43 ideas
| 6814 | Instead of prayer and charity, sinners pursue vain disputes and want their own personal scripture [Mohammed] |
| Full Idea: The sinners will say 'we never prayed or fed the hungry. We engaged in vain disputes and denied the Day of Reckoning'. Indeed, each one of them demands a scripture of his own to be unrolled before him. | |
| From: Mohammed (The Koran [c.622], Ch.74) | |
| A reaction: The implication seems to be that most disputes are 'vain'. The charge that everyone wants a 'scripture of his own' is a nice challenge to the world of liberal education, where we are all enjoined to pursue our personalised routes to our own truth. |
| 8628 | I hold that algebra and number are developments of logic [Jevons] |
| Full Idea: I hold that algebra is a highly developed logic, and number but logical discrimination. | |
| From: William S. Jevons (The Principles of Science [1879], p.156), quoted by Gottlob Frege - Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) §15 | |
| A reaction: Thus Frege shows that logicism was an idea that was in the air before he started writing. Riemann's geometry and Boole's logic presumably had some influence here. |
| 6828 | You may break off a treaty if you fear treachery from your ally [Mohammed] |
| Full Idea: If you fear treachery from any of your allies, you may retaliate by breaking off your treaty with them; Allah does not love the treacherous. | |
| From: Mohammed (The Koran [c.622], Ch.8) | |
| A reaction: I do not think this is good advice. Everybody fears treachery, but if we all acted on that fear human relationships and society would immediately collapse. If anyone thought this was good advice, I would not want to make a treaty with them. |
| 6823 | Repay evil with good and your enemies will become friends (though this is hard) [Mohammed] |
| Full Idea: Requite evil with good, and he who is your enemy will become your dearest friend; but none will attain this save those who endure with fortitude and are greatly favoured by Allah. | |
| From: Mohammed (The Koran [c.622], Ch.41) | |
| A reaction: This seems opposed to some of the more vengeful remarks in the Koran. It strikes me as good common sense, since vengeance only seems to breed counter-vengeance. It doesn't carry the full altruistic commitment, though, of unrewarded love. |
| 6826 | Allah rewards those who are devout, sincere, patient, humble, charitable, chaste, and who fast [Mohammed] |
| Full Idea: Allah will bestow forgiveness and a rich reward on those, both men and women, who are devout, sincere, patient, humble, charitable and chaste; who fast and are ever mindful of Allah. | |
| From: Mohammed (The Koran [c.622], Ch.33) | |
| A reaction: Most people would still agree that all of these are virtues, though other lists will show interesting virtues that are not mentioned here, and many on this list seem overrated in the modern pantheon of virtues. |
| 6822 | Those who avenge themselves when wronged incur no guilt [Mohammed] |
| Full Idea: Those who avenge themselves when wronged incur no guilt. | |
| From: Mohammed (The Koran [c.622], Ch.42) | |
| A reaction: Compare Ideas 1659 (Protagoras), 346 (Socrates), 6288 (Jesus), and 4286 (Scruton!). In the light of those ideas, this comment in the Koran strikes me as coming from an older and less civilized world. |
| 23125 | Most good social changes are incremental, rather than revolutionary [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: More permanent positive social change is made incrementally rather than by revolutionary transformation. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard liberal response to revolution. Revolutionaries obviously consider such a claim to be very naïve, and a failure to grasp how deep the changes need to go. |
| 23126 | Conservatives often want peace, prosperity and tolerance, but not social fairness [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Many conservatives want their world to be peaceful, properous, and pluralist, just as liberals do, but they don't particularly care that it be fair. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: Every conservative will have a sense of what is fair (such as appropriate punishments, and keeping of contracts), but they are more inclined to think that fairness must be fought for by individuals, not imposed by governments. |
| 23132 | Conservatives believe obedience and rank are essential to social order [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The idea that the appearance of submission and obedience and rank are essential to order is at the heart of the conservative ideal. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: [He has just quoted Edmund Burke writing of Marie Antoinette] I once heard Richard Hare say that he thought social order would be best modelled on the army. A colleague once told me that obedience is a prime duty of a school teacher. |
| 23128 | The opposite of liberalism is dogmatism [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The opposite of liberalism is not conservatism but dogmatism. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: Nice. It pinpoints the liberal opposition to both extremes of normal politics. It might make anarchists their allies, though! |
| 23142 | People are fallible, so liberalism tries to distribute power [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Liberalism makes the idea of fallibility into a political practice by trying not to have too much power concentrated in one place or part of the system. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: There is a potential inefficiency and failure to focus on key goals implicit in this aim. It may be a good idea for a peacetime democracy, but a terrible idea for a wartime army. To stop corruption, don't let anyone do anything? |
| 23143 | Liberals have tried very hard to build a conscience into their institutions [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: What liberalism can say on its own behalf is that no system of power in human history has tried harder to insert a corrective conscience into its institutions. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: What we are learning in recent years is that wonderful liberal institutions can be quietly eroded by the forces of darkness, once those forces have sufficient control of the media to hide what they are doing. The 'rule of law' is wobbling. |
| 23141 | Left-wingers are inconsistent in their essentialist descriptions of social groups [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: A criticism of the left is that it is essentialist at some moments, and wildly anti-essentialist at others. We can call this opportunistic essentialism. Gender is fluid - except for transgender kids. Race is a construction - except for white races. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Interesting. Gopnik's solution seems to be to abandon all social essentialism as wicked. In this context he is probably right, but I am firmly committed to the idea that many entities in the world have essential natures. 'Bourgeois'. |
| 23124 | Liberal community is not blood ties or tradition, but shared choices, and sympathy for the losers [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The liberal idea of community is not one, as it is for many conservatives, of blood ties or traditional authority. It rest on the idea of shared choices …including even a sense of sympathy for those caught on the losing side of the argument. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: The key point is that most liberals (other than extreme libertarians) have a strong sense of community, contrary to the standard criticisms offered by communitarians. |
| 23127 | Liberal community includes flight from the family, into energetic reforming groups [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Where conservatives believe in the renewal of traditional community, liberals believe as well in the flight from family and tradition into new kinds of communal order. …It is an idea of assembling confidence and energies for reform. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: He cites Greenwich Village as an example. This suggests that his vision is a little narrow. His communities are for radicals who flee to join like minds in big cities. Politics must care about community for those left behind. Pubs, sport and pets. |
| 23138 | Modern left-wingers criticise liberalism's control of culture [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Most left-wing critiques of liberalism now turn more often on its cultural power and its cultural illusions. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: As opposed to older Marxists critiques of the exploitation of workers. This is certainly fertile ground for interesting studies of our culture. It is very hard to grasp the influence had by the endless stories we expose ourselves to. |
| 23129 | Right-wingers attack liberal faith in reason, left-wingers attack its faith in reform [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The right-wing critique of liberalism is largely an attack on its overreliance on reason; the left-wing one, mostly an attack on its false faith in reform. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: I doubt whether sensible liberals do rely too much on reason, though they do rely of scientific evidence (after peer review!). No one can doubt that lots of reforms have occurred, so it must be frustration with the very slow process. |
| 23133 | Cosmopolitan liberals lack national loyalty, and welcome excessive immigration [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Critics say liberal cosmopolitanism is indifference to national loyalty, making them easily contemplate going elsewhere and, worse still, welcoming in the world through unsifted immigration. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: There is certainly some truth in this. Not all liberals are so cosmopolitan, though. It is interesting to observe whether people who retire stay in their old community or move to somewhere quite new. |
| 23139 | Liberalism's attempt to be neutral and colour-blind erases cultural identities [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The 'colour-blind' universe of 'neutral' liberalism is actually an attempt to erase cultural identity and history. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is the modern critique of liberalism [centred on the Intersectionality of Bell Hooks or Kimberlé Crenshaw], which analyses alienated minorities, and their emphasis on their difference in response. It can lead to 'identity politics'. |
| 23135 | Classic Marxists see liberalism as the ideology of the bourgeoisie [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The classic Marxist account shows liberalism as merely the ideology of the bourgeoisie. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: The word 'merely' does an awful lot of work in philosohy! I suspect that 'bourgeoisie' is self-defining here - as the believers in liberalism - given that lots of Marxists emerge from the middle classes. |
| 23140 | Environmental disasters result not from capitalism, but from a general drive for growth [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: It is the drive for growth, not capitalism in particular, that makes environmental disasters happen. Those caused by the command economics of Eastern Europe were far greater than even the worst known in Western Europe. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: So the next question is whether you can have capitalism without a drive for growth. I would have thought not, given the role recycled profit plays in driving capitalism. Command economies are more easily swept away. |
| 23130 | Popular imperialism gives the poor the belief that their acts have world historical meaning [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Popular imperialism is the cosmopolitanism of the poor, the lever by which the small and impotent come to believe that their acts have world historical meaning. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: It is not only the poor who like imperialism. The focus of this popular attitude is the armed forces, and especially the army, where personal bravery is most obvious. The army gets strong support, no matter how dubious are its activities. |
| 23131 | Patriots love their place, but nationalists have a paranoid ethnic hostility [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The patriot loves his place and its cheeses; …the nationalist has not particular affection for the place, but employs his obsessive sense of encirclement and grievance on behalf of acts of ethnic vengeance. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: 'Vengeance' seems a bit strong. John Le Carré said nationalists are distinguished by the need to have enemies. Russia is particularly obsessed with 'encirclement'. |
| 23136 | Liberal free speech is actually paid speech [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: What liberals call free speech or a free press is invariably paid speech. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: He give this as the left-wing view of liberalism. The much-hated social media are a substantial breech in this tendency. Sales of newspapers are declining everywhere, so the battle is for television channels. |
| 23134 | A 'free' society implies a free market, which always produces predatory capitalism and inequalities [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: 'Free societies', as a matter of practical fact, always mean free-market societies - and free markets will never sponsor more than predatory capitalism. Inequalities always emerge. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is part of his account of left-wing objections to liberalism. The crux of the liberal view is a conviction that the worst of capitalism can be restrained. This began to look doubtful once huge multinational companies emerged. What to do? |
| 6833 | Punish theft in men or women by cutting off their hands [Mohammed] |
| Full Idea: As for the man or woman who is guilty of theft, cut off their hands to punish them for their crimes. | |
| From: Mohammed (The Koran [c.622], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: I find this shocking because it is irrevocable and offers no hope of redemption. It is particularly shocking that the text does not enjoin any caution about inflicting the punishment on the young, most of whom reform from thieving in later life. |
| 6832 | Killing a human, except as just punishment, is like killing all mankind [Mohammed] |
| Full Idea: We laid it down for the Israelites that whoever killed a human being, except as a punishment for murder or other wicked crimes, should be looked upon as though he had killed all mankind. | |
| From: Mohammed (The Koran [c.622], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: It seems inconceivable that the Koran could be used to justify indiscriminate terrorism, in the light of remarks such as this. |
| 6825 | Do not kill except for a just cause [Mohammed] |
| Full Idea: Do not kill except for a just cause. | |
| From: Mohammed (The Koran [c.622], Ch.25) | |
| A reaction: Slippery slope! I can see that pleasure would not be a just cause, and ensuring the entry of all humanity to paradise might be one, but I find the area in between a little unclear. The Koran seems to allow you to decide for yourself. |
| 6811 | Allah is lord of creation, compassionate, merciful, king of judgement-day [Mohammed] |
| Full Idea: Praise be to Allah, Lord of Creation, The Compassionate, the Merciful, King of Judgement-day! | |
| From: Mohammed (The Koran [c.622], Exord) | |
| A reaction: The Muslim concept of God confronts directly a clear theological difficulty, a difficulty faced by any judge: the conflict between mercy and justice. Christianity seems to emphasise mercy, and Islam emphasises justice. |
| 6819 | True believers see that Allah made the night for rest and the day to give light [Mohammed] |
| Full Idea: Do they not see how We have made the night for them to rest in and the day to give them light? Surely there are signs in this for true believers. | |
| From: Mohammed (The Koran [c.622], Ch.27) | |
| A reaction: The main traditional argument for God implied in the Koran is the design argument. It is clear from this that Islam will not be comfortable with Darwinian evolution, which implies we are 'designed' for the Earth, not the Earth for us. |
| 6818 | Allah cannot have begotten a son, as He is self-sufficient [Mohammed] |
| Full Idea: They say: 'Allah has begotten a son.' Allah forbid! Self-sufficient is He. | |
| From: Mohammed (The Koran [c.622], Ch.10) | |
| A reaction: This is quite persuasive, except that the point of Jesus is that he suffers a cruel death, and we are required to identify with God's parental feelings here, His involvement, which would not occur with the death of one of His prophets. |
| 6821 | I created mankind that it might worship Me [Mohammed] |
| Full Idea: I created mankind and the jinn in order that they might worship Me. | |
| From: Mohammed (The Koran [c.622], Ch.51) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a view common to all the monotheistic religions, with monasticism as its clearest (and most logical) outcome. Nietzsche is the most obvious opponent of this idea that the abasement of mankind is its highest ideal. |
| 6815 | Be patient with unbelievers, and leave them to the judgement of Allah [Mohammed] |
| Full Idea: Bear patiently with what the unbelievers say, and leave their company without recrimination; leave to Me those that deny the truth. | |
| From: Mohammed (The Koran [c.622], Ch.73) | |
| A reaction: This explicitly says Muslims should not attack infidels simply for their unbelief in Allah. |
| 6834 | Unbelievers try to interpret the ambiguous parts of the Koran, simply to create dissension [Mohammed] |
| Full Idea: Some of the verses of the Koran are precise in meaning - they are the foundations of the Book - and others are ambiguous. Disbelievers follow the ambiguous part, to create dissension by seeking to explain it. No one knows its meaning except Allah. | |
| From: Mohammed (The Koran [c.622], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: It is tempting to ask why some of the verses are ambiguous. The implication here is that they are a deliberate test for believers, like the apple in the garden of Eden. |
| 6817 | The Koran is certainly composed by Allah; no one could compose a chapter like it [Mohammed] |
| Full Idea: This Koran could not have been composed by any but Allah. It is beyond doubt from the Lord of the Creation. If they say: 'It is your own invention', say: 'Compose one chapter like it. Call on your false gods to help you!' | |
| From: Mohammed (The Koran [c.622], Ch.10) | |
| A reaction: I find this unpersuasive, firstly because I couldn't imitate the sonnets of Shakespeare either, and secondly because the authority of a text must be asserted outside the text, not within it. Scribble "this is a ten pound note" on a scrap of paper. |
| 6831 | He that kills a believer by design shall burn in Hell for ever [Mohammed] |
| Full Idea: He that kills a believer by design shall burn in Hell for ever. | |
| From: Mohammed (The Koran [c.622], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This would appear to make modern indiscriminate urban terrorism a damning sin for a Muslim. |
| 6829 | There shall be no compulsion in religion [Mohammed] |
| Full Idea: There shall be no compulsion in religion. | |
| From: Mohammed (The Koran [c.622], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to contradict some of the more aggressive remarks in the Koran, such as Idea 6827. As I read it, the three non-compelling ideas that lead to true religion in the Koran are desire for paradise, fear of punishment, and worship of divine design. |
| 6824 | Do not split into sects, exulting in separate beliefs [Mohammed] |
| Full Idea: Do not split up your religion into sects, each exulting in its own beliefs. | |
| From: Mohammed (The Koran [c.622], Ch.30) | |
| A reaction: This seems like good advice to a religion, but it is very difficult to retrace steps and reunite once it has happened. Which sect should make the greatest concessions? Must they both admit to being somewhat wrong? |
| 6827 | Make war on the unbelievers until Allah's religion reigns supreme [Mohammed] |
| Full Idea: Make war on the unbelievers until idolatry is no more and Allah's religion reigns supreme. | |
| From: Mohammed (The Koran [c.622], Ch.8) | |
| A reaction: This should presumably be seen in context, as a war speech written during a conflict, like Churchill 'fighting them on the beaches', which does not apply to modern German tourists. However, one worries about how fundamentalists might read it. |
| 6820 | The righteous shall dwell on couches in gardens, wedded to dark-eyed houris [Mohammed] |
| Full Idea: In fair gardens the righteous shall dwell in bliss, rejoicing in what their Lord will give them. They shall recline on couches ranged in rows. To dark-eyed houris We shall wed them. | |
| From: Mohammed (The Koran [c.622], Ch.52) | |
| A reaction: What I find distressing about this is that we have gradually worked out how young men can recline on couches in gardens with dark-eyed houris before death, and the Koran seems to depict it as the highest form of living. |
| 6812 | Heaven will be reclining on couches, eating fruit, attended by virgins [Mohammed] |
| Full Idea: All who dwell in heaven shall recline on couches lined with thick brocade, and within their reach will hang the fruits of gardens; they shall dwell with bashful virgins whom neither men nor jinnee will have touched before. | |
| From: Mohammed (The Koran [c.622], Ch.55) | |
| A reaction: In the seventh century this was more impressive than it seems now. I still find it sad (though understandable) that paradise must always be depicted in terms of physical pleasure. Aristotle wouldn't have yearned for such an immortality. |
| 6816 | The unbelievers shall drink boiling water [Mohammed] |
| Full Idea: As for the unbelievers, they shall drink boiling water. | |
| From: Mohammed (The Koran [c.622], Ch.10) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be presented not only as a threat to unbelievers, but also as a satisfaction to believers. |
| 6830 | Unbelievers will have their skin repeatedly burned off in hell [Mohammed] |
| Full Idea: Those that deny Our revelations We will burn in Hell-fire. No sooner will their skins be consumed that We shall give them other skins, so that they may truly taste Our scourge. Allah is mighty and wise. | |
| From: Mohammed (The Koran [c.622], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: Of all the accounts of hell in the Koran, this strikes me as the most alarming. I cannot think of a worse infliction, because here every nerve which can experience pain will suffer it (though the drinking of boiling water, Idea 6816, will make it worse). |