66 ideas
| 7500 | Early Greeks cared about city and companions; later Greeks concentrated on the self [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: For early Greeks their techné for life was to take care of the city, of companions (see Plato's 'Alcibiades'). Taking care of yourself for its own sake starts with the Epicureans, and becomes very general in Seneca and Pliny. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (On the Genealogy of Ethics [1983], p.260) | |
| A reaction: In Aristotle the two strike me as ideally balanced - to become a wonderful citizen by looking after yourself. Presumably the destruction of the city-states by Alexander took away the motive, and the aim became more private. |
| 15045 | The big issue since the eighteenth century has been: what is Reason? Its effect, limits and dangers? [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: I think the central issue of philosophy and critical thought since the eighteenth century has always been, still is, and will, I hope, remain the question: What is this Reason that we use? What are its historical effects? What are its limits and dangers? | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Space, Knowledge and Power (interview) [1982], p.358) | |
| A reaction: One can hardly deny the fairness of the question, but I hope that won't prevent us from trying to be rational. Maybe logicians do a better job of clarifying reason than the political and historical speculations of Foucault? |
| 7426 | Critical philosophy is what questions domination at every level [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: In its critical aspect, philosophy is that which calls into question domination at every level | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Ethics of the Concern for Self as Freedom [1984], p.300) | |
| A reaction: A very French view of the subject. It is tempting to say that they had their adolescent outburst in 1789, and it is time to grow up. With rights come responsibilities... |
| 7423 | Philosophy and politics are fundamentally linked [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: The relationship between philosophy and politics is permanent and fundamental. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Ethics of the Concern for Self as Freedom [1984], p.293) | |
| A reaction: This idea is one of the biggest gulfs between continental and analytical philosophy. Many aspects of philosophy are turning out to be much more social than analytical philosophers might have thought - epistemology, for example. |
| 15038 | Structuralism systematically abstracted the event from sciences, and even from history [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: One can agree that structuralism formed the most systematic effort to evacuate the concept of the event, not only from ethnology but from a whole series of other sciences and in the extreme case from history. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Truth and Power (interview) [1976], p.115) | |
| A reaction: 'Abstract' might be a better word than 'evacuate'. In that sense, this at least seems to have it the right way round - that structure can be abstracted, but in no way can a structure be prior to its components (pace Ladyman, Shapiro etc). |
| 7420 | When logos controls our desires, we have actually become the logos [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: Plutarch says if you have mastered principles then logos will silence your desires like a master silencing a dog - in which case the logos functions without intervention on your part - you have become the logos, or the logos has become you. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Ethics of the Concern for Self as Freedom [1984], p.286) | |
| A reaction: If you believe that logos is pure reason, you might be quite happy with this, but if you thought it was a cultural construct, you might feel that you had been cunningly enslaved. If I ask 'what is 7+6?', logos interrupts me to give the answer. |
| 21945 | Foucault originally felt that liberating reason had become an instrument of domination [Foucault, by Gutting] |
| Full Idea: In early work Foucault writes in opposition to the Enlightenment. ..The reason that was supposed to liberate us has itself become the primary instrument of our domination. ..His heroisation of the mad aims to set up an alternative to the regime of reason. | |
| From: report of Michel Foucault (works [1978]) by Gary Gutting - Foucault: a very short introduction 7 | |
| A reaction: Adorno and Horkheimer are cited as background. I hear Spinoza turning in his grave, because right reason could never be an instrument of domination. |
| 15044 | 'Truth' is the procedures for controlling which statements are acceptable [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: 'Truth' is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation, and operation of statements. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Truth and Power (interview) [1976], p.132) | |
| A reaction: Foucault is not absurdly relativist about this, but I don't think I agree, even in his terms. In a sexually prudish culture, blunt sexual truths are clearly true to everyone, but totally unacceptable. Society shudders when unacceptable truths are spoken. |
| 15042 | Truth doesn't arise from solitary freedom, but from societies with constraints [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: Truth isn't a reward of free spirits, the child of protracted solitude, nor the privilege of those who have succeeded in liberating themselves. Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Truth and Power (interview) [1976], p.131) | |
| A reaction: This obviously has a degree of truth in many areas of human belief, but I just don't buy it as an account of Newton's researches into optics, or Lavoisier's chemistry. Politics is more involved once big money is required. |
| 16062 | A necessary relation between fact-levels seems to be a further irreducible fact [Lynch/Glasgow] |
| Full Idea: It seems unavoidable that the facts about logically necessary relations between levels of facts are themselves logically distinct further facts, irreducible to the microphysical facts. | |
| From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], C) | |
| A reaction: I'm beginning to think that rejecting every theory of reality that is proposed by carefully exposing some infinite regress hidden in it is a rather lazy way to do philosophy. Almost as bad as rejecting anything if it can't be defined. |
| 16061 | If some facts 'logically supervene' on some others, they just redescribe them, adding nothing [Lynch/Glasgow] |
| Full Idea: Logical supervenience, restricted to individuals, seems to imply strong reduction. It is said that where the B-facts logically supervene on the A-facts, the B-facts simply re-describe what the A-facts describe, and the B-facts come along 'for free'. | |
| From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], C) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be taking 'logically' to mean 'analytically'. Presumably an entailment is logically supervenient on its premisses, and may therefore be very revealing, even if some people think such things are analytic. |
| 16060 | Nonreductive materialism says upper 'levels' depend on lower, but don't 'reduce' [Lynch/Glasgow] |
| Full Idea: The root intuition behind nonreductive materialism is that reality is composed of ontologically distinct layers or levels. …The upper levels depend on the physical without reducing to it. | |
| From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], B) | |
| A reaction: A nice clear statement of a view which I take to be false. This relationship is the sort of thing that drives people fishing for an account of it to use the word 'supervenience', which just says two things seem to hang out together. Fluffy materialism. |
| 16064 | The hallmark of physicalism is that each causal power has a base causal power under it [Lynch/Glasgow] |
| Full Idea: Jessica Wilson (1999) says what makes physicalist accounts different from emergentism etc. is that each individual causal power associated with a supervenient property is numerically identical with a causal power associated with its base property. | |
| From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], n 11) | |
| A reaction: Hence the key thought in so-called (serious, rather than self-evident) 'emergentism' is so-called 'downward causation', which I take to be an idle daydream. |
| 15037 | Why does knowledge appear in sudden bursts, and not in a smooth continuous development? [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: How is it that at certain moments and in certain orders of knowledge, there are these sudden take-offs, these hastenings of evolution, these transformations which fail to correspond to the calm, continuist image that is normally accredited? | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Truth and Power (interview) [1976], p.114) | |
| A reaction: The answer is either in the excitement of a new motivation, which may concern power, or may concern pure understanding - or else it is just that one discovery brings a host of others along with (like discovering DNA). |
| 21942 | Foucault challenges knowledge in psychology and sociology, not in the basic sciences [Foucault, by Gutting] |
| Full Idea: Foucault's project is to question quite specific claims to cognitive authority, made by many psychologists and social scientists. He has not problems with other domains, such as mathematics and the basic sciences. | |
| From: report of Michel Foucault (works [1978]) by Gary Gutting - Foucault: a very short introduction 5 | |
| A reaction: Nowadays we describe his target as Epistemic Injustice (see book of that title by Miranda Fricker). |
| 7424 | Saying games of truth were merely power relations would be a horrible exaggeration [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: When I talk about power relations and games of truth, I am absolutely not saying that games of truth are just concealed power relations - that would be a horrible exaggeration. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Ethics of the Concern for Self as Freedom [1984], p.296) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a denial of the more absurd forms of relativism. I think there is an interesting convergence between this kind of continental thinking, and the social view of justification found in the later work of Alvin Goldman. |
| 21941 | Unlike Marxists, Foucault explains thought internally, without deference to conscious ideas [Foucault, by Gutting] |
| Full Idea: Unlike Marxists, Foucault's project is to offer an internal account of human thinking, without assuming a privileged status for the conscious content of that thought. | |
| From: report of Michel Foucault (works [1978]) by Gary Gutting - Foucault: a very short introduction 4 | |
| A reaction: His project is historical. Personally I resent anyone who claims to understand my thought better than I do. I suppose my intellectual duty is to read Foucault, and see (honestly) whether his project applies to me. |
| 20589 | Maybe a person's true self is their second-order desires [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: A second-order desire is a desire about what kind of desires you want to have. ....Some philosophers have argued that we should associate a person's second-order desires with her 'true self'. | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 2 'What is') | |
| A reaction: Presumably the buck stops at these second-order desires, though we might request an account of their origin. 'What sort of person do I want to be?' looks like a third-order question. I don't even want to be a saint. Self is nothing to do with desires? |
| 7422 | A subject is a form which can change, in (say) political or sexual situations [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: The subject is not a substance but a form, which is not always identical to itself. You do not have the same relation to yourself when you go to vote and when you seek to fulfil your desires in a sexual relationship. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Ethics of the Concern for Self as Freedom [1984], p.290) | |
| A reaction: I don't think I believe this. If it were true, the concept of 'sexual politics' would mean nothing to me. A brutal or sympathetic nature is likely to express itself in both situations. |
| 22235 | Feelings are not unchanging, but have a history (especially if they are noble) [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: We believe that feelings are immutable, but every sentiment, particularly the most noble and disinterested, has a history. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Nietzsche, Genealogy, History [1971], p.86), quoted by Johanna Oksala - How to Read Foucault 5 | |
| A reaction: This is the sort of remark that makes me think Foucault is worth reading. Aristotle thought you could teach correct feelings. That implies that you can also teach incorrect feelings. |
| 21939 | The author function of any text is a plurality of selves [Foucault, by Gutting] |
| Full Idea: Foucault maintains that for any 'authored' text a plurality of selves fulfils the author function. | |
| From: report of Michel Foucault (works [1978]) by Gary Gutting - Foucault: a very short introduction 2 | |
| A reaction: This is a completely different concept of a 'self' from the one normally found in this database. I would call it the sociological concept of self, as something changing with context. So how many selves is 'Jane Austen'? |
| 7419 | Ethics is the conscious practice of freedom [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: What is ethics, if not the practice of freedom, the conscious [réfléchie] practice of freedom? | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Ethics of the Concern for Self as Freedom [1984], p.284) | |
| A reaction: Makes Foucault sound very existentialist. I'm not sure I understand this kind of remark, given that serial killers seem to be exceptionally good at 'practising their freedom'. However, the idea is akin to Kant's notion of a truly good will (Idea 3710). |
| 7501 | Why couldn't a person's life become a work of art? [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: Couldn't everyone's life become a work of art? Why should the lamp or the house be an art object, but not our life? | |
| From: Michel Foucault (On the Genealogy of Ethics [1983], p.261) | |
| A reaction: This sounds wonderfully appealing until I try to think how I would implement it. The Augustine move, from sinner to saint, is a possibility, but there is nothing good about sin. The Christian ideal, of colossal self-sacrifice, can be very heroic. |
| 7498 | Greeks and early Christians were much more concerned about food than about sex [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: It is interesting to see the very slow move from the privileging of food, which was overwhelming in Greece, to interest in sex. Early Christians (and rules for monks) were more concerned with food. Sex only dominates from the seventeenth century. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (On the Genealogy of Ethics [1983], p.253) | |
| A reaction: Certainly the Greeks were obsessed with food, and the Sicilian Greeks were notorious for their love of it. Is it simply that food becomes more plentiful, or does female freedom lead to more sex? Puritanism hates the greatest pleasures the most. |
| 20583 | If maximising pleasure needs measurement, so does fulfilling desires [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: Just as hedonists need a way to compare pleasures, so desire fulfilment theorists need a way to compare the fulfilment of desires. | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 1 'Is happiness') | |
| A reaction: A nice point. We picture desire fulfilment as just ticking it off when it is achieved, but if your desire is for a really nice house, the achievement of that can be pretty vague. |
| 20584 | Desire satisfaction as the ideal is confused, because we desire what we judge to be good [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: Critics of desire satisfaction theory argue that it gets things backward. We desire things because we already think they are good in some way. Desire theory puts it the other way round. | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 1 'Is happiness') | |
| A reaction: Not persuasive. It looks to me as if skiing is a spendid pastime, but I have no desire to do it. More exercise would even be a good for me, but I don't desire that either. Indeed, right now I desire more cake, which is very naughty. |
| 20598 | In a democracy, which 'people' are included in the decision process? [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: In any democratic state, who are 'the people' who get to rule themselves? That is, who gets to participate in the public decision process, and who is excluded? | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 5 'What is') | |
| A reaction: In the modern world this may be clear-cut when a democracy gets started, but people move around so much more that every democracy is faced with new types of residents. Then there is age, criminality, mental health... |
| 20614 | People often have greater attachment to ethnic or tribal groups than to the state [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: Some states have a number of different ethnic or tribal groups. Often these attachments are much stronger than the attachment people feel towards the state. | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 6 'Membership') | |
| A reaction: In Britain I fine people torn between attachments to the UK and to England or Wales or Scotland or NI. Attachments to football clubs are much stronger than most patriotism. Or attachment to a particular locality. Does it matter? |
| 21940 | Nature is not the basis of rights, but the willingness to risk death in asserting them [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: The decision 'to prefer the risk of death to the certainty of having to obey' is the 'last anchor point' for any assertion of rights, 'one more solid and closer to the experience than "natural rights"'. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (works [1978], EW III:449) | |
| A reaction: I recall a group of Afrikaan men going to face certain death, rather than give up apartheid. |
| 20596 | For global justice, adopt rules without knowing which country you will inhabit [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: Imagine a new original position where we adopted rules for global justice without knowing which country we would inhabit. | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 4 'Cosmopolitan') | |
| A reaction: Nice question. North Korea!! Rawls says it is only within a nation, because there is a co-operative enterprise going on. That is, I presume, that the choosers involved are a 'people'. See Kant's 'Perpetual Peace' for an alternative. |
| 20593 | The veil of ignorance ensures both fairness and unanimity [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: The veil of ignorance ensures that the original position is fair, but it also guarantees that agreement will be unanimous (which would be impossible if each person insisted that justice should match her own conception). | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 4 'Original') | |
| A reaction: Not clear about this. If I choose very cautiously, but others choose very riskily, and they win, why I should I fall in with their unanimity? That can only be if we agree to be unanimous in backing the result. Like a democratic election? |
| 15043 | Every society has a politics of truth, concerning its values, functions, prestige and mechanisms [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: Each society has its regime of truth, its 'general politics' of truth - the types of discourse it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms for distinguishing; the means of sanctioning it; the values in its acquisition; the status of its keepers. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Truth and Power (interview) [1976], p.131) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This idea is appropriately filed under 'society' rather than under 'truth'. Foucault knows there is a genuine truth beneath the complex social story. |
| 20608 | Unjust institutions may be seen as just; are they legitimate if just but seen as unjust? [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: Legitimacy and perceived legitimacy do not always go together: people can believe that their institutions are just, but they may be wrong. Is the reverse also possible? Can institutions be legitimate if people believe they are not? | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 5 'What are') | |
| A reaction: Nice thoughts. An institution cannot be just merely because it is seen that way (if someone gets away with rigging an election). If they are just but seen as unjust, I presume they are legitimate (which is objective), but disfunctional. |
| 15040 | Marxists denounced power as class domination, but never analysed its mechanics [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: Power in Western capitalism was denounced by the Marxists as class domination; but the mechanics of power in themselves were never analysed. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Truth and Power (interview) [1976], p.117) | |
| A reaction: This seems to pinpoint Foucault's distinctive contribution to political thought, and it makes him one of the most interesting thinkers in the area. It is a good approach to history, but also to the role of power as a background to conventional thought. |
| 15041 | Power doesn't just repress, but entices us with pleasure, artefacts, knowledge and discourse [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: If power was only repressive, would we obey it? What makes power accepted is the fact …that it also traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Truth and Power (interview) [1976], p.120) | |
| A reaction: Once you present 'power' this way, it permeates so deeply into human activity that it is in danger of becoming a mere triviality of social analysis. Is every conversation that ever took place actually a power struggle? |
| 8991 | Foucault can't accept that power is sometimes decent and benign [Foucault, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: It became impossible for Foucault to accept that power is sometimes decent and benign. | |
| From: report of Michel Foucault (Power/Knowledge [1980]) by Roger Scruton - Upon Nothing: Swansea lecture p.12 | |
| A reaction: Actually Idea 7425 suggests that Foucault has no dream of eliminating power, but he does seem to be utterly in favour of maximum autonomy, and to regard paternalism as inherently evil. What sort of parent would Foucault have been? |
| 7425 | The aim is not to eliminate power relations, but to reduce domination [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: The problem is not to dissolve power relations in a utopia of transparent communications, but to acquire the rules of law, the management techniques, the morality, the practice of the self, that allows games of power with minimum domination. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Ethics of the Concern for Self as Freedom [1984], p.298) | |
| A reaction: If you are a democrat it is hard to disagree with this, though I am still unclear why being dominated should rank as a total disaster. A healthy personal relationship might involve domination. 'Management techniques' is interesting. |
| 20597 | If winning elections depends on wealth, we have plutocracy instead of democracy [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: If we let people's influence on election outcomes depend on their wealth, then we don't have a democracy any more. We have a plutocracy, where the people who have all the wealth have all the political power too. | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 5 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: [see Michael Walzer on 'complex equality'] This is startling true in the United States, but still somewhat true elsewhere. Being wealthy enough to control the media is the key in modern democracies. |
| 22236 | The big question of the Renaissance was how to govern everything, from the state to children [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: How to govern was one of the fundamental question of the fifteenth and sixteenth century. ...How to govern children, the poor and beggars, how to govern the family, a house, how to govern armies, different groups, cities, states, and govern one's self. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (What is Critique? [1982], p.28), quoted by Johanna Oksala - How to Read Foucault 9 | |
| A reaction: A nice example of Foucault showing how things we take for granted (techniques of control) have been slowly learned, and then taught as standard. Of course, the Romans knew how to govern an army. |
| 21947 | Power is localised, so we either have totalitarian centralisation, or local politics [Foucault, by Gutting] |
| Full Idea: Foucault's analysis suggests that meaningful revolution, hence genuine liberation, is impossible: the only alternative to the modern net of micro-centres of power is totalitatian domination. Hence his politics, even when revolutionary, is always local. | |
| From: report of Michel Foucault (Discipline and Punish [1977]) by Gary Gutting - Foucault: a very short introduction 8 | |
| A reaction: It is hard to disagree with this. |
| 20606 | Epistemic theories defend democracy as more likely to produce the right answer [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: According to epistemic theories of democracy, democratic outcomes are justified because they are more likely to be true or right than the choice of the individual. | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 5 'Do the people') | |
| A reaction: Bear in mind Condorcet's proof that this claim is only correct if individuals have a better than 50% chance of being right, which may be so on obvious things, but is implausible for decisions like going to war. |
| 20600 | Which areas of public concern should be decided democratically, and which not? [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: Are there areas which are excluded from democratic decision making? Or should all issues of public concern be decided through a democratic process? | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 5 'What is') | |
| A reaction: Crucially, are we discussing direct democracy, or representative democracy? In Britain all major decisions are made by the cabinet. Our representatives appoint leaders, who then appoint the decision makers. Judiciary is non-democratic. |
| 20609 | If several losing groups would win if they combine, a runoff seems called for [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: It is possible that the people who supported several losing candidates might have joined forces and had a majority. For that reason, many countries have a runoff election. | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 5 'Does democracy') | |
| A reaction: The problem is that there is no rationale as to who stands in an election. If their views are evenly spread, the first result seems OK. If there are five left-wingers and one right-winger, a runoff seems to be produce a more just result. |
| 20605 | Rights as interests (unlike rights as autonomy) supports mandatory voting [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: If rights concern people's interests, that might support mandatory voting, but if rights rely on protecting autonomy that might oppose it. | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 5 'Interest') | |
| A reaction: I approach it from the other end, and am inclined to support mandatory voting, which suggests I am more concerned about interests than about autonomy. |
| 20599 | How should democratic votes be aggregated? Can some person's votes count for more? [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: A major question for democracy is how are the contributions of different people aggregated into a collective decision? Must votes have equal weight and consideration, or is it permissible for different people's votes to count differently? | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 5 'What is') | |
| A reaction: Mill hoped that wise and knowledgeable people would have a strong influence over the others, but we have recently moved into the post-truth era, where we are swamped by bogus facts. Does that strengthen the case for elite voting? |
| 20601 | Discussion before voting should be an essential part of democracy [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: According to advocates of deliberative democracy, people should have an opportunity to talk and reason with one another before votes are cast. | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 5 'Who gets') | |
| A reaction: This is now done on Facebook and Twitter, but no one thinks that is sufficient. We will never again persuade most people to actually meet up and discuss issues. |
| 20613 | We have obligations to our family, even though we didn't choose its members [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: Many of our most important obligations are things we did not consent to. If you think you have obligations to your family, did you choose to have them as family members? | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 6 'Gratitude') | |
| A reaction: A question that gets close to the heart of the communitarian ideal, I think. We choose to have children, and we bring them up, but even then we don't choose who our children are. |
| 20586 | Free speech does not include the right to shout 'Fire!' in a crowded theatre [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: Oliver Wendell Holmes (in 1919) noted that freedom of speech does not include the right to shout 'Fire!' in a crowded theatre. | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 1 'Conflict') | |
| A reaction: The point here is that such irresponsible free speech does not even require legislation, and there is probably already some law under which the perpetrator could be prosecuted. |
| 21946 | Prisons gradually became our models for schools, hospitals and factories [Foucault, by Gutting] |
| Full Idea: Foucault's thesis is that disciplinary techniques introduced for criminals became the model for other modern sites of control (schools, hospitals, factories), so that prison discipline pervades all of society. | |
| From: report of Michel Foucault (Discipline and Punish [1977]) by Gary Gutting - Foucault: a very short introduction 8 | |
| A reaction: Someone recently designed Foucault Monopoly, where every location is a prison. All tightly controlled organisations, such as a medieval monastery, or the Roman army, will inevitably share many features. |
| 7418 | The idea of liberation suggests there is a human nature which has been repressed [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: I am somewhat suspicious of the notion of liberation, because one runs the risk of falling back on the idea that there is a human nature, that has been concealed or alienated by mechanisms of repression. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Ethics of the Concern for Self as Freedom [1984], p.282) | |
| A reaction: Personally I think there is (to some extent) a human nature, and that it fails to flourish if it gets too much 'liberation. However, the world contains a lot more repression than liberation, so we should all be fans of liberty. |
| 20587 | Most people want equality because they want a flourishing life [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: If we want equality so much, we find that it is often because they think of equality as a prerequisite for a certain kind of flourishing life. | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 1 'Happiness') | |
| A reaction: Most writers seem to agree that we don't want equality for its own sake. In what respects do we want to be equal? Why not equal in hair colour? Hence it looks as if equality drops out. I would aim to derive it from the social virtue of respect. |
| 20591 | If there is no suffering, wealth inequalities don't matter much [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: It is hard to get worked up over wealth inequalities if no one is suffering from them! | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 3 'Deprivation') | |
| A reaction: The more the poorer group resent the inequality, the more they suffer. When is resenting huge inequalities in wealth justified? It depends how the big wealth was obtained. |
| 20602 | Some rights are 'claims' that other people should act in a certain way [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: A 'claim right' is one in which the person asserting the right makes a claim on others to act or not act in a certain way. | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 5 'Claim') | |
| A reaction: There seems to be a crucial distinction between rights which entail obligations on some individual or institution, and those which don't. Contracts (including employment contracts) generate duties on the parties. |
| 20604 | Choice theory says protecting individual autonomy is basic (but needs to cover infants and animals) [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: Choice theorists hold that rights protect our rights to make autonomous judgements, because our basic right to autonomy must be protected, The theory has a problem with people unable to exercise autonomy (such as infants and animals). | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 5 'Interest') | |
| A reaction: The problem of infants and animals looks like a decisive objection to me. We obviously don't protect dangerous or hostile autonomous judgements, and it is not clear why protecting stupid autonomy should be basic. |
| 20603 | One theory (fairly utilitarian) says rights protect interests (but it needs to cover trivial interests) [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: Interest theorists hold that rights serve to protect people's important interests. This is closely allied with utilitarian values. The theory has difficulty accounting for relatively trivial interests (like owning a lemonade you bought). | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 5 'Interest') | |
| A reaction: This sounds more plausible than choice theory (Idea 20604). It is obvious that infants must have rights. The lemonade problem seems to demand some sort of rule utilitarianism. Sidgwick looks promising. Rights can also be moral claims. |
| 20607 | Having a right does not entail further rights needed to implement it [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: Possession of a right (such as self-defence) does not always imply that one has additional rights to whatever they need (such as a handgun) in order to exercise the first right. | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 5 'Is there') | |
| A reaction: The right to life entails a right to food (but not to a banquet), so it is a stronger right than self-defence. I have no obligation to let you defend yourself against me, but I may have an obligation to feed you if you are starving. (Distinction here?) |
| 20612 | If being subject to the law resembles a promise, we are morally obliged to obey it [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: One of the more common reasons people will give for having a moral obligation to obey the law is consent. ...It rests on the intuitively appealing idea of an analogy with a promise. | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 6 'Consent') | |
| A reaction: [They cite Locke and Jefferson] In Locke's case it has to be a 'tacit' promise, which is more realistic. In real life we have problems with people who 'said' they would do something. They are often accused of promising, when they didn't. |
| 20611 | If others must obey laws that we like, we must obey laws that they like? [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: If we expect others to obey the laws we think just, do we have an obligation to obey the laws that other people think just? | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 6 'What should') | |
| A reaction: Depends whether you have to be consistent about everything. I'm picky about which laws I obey, but I'm not going to tell you that, in case you get the same idea. Free riders. |
| 20610 | Instead of against natural law, we might assess unjust laws against the values of the culture [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: Do we need natural law theory in order to make sense of the idea that laws can be unjust? Perhaps not: we might consider whether laws are consistent with the values of the culture or society where they apply. | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 5 'Unjust') | |
| A reaction: So were the wicked laws passed by the Nazis consistent with 1930s German culture? Impossible to say. |
| 20617 | How should the punishment fit the crime (for stealing chickens?) [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: One criticism of the retributive theory of punishment is that it is hard to know how to fit the punishment to the crime. What punishment should correspond to stealing chickens? | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 7 'Rationales') | |
| A reaction: The ancient world was more keen on restitution for such crimes, which makes much better sense. Buy them some chickens, plus twenty percent. |
| 21116 | Power is used to create identities and ways of life for other people [Foucault, by Shorten] |
| Full Idea: For Foucault power is less about repressing people or issuing commands, and more about producing identities and ways of living. | |
| From: report of Michel Foucault (works [1978]) by Andrew Shorten - Contemporary Political Theory 01 | |
| A reaction: I take this to be the culmination of the Hegelian view of a person, as largely created by social circumstances rather than by biology. I'm beginning to think that Foucault may be a very important philosopher - although elusive. |
| 20615 | Just wars: resist aggression, done on just cause, proportionate, last resort, not futile, legal [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: Classical just war theory: resist aggression; just cause must be the real reason; must be proportionate; last resort; not futile; made by a nation's authority. | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 9 'Ius ad') | |
| A reaction: [My squashed summary of Tuckness and Wolf] A very helpful list, from Cicero, Augustine and Aquinas. So where is the sticking point for pacifists? Presumably it is never the last resort, and aggression should not answer aggression. |
| 20616 | During wars: proportional force, fair targets, fair weapons, safe prisoners, no reprisals [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: Classical just war theory during a war: force must be proportional; only legitimate targets; avoid prohibited weapons; safety for prisoners of war; no reprisals. | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 9 'In the conduct') | |
| A reaction: What of massacre if a besieged city refuses to surrender? It was commonplace, and sometimes the only way to achieve victory. What if the enemy breaks all the rules? Nice rules though. At the heart of civilisation. |
| 20620 | If minority views are accepted in debate, then religious views must be accepted [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: It is unfair to exclude religious arguments from the public square because they are not accepted by everyone, unless other views that are not accepted by everyone are also excluded. | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 9 'fairly') | |
| A reaction: Raises the obvious problems of a huge group in the grips of a fairly crazy view, and a tiny group (e.g. specialist scientists) in possession of a correct view. You can't just assess it on the size of the group. You can be wrong but reasonable. |
| 15039 | History lacks 'meaning', but it can be analysed in terms of its struggles [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: History has no 'meaning', but it is not absurd or incoherent. On the contrary, it is intelligible and should be susceptible of analysis down to the smallest detail - but this in accordance with the intelligibility of struggles, of strategies and tactics. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Truth and Power (interview) [1976], p.116) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be an essentially Marxist view, in which one teases out the dialectical processes of any period. I can't think of a better way to approach history. The alternative is to only recount one side of the struggle, which must be bad history. |
| 20619 | Is abortion the ending of a life, or a decision not to start one? [Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: One group may consider abortion as a decision to end a life, while another may regard it as the decision not to start one. | |
| From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 8 'Hard I') | |
| A reaction: An early foetus is 'life', but is it 'a life'? Is a blade of grass 'a life'? Is a cell in a body 'a life'? |