9 ideas
| 3269 | If your life is to be meaningful as part of some large thing, the large thing must be meaningful [Nagel] |
| Full Idea: Those seeking to give their lives meaning usually envision a role in something larger than themselves, …but such a role can't confer significance unless that enterprise is itself significant. | |
| From: Thomas Nagel (The Absurd [1971], §3) | |
| A reaction: Which correctly implies that this way of finding meaning for one's life is doomed. |
| 16657 | Substance, Quantity and Quality are real; other categories depend on those three [Henry of Ghent] |
| Full Idea: Among creatures there are only three 'res' belong to the three first categories: Substance, Quantity and Quality. All other are aspects [rationes] and intellectual concepts with respect to them, with reality only as grounded on the res of those three. | |
| From: Henry of Ghent (Quodlibeta [1284], VII:1-2), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 12.3 | |
| A reaction: Pasnau connects with the 'arrangement of being', giving an 'ontologically innocent' structure to reality. That seems to be what we all want, if only we could work out the ontologically guilty bit. |
| 16658 | The only reality in the category of Relation is things from another category [Henry of Ghent] |
| Full Idea: There is beyond a doubt nothing real in the category of Relation, except what is a thing from another category. | |
| From: Henry of Ghent (Quodlibeta [1284], VII:1-2), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 12.3 | |
| A reaction: This seems to have been the fairly orthodox scholastic view of relations. |
| 16645 | Accidents are diminished beings, because they are dispositions of substance (unqualified being) [Henry of Ghent] |
| Full Idea: Accidents are beings only in a qualified and diminished sense, because they are not called beings, nor are they beings, except because they are dispositions of an unqualified being, a substance. | |
| From: Henry of Ghent (Quodlibeta [1284], XV.5), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 10.4 | |
| A reaction: This is aimed to 'half' detach the accidents (as the Eucharist requires). Later scholastics detached them completely. Late scholastics seem to have drifted back to Henry's view. The equivocal use of 'being' here was challenged later. |
| 22012 | Kant says things-in-themselves cause sensations, but then makes causation transcendental! [Henry of Ghent, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Kant claimed that things-in-themselves caused our sensations; but causality was a transcendental condition of experience, not a property of things-in-themselves, so the great Kant had contradicted himself. | |
| From: report of Henry of Ghent (Quodlibeta [1284], Supplement) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 04 | |
| A reaction: This early objection by the conservative Jacobi (who disliked Enlightenment rational religion) is the key to the dispute over whether Kant is an idealist. Kant denied being an idealist, but how can he be, if this idea is correct? |
| 3270 | Justifications come to an end when we want them to [Nagel] |
| Full Idea: Justifications come to an end when we are content to have them end. | |
| From: Thomas Nagel (The Absurd [1971], §3) | |
| A reaction: This is the correct account, with the vital proviso that where justification comes to an end is usually a social matter. Robinson Crusoe doesn't care whether he 'knows' - he just acts on his beliefs. |
| 3268 | If a small brief life is absurd, then so is a long and large one [Nagel] |
| Full Idea: If life is absurd because it only lasts seventy years, wouldn't it be infinitely absurd if it lasted for eternity? And if we are absurd because we are small, would we be any less absurd if we filled the universe? | |
| From: Thomas Nagel (The Absurd [1971], §1) |
| 13304 | Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius] |
| Full Idea: In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes. | |
| From: Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]), quoted by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 078 | |
| A reaction: These remarks endorsing the infinite superiority of the educated to the uneducated seem to have been popular in late antiquity. It tends to be the religions which discourage great learning, especially in their emphasis on a single book. |
| 20820 | Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: Posidonius defined time thus: it is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed and slowness. | |
| From: report of Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42 | |
| A reaction: Hm. Can we define motion or speed without alluding to time? Looks like we have to define them as a conjoined pair, which means we cannot fully understand either of them. |