94 ideas
| 19608 | Wisdom is just the last gasp of a dying civilization [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] |
| 19631 | The history of ideas (and deeds) occurs in a meaningless environment [Cioran] |
| 19645 | Some thinkers would have been just as dynamic, no matter when they had lived [Cioran] |
| 19629 | A nation gives expression to its sum of values, and is then exhausted [Cioran] |
| 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] |
| 19620 | Great systems of philosophy are just brilliant tautologies [Cioran] |
| 4194 | Metaphysics is concerned with the fundamental structure of reality as a whole [Lowe] |
| 4214 | Maybe such concepts as causation, identity and existence are primitive and irreducible [Lowe] |
| 4222 | If all that exists is what is being measured, what about the people and instruments doing the measuring? [Lowe] |
| 4217 | It is more extravagant, in general, to revise one's logic than to augment one's ontology [Lowe] |
| 19630 | No great idea ever emerged from a dialogue [Cioran] |
| 19636 | Truth is just an error insufficiently experienced [Cioran] |
| 19642 | Eventually every 'truth' is guaranteed by the police [Cioran] |
| 19632 | An axiom has no more authority than a frenzy [Cioran] |
| 4229 | An infinite series of tasks can't be completed because it has no last member [Lowe] |
| 4240 | It might be argued that mathematics does not, or should not, aim at truth [Lowe] |
| 4241 | If there are infinite numbers and finite concrete objects, this implies that numbers are abstract objects [Lowe] |
| 4239 | Nominalists deny abstract objects, because we can have no reason to believe in their existence [Lowe] |
| 4202 | Change can be of composition (the component parts), or quality (properties), or substance [Lowe] |
| 4201 | Four theories of qualitative change are 'a is F now', or 'a is F-at-t', or 'a-at-t is F', or 'a is-at-t F' [Lowe, by PG] |
| 4219 | Numerically distinct events of the same kind (like two battles) can coincide in space and time [Lowe] |
| 4221 | Maybe modern physics requires an event-ontology, rather than a thing-ontology [Lowe] |
| 4220 | Maybe an event is the exemplification of a property at a time [Lowe] |
| 4225 | Events are changes in the properties of or relations between things [Lowe] |
| 4196 | The main categories of existence are either universal and particular, or abstract and concrete [Lowe] |
| 4234 | Trope theory says blueness is a real feature of objects, but not the same as an identical blue found elsewhere [Lowe] |
| 4235 | Maybe a cushion is just a bundle of tropes, such as roundness, blueness and softness [Lowe] |
| 4236 | Tropes seem to be abstract entities, because they can't exist alone, but must come in bundles [Lowe] |
| 4197 | The category of universals can be sub-divided into properties and relations [Lowe] |
| 4232 | Nominalists believe that only particulars exist [Lowe] |
| 4205 | 'Is non-self-exemplifying' is a predicate which cannot denote a property (as it would be a contradiction) [Lowe] |
| 4233 | If 'blueness' is a set of particulars, there is danger of circularity, or using universals, in identifying the set [Lowe] |
| 4206 | Conventionalists see the world as an amorphous lump without identities, but are we part of the lump? [Lowe] |
| 4204 | Statues can't survive much change to their shape, unlike lumps of bronze, which must retain material [Lowe] |
| 4200 | If old parts are stored and then appropriated, they are no longer part of the original (which is the renovated ship). [Lowe] |
| 4198 | If 5% replacement preserves a ship, we can replace 4% and 4% again, and still retain the ship [Lowe] |
| 4199 | A renovation or a reconstruction of an original ship would be accepted, as long as the other one didn't exist [Lowe] |
| 4203 | Identity of Indiscernibles (same properties, same thing) ) is not Leibniz's Law (same thing, same properties) [Lowe] |
| 4195 | It is impossible to reach a valid false conclusion from true premises, so reason itself depends on possibility [Lowe] |
| 4207 | We might eliminate 'possible' and 'necessary' in favour of quantification over possible worlds [Lowe] |
| 4223 | Unfalsifiability may be a failure in an empirical theory, but it is a virtue in metaphysics [Lowe] |
| 4193 | The behaviour of persons and social groups seems to need rational rather than causal explanation [Lowe] |
| 19626 | Our instincts had to be blunted and diminished, to make way for consciousness! [Cioran] |
| 19633 | We use concepts to master our fears; saying 'death' releases us from confronting it [Cioran] |
| 4238 | The centre of mass of the solar system is a non-causal abstract object, despite having a location [Lowe] |
| 4237 | Concrete and abstract objects are distinct because the former have causal powers and relations [Lowe] |
| 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] |
| 19634 | Man is never himself; he always aims at less than life, or more than life [Cioran] |
| 19619 | To live authentically, we must see that philosophy is totally useless [Cioran] |
| 19622 | The pointlessness of our motives and irrelevance of our gestures reveals our vacuity [Cioran] |
| 19617 | Evidence suggests that humans do not have a purpose [Cioran] |
| 19612 | The universe is dirty and fragile, as if a scandal in nothingness had produced its matter [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] |
| 19644 | History is the bloody rejection of boredom [Cioran] |
| 19641 | If you lack beliefs, boredom is your martyrdom [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] |
| 13304 | Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius] |
| 19605 | Despite endless suggestions, no one has found a goal for history [Cioran] |
| 19637 | History is wonderfully devoid of meaning [Cioran] |
| 19610 | Religions see suicide as insubordination [Cioran] |
| 19611 | No one has ever found a good argument against suicide [Cioran] |
| 19609 | If you have not contemplated suicide, you are a miserable worm [Cioran] |
| 19639 | We all need sexual secrets! [Cioran] |
| 4210 | If the concept of a cause says it precedes its effect, that rules out backward causation by definition [Lowe] |
| 4209 | The theories of fact causation and event causation are both worth serious consideration [Lowe] |
| 4215 | It seems proper to say that only substances (rather than events) have causal powers [Lowe] |
| 4211 | Causal overdetermination is either actual overdetermination, or pre-emption, or the fail-safe case [Lowe] |
| 4213 | Causation may be instances of laws (seen either as constant conjunctions, or as necessities) [Lowe] |
| 4212 | Hume showed that causation could at most be natural necessity, never metaphysical necessity [Lowe] |
| 14581 | The normative view says laws show the natural behaviour of natural kind members [Lowe, by Mumford/Anjum] |
| 4208 | 'If he wasn't born he wouldn't have died' doesn't mean birth causes death, so causation isn't counterfactual [Lowe] |
| 4224 | If motion is change of distance between objects, it involves no intrinsic change in the objects [Lowe] |
| 4227 | Surfaces, lines and points are not, strictly speaking, parts of space, but 'limits', which are abstract [Lowe] |
| 4228 | If space is entirely relational, what makes a boundary, or a place unoccupied by physical objects? [Lowe] |
| 20820 | Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus] |
| 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] |