idea from someone who spent his later years living in one room in a guest house. The context of this is a rejection of socialism. The love of and need for property and possessions must be taken into account in any politics. |
| 23195 | Laws of nature are actually formulas of power relations [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The alleged 'laws of nature' are formulas for power relationships… | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[247]) | |
| A reaction: Love it. This is precisely the powers ontology of modern philosophy of science. His Will to Power is not often recognised as closely related to this view. |
| 20822 | There is no void in the cosmos, but indefinite void outside it [Zeno of Citium, by Ps-Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Zeno and his followers say that there is no void within the cosmos but an indefinite void outside it. | |
| From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by Pseudo-Plutarch - On the Doctrine of the Philosophers 884a | |
| A reaction: Only atomists (such as Epicureans) need void within the cosmos, as space within which atoms can move. What would they make of modern 'fields'? Posidonius later said there was sufficient, but not infinite, void. |
| 2648 | Things are more perfect if they have reason; nothing is more perfect than the universe, so it must have reason [Zeno of Citium] |
| Full Idea: That which has reason is more perfect than that which has not. But there is nothing more perfect than the universe; therefore the universe is a rational being. | |
| From: Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]), quoted by M. Tullius Cicero - On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') II.20 |
| 20811 | Since the cosmos produces what is alive and rational, it too must be alive and rational [Zeno of Citium] |
| Full Idea: Nothing which lacks life and reason can produce from itself something which is alive and rational; but the cosmos can produce from itself things which are alive and rational; therefore the cosmos is alive and rational. | |
| From: Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]), quoted by M. Tullius Cicero - On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') 2.22 | |
| A reaction: Eggs and sperm don't seem to be rational, but I don't suppose they count. I note that this is presented as a formal proof, when actually it is just an evaluation of evidence. Logic as rhetoric, I would say. |
| 23185 | In chemistry every substance pushes, and thus creates new substances [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: In chemistry is revealed that every substance pushes its force as far as it can, then a third something emerges. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[51]) | |
| A reaction: This is the ontology of powers as the basis of science, of which I am a fan. It is Nietzsche's Will to Power in action, which is often mistakenly taken to only refer to human affairs. |
| 20810 | Rational is better than non-rational; the cosmos is supreme, so it is rational [Zeno of Citium] |
| Full Idea: That which is rational is better than that which is not rational; but there is nothing better than the cosmos; therefore, the cosmos is rational. | |
| From: Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]), quoted by M. Tullius Cicero - On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') 2.21 | |
| A reaction: This looks awfully like Anselm's ontological argument to me. The cosmos was the greatest thing that Zeno could conceive. |
| 2649 | If tuneful flutes grew on olive trees, you would assume the olive had some knowledge of the flute [Zeno of Citium] |
| Full Idea: If flutes playing tunes were to grow on olive trees, would you not infer that the olive must have some knowledge of the flute? | |
| From: Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]), quoted by M. Tullius Cicero - On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') II.22 |
| 20807 | The cosmos and heavens are the substance of god [Zeno of Citium, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Zeno says that the entire cosmos and the heaven are the substance of god. | |
| From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.148 |