display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
2 ideas
6701 | Rescue operations need spontaneous benevolence, not careful thought [Graham] |
Full Idea: If more lives are to be saved in natural disasters, what is needed is spontaneity on the part of the rescuers, a willingness not to stop and think but to act spontaneously. | |
From: Gordon Graham (Eight Theories of Ethics [2004], Ch.7) | |
A reaction: This seems right, but must obviously be applied with caution, as when people are drowned attempting hopeless rescues. The most valuable person in an earthquake may be the thinker, not the digger. |
5244 | For Pythagoreans, justice is simply treating all people the same [Pythagoras, by Aristotle] |
Full Idea: Some even think that what is just is simple reciprocity, as the Pythagoreans maintained, because they defined justice simply as having done to one what one has done to another. | |
From: report of Pythagoras (reports [c.530 BCE], 28) by Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics 1132b22 | |
A reaction: One wonders what Pythagoreans made of slavery. Aristotle argues that officials, for example, have superior rights. The Pythagorean idea makes fairness the central aspect of justice, and that must at least be partly right. |