HKB
15 passages · search this phrase →
Often appears with: reason and the intellect · fate, destiny, and necessity · language, naming, and meaning · will, choice, and freedom · the nature and attributes of God · the passions and the emotions · sin, guilt, and repentance · logic, method, and demonstration · justice as a virtue · will and appetite · vice worse than sin · veil over tomorrow
Usually: argument (13) · skepticism (7) · detachment (6) · censure (4) · curiosity (2) · commentary or gloss (1) · reflection (1) · crisis of belief (1) · exhortation (1) · reverence (1)
“If objects had nor an uniform and regular conjunction with each other, we should never arrive at any idea of cause and effect; and even after all, the necessity, which enters into that idea, is nothing but a determination of the mind to pass from one object to its usual attendant, and infer the existence of one from that of the other.” David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature · insight
“For neither in tailoring nor in legislating does man proceed by mere Accident, but the hand is ever guided on by mysterious operations of the mind.” Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufe · insight
“The moment the doctrine of the immortality is separately taught, man is already fallen. In the flowing of love, in the adoration of humility, there is no question of continuance.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays — First Series · insight
“But whenever it thus yielded, there was power to the contrary”; otherwise there could be no freedom of moral action.” Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection; and, The Confessions of an Inqui · observation
Kant claims that because sensibility requires the preceding to determine the succeeding, past phenomena must determine future ones in experience, yielding the principle that an event always follows from conditions in what precedes.
of the existing event which is given—a correlate which itself relates to the event as its consequence, conditions it, and connects it necessarily with itself in the series of time. If then it be admitted as a necessary law of sensibility, and consequently a formal condition of all perception, that the preceding necessarily determines the succeeding time (inasmuch as I cannot arrive at the succeeding except through t…
Locke distinguishes action, cause, and passion in terms of power and its effects, arguing that words like creation and annihilation often signify only the effect rather than the action.
3. Of the Sorts of Substances. An obscure and relative idea of SUBSTANCE IN GENERAL being thus made we come to have the ideas of PARTICULAR SORTS OF SUBSTANCES, by collecting SUCH combinations of simple ideas as are, by experience and observation of men’s senses, taken notice of to exist together; and are therefore supposed to flow from the particular internal constitution, or unknown essence of that substance. Thus…
He derives the idea of cause and effect from observing how one thing produces another, distinguishes creation, generation, making, and alteration, and insists this notion still comes from sensation or reflection.
11. All relatives made up of simple ideas. Having laid down these premises concerning relation in general, I shall now proceed to show, in some instances, how all the ideas we have of relation are made up, as the others are, only of simple ideas; and that they all, how refined or remote from sense soever they seem, terminate at last in simple ideas. I shall begin with the most comprehensive relation, wherein all thi…
Nietzsche attacks “immediate certainty” and “absolute knowledge,” claiming that even “I think” smuggles in assumptions about an ego, causation, and standards of meaning that cannot be genuinely immediate.
It seems that the hundred-times-refuted theory of the "free will" owes its persistence to this charm alone; some one is always appearing who feels himself strong enough to refute it. 19. Philosophers are accustomed to speak of the will as though it were the best-known thing in the world; indeed, Schopenhauer has given us to understand that the will alone is really known to us, absolutely and completely known, withou…
Nietzsche calls the causa sui the best self-contradiction and rejects metaphysical free will as an impossible attempt to make oneself the ultimate cause, while also warning against materializing “cause” and “effect.”
24. O sancta simplicitas! In what strange simplification and falsification man lives! One can never cease wondering when once one has got eyes for beholding this marvel! How we have made everything around us clear and free and easy and simple! how we have been able to give our senses a passport to everything superficial, our thoughts a godlike desire for wanton pranks and wrong inferences!--how from the beginning, we…
The editor continues, distinguishing causes and effects from mere sequences of phenomena, and arguing that creation in a vulgar sense is absurd; nature’s true underlying cause is ultimate divinity.
it is certain that our knowledge of the true sequence of all actual phenomena, as for instance the phenomena of generation, growth, and dissolution, is and ever must be imperfect. We do not fare much better when we speak of Causes and Effects than when we speak of Nature. For the practical purposes of life we may use the terms cause and effect conveniently, and we may fix a distinct meaning to them, distinct enough …
Hume explains association of ideas as a guiding principle that replaces chance by linking ideas through resemblance, contiguity in time or place, and cause-and-effect, and notes how distant connections weaken.
SECT. IV. OF THE CONNEXION OR ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. As all simple ideas may be separated by the imagination, and may be united again in what form it pleases, nothing would be more unaccountable than the operations of that faculty, were it not guided by some universal principles, which render it, in some measure, uniform with itself in all times and places. Were ideas entirely loose and unconnected, chance alone woul…
Hume argues necessity comes from constant conjunction and the mind’s inference from one event to its usual attendant; he claims human actions show constant union with motives and circumstances through stable, lawlike patterns.
matter, and considering on what the idea of a necessity in its operations are founded, and why we conclude one body or action to be the infallible cause of another. It has been observed already, that in no single instance the ultimate connexion of any objects is discoverable, either by our senses or reason, and that we can never penetrate so far into the essence and construction of bodies, as to perceive the princip…
He continues that revelation is about moral attributes rather than timelines, claims future-curiosity confesses sin, and concludes that God instructs people to live in the present by cause-and-effect understanding.
of the soul’s own questions. They do not answer the questions which the understanding asks. The soul answers never by words, but by the thing itself that is inquired after. Revelation is the disclosure of the soul. The popular notion of a revelation is that it is a telling of fortunes. In past oracles of the soul the understanding seeks to find answers to sensual questions, and undertakes to tell from God how long m…
Aquinas concludes that hatred is never stronger than love in absolute terms because hatred is an effect of love, though hatred can seem stronger when felt more intensely or when tied to a greater love.
on seeking what is pleasant: thus also irrational animals refrain from pleasure for fear of the whip, as Augustine instances (QQ. 83, qu. 36). Therefore hatred is stronger than love. *On the contrary,* Good is stronger than evil; because "evil does nothing except in virtue of good," as Dionysius says (Div. Nom. iv). But hatred and love differ according to the difference of good and evil. Therefore love is stronger t…
The text presents an objection that a vice (as a lasting bad habit) is worse than a sinful act, since longer-lasting evils and their causal power are ordinarily worse than brief effects.
in act: so that a thing needs to be well disposed if it has to produce a good work. It is in this respect that vice is contrary to virtue. Reply Obj. 3: As Cicero says (De Quaest. Tusc. iv), "disease and sickness are vicious qualities," for in speaking of the body he calls it disease "when the whole body is infected," for instance, with fever or the like; he calls it sickness "when the disease is attended with weakn…
Teufelsdrockh claims clothing follows hidden “architectural ideas” and cause-effect influences like laws, rejects a full cause-and-effect philosophy, and says clothes’ first chapters are overly mythic.
Public invited to help itself. To bring what order we can out of this Chaos shall be part of our endeavor. "As Montesquieu wrote a *Spirit of Laws*," observes our Professor, "so could I write a *Spirit of Clothes*; thus, with an _Esprit des Lois*, properly an *Esprit de Coutumes*, we should have an *Esprit de Costumes_. For neither in tailoring nor in legislating does man proceed by mere Accident, but the hand is ev…
He defines the “prevailing system of metaphysics” as associated with Locke and argues its doctrines are tied to orthodox religious teaching, making them hard to question and obstructing clear spiritual distinctions.
unfolded in the Work. But this also is an evil which I saw no means of avoiding without incurring a greater, and writing a book instead of a brief essay. Let it be understood, then, without further preface, that by the prevailing system of metaphysics, I mean the system, of which in modern times Locke is the reputed author, and the leading principles of which, with various modifications, more or less important, but …
Coleridge criticizes editors’ claim of a “power to the contrary,” arguing that if will is determined by causes then no such power exists, and if there is a true power then the will is self-determined rather than externally determined.
doubts and conclusions which every one will entertain, who lays aside authority, and reflects upon the goings-on of his own mind, and the dictates of his own reason and conscience. But let us look for a moment at the remarks of the editors in reply to the letter above quoted. They maintain, in relation to original sin and the perversion of the will, that from either the *original* or the *acquired* strength of certa…
Philo presses Cleanthes by saying orthodox divines may look “atheist” under Cleanthe’s labeling, then argues that treating God like an architect’s mind fails to explain cause and effect.
mind at all. It is an abuse of terms to give it that appellation; and we may as well speak of limited extension without figure, or of number without composition. Pray consider, said PHILO, whom you are at present inveighing against. You are honouring with the appellation of Atheist all the sound, orthodox divines, almost, who have treated of this subject; and you will at last be, yourself, found, according to your r…