84 ideas
| 19693 | There is practical wisdom (for action), and theoretical wisdom (for deep understanding) [Aristotle, by Whitcomb] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle takes wisdom to come in two forms, the practical and the theoretical, the former of which is good judgement about how to act, and the latter of which is deep knowledge or understanding. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Dennis Whitcomb - Wisdom Intro | |
| A reaction: The interesting question is then whether the two are connected. One might be thoroughly 'sensible' about action, without counting as 'wise', which seems to require a broader view of what is being done. Whitcomb endorses Aristotle on this idea. |
| 19608 | Wisdom is just the last gasp of a dying civilization [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Wisdom is the last word of an expiring civilization, the nimbus of historic twilights, fatigue transfigured into a vision of the world, the last tolerance before the advent of newer gods, and of barbarism. A vain attempt at melody among the death rattles. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Twilight') | |
| A reaction: I didn't quite get what he said there, but I picked up the tone all right. But I thought wisdom was something sought in the early stages of western civilization, and now relegated to the wings as an idle dream? |
| 19624 | Intelligence only fully flourishes at the end of a historical period [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Intelligence flourishes only in the ages when beliefs wither. ...Every period's ending is the mind's paradise, for the mind regains its play and its whims only within an organism in utter dissolution. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Felicity') | |
| A reaction: I wouldn't have thought that the facts of history supported this very well. The golden ages of philosophy are the Age of Pericles, the Aristotelian Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the early twentieth century. |
| 19599 | Ideas are neutral, but people fill them with passion and weakness [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: In itself, every idea is neutral, or should be; but man animates ideas, projects his flames and flaws into them. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Genealogy') | |
| A reaction: If it isn't neutral (if, say, it expresses love or hatred) then presumably it doesn't qualify as an 'idea'. Are ideas as neutral as mathematical theorems. It's a nice remark, and a good epigraph for a book on the history of ideas. |
| 19631 | The history of ideas (and deeds) occurs in a meaningless environment [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: The history of ideas, like that of deeds, unfolds in a meaningless climate. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is the 'Tory' view of the history of ideas (as opposed to the 'Whig' view of directedness - a distinction made by historians). I would say there are periods where a certain inevitable sequence is worked out, but then there are dislocations. |
| 19645 | Some thinkers would have been just as dynamic, no matter when they had lived [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: A Kierkegaard, a Nietzsche, had they appeared in the most anodyne age, would have had no less tremulous, no less incendiary an inspiration. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 6 'Truths') | |
| A reaction: He is saying that some (only some) thinkers are independent of the age and culture in which they live. Personally I think of those two as distinctive products of a romantic age. Diogenes of Sinope seems a bit of a misfit! |
| 19629 | A nation gives expression to its sum of values, and is then exhausted [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: A nation cannot create indefinitely. It is called upon to give expression and meaning to a sum of values which are exhausted with the soul which has begotten them. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 3) | |
| A reaction: This phenomenon is obvious. Is it the people who run out of steam, or the ideas and values to which their nation is giving expression? Is this a reason to break up nations every few centuries, and re-form them differently? Break up the UK! |
| 19618 | I abandoned philosophy because it didn't acknowledge melancholy and human weakness [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: I turned away from philosophy when it became impossible to discover in Kant any human weakness, any authentic accent of melancholy; in Kant and in all the philosophers. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Farewell') | |
| A reaction: An interesting challenge, but if I set out to develop a philosophy based on human weakness I'm not sure where I would start, once I had settled the 'akrasia' [weakness of will] problem. |
| 19621 | Originality in philosophy is just the invention of terms [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: The philosopher's originality comes down to inventing terms. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Farewell') | |
| A reaction: Analytic philosophers are just as obsessed with inventing terms as their continental rivals. Kit Fine, for example. It can't be wrong to invent terms. Scientists do it too. |
| 19607 | The mind is superficial, only concerned with the arrangement of events, not their significance [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: The mind in itself can be only superficial, its nature being uniquely concerned with the arrangement of conceptual events, and not with their implications in the spheres the signify. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 'The Abstract') | |
| A reaction: This may be excessively pessimistic, and any decent philosopher must partially concede the point. Thoughts about the significance of historical events just recede into the mist. |
| 19638 | Metaphysics is a universalisation of physical anguish [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Every metaphysic begins with an anguish of the body, which then becomes universal. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 6 'Underside') | |
| A reaction: Not sure if I understand this, but anyone who registers the physical aspect of abstract thought gets a nod of approval from me. |
| 19620 | Great systems of philosophy are just brilliant tautologies [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: The great philosophical systems are no more than brilliant tautologies. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Farewell') | |
| A reaction: This makes them sound pointless, but the terms used in the system all have some kind of reference, so the systems are in some way about the world, and not mere private games. At the very least, they are a wonderful branch of poetry. |
| 1575 | For Aristotle logos is essentially the ability to talk rationally about questions of value [Roochnik on Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle logos is the ability to speak rationally about, with the hope of attaining knowledge, questions of value. | |
| From: comment on Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.26 |
| 1589 | Aristotle is the supreme optimist about the ability of logos to explain nature [Roochnik on Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle is the great theoretician who articulates a vision of a world in which natural and stable structures can be rationally discovered. His is the most optimistic and richest view of the possibilities of logos | |
| From: comment on Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.95 |
| 19630 | No great idea ever emerged from a dialogue [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Nothing monumental has ever emerged from dialogue, nothing explosive, nothing 'great'. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 3) | |
| A reaction: This may be an argument in favour of dialogue! It smacks of the creepier side of Nietzsche's thinking. I suspect individuals have had many great ideas during dialogues, though not as part of them. Greek schools were all dialogue. |
| 8200 | Aristotelian definitions aim to give the essential properties of the thing defined [Aristotle, by Quine] |
| Full Idea: A real definition, according to the Aristotelian tradition, gives the essence of the kind of thing defined. Man is defined as a rational animal, and thus rationality and animality are of the essence of each of us. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Willard Quine - Vagaries of Definition p.51 | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 4385. Personally I prefer the Aristotelian approach, but we may have to say 'We cannot identify the essence of x, and so x cannot be defined'. Compare 'his mood was hard to define' with 'his mood was hostile'. |
| 4385 | Aristotelian definition involves first stating the genus, then the differentia of the thing [Aristotle, by Urmson] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle, to give a definition one must first state the genus and then the differentia of the kind of thing to be defined. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by J.O. Urmson - Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean p.157 | |
| A reaction: Presumably a modern definition would just be a list of properties, but Aristotle seeks the substance. How does he define a genus? - by placing it in a further genus? |
| 19636 | Truth is just an error insufficiently experienced [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: What we call truth is an error insufficiently experienced. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 5) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure how to go about refuting that claim! Turn the tables, I suppose. 'Tell me, Cioran, are you claiming that this idea is true?' |
| 19642 | Eventually every 'truth' is guaranteed by the police [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Once a belief is established the police will guarantee its 'truth' sooner or later. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 6 'Views') |
| 13282 | Aristotle relativises the notion of wholeness to different measures [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle proposes to relativise unity and plurality, so that a single object can be both one (indivisible) and many (divisible) simultaneously, without contradiction, relative to different measures. Wholeness has degrees, with the strength of the unity. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 7.2.12 | |
| A reaction: [see Koslicki's account of Aristotle for details] As always, the Aristotelian approach looks by far the most promising. Simplistic mechanical accounts of how parts make wholes aren't going to work. We must include the conventional and conceptual bit. |
| 4730 | For Aristotle, the subject-predicate structure of Greek reflected a substance-accident structure of reality [Aristotle, by O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle apparently believed that the subject-predicate structure of Greek reflected the substance-accident nature of reality. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Paul O'Grady - Relativism Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: We need not assume that Aristotle is wrong. It is a chicken-and-egg. There is something obvious about subject-predicate language, if one assumes that unified objects are part of nature, and not just conventional. |
| 19632 | An axiom has no more authority than a frenzy [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: This earth is a place where can confirm anything with an equal likelihood: here axioms and frenzies are interchangeable. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 3) | |
| A reaction: A perceptive and poetic expression of the modern anti-Euclidean and anti-Fregean view of axioms, as purely formal features of a model or system. |
| 5311 | If observation goes up a level, we expect the laws of the lower level to remain in force [Wilson,EO] |
| Full Idea: When the observer shifts his attention from one level of organisation to the next, as from physics to chemistry, he expects to find obedience to all the laws of the levels below. | |
| From: Edmund O. Wilson (On Human Nature [1978], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems to state a necessary condition of reduction, but not a sufficient one. Wilson points out that new phenomena emerge at higher levels. This principle is similar to Hume's argument against miracles. You don't easily overthrow basic laws. |
| 5312 | A child first sees objects as distinct, and later as members of groups [Wilson,EO] |
| Full Idea: From a single-minded effort to move objects a child's activity grows into a detached reflection on the movements themselves. The objects are first perceived as distinct entities, and then as members of groups to be classified. | |
| From: Edmund O. Wilson (On Human Nature [1978], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: This does not, of course, prove anything about the philosophical problems of universals, but it does seem to pinpoint the stage in human development when 'universals' are perceived. The basis seems to be groups or sets, but how do we spot those? |
| 13276 | The unmoved mover and the soul show Aristotelian form as the ultimate mereological atom [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's discussion of the unmoved mover and of the soul confirms the suspicion that form, when it is not thought of as the object represented in a definition, plays the role of the ultimate mereological atom within his system. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 6.6 | |
| A reaction: Aristotle is concerned with which things are 'divisible', and he cites these two examples as indivisible, but they may be too unusual to offer an actual theory of how Aristotle builds up wholes from atoms. He denies atoms in matter. |
| 13277 | The 'form' is the recipe for building wholes of a particular kind [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Thus in Aristotle we may think of an object's formal components as a sort of recipe for how to build wholes of that particular kind. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 7.2.5 | |
| A reaction: In the elusive business of pinning down what Aristotle means by the crucial idea of 'form', this analogy strikes me as being quite illuminating. It would fit DNA in living things, and the design of an artifact. |
| 5991 | For Aristotle, knowledge is of causes, and is theoretical, practical or productive [Aristotle, by Code] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle thinks that in general we have knowledge or understanding when we grasp causes, and he distinguishes three fundamental types of knowledge - theoretical, practical and productive. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Alan D. Code - Aristotle | |
| A reaction: Productive knowledge we tend to label as 'knowing how'. The centrality of causes for knowledge would get Aristotle nowadays labelled as a 'naturalist'. It is hard to disagree with his three types, though they may overlap. |
| 5309 | Beliefs are really enabling mechanisms for survival [Wilson,EO] |
| Full Idea: Beliefs are really enabling mechanisms for survival. | |
| From: Edmund O. Wilson (On Human Nature [1978], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: How does he know this proposition which he asserts so confidently? Obvious counterexamples seem to be utterly trivial beliefs, and self-destructive beliefs. What is the evolutionary value of low self-esteem? Still, you see his point. |
| 11239 | The notion of a priori truth is absent in Aristotle [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: The notion of a priori truth is conspicuously absent in Aristotle. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.5 | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 11240. |
| 23312 | Aristotle is a rationalist, but reason is slowly acquired through perception and experience [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle is a rationalist …but reason for him is a disposition which we only acquire over time. Its acquisition is made possible primarily by perception and experience. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Michael Frede - Aristotle's Rationalism p.173 | |
| A reaction: I would describe this process as the gradual acquisition of the skill of objectivity, which needs the right knowledge and concepts to evaluate new experiences. |
| 16111 | Aristotle wants to fit common intuitions, and therefore uses language as a guide [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
| Full Idea: Since Aristotle generally prefers a metaphysical theory that accords with common intuitions, he frequently relies on facts about language to guide his metaphysical claims. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: I approve of his procedure. I take intuition to be largely rational justifications too complex for us to enunciate fully, and language embodies folk intuitions in its concepts (especially if the concepts occur in many languages). |
| 16971 | Plato says sciences are unified around Forms; Aristotle says they're unified around substance [Aristotle, by Moravcsik] |
| Full Idea: Plato's unity of science principle states that all - legitimate - sciences are ultimately about the Forms. Aristotle's principle states that all sciences must be, ultimately, about substances, or aspects of substances. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE], 1) by Julius Moravcsik - Aristotle on Adequate Explanations 1 |
| 11243 | Aristotelian explanations are facts, while modern explanations depend on human conceptions [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle things which explain (the explanantia) are facts, which should not be associated with the modern view that says explanations are dependent on how we conceive and describe the world (where causes are independent of us). | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.1 | |
| A reaction: There must be some room in modern thought for the Aristotelian view, if some sort of robust scientific realism is being maintained against the highly linguistic view of philosophy found in the twentieth century. |
| 3320 | Aristotle's standard analysis of species and genus involves specifying things in terms of something more general [Aristotle, by Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: The standard Aristotelian doctrine of species and genus in the theory of anything whatever involves specifying what the thing is in terms of something more general. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.10 |
| 12000 | Aristotle regularly says that essential properties explain other significant properties [Aristotle, by Kung] |
| Full Idea: The view that essential properties are those in virtue of which other significant properties of the subjects under investigation can be explained is encountered repeatedly in Aristotle's work. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Joan Kung - Aristotle on Essence and Explanation IV | |
| A reaction: What does 'significant' mean here? I take it that the significant properties are the ones which explain the role, function and powers of the object. |
| 19626 | Our instincts had to be blunted and diminished, to make way for consciousness! [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: How much our instincts must have had to be blunted and their functioning slackened before consciousness extended its control over the sum of our actions and our thoughts! | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'The Coming') | |
| A reaction: Modern wisdom, founded in neuroscience, seems to tell us that the role of consciousness even now is far less than Cioran believed. Once you digest that wisdom, I believe introspection supports it. Still, instinct in animals is much stronger than ours. |
| 23300 | Aristotle and the Stoics denied rationality to animals, while Platonists affirmed it [Aristotle, by Sorabji] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle, and also the Stoics, denied rationality to animals. …The Platonists, the Pythagoreans, and some more independent Aristotelians, did grant reason and intellect to animals. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Richard Sorabji - Rationality 'Denial' | |
| A reaction: This is not the same as affirming or denying their consciousness. The debate depends on how rationality is conceived. |
| 19633 | We use concepts to master our fears; saying 'death' releases us from confronting it [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: It is the use of concepts which makes us master of our fears. We say: Death - and this abstraction releases us from experiencing its infinity, its horror. By baptising events and things, we elude the inexplicable. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 3) | |
| A reaction: I like this idea. I'm struck by how weird our lives would become if people no longer had names. They are so deeply embedded in our experience that we don't notice them. Imagine if it were taboo to ever name death. |
| 11240 | The notion of analytic truth is absent in Aristotle [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: The notion of analytic truth is conspicuously absent in Aristotle. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.5 | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 11239. |
| 19615 | I want to suppress in myself the normal reasons people have for action [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: I want to suppress in myself the reasons men invoke in order to exist, in order to act. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Gamut') | |
| A reaction: So much of our inner and moral life concerns not what we think or feel, but what we want to think or feel. The theory of action (if there can be such a thing) must account for these metareasons, which hover over us while we act. |
| 19628 | At a civilisation's peak values are all that matters, and people unconsciously live by them [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Epochs of apogee cultivate values for their own sake: life is only a means of realising them; the individual is not aware of living - he lives. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is a very Nietzschean thought. Mind you, a crazed and dangerous crowd exhibits the same absorption in simple values. |
| 5310 | Philosophers study the consequences of ethics instead of its origins [Wilson,EO] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers examine the precepts of ethical systems with reference to their consequences and not their origins. | |
| From: Edmund O. Wilson (On Human Nature [1978], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: He is interested in biological origins, but it strikes me that every moral theory has some account of the origins of morality, be it pure reason, or the love of pleasure, or human nature, or eternal ideas, or the will of God, or selfish desires. |
| 6559 | Aristotle never actually says that man is a rational animal [Aristotle, by Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: To the best of my knowledge (and somewhat to my surprise), Aristotle never actually says that man is a rational animal; however, he all but says it. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: When I read this I thought that this database would prove Fogelin wrong, but it actually supports him, as I can't find it in Aristotle either. Descartes refers to it in Med.Two. In Idea 5133 Aristotle does say that man is a 'social being'. But 22586! |
| 5313 | The rules of human decision-making converge and overlap in a 'human nature' [Wilson,EO] |
| Full Idea: The rules followed in human decision-making are tight enough to produce a broad overlap in the decisions taken by all individuals, and hence a convergence powerful enough to be labelled 'human nature'. | |
| From: Edmund O. Wilson (On Human Nature [1978], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice empirical criterion for asserting the existence of human nature, and it seems right to examine decisions, rather than more thoughtless or conformist behaviour. Existentialists dream of new possibilities, but the old ways always seem best… |
| 19646 | Values don't accumulate; they are ruthlessly replaced [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Values do not accumulate: a generation contributes something new only by trampling on what was unique in the preceding generation. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 6 'We') | |
| A reaction: That may seem true for a Frenchman or a Romanian, but it doesn't feel true of British culture, which seems to me to have accumulated values over the last five hundred years. Before 1500 it seems to me to be a foreign country. We may be near the end! |
| 5316 | We undermine altruism by rewarding it, but we reward it to encourage it [Wilson,EO] |
| Full Idea: By sanctifying altruism in order to reward it we make it less true, but by that means we promote its recurrence in others. | |
| From: Edmund O. Wilson (On Human Nature [1978], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: So is my preference for not rewarding (or even noticing) altruism an anti-social tendency. The very conspicuous charity of sponsorship seems somehow inferior to the truly anonymous gift. Or super-altruism is very public, to encourage it in others? |
| 5318 | Pure hard-core altruism based on kin selection is the enemy of civilisation [Wilson,EO] |
| Full Idea: Pure hard-core altruism based on kin selection is the enemy of civilisation. | |
| From: Edmund O. Wilson (On Human Nature [1978], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: By 'hard-core' he means suicidally self-sacrificing, rather than extensive. This seems a good thesis. It strikes me that the development of civil society is often impeded by family loyalty, such as in the case of the Mafia. |
| 19614 | Lovers are hateful, apart from their hovering awareness of death [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: As for lovers, they would be hateful if among their grimaces the presentiment of death did not hover. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Gamut') | |
| A reaction: A nice existential corrective, if you were planning to build an ethical system around a rather sentimental idea of love! If you are not gripped by a latent fear that your beloved may die, I doubt whether you are in love. |
| 5317 | The actor is most convincing who believes that his performance is real [Wilson,EO] |
| Full Idea: The actor is most convincing who believes that his performance is real. | |
| From: Edmund O. Wilson (On Human Nature [1978], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: This is a key element of social contract theory. It shows why natural selection of truly altruistic traits might be beneficial to individuals, provided they are surrounded by possible recipricators. We trust those who are genuine and sincere. |
| 19634 | Man is never himself; he always aims at less than life, or more than life [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Able to live only beyond and short of life, man is a prey to two temptation: imbecility and sanctity: sub-man and superman, never himself. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 4 'Threat') | |
| A reaction: To me, Taoism embodies imbecility, and spiritual religions embody the superman idea. [This is not Nietzsche's übermensch]. |
| 19619 | To live authentically, we must see that philosophy is totally useless [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: We begin to live authentically only where philosophy ends, at its wreck, when we have understood its terrible nullity, when we have understood that it was futile to resort to it, that it is no help. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Farewell') | |
| A reaction: The existentialist dream of trying to find an 'authentic' way of life. That idea means nothing to me. You would need to be utterly immersed in the life of a community with which you identified to live authentically, and that life has almost vanished. |
| 19622 | The pointlessness of our motives and irrelevance of our gestures reveals our vacuity [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: When we realise that no human motive is compatible with infinity, and that no gesture is worth the trouble of making it, our heart, by its very beating, can no longer conceal its vacuity. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Disintoxication') | |
| A reaction: An interesting choice of reasons. Nihilism in comparison with infinity, and in comparison with the vastness of society? If you were immortal, and there were only fifty other humans, would that help? |
| 19617 | Evidence suggests that humans do not have a purpose [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: By all evidence, we are in the world to do nothing. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Militant') | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear what evidence there could be. Other animals are all enmeshed in a particular environment. As soon as homo sapiens left Africa, it became a baffling phenonomen. I'm not sure what an alligator is in the world for, either. |
| 19612 | The universe is dirty and fragile, as if a scandal in nothingness had produced its matter [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Everything which is done and undone in the universe bears the stamp of a filthy fragility, as if matter were the fruit of a scandal at the core of nothingness. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'The Reactionary') | |
| A reaction: A gloriously imagined idea, worthy of Shakespeare. By 'scandal' I suppose he implies that the universe is the bastard child of a horrible relationship. A prize exhibit for my 'Nihilism' collection. True nihilists, of course, don't write books. |
| 19604 | Unlike other creatures, mankind seems lost in nature [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Whereas all beings have their place in nature, man remains a metaphysically straying creature, lost in Life, a stranger to the Creation. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'The Indirect5') | |
| A reaction: Nice challenge to the Aristotelian idea that we can identify the nature and function of man, and derive an ethics from it. This idea seems to state the essence of existentialism, perhaps better than anything in Sartre. We should have stayed in Africa? |
| 19606 | We can only live because our imagination and memory are poor [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and our memory | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'The Key') | |
| A reaction: Does this mean that we should actually aspire to limit our imaginations and memories? Or are we mercifully intrinsically limited, so that massive intellectual ambition will do no harm? We should be told these things, Cioran! |
| 19601 | Life is now more dreaded than death [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: By dint of accumulating non-mysteries and monopolizing non-meanings, life inspires more dread than death; it is life which is the Great Unknown. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Variations') | |
| A reaction: This is the sort of remark we pay continental philosophers to make. |
| 19640 | No one is brave enough to say they don't want to do anything; we despise such a view [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: No one has the audacity to exclaim: 'I don't want to do anything!' - we are more indulgent with a murderer than with a mind emancipated from actions. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 6 'The Architect') | |
| A reaction: Perhaps this should be the anti-epigraph for this website. I've slogged away at this project for nineteen years, probably for no other reason than that inactivity appears to be wicked. If I abandoned it, I would invent another project. Sad. |
| 19644 | History is the bloody rejection of boredom [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: History is the bloody product of the rejection of boredom. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 6 'Views') | |
| A reaction: How many absurd and horrible things have been done by people who could not stand being bored? But also, almost everything wonderful has the same source. How did Bach and Shakespeare and Rembrandt feel about boredom? |
| 19602 | You are stuck in the past if you don't know boredom [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: The man who knows nothing of ennui is still in the world's childhood. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Dislocation') | |
| A reaction: Boredom well may be the central experience of existentialism, rather than angst, or nihilism, or the temptations of suicide. |
| 19641 | If you lack beliefs, boredom is your martyrdom [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Ennui is the martyrdom of those who live and die for no belief. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 6 'Obsequies') |
| 19613 | It is pointless to refuse or accept the social order; we must endure it like the weather [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: It is equally futile to refuse or to accept the social order: we must endure its changes for the better or the worse with a despairing conformism, as we endure birth, love, the weather, and death. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'The Reactionary') |
| 19627 | Opportunists can save a nation, and heroes can ruin it [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Opportunists have saved nations; heroes have ruined them. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Defense') | |
| A reaction: Siegfried smashes the staff of Wotan. Napoleon looks like a hero, but he increasingly looks like the single most disastrous figure ever to have emerged in Europe. It took the Germans till 1940 to avenge what he did. |
| 19625 | The ideal is to impose a religion by force, and then live in doubt about its beliefs [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: To belong to a church uncertain of its god - after once imposing that god by fire and sword - should be the ideal of every detached mind. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Felicity') | |
| A reaction: I'm trying hard to think of an adequate response to this. I'll get back to you.... |
| 11150 | It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it. | |
| From: Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) | |
| A reaction: The epigraph on a David Chalmers website. A wonderful remark, and it should be on the wall of every beginners' philosophy class. However, while it is in the spirit of Aristotle, it appears to be a misattribution with no ancient provenance. |
| 3037 | Aristotle said the educated were superior to the uneducated as the living are to the dead [Aristotle, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle was asked how much educated men were superior to those uneducated; "As much," he said, "as the living are to the dead." | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 05.1.11 |
| 19605 | Despite endless suggestions, no one has found a goal for history [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: No one has found a valid goal for history; but everyone has proposed one. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'The Indirect') | |
| A reaction: This seems to be an attack on the Hegelian idea of destiny that suffused both marxism and fascism in the 1930s. |
| 19637 | History is wonderfully devoid of meaning [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: That History has no meaning is what should delight our hearts. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 5) | |
| A reaction: I have just read a history of the Wars of the Roses, and I wholeheartedly endorse Cioran's view. |
| 19610 | Religions see suicide as insubordination [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: If the religions have forbidden us to die by our own hand, it is because they saw that such practices set an example of insubordination which humiliated temples and gods alike. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Resources') | |
| A reaction: Has anyone ever committed suicide in a cathedral (even during a service)? How many bishops, cardinals, rabbis etc have committed suicide? It is not uncommon among priests in the lower echelons. |
| 19611 | No one has ever found a good argument against suicide [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: No church, no civil institution has as yet invented a single argument valid against suicide. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Resources') | |
| A reaction: Suicide in young people usually looks like an error of judgement (in quiet moments of history). You need more inductive evidence that life is going to be irremediably awful. But if life is fine but they choose suicide anyway, what can you say? |
| 19609 | If you have not contemplated suicide, you are a miserable worm [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: The man who has never imagined his own annihilation, who has not anticipated recourse to the rope, the bullet, poison, or the sea, is a degraded galley slave or a worm crawling upon the cosmic carrion. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1'Resources') | |
| A reaction: I guess by this date everyone in Paris had read Camus' 'The Myth of Sisyphus', so suicide was the main topic in the cafés. I sort of agree with it. The possibility of suicide is part of the examined life. |
| 19639 | We all need sexual secrets! [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Woe to those who have no sexual secrets! | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 6 'Wonders') |
| 5308 | The only human purpose is that created by our genetic history [Wilson,EO] |
| Full Idea: No species, ours included, possesses a purpose beyond the imperatives created by its genetic history. | |
| From: Edmund O. Wilson (On Human Nature [1978], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This invites the question of what that purpose is perceived to be. Some people feel an imperative to play the piano all day, so presumably genetic history has created that feeling. Presumably we can also choose a purpose, even extinction. |
| 8660 | There are potential infinities (never running out), but actual infinity is incoherent [Aristotle, by Friend] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle developed his own distinction between potential infinity (never running out) and actual infinity (there being a collection of an actual infinite number of things, such as places, times, objects). He decided that actual infinity was incoherent. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Michèle Friend - Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics 1.3 | |
| A reaction: Friend argues, plausibly, that this won't do, since potential infinity doesn't make much sense if there is not an actual infinity of things to supply the demand. It seems to just illustrate how boggling and uncongenial infinity was to Aristotle. |
| 12058 | Aristotle's matter can become any other kind of matter [Aristotle, by Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's conception of matter permits any kind of matter to become any other kind of matter. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Wiggins - Substance 4.11.2 | |
| A reaction: This is obviously crucial background information when we read Aristotle on matter. Our 92+ elements, and fixed fundamental particles, gives a quite different picture. Aristotle would discuss form and matter quite differently now. |
| 5314 | Cultural evolution is Lamarckian and fast, biological evolution is Darwinian and slow [Wilson,EO] |
| Full Idea: Cultural evolution is Lamarckian and very fast, whereas biological evolution is Darwinian and usually very slow. | |
| From: Edmund O. Wilson (On Human Nature [1978], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: An intriguing point, given how discredited Lamarckian evolution is. It links with the Dawkins idea of 'memes' - cultural ideas which spread very fast. Is biological evolution suddenly about to become Lamarckian, as culture influences biology? |
| 5315 | Over 99 percent of human evolution has been in the hunter-gatherer phase [Wilson,EO] |
| Full Idea: Selection pressures of hunter-gatherer existence have persisted for over 99 percent of human genetic evolution. | |
| From: Edmund O. Wilson (On Human Nature [1978], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This seems a key point to bear in mind when assessing human nature. Hunter-gathering isn't just one tendency in our genetics; it more or less constitutes everything we are. |
| 19603 | Why is God so boring, and why does God resemble humanity so little? [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Why is God so dull, so feeble, so inadequately picturesque? Why does He lack interest, vigor, actuality and resemble us so little? Is there any image less anthropomorphic and more gratuitously remote? | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'The Devil') | |
| A reaction: This seems to be directed at those like Feuerbach who said that we had merely created God as a glorified image of humanity. |
| 22729 | The concepts of gods arose from observing the soul, and the cosmos [Aristotle, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle said that the conception of gods arose among mankind from two originating causes, namely from events which concern the soul and from celestial phenomena. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE], Frag 10) by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Physicists (two books) I.20 | |
| A reaction: The cosmos suggests order, and possible creation. What do events of the soul suggest? It doesn't seem to be its non-physical nature, because Aristotle is more of a functionalist. Puzzling. (It says later that gods are like the soul). |
| 19616 | As the perfect wisdom of detachment, philosophy offers no rivals to Taoism [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: China alone long since arrived at a refined wisdom superior to philosophy: Taoism surpasses all the mind has conceived by way of detachment. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Militant') | |
| A reaction: Personally I dislike Taoism, which seems to advocate a sort of suicide within life. But given Cioran's evident state of mind, I can see its attractions. If this country deteriorates any further [I write on 4th July 2016], I may turn to Taoism. |
| 19600 | When man abandons religion, he then follows new fake gods and mythologies [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Even when he turns from religion, man remains subject to it; depleting himself to create fake gods, he then feverishly adopts them: his need for fiction, for mythology triumphs over evidence and absurdity alike. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Genealogy') | |
| A reaction: Cioran had just lived through the high water mark of communism and fascism. I don't think modern atheists fit this description very well. |
| 19643 | A religion needs to motivate killings, and cannot tolerate rivals [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: A religion dies when it tolerates truths which exclude it; and the god in whose name one no longer kills is dead indeed. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 6 'Views') | |
| A reaction: I fear that in our time we have people who are killing in the name of their religion as a last resort to try to convince themselves that their religion is not dying. It is startlingly how religion can now be publicly mocked. Unthinkable 50 years ago. |
| 5320 | It is estimated that mankind has produced 100,000 religions [Wilson,EO] |
| Full Idea: Since the first recorded religion (in Iraq 60,000 years ago) it is estimated that mankind has produced in the order of one hundred thousand religions. | |
| From: Edmund O. Wilson (On Human Nature [1978], Ch.8) | |
| A reaction: If asked to guess the number, I would probably have said '200'! This staggering figure seems to argue both ways - it suggest a certain arbitrariness in the details of religions, but an extremely intense drive to have some sort of religious belief. |
| 19623 | Circles of hell are ridiculous; all that matters is to be there [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: What a preposterous notion, to draw circles in hell, to make the intensity of the flames vary in its compartments, to hierarchise its torments! The important thing is to be there. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], '1 'La Perduta') |