33 ideas
| 1597 | Thales was the first western thinker to believe the arché was intelligible [Roochnik on Thales] |
| 22744 | Parts are not parts if their whole is nothing more than the parts [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 3013 | Nothing is stronger than necessity, which rules everything [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 22748 | Some say motion is perceived by sense, but others say it is by intellect [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22746 | If we try to conceive of a line with no breadth, it ceases to exist, and so has no length [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22741 | The incorporeal is not in the nature of body, and so could not emerge from it [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22809 | The social contract sees society as constituted by and for individuals [Taylor,C] |
| 22811 | Assigning a right based on a human capacity implies that the capacity should be developed [Taylor,C] |
| 22815 | If freedom depends on society and culture, the greatest freedom is in shaping them [Taylor,C] |
| 22814 | Our reliance on other people close to us does not imply any political obligations [Taylor,C] |
| 22810 | A right is not just a rule, but also asserts certain ideas of moral worth [Taylor,C] |
| 22812 | For most people the primacy of rights mainly concerns freedom [Taylor,C] |
| 22813 | Property is not essential for life, but it may be essential for independence [Taylor,C] |
| 23417 | If the state is neutral, there won't be sufficient community to support a welfare state [Taylor,C, by Kymlicka] |
| 1494 | Thales said water is the first principle, perhaps from observing that food is moist [Thales, by Aristotle] |
| 1713 | Thales must have thought soul causes movement, since he thought magnets have soul [Thales, by Aristotle] |
| 22747 | A man walking backwards on a forwards-moving ship is moving in a fixed place [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22749 | Time doesn't end with the Universe, because tensed statements about destruction remain true [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22750 | Time is divisible, into past, present and future [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22742 | Socrates either dies when he exists (before his death) or when he doesn't (after his death) [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22751 | If the present is just the limit of the past or the future, it can't exist because they don't exist [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22730 | All men agree that God is blessed, imperishable, happy and good [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22739 | God must suffer to understand suffering [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22738 | The Divine must lack the virtues of continence and fortitude, because they are not needed [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22734 | God is defended by agreement, order, absurdity of denying God, and refutations [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22736 | God's sensations imply change, and hence perishing, which is absurd, so there is no such God [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22740 | God without virtue is absurd, but God's virtues will be better than God [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22735 | The original substance lacked motion or shape, and was given these by a cause [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22732 | The perfections of God were extrapolations from mankind [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22728 | Gods were invented as watchers of people's secret actions [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22737 | An incorporeal God could do nothing, and a bodily god would perish, so there is no God [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22731 | It is mad to think that what is useful to us, like lakes and rivers, are gods [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 1742 | Thales said the gods know our wrong thoughts as well as our evil actions [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |