101 ideas
19608 | Wisdom is just the last gasp of a dying civilization [Cioran] |
19631 | The history of ideas (and deeds) occurs in a meaningless environment [Cioran] |
19624 | Intelligence only fully flourishes at the end of a historical period [Cioran] |
19599 | Ideas are neutral, but people fill them with passion and weakness [Cioran] |
19629 | A nation gives expression to its sum of values, and is then exhausted [Cioran] |
19645 | Some thinkers would have been just as dynamic, no matter when they had lived [Cioran] |
19073 | True philosophy aims at absolute unity, while our understanding sees only separation [Hegel] |
15624 | Free thinking has no presuppositions [Hegel] |
19618 | I abandoned philosophy because it didn't acknowledge melancholy and human weakness [Cioran] |
19621 | Originality in philosophy is just the invention of terms [Cioran] |
19607 | The mind is superficial, only concerned with the arrangement of events, not their significance [Cioran] |
19638 | Metaphysics is a universalisation of physical anguish [Cioran] |
15631 | The ideal of reason is the unification of abstract identity (or 'concept') and being [Hegel] |
15612 | Older metaphysics naively assumed that thought grasped things in themselves [Hegel] |
19620 | Great systems of philosophy are just brilliant tautologies [Cioran] |
21768 | Logic is metaphysics, the science of things grasped in thoughts [Hegel] |
21984 | We must break up the rigidity that our understanding has imposed [Hegel] |
22081 | Let thought follow its own course, and don't interfere [Hegel] |
15626 | Categories create objective experience, but are too conditioned by things to actually grasp them [Hegel] |
15616 | If truth is just non-contradiction, we must take care that our basic concepts aren't contradictory [Hegel] |
15638 | Dialectic is the moving soul of scientific progression, the principle which binds science together [Hegel] |
21767 | Dialectic is seen in popular proverbs like 'pride comes before a fall' [Hegel] |
15639 | Socratic dialectic is subjective, but Plato made it freely scientific and objective [Hegel] |
19630 | No great idea ever emerged from a dialogue [Cioran] |
15615 | Older metaphysics became dogmatic, by assuming opposed assertions must be true and false [Hegel] |
19070 | Superficial truth is knowing how something is, which is consciousness of bare correctness [Hegel] |
5644 | In Hegel's logic it is concepts (rather than judgements or propositions) which are true or false [Hegel, by Scruton] |
19072 | In the deeper sense of truth, to be untrue resembles being bad; badness is untrue to a thing's nature [Hegel] |
19636 | Truth is just an error insufficiently experienced [Cioran] |
19642 | Eventually every 'truth' is guaranteed by the police [Cioran] |
19071 | The deeper sense of truth is a thing matching the idea of what it ought to be [Hegel] |
13331 | Part and whole contribute asymmetrically to one another, so must differ [Fine,K] |
21595 | Excluded middle is the maxim of definite understanding, but just produces contradictions [Hegel] |
19632 | An axiom has no more authority than a frenzy [Cioran] |
15628 | The idea that contradiction is essential to rational understanding is a key modern idea [Hegel] |
15629 | Tenderness for the world solves the antinomies; contradiction is in our reason, not in the essence of the world [Hegel] |
15630 | Antinomies are not just in four objects, but in all objects, all representations, all objects and all ideas [Hegel] |
22078 | Even simple propositions about sensations are filled with categories [Hegel] |
15634 | Thought about particulars is done entirely through categories [Hegel] |
13332 | Hierarchical set membership models objects better than the subset or aggregate relations do [Fine,K] |
21981 | The one substance is formless without the mediation of dialectical concepts [Hegel] |
13333 | The matter is a relatively unstructured version of the object, like a set without membership structure [Fine,K] |
13326 | A 'temporary' part is a part at one time, but may not be at another, like a carburetor [Fine,K] |
13327 | A 'timeless' part just is a part, not a part at some time; some atoms are timeless parts of a water molecule [Fine,K] |
13329 | An 'aggregative' sum is spread in time, and exists whenever a component exists [Fine,K] |
13330 | An 'compound' sum is not spread in time, and only exists when all the components exists [Fine,K] |
13328 | Two sorts of whole have 'rigid embodiment' (timeless parts) or 'variable embodiment' (temporary parts) [Fine,K] |
15637 | Essence is the essential self-positing unity of immediacy and mediation [Hegel] |
15613 | Real cognition grasps a thing from within itself, and is not satisfied with mere predicates [Hegel] |
15636 | The Cogito is at the very centre of the entire concern of modern philosophy [Hegel] |
22300 | Existence is just a set of relationships [Hegel] |
15609 | The sensible is distinguished from thought by being about singular things [Hegel] |
15625 | Sense perception is secondary and dependent, while thought is independent and primitive [Hegel] |
15619 | Empiricism made particular knowledge possible, and blocked wild claims [Hegel] |
15620 | Empiricism contains the important idea that we should see knowledge for ourselves, and be part of it [Hegel] |
15622 | Empiricism unknowingly contains and uses a metaphysic, which underlies its categories [Hegel] |
15621 | Empiricism of the finite denies the supersensible, and can only think with formal abstraction [Hegel] |
15632 | The Humean view stops us thinking about perception, and finding universals and necessities in it [Hegel] |
15623 | Humean scepticism, unlike ancient Greek scepticism, accepts the truth of experience as basic [Hegel] |
19626 | Our instincts had to be blunted and diminished, to make way for consciousness! [Cioran] |
15617 | In abstraction, beyond finitude, freedom and necessity must exist together [Hegel] |
15608 | The act of thinking is the bringing forth of universals [Hegel] |
21986 | Hegel's system has a vast number of basic concepts [Hegel, by Moore,AW] |
15607 | We don't think with concepts - we think the concepts [Hegel] |
15610 | Active thought about objects produces the universal, which is what is true and essential of it [Hegel] |
19633 | We use concepts to master our fears; saying 'death' releases us from confronting it [Cioran] |
19615 | I want to suppress in myself the normal reasons people have for action [Cioran] |
19628 | At a civilisation's peak values are all that matters, and people unconsciously live by them [Cioran] |
19646 | Values don't accumulate; they are ruthlessly replaced [Cioran] |
19614 | Lovers are hateful, apart from their hovering awareness of death [Cioran] |
19619 | To live authentically, we must see that philosophy is totally useless [Cioran] |
19634 | Man is never himself; he always aims at less than life, or more than life [Cioran] |
19622 | The pointlessness of our motives and irrelevance of our gestures reveals our vacuity [Cioran] |
19612 | The universe is dirty and fragile, as if a scandal in nothingness had produced its matter [Cioran] |
19617 | Evidence suggests that humans do not have a purpose [Cioran] |
19604 | Unlike other creatures, mankind seems lost in nature [Cioran] |
19606 | We can only live because our imagination and memory are poor [Cioran] |
19601 | Life is now more dreaded than death [Cioran] |
19640 | No one is brave enough to say they don't want to do anything; we despise such a view [Cioran] |
19602 | You are stuck in the past if you don't know boredom [Cioran] |
19641 | If you lack beliefs, boredom is your martyrdom [Cioran] |
19644 | History is the bloody rejection of boredom [Cioran] |
19613 | It is pointless to refuse or accept the social order; we must endure it like the weather [Cioran] |
19627 | Opportunists can save a nation, and heroes can ruin it [Cioran] |
19625 | The ideal is to impose a religion by force, and then live in doubt about its beliefs [Cioran] |
19605 | Despite endless suggestions, no one has found a goal for history [Cioran] |
19637 | History is wonderfully devoid of meaning [Cioran] |
19611 | No one has ever found a good argument against suicide [Cioran] |
19610 | Religions see suicide as insubordination [Cioran] |
19609 | If you have not contemplated suicide, you are a miserable worm [Cioran] |
19639 | We all need sexual secrets! [Cioran] |
15614 | Old metaphysics tried to grasp eternal truths through causal events, which is impossible [Hegel] |
15618 | If God is the abstract of Supremely Real Essence, then God is a mere Beyond, and unknowable [Hegel] |
15635 | The older conception of God was emptied of human features, to make it worthy of the Infinite [Hegel] |
21980 | God is the absolute thing, and also the absolute person [Hegel] |
15633 | We establish unification of the Ideal by the ontological proof, deriving being from abstraction of thinking [Hegel] |
19603 | Why is God so boring, and why does God resemble humanity so little? [Cioran] |
19616 | As the perfect wisdom of detachment, philosophy offers no rivals to Taoism [Cioran] |
19600 | When man abandons religion, he then follows new fake gods and mythologies [Cioran] |
19643 | A religion needs to motivate killings, and cannot tolerate rivals [Cioran] |
19623 | Circles of hell are ridiculous; all that matters is to be there [Cioran] |