81 ideas
13310 | Wisdom does not lie in books, and unread people can also become wise [Seneca] |
13560 | A wise man is not subservient to anything [Seneca] |
13295 | Wise people escape necessity by willing it [Seneca] |
7500 | Early Greeks cared about city and companions; later Greeks concentrated on the self [Foucault] |
15045 | The big issue since the eighteenth century has been: what is Reason? Its effect, limits and dangers? [Foucault] |
7426 | Critical philosophy is what questions domination at every level [Foucault] |
13317 | Philosophy aims at happiness [Seneca] |
13293 | What philosophy offers humanity is guidance [Seneca] |
13309 | That something is a necessary condition of something else doesn't mean it caused it [Seneca] |
13313 | Even philosophers have got bogged down in analysing tiny bits of language [Seneca] |
7423 | Philosophy and politics are fundamentally linked [Foucault] |
15038 | Structuralism systematically abstracted the event from sciences, and even from history [Foucault] |
7420 | When logos controls our desires, we have actually become the logos [Foucault] |
21945 | Foucault originally felt that liberating reason had become an instrument of domination [Foucault, by Gutting] |
15044 | 'Truth' is the procedures for controlling which statements are acceptable [Foucault] |
15042 | Truth doesn't arise from solitary freedom, but from societies with constraints [Foucault] |
15037 | Why does knowledge appear in sudden bursts, and not in a smooth continuous development? [Foucault] |
21942 | Foucault challenges knowledge in psychology and sociology, not in the basic sciences [Foucault, by Gutting] |
7424 | Saying games of truth were merely power relations would be a horrible exaggeration [Foucault] |
13297 | To the four causes Plato adds a fifth, the idea which guided the event [Seneca] |
21941 | Unlike Marxists, Foucault explains thought internally, without deference to conscious ideas [Foucault, by Gutting] |
7422 | A subject is a form which can change, in (say) political or sexual situations [Foucault] |
13307 | If everything can be measured, try measuring the size of a man's soul [Seneca] |
22235 | Feelings are not unchanging, but have a history (especially if they are noble) [Foucault] |
21399 | Referring to a person, and speaking about him, are very different [Seneca] |
21939 | The author function of any text is a plurality of selves [Foucault, by Gutting] |
7419 | Ethics is the conscious practice of freedom [Foucault] |
13558 | The supreme good is harmony of spirit [Seneca] |
13325 | Trouble in life comes from copying other people, which is following convention instead of reason [Seneca] |
22239 | Humans acquired the concept of virtue from an analogy with bodily health and strength [Seneca, by Allen] |
13294 | We know death, which is like before birth; ceasing to be and never beginning are the same [Seneca] |
13299 | Living is nothing wonderful; what matters is to die well [Seneca] |
13300 | It is as silly to lament ceasing to be as to lament not having lived in the remote past [Seneca] |
13321 | Is anything sweeter than valuing yourself more when you find you are loved? [Seneca] |
7501 | Why couldn't a person's life become a work of art? [Foucault] |
13292 | Selfishness does not produce happiness; to live for yourself, live for others [Seneca] |
13550 | To be always happy is to lack knowledge of one half of nature [Seneca] |
13303 | A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is [Seneca] |
13302 | Life is like a play - it is the quality that matters, not the length [Seneca] |
7498 | Greeks and early Christians were much more concerned about food than about sex [Foucault] |
13301 | We are scared of death - except when we are immersed in pleasure! [Seneca] |
13323 | The whole point of pleasure-seeking is novelty, and abandoning established ways [Seneca] |
13318 | Nature doesn't give us virtue; we must unremittingly pursue it, as a training and an art [Seneca] |
13324 | Living contrary to nature is like rowing against the stream [Seneca] |
13559 | I seek virtue, because it is its own reward [Seneca] |
13554 | True greatness is never allowing events to disturb you [Seneca] |
13305 | Character is ruined by not looking back over our pasts, since the future rests on the past [Seneca] |
13561 | Virtue is always moderate, so excess need not be feared [Seneca] |
13562 | It is shameful to not even recognise your own slaves [Seneca] |
13556 | Every night I critically review how I have behaved during the day [Seneca] |
13308 | It's no good winning lots of fights, if you are then conquered by your own temper [Seneca] |
13553 | Anger is a vice which afflicts good men as well as bad [Seneca] |
13312 | Excessive curiosity is a form of intemperance [Seneca] |
13552 | Anger is an extreme vice, threatening sanity, and gripping whole states [Seneca] |
13549 | Nothing bad can happen to a good man [Seneca] |
13563 | Why does your wife wear in her ears the income of a wealthy house? [Seneca] |
13565 | If wealth was a good, it would make men good [Seneca] |
13564 | There is far more scope for virtue if you are wealthy; poverty only allows endurance [Seneca] |
21940 | Nature is not the basis of rights, but the willingness to risk death in asserting them [Foucault] |
15043 | Every society has a politics of truth, concerning its values, functions, prestige and mechanisms [Foucault] |
13315 | To govern used to mean to serve, not to rule; rulers did not test their powers over those who bestowed it [Seneca] |
15040 | Marxists denounced power as class domination, but never analysed its mechanics [Foucault] |
15041 | Power doesn't just repress, but entices us with pleasure, artefacts, knowledge and discourse [Foucault] |
8991 | Foucault can't accept that power is sometimes decent and benign [Foucault, by Scruton] |
7425 | The aim is not to eliminate power relations, but to reduce domination [Foucault] |
22236 | The big question of the Renaissance was how to govern everything, from the state to children [Foucault] |
21947 | Power is localised, so we either have totalitarian centralisation, or local politics [Foucault, by Gutting] |
13557 | Unfortunately the majority do not tend to favour what is best [Seneca] |
21946 | Prisons gradually became our models for schools, hospitals and factories [Foucault, by Gutting] |
7418 | The idea of liberation suggests there is a human nature which has been repressed [Foucault] |
21116 | Power is used to create identities and ways of life for other people [Foucault, by Shorten] |
13322 | Both teachers and pupils should aim at one thing - the improvement of the pupil [Seneca] |
13290 | One joy of learning is making teaching possible [Seneca] |
15039 | History lacks 'meaning', but it can be analysed in terms of its struggles [Foucault] |
13298 | Suicide may be appropriate even when it is not urgent, if there are few reasons against it [Seneca] |
13319 | If we control our own death, no one has power over us [Seneca] |
13320 | Sometimes we have a duty not to commit suicide, for those we love [Seneca] |
22745 | Pherecydes said the first principle and element is earth [Pherecydes, by Sext.Empiricus] |
13548 | The ocean changes in volume in proportion to the attraction of the moon [Seneca] |
13311 | Does time exist on its own? Did anything precede it? Did it pre-exist the cosmos? [Seneca] |
5883 | Pherecydes was the first to say that the soul is eternal [Pherecydes, by Cicero] |