68 ideas
| 19635 | Hegel produced modern optimism; he failed to grasp that consciousness never progresses [Hegel, by Cioran] |
| 8215 | Hegel was the last philosopher of the Book [Hegel, by Derrida] |
| 16011 | Hegel doesn't storm the heavens like the giants, but works his way up by syllogisms [Kierkegaard on Hegel] |
| 5433 | For Hegel, things are incomplete, and contain external references in their own nature [Hegel, by Russell] |
| 3301 | On the continent it is generally believed that metaphysics died with Hegel [Benardete,JA on Hegel] |
| 19767 | Reason leads to prudent selfishness, which overrules natural compassion [Rousseau] |
| 19661 | Making sufficient reason an absolute devalues the principle of non-contradiction [Hegel, by Meillassoux] |
| 20952 | Rather than in three stages, Hegel presented his dialectic as 'negation of the negation' [Hegel, by Bowie] |
| 21777 | Negation of negation doubles back into a self-relationship [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| 5645 | The dialectical opposition of being and nothing is resolved in passing to the concept of becoming [Hegel, by Scruton] |
| 5646 | Hegel gives an ontological proof of the existence of everything [Hegel, by Scruton] |
| 21755 | For Hegel, categories shift their form in the course of history [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| 21754 | Our concepts and categories disclose the world, because we are part of the world [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| 22079 | Hegel said Kant's fixed categories actually vary with culture and era [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| 14919 | Empiricists deny what is unobservable, and reject objective modality [Fraassen] |
| 19757 | No one would bother to reason, and try to know things, without a desire for enjoyment [Rousseau] |
| 6783 | To 'accept' a theory is not to believe it, but to believe it empirically adequate [Fraassen, by Bird] |
| 9225 | Hegel reputedly claimed to know a priori that there are five planets [Hegel, by Field,H] |
| 14917 | To accept a scientific theory, we only need to believe that it is empirically adequate [Fraassen] |
| 6784 | Why should the true explanation be one of the few we have actually thought of? [Fraassen, by Bird] |
| 13066 | An explanation is just descriptive information answering a particular question [Fraassen, by Salmon] |
| 19760 | General ideas are purely intellectual; imagining them is immediately particular [Rousseau] |
| 19759 | Only words can introduce general ideas into the mind [Rousseau] |
| 19758 | Language may aid thinking, but powerful thought was needed to produce language [Rousseau] |
| 19773 | Without love, what use is beauty? [Rousseau] |
| 19769 | Rational morality is OK for brainy people, but ordinary life can't rely on that [Rousseau] |
| 19752 | If we should not mistreat humans, it is mainly because of sentience, not rationality [Rousseau] |
| 19768 | The better Golden Rule is 'do good for yourself without harming others' [Rousseau] |
| 19766 | The fact that we weep (e.g. in theatres) shows that we are naturally compassionate [Rousseau] |
| 21758 | Humans have no fixed identity, but produce and reveal their shifting identity in history [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| 19756 | Humans are less distinguished from other animals by understanding, than by being free agents [Rousseau] |
| 19755 | Most human ills are self-inflicted; the simple, solitary, regular natural life is good [Rousseau] |
| 19762 | Is language a pre-requisite for society, or might it emerge afterwards? [Rousseau] |
| 19763 | I doubt whether a savage person ever complains of life, or considers suicide [Rousseau] |
| 19765 | Savages avoid evil because they are calm, and never think of it (not because they know goodness) [Rousseau] |
| 19779 | Primitive man was very gentle [Rousseau] |
| 19771 | Savage men quietly pursue desires, without the havoc of modern frenzied imagination [Rousseau] |
| 19778 | Leisure led to envy, inequality, vice and revenge, which we now see in savages [Rousseau] |
| 19751 | Our two starting principles are concern for self-interest, and compassion for others [Rousseau] |
| 20414 | Hegel's Absolute Spirit is the union of human rational activity at a moment, and whatever that sustains [Hegel, by Eldridge] |
| 19774 | A savage can steal fruit or a home, but there is no means of achieving obedience [Rousseau] |
| 19772 | In a state of nature people are much more equal; it is society which increases inequalities [Rousseau] |
| 19789 | It is against nature for children to rule old men, fools to rule the wise, and the rich to hog resources [Rousseau] |
| 19787 | People accept the right to be commanded, because they themselves wish to command [Rousseau] |
| 3909 | Society isn’t founded on a contract, since contracts presuppose a society [Hegel, by Scruton] |
| 19780 | We seem to have made individual progress since savagery, but actually the species has decayed [Rousseau] |
| 19747 | Revolutionaries usually confuse liberty with total freedom, and end up with heavier chains [Rousseau] |
| 19748 | Plebiscites are bad, because they exclude the leaders from crucial decisions [Rousseau] |
| 19749 | In a direct democracy, only the leaders should be able to propose new laws [Rousseau] |
| 19775 | People must be made dependent before they can be enslaved [Rousseau] |
| 19784 | Enslaved peoples often boast of their condition, calling it a state of 'peace' [Rousseau] |
| 19785 | If the child of a slave woman is born a slave, then a man is not born a man [Rousseau] |
| 19746 | Like rich food, liberty can ruin people who are too weak to cope with it [Rousseau] |
| 19786 | Three stages of the state produce inequalities of wealth, power, and enslavement [Rousseau] |
| 19788 | The pleasure of wealth and power is largely seeing others deprived of them [Rousseau] |
| 19777 | Persuading other people that some land was 'owned' was the beginning of society [Rousseau] |
| 19782 | What else could property arise from, but the labour people add to it? [Rousseau] |
| 19781 | Land cultivation led to a general right of ownership, administered justly [Rousseau] |
| 19754 | If we have a natural right to property, what exactly does 'belonging to' mean? [Rousseau] |
| 19750 | Writers just propose natural law as the likely useful agreements among people [Rousseau] |
| 19770 | Primitive people simply redressed the evil caused by violence, without thought of punishing [Rousseau] |
| 19783 | A state of war remains after a conquest, if the losers don't accept the winners [Rousseau] |
| 19753 | Both men and animals are sentient, which should give the latter the right not to be mistreated [Rousseau] |
| 4347 | When man wills the natural, it is no longer natural [Hegel] |
| 19761 | Men started with too few particular names, but later had too few natural kind names [Rousseau] |
| 19776 | Small uninterrupted causes can have big effects [Rousseau] |
| 4188 | Hegel's entire philosophy is nothing but a monstrous amplification of the ontological proof [Schopenhauer on Hegel] |
| 6686 | Hegel said he was offering an encyclopaedic rationalisation of Christianity [Hegel, by Graham] |