4 ideas
| 22519 | Philosophers are revealed by their fears [Billington] |
| Full Idea: To understand any philosopher, ask 'What are they afraid of?'. | |
| From: Ray Billington (talk [2010]) | |
| A reaction: Yes! So... Plato - disorder. Aristotle - ignorance. Augustine - sin. Descartes - uncertainty. Spinoza - fragmentation. Leibniz - superficiality. Hume - speculation. Bentham - egotism. Kant - self-deception. Nietzsche - nihilism. Russell - imprecision. |
| 19433 | The universe is infinitely varied, so the Buridan's Ass dilemma could never happen [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The Buridan's Ass case of perfect equilibrium is chimerical. ...The universe has no centre and its parts are infinitely varied; thus it will never happen that all will be perfectly equal and will strike equally from one side or the other. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Coste [1707], 1707) | |
| A reaction: Can the great Leibniz have missed the point? Surely all that matters is that the ass cannot distinguish the two options - not that they actually are identical in every detail? If the ass is short-sighted, that should be easy to set up. |
| 19434 | There may be a world where dogs smell their game at a thousand leagues [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: There will perhaps be a world in which dogs will have sufficiently good noses to scent their game at a thousand leagues. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Coste [1707], 1707) | |
| A reaction: Wonderful. This should immediately replace Lewis's much repeated example of a world containing a talking donkey. We should always honour the first person to suggest an idea. That is one of the motivations for this collection of ideas. |
| 7903 | The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna] |
| Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom. | |
| From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88) | |
| A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate'). |