53 ideas
1597 | Thales was the first western thinker to believe the arché was intelligible [Roochnik on Thales] |
20455 | Philosophy really got started as the rival mode of discourse to tragedy [Critchley] |
20446 | Philosophy begins in disappointment, notably in religion and politics [Critchley] |
6848 | Humour is practically enacted philosophy [Critchley] |
6847 | Humour can give a phenomenological account of existence, and point to change [Critchley] |
7068 | If infatuation with science leads to bad scientism, its rejection leads to obscurantism [Critchley] |
6844 | Scientism is the view that everything can be explained causally through scientific method [Critchley] |
20449 | Science gives us an excessively theoretical view of life [Critchley] |
7075 | To meet the division in our life, try the Subject, Nature, Spirit, Will, Power, Praxis, Unconscious, or Being [Critchley] |
7069 | The French keep returning, to Hegel or Nietzsche or Marx [Critchley] |
6835 | German idealism aimed to find a unifying principle for Kant's various dualisms [Critchley] |
6837 | Since Hegel, continental philosophy has been linked with social and historical enquiry. [Critchley] |
6836 | Continental philosophy fights the threatened nihilism in the critique of reason [Critchley] |
6838 | Continental philosophy is based on critique, praxis and emancipation [Critchley] |
6845 | Continental philosophy has a bad tendency to offer 'one big thing' to explain everything [Critchley] |
6846 | Phenomenology is a technique of redescription which clarifies our social world [Critchley] |
20448 | Phenomenology uncovers and redescribes the pre-theoretical layer of life [Critchley] |
16661 | There are two sorts of category - referring to things, and to circumstances of things [Boethius] |
15035 | If universals are not separate, we can isolate them by abstraction [Boethius, by Panaccio] |
14665 | We can call the quality of Plato 'Platonity', and say it is a quality which only he possesses [Boethius] |
3013 | Nothing is stronger than necessity, which rules everything [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |
23308 | Reasoning relates to understanding as time does to eternity [Boethius, by Sorabji] |
5771 | Knowledge of present events doesn't make them necessary, so future events are no different [Boethius] |
5767 | Rational natures require free will, in order to have power of judgement [Boethius] |
5768 | God's universal foreknowledge seems opposed to free will [Boethius] |
5769 | Does foreknowledge cause necessity, or necessity cause foreknowledge? [Boethius] |
5762 | The wicked want goodness, so they would not be wicked if they obtained it [Boethius] |
20454 | Wallace Stevens is the greatest philosophical poet of the twentieth century in English [Critchley] |
20456 | Interesting art is always organised around ethical demands [Critchley] |
20447 | The problems is not justifying ethics, but motivating it. Why should a self seek its good? [Critchley] |
5770 | Rewards and punishments are not deserved if they don't arise from free movement of the mind [Boethius] |
5764 | When people fall into wickedness they lose their human nature [Boethius] |
7067 | Food first, then ethics [Critchley] |
5756 | Happiness is a good which once obtained leaves nothing more to be desired [Boethius] |
5763 | The bad seek the good through desire, but the good through virtue, which is more natural [Boethius] |
5759 | Varied aims cannot be good because they differ, but only become good when they unify [Boethius] |
6843 | Perceiving meaninglessness is an achievement, which can transform daily life [Critchley] |
20452 | Anarchism used to be libertarian (especially for sexuality), but now concerns responsibility [Critchley] |
20450 | The state, law, bureaucracy and capital are limitations on life, so I prefer federalist anarchism [Critchley] |
20451 | Belief that humans are wicked leads to authoritarian politics [Critchley] |
5754 | You can't control someone's free mind, only their body and possessions [Boethius] |
1494 | Thales said water is the first principle, perhaps from observing that food is moist [Thales, by Aristotle] |
1713 | Thales must have thought soul causes movement, since he thought magnets have soul [Thales, by Aristotle] |
16692 | Divine eternity is the all-at-once and complete possession of unending life [Boethius] |
5752 | Where does evil come from if there is a god; where does good come from if there isn't? [Boethius] |
5758 | God is the good [Boethius] |
5757 | God is the supreme good, so no source of goodness could take precedence over God [Boethius] |
5760 | The power through which creation remains in existence and motion I call 'God' [Boethius] |
5753 | The regular events of this life could never be due to chance [Boethius] |
1742 | Thales said the gods know our wrong thoughts as well as our evil actions [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |
5765 | The reward of the good is to become gods [Boethius] |
5761 | God can do anything, but he cannot do evil, so evil must be nothing [Boethius] |
5766 | If you could see the plan of Providence, you would not think there was evil anywhere [Boethius] |