Chris Navin

Thanks, reader: ‘Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. Guests include A.C. Grayling, Béatrice Han-Pile and Chris Janaway.’

It’s all pretty much will, but how he arrives at such a metaphysics gets some treatment.

As posted:

‘The separation between so-called duties of law and duties of virtue, more correctly between justice and philanthropy, which was effected by Kant in so forced and unnatural a manner, results here entirely of itself and thereby testifies to the correctness of the principle. It is the natural, unmistakable, and sharp boundary between the negative and positive, between doing no injury and helping.’

Schopenhauer, Arthur. On The Basis Of Morality.

Also On This Site: From Bryan Magee’s Talking Philosophy On Youtube: Geoffrey Warnock On Kant…Repost-From YouTube-Bryan Magee: On The Ideas Of Quine

Exposition and critique here.

‘I’ll begin the critique with the last point. “We never see properties, although we see that certain things have certain properties.” (179) If van Inwagen can ‘peter out,’ so can I: I honestly don’t know what to make of the second clause of the quoted sentence. I am now, with a brain properly caffeinated, staring at my blue coffee cup in good light. Van Inwagen’s claim is that I do not see the blueness of the cup, though I do see that the cup is blue. Here I balk. If I don’t see blueness, or blue, when I look at the cup, how can I see (literally see, with the eyes of the head, not the eye of the mind) that the cup is blue?’

From Darwinian Conservatism: ‘The Evolution of Mind and Mathematics: Dehaene Versus Plantinga and Nagel’Repost: From the Cambridge Companion To Plato-T.H. Irwin’s “Plato: The intellectual Background’