38 ideas
| 6928 | Only that which can be an object of religion is an object of philosophy [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Only that which can be an object of religion is an object of philosophy. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §35) | |
| A reaction: The temple of Pythagoras at Solon sounds like an embodiment of this idea. The obvious candidate would be truth, to which philosophers must show almost religious respect. Some what motivates the philosophy of a minimalist (Idea 3750)? |
| 11103 | We aren't stuck with our native conceptual scheme; we can gradually change it [Quine] |
| Full Idea: We must not leap to the fatalistic conclusion that we are stuck with the conceptual scheme that we grew up in. We can change it bit by bit, plank by plank. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 5) | |
| A reaction: This is an interesting commitment to Strawson's 'revisionary' metaphysics, rather than its duller cousin 'descriptive' metaphysics. Good for Quine. Remember, though, Davidson's 'On the Very Idea of Conceptual Scheme'. |
| 6918 | Philosophy should not focus on names, but on the determined nature of things [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy need not care about the conceptions that common usage or misuse attaches to a name; philosophy, however, has to bind itself to the determined nature of things, whose signs are names. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §23) | |
| A reaction: I like this attempt to nip ordinary language philosophy in the bud. Indeed I like the notion of philosophy binding itself to the 'determined nature of things' (which sound like essences to me), rather than to their names or descriptions. |
| 6904 | Modern philosophy begins with Descartes' abstraction from sensation and matter [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: The beginning of Descartes' philosophy, namely, the abstraction from sensation and matter, is the beginning of modern speculative philosophy. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §10) | |
| A reaction: In Britain it might be said that modern philosophy begins with a rebellion against Descartes' move. Feuerbach is charting the movement towards idealism. |
| 6931 | Empiricism is right about ideas, but forgets man himself as one of our objects [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Empiricism rightly derives the origin of our ideas from the senses; only it forgets that the most important and essential object of man is man himself. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §41) | |
| A reaction: This seems to nicely pinpoint the objection of most 'continental' philosophy to British empiricism and analytic philosophy. It seems to point towards Husserl's phenomenology as the next step. It is true that empiricists divided person from world. |
| 6933 | The laws of reality are also the laws of thought [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: The laws of reality are also the laws of thought. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §45) | |
| A reaction: I like this a lot, though it runs contrary to a lot of conventionalist thinking in the twentieth century. Russell, though, agrees with Feuerbach (Idea 5405). There is not much point to thought if it doesn't plug into reality at the roots. |
| 6919 | Absolute thought remains in another world from being [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Absolute thought never extricates itself from itself to become being. Being remains in another world. …If being is to be added to an object of thought, so must something distinct from thought be added to thought itself. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §24/5) | |
| A reaction: This sounds a bit like a child wishing for the moon. Is he saying he doesn't just want to think about reality - he wants his mental states to BE external reality? The distinction between a thought and its content or intentionality would help here. |
| 19457 | Being is what is undetermined, and hence indistinguishable [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Being in the sense in which it is an object of speculative thought is that which is purely and simply unmediated, that is, undetermined; in other words, there is nothing to distinguish and nothing to think of in being. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], 26) | |
| A reaction: This sounds remarkably like the idea of 'prime matter' used in scholastic Aristotelian philosophy. Matter existing without form is somehow ungraspable, but presented from Hegel onwards as the ultimate mystery. |
| 6920 | Being posits essence, and my essence is my being [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Being is the positing of essence. That which is my essence is my being. The fish exists in water; you cannot, however, separate its essence from this being. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §27) | |
| A reaction: This throws a different light on later (e.g. Heidegger) discussions of 'being', which may map onto Aristotelian discussions of essences. |
| 6921 | Particularity belongs to being, whereas generality belongs to thought [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Particularity and individuality belong to being, whereas generality belongs to thought. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §29) | |
| A reaction: This agrees with Russell's view that every sentence (and proposition) must contain a universal (i.e a generality). The very notion of thinking 'about' a horse seems to require a move to the universal concept of a horse. |
| 6926 | The only true being is of the senses, perception, feeling and love [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Being as an object of being - and only this being is being and deserves the name of being - is the being of the senses, perception, feeling, and love. …Only passion is the hallmark of existence. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §33) | |
| A reaction: This remark seems to make Feuerbach a romantic and anti-Enlightenment figure. I don't see why there shouldn't be just as much 'being' in doing maths as in admiring a landscape. The mention of love links him to Empedocles (Ideas 459 + 630). |
| 11092 | A river is a process, with stages; if we consider it as one thing, we are considering a process [Quine] |
| Full Idea: A river is a process through time, and the river stages are its momentary parts. Identification of the river bathed in once with the river bathed in again is just what determines our subject matter to be a river process as opposed to a river stage. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 1) | |
| A reaction: So if we take a thing which has stages, but instead of talking about the stages we talk about a single thing that endures through them, then we are talking about a process. Sounds very good to me. |
| 11093 | We don't say 'red' is abstract, unlike a river, just because it has discontinuous shape [Quine] |
| Full Idea: 'Red' is surely not going to be opposed to 'Cayster' [name of a river], as abstract to concrete, merely because of discontinuity in geometrical shape? | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 2) | |
| A reaction: I've been slow to grasp the truth of this. However, Quine assumes that 'red' is concrete because 'Cayster' is, but it is perfectly arguable that 'Cayster' is an abstraction, despite all that water. |
| 11101 | General terms don't commit us ontologically, but singular terms with substitution do [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The use of general terms does not commit us to admitting a corresponding abstract entity into our ontology, but an abstract singular term, including the law of putting equals for equals, flatly commits us to an abstract entity named by the term. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 4) | |
| A reaction: Does this mean that in 'for the sake of the children', I have to believe in 'sakes' if I can find a synonym which will substitute for it? |
| 11096 | Discourse generally departmentalizes itself to some degree [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Discourse generally departmentalizes itself to some degree. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 2) | |
| A reaction: I pick this out because I think it is important. There is a continually shifting domain in any conversation ('what we are talking about'), and speech cannot be understand if the shifting domain or department has not been grasped. |
| 11099 | Understanding 'is square' is knowing when to apply it, not knowing some object [Quine] |
| Full Idea: No more need be demanded of 'is square' than that our listener learn when to expect us to apply it to an object and when not; there is no need for the phrase itself to be the name in turn of a separate object of any kind. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 4) |
| 11094 | 'Red' is a single concrete object in space-time; 'red' and 'drop' are parts of a red drop [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Why not view 'red' as naming a single concrete object extended in space and time? ..To say a drop is red is to say that the one object, the drop, is a spatio-temporal part of the other, red, as a waterfall is part of a river. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 2) |
| 11097 | Red is the largest red thing in the universe [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Red is the largest red thing in the universe - the scattered total thing whose parts are all the red things. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 3) |
| 17595 | To unite a sequence of ostensions to make one object, a prior concept of identity is needed [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The concept of identity is central in specifying spatio-temporally broad objects by ostension. Without identity, n acts of ostension merely specify up to n objects. ..But when we affirm identity of object between ostensions, they refer to the same object. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 1) | |
| A reaction: Quine says that there is an induction involved. On the whole, Quine seems to give a better account of identity than Geach or Wiggins can offer. |
| 11095 | We should just identify any items which are indiscernible within a given discourse [Quine] |
| Full Idea: We might propound the maxim of the 'identification of indiscernibles': Objects indistinguishable from one another within the terms of a given discourse should be construed as identical for that discourse. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 2) | |
| A reaction: This increasingly strikes me as the correct way to discuss such things. Identity is largely contextual, and two things can be viewed as type-identical for practical purposes (e.g. teaspoons), but distinguished if it is necessary. |
| 6908 | Consciousness is absolute reality, and everything exists through consciousness [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Consciousness is the absolute reality, the measure of all existence; all that exists, exists only as being for consciousness, as comprehended in consciousness; for consciousness is first and foremost being. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §17) | |
| A reaction: This is Feuerbach declaring himself in favour of idealism even as he was trying to rebel against it, and move towards a more sensuous and human view of the world. I just see idealists as confusing ontology and epistemology. |
| 6932 | Ideas arise through communication, and reason is reached through community [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Only through communication and conversation between man and man do ideas arise; not alone, but only with others, does one reach notions and reason in general. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §41) | |
| A reaction: This is a strikingly modern view of the solipsism problem, and is close in spirit to Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument (Ideas 4143 +4158). Feuerbach is interested in universals rather than rules. I prefer Feuerbach. |
| 6935 | In man the lowest senses of smell and taste elevate themselves to intellectual acts [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Even the lowest senses, smell and taste, elevate themselves in man to intellectual and scientific acts. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §53) | |
| A reaction: Since Darwin we have, I am glad to say, lost this need to distinguish what is 'low' or 'high', and to try to show that even our 'lowest' functions are on the 'high' side. Personally, though, I still need the low/high distinction in moral thinking. |
| 11104 | Concepts are language [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Concepts are language. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 5) | |
| A reaction: Hm. This seems to mean that animals and pre-linguistic children have no concepts. I just don't believe that. |
| 6925 | The new philosophy thinks of the concrete in a concrete (not a abstract) manner [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: The new philosophy is the philosophy that thinks of the concrete not in an abstract, but in a concrete manner. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §31) | |
| A reaction: This leads to placing a high value on art, and on virtuous action through particulars rather than principles, and on empirical science. The only problem is that what he proposes is impossible. To think 'about' is to abstract from the particulars. |
| 11102 | Apply '-ness' or 'class of' to abstract general terms, to get second-level abstract singular terms [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Applying the operator '-ness' or 'class of' to abstract general terms, we get second-level abstract singular terms. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 5) | |
| A reaction: This is the derivation of abstract concepts by naming classes, rather than by deriving equivalence classes. Any theory which doesn't allow multi-level abstraction is self-evidently hopeless. Quine says Frege and Russell get numbers this way. |
| 6924 | Plotinus was ashamed to have a body [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Plotinus, according to his biographers, was ashamed to have a body. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §29) | |
| A reaction: When Feuerbach draws our attention to this, we see what an astonishing state it is for a human being to have got into. Modern thought is appalled by it, but it also has something heroic about it, like swimming all the time because you want to be a fish. |
| 6927 | If you love nothing, it doesn't matter whether something exists or not [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: To him who loves nothing it is all the same whether something does or does not exist. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §33) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me to be quite a good motto for the aim of education - just get them to love something, no matter what (well, almost!). Loving something, even if it is train-spotting, seems a good route to human happiness. |
| 6934 | Man is not a particular being, like animals, but a universal being [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Man is not a particular being, like the animals, but a universal being. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §53) | |
| A reaction: This sounds a bit extravagent. The capacity of man to use universals in thought seems crucial to Feuerbach (though he doesn't directly address the problem). 'We are particulars with access to universals' sounds better. |
| 6936 | The essence of man is in community, but with distinct individuals [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: The essence of man is contained only in the community and unity of man and man; it is a unity, however, which rests only on the reality of the distinction between I and thou. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §59) | |
| A reaction: In English provincial suburbs (where I live) it is astonishing how little interest in and need for their neighbours people seem to have. People seem to survive without community. Most of us, though, think full human happiness needs community. |
| 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. |
| 6913 | God's existence cannot be separated from essence and concept, which can only be thought as existing [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: God is the being in which existence cannot be separated from essence and concept and which cannot be thought except as existing. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §18) | |
| A reaction: This shows how faith in God endured through the Idealist movement by means of the Ontological Argument, despite the criticisms of Hume and Kant. To me this now appears as an odd abberation in the history of human thought. |
| 6903 | If God is only an object for man, then only the essence of man is revealed in God [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: If God is only an object of man, what is revealed to us in his essence? Nothing but the essence of man. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §07) | |
| A reaction: It is important to distinguish here between what we could know about God, and what we think God might actually be like. We may well only be able to read the essence of man into God, but we might speculate that God is more than that. |
| 6923 | God is what man would like to be [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: God is what man would like to be. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §29) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to see how even the most devout person could deny the truth of this. Perhaps the essential hallmark of humanity is a desire to be different from the way we are. |
| 6911 | God is for us a mere empty idea, which we fill with our own ego and essence [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: God exists, but he is for us a tabula rasa, an empty being, a mere idea; God, as we conceive and think of him, is our ego, our mind, and our essence. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §17) | |
| A reaction: He accepted God's existence because of the Ontological Argument. This is a little stronger than Hume's view (Idea 2185), because Hume seems to be talking about imagining God, but Feuerbach says this is our understanding of God. |
| 6902 | Catholicism concerns God in himself, Protestantism what God is for man [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Protestantism is no longer concerned, as Catholicism is, about what God is in himself, but about what he is for man. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §02) | |
| A reaction: It is certainly true that the major religions in their origins seem to be almost exclusively concerned with God alone, and have little interest in human life (or morality). |
| 6905 | Absolute idealism is the realized divine mind of Leibnizian theism [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Absolute idealism is nothing but the realized divine mind of Leibnizian theism. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §10) | |
| A reaction: In general it seems an accurate commentary that during the eighteenth century philosophers on the continent were designing a religion without God. Kantian duty tries to replace the authority of God with pure reason. |