6 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. |
| 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. |
| 4001 | The meaning of a word contains all its possible uses as well as its actual ones [Nagel] |
| Full Idea: The meaning of a word contains all its possible uses, true and false, not only its actual ones. | |
| From: Thomas Nagel (What Does It All Mean? [1987], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: It has always seemed to me that meaning is not use, because you can't use it if it hasn't already got a meaning. What use is a meaningless word? |
| 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. |