52 ideas
| 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] |
| 6602 | Philosophy is like a statue which is worshipped but never advances [Bacon] |
| 12124 | Metaphysics is the best knowledge, because it is the simplest [Bacon] |
| 12123 | Natural history supports physical knowledge, which supports metaphysical knowledge [Bacon] |
| 12119 | Physics studies transitory matter; metaphysics what is abstracted and necessary [Bacon] |
| 12120 | Physics is of material and efficient causes, metaphysics of formal and final causes [Bacon] |
| 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] |
| 16639 | Only individual bodies exist [Bacon] |
| 16625 | In hylomorphism all the explanation of actions is in the form, and the matter doesn't do anything [Bacon] |
| 16033 | There are only individual bodies containing law-based powers, and the Forms are these laws [Bacon] |
| 12887 | A whole must have one characteristic, an internal relation, and a structure [Rescher/Oppenheim] |
| 15037 | Why does knowledge appear in sudden bursts, and not in a smooth continuous development? [Foucault] |
| 16724 | The senses deceive, but also show their own errors [Bacon] |
| 12121 | We don't assume there is no land, because we can only see sea [Bacon] |
| 3648 | Empiricists are collecting ants; rationalists are spinning spiders; and bees do both [Bacon] |
| 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] |
| 12117 | Science moves up and down between inventions of causes, and experiments [Bacon] |
| 6603 | Nature is revealed when we put it under pressure rather than observe it [Bacon] |
| 21950 | Science must clear away the idols of the mind if they are ever going to find the truth [Bacon] |
| 12127 | Many different theories will fit the observed facts [Bacon] |
| 21941 | Unlike Marxists, Foucault explains thought internally, without deference to conscious ideas [Foucault, by Gutting] |
| 12126 | People love (unfortunately) extreme generality, rather than particular knowledge [Bacon] |
| 7422 | A subject is a form which can change, in (say) political or sexual situations [Foucault] |
| 22235 | Feelings are not unchanging, but have a history (especially if they are noble) [Foucault] |
| 21939 | The author function of any text is a plurality of selves [Foucault, by Gutting] |
| 7419 | Ethics is the conscious practice of freedom [Foucault] |
| 7501 | Why couldn't a person's life become a work of art? [Foucault] |
| 7498 | Greeks and early Christians were much more concerned about food than about sex [Foucault] |
| 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] |
| 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] |
| 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] |
| 15039 | History lacks 'meaning', but it can be analysed in terms of its struggles [Foucault] |
| 12125 | Teleological accounts are fine in metaphysics, but they stop us from searching for the causes [Bacon] |
| 16624 | Stripped and passive matter is just a human invention [Bacon] |
| 12118 | Essences are part of first philosophy, but as part of nature, not part of logic [Bacon] |
| 7399 | Even without religion, there are many guides to morality [Bacon] |