55 ideas
7500 | Early Greeks cared about city and companions; later Greeks concentrated on the self [Foucault] |
15045 | The big issue since the eighteenth century has been: what is Reason? Its effect, limits and dangers? [Foucault] |
7426 | Critical philosophy is what questions domination at every level [Foucault] |
7423 | Philosophy and politics are fundamentally linked [Foucault] |
15038 | Structuralism systematically abstracted the event from sciences, and even from history [Foucault] |
7420 | When logos controls our desires, we have actually become the logos [Foucault] |
21945 | Foucault originally felt that liberating reason had become an instrument of domination [Foucault, by Gutting] |
15044 | 'Truth' is the procedures for controlling which statements are acceptable [Foucault] |
15042 | Truth doesn't arise from solitary freedom, but from societies with constraints [Foucault] |
15037 | Why does knowledge appear in sudden bursts, and not in a smooth continuous development? [Foucault] |
21942 | Foucault challenges knowledge in psychology and sociology, not in the basic sciences [Foucault, by Gutting] |
7424 | Saying games of truth were merely power relations would be a horrible exaggeration [Foucault] |
16861 | A false theory could hardly rival the explanatory power of natural selection [Darwin] |
21941 | Unlike Marxists, Foucault explains thought internally, without deference to conscious ideas [Foucault, by Gutting] |
7422 | A subject is a form which can change, in (say) political or sexual situations [Foucault] |
22235 | Feelings are not unchanging, but have a history (especially if they are noble) [Foucault] |
23616 | Legal excuses are duress, ignorance, and diminished responsibility [McMahan] |
21939 | The author function of any text is a plurality of selves [Foucault, by Gutting] |
7419 | Ethics is the conscious practice of freedom [Foucault] |
7501 | Why couldn't a person's life become a work of art? [Foucault] |
7498 | Greeks and early Christians were much more concerned about food than about sex [Foucault] |
21940 | Nature is not the basis of rights, but the willingness to risk death in asserting them [Foucault] |
15043 | Every society has a politics of truth, concerning its values, functions, prestige and mechanisms [Foucault] |
15040 | Marxists denounced power as class domination, but never analysed its mechanics [Foucault] |
15041 | Power doesn't just repress, but entices us with pleasure, artefacts, knowledge and discourse [Foucault] |
8991 | Foucault can't accept that power is sometimes decent and benign [Foucault, by Scruton] |
7425 | The aim is not to eliminate power relations, but to reduce domination [Foucault] |
22236 | The big question of the Renaissance was how to govern everything, from the state to children [Foucault] |
21947 | Power is localised, so we either have totalitarian centralisation, or local politics [Foucault, by Gutting] |
21946 | Prisons gradually became our models for schools, hospitals and factories [Foucault, by Gutting] |
7418 | The idea of liberation suggests there is a human nature which has been repressed [Foucault] |
23606 | Liberty Rights are permissions, and Claim Rights are freedom from intervention [McMahan] |
21116 | Power is used to create identities and ways of life for other people [Foucault, by Shorten] |
23620 | A person or state may be attacked if they are responsible for an unjustified threat [McMahan] |
23598 | You (e.g. a police officer) are not liable to attack just because you pose a threat [McMahan] |
23594 | Wars can be unjust, despite a just cause, if they are unnecessary or excessive or of mixed cause [McMahan] |
23597 | Just war theory says all and only persons posing a threat are liable to attack [McMahan] |
23595 | The worst unjustified wars have no aim at all [McMahan] |
23619 | A defensive war is unjust, if it is responding to a just war [McMahan] |
23600 | Proportionality in fighting can't be judged independently of the justice of each side [McMahan] |
23603 | Can an army start an unjust war, and then fight justly to defend their own civilians? [McMahan] |
23611 | Soldiers cannot freely fight in unjust wars, just because they behave well when fighting [McMahan] |
23612 | The law of war differs from criminal law; attacking just combatants is immoral, but legal [McMahan] |
23617 | If the unjust combatants are morally excused they are innocent, so how can they be killed? [McMahan] |
23599 | You don't become a legitimate target, just because you violently resist an unjust attack [McMahan] |
23596 | If all combatants are seen as morally equal, that facilitates starting unjust wars [McMahan] |
23604 | Volunteer soldiers accept the risk of attack, but they don't agree to it, or to their deaths [McMahan] |
23608 | If being part of a big collective relieves soldiers of moral responsibility, why not the leaders too? [McMahan] |
23610 | If soldiers can't refuse to fight in unjust wars, can they choose to fight in just wars? [McMahan] |
23613 | Equality is both sides have permission, or both sides are justified, or one justified the other permitted [McMahan] |
23615 | Fighting unjustly under duress does not justify it, or permit it, but it may excuse it [McMahan] |
23605 | Soldiers cannot know enough facts to evaluate the justice of their war [McMahan] |
23602 | Innocence implies not being morally responsible, rather than merely being guiltless [McMahan] |
23618 | Unconditional surrender can't be demanded, since evil losers still have legitimate conditions [McMahan] |
15039 | History lacks 'meaning', but it can be analysed in terms of its struggles [Foucault] |