48 ideas
7662 | Romanticism is the greatest change in the consciousness of the West [Berlin] |
3656 | The greatest good for a state is true philosophers [Descartes] |
16744 | All powers can be explained by obvious features like size, shape and motion of matter [Descartes] |
5016 | Five universals: genus, species, difference, property, accident [Descartes] |
5015 | A universal is a single idea applied to individual things that are similar to one another [Descartes] |
16630 | If we perceive an attribute, we infer the existence of some substance [Descartes] |
5013 | A substance needs nothing else in order to exist [Descartes] |
16633 | A substance has one principal property which is its nature and essence [Descartes] |
3658 | Total doubt can't include your existence while doubting [Descartes] |
5005 | I think, therefore I am, because for a thinking thing to not exist is a contradiction [Descartes] |
5006 | 'Thought' is all our conscious awareness, including feeling as well as understanding [Descartes] |
5012 | 'Nothing comes from nothing' is an eternal truth found within the mind [Descartes] |
5004 | We can know basic Principles without further knowledge, but not the other way round [Descartes] |
5014 | We can understand thinking occuring without imagination or sensation [Descartes] |
5017 | In thinking we shut ourselves off from other substances, showing our identity and separateness [Descartes] |
5010 | Our free will is so self-evident to us that it must be a basic innate idea [Descartes] |
5011 | There are two ultimate classes of existence: thinking substance and extended substance [Descartes] |
5018 | Even if tightly united, mind and body are different, as God could separate them [Descartes] |
5007 | Most errors of judgement result from an inaccurate perception of the facts [Descartes] |
7665 | Most Enlightenment thinkers believed that virtue consists ultimately in knowledge [Berlin] |
5009 | We do not praise the acts of an efficient automaton, as their acts are necessary [Descartes] |
5008 | The greatest perfection of man is to act by free will, and thus merit praise or blame [Descartes] |
7676 | If we are essentially free wills, authenticity and sincerity are the highest virtues [Berlin] |
7664 | The Greeks have no notion of obligation or duty [Berlin] |
7677 | Central to existentialism is the romantic idea that there is nothing to lean on [Berlin] |
23125 | Most good social changes are incremental, rather than revolutionary [Gopnik] |
23126 | Conservatives often want peace, prosperity and tolerance, but not social fairness [Gopnik] |
23132 | Conservatives believe obedience and rank are essential to social order [Gopnik] |
23128 | The opposite of liberalism is dogmatism [Gopnik] |
23142 | People are fallible, so liberalism tries to distribute power [Gopnik] |
23143 | Liberals have tried very hard to build a conscience into their institutions [Gopnik] |
23141 | Left-wingers are inconsistent in their essentialist descriptions of social groups [Gopnik] |
23124 | Liberal community is not blood ties or tradition, but shared choices, and sympathy for the losers [Gopnik] |
23127 | Liberal community includes flight from the family, into energetic reforming groups [Gopnik] |
23129 | Right-wingers attack liberal faith in reason, left-wingers attack its faith in reform [Gopnik] |
23133 | Cosmopolitan liberals lack national loyalty, and welcome excessive immigration [Gopnik] |
23138 | Modern left-wingers criticise liberalism's control of culture [Gopnik] |
23139 | Liberalism's attempt to be neutral and colour-blind erases cultural identities [Gopnik] |
23135 | Classic Marxists see liberalism as the ideology of the bourgeoisie [Gopnik] |
23140 | Environmental disasters result not from capitalism, but from a general drive for growth [Gopnik] |
23130 | Popular imperialism gives the poor the belief that their acts have world historical meaning [Gopnik] |
23131 | Patriots love their place, but nationalists have a paranoid ethnic hostility [Gopnik] |
23136 | Liberal free speech is actually paid speech [Gopnik] |
23134 | A 'free' society implies a free market, which always produces predatory capitalism and inequalities [Gopnik] |
15987 | Physics only needs geometry or abstract mathematics, which can explain and demonstrate everything [Descartes] |
12730 | We will not try to understand natural or divine ends, or final causes [Descartes] |
16601 | Matter is not hard, heavy or coloured, but merely extended in space [Descartes] |
7663 | Judaism and Christianity views are based on paternal, family and tribal relations [Berlin] |