display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
3 ideas
| 5770 | Rewards and punishments are not deserved if they don't arise from free movement of the mind [Boethius] |
| Full Idea: If there is no free will, then in vain is reward offered to the good and punishment to the bad, because they have not been deserved by any free and willed movement of the mind. | |
| From: Boethius (The Consolations of Philosophy [c.520], V.III) | |
| A reaction: I just don't see why decisions have to come out of nowhere in order to have any merit. People are different from natural forces, because the former can be persuaded by reasons. A moral agent is a mechanism which decides according to reasons. |
| 6217 | Natural law is supplied to the human mind by reality and human nature [Cumberland] |
| Full Idea: Some truths of natural law, concerning guides to moral good and evil, and duties not laid down by civil law and government, are necessarily supplied ot the human mind by the nature of things and of men. | |
| From: Richard Cumberland (De Legibus Naturae [1672], Ch.I.I) | |
| A reaction: I agree that some moral truths have the power of self-evidence. If you say they are built into the mind, we now ask what did the building, and evolution is the only answer, and hence we distance ourselves from the truths, seeing them as strategies. |
| 5764 | When people fall into wickedness they lose their human nature [Boethius] |
| Full Idea: When people fall into wickedness they lose their human nature. | |
| From: Boethius (The Consolations of Philosophy [c.520], IV.III) | |
| A reaction: This is a view I find quite sympathetic, but which is a million miles from the modern view. Today's paper showed a picture of a famous criminal holding a machine gun and a baby. We seem to delight in the idea that human nature is partly wicked. |