54 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] |
| 21021 | Keep premises as weak as possible, to avoid controversial difficulties [Nussbaum] |
| 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] |
| 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] |
| 21007 | Storytelling is never neutral; some features of the world must be emphasised [Nussbaum] |
| 21939 | The author function of any text is a plurality of selves [Foucault, by Gutting] |
| 22688 | The Aristotelian idea that choices can be perceived needs literary texts to expound it [Nussbaum] |
| 7419 | Ethics is the conscious practice of freedom [Foucault] |
| 7501 | Why couldn't a person's life become a work of art? [Foucault] |
| 21836 | Philosophers after Aristotle endorsed the medical analogy for eudaimonia [Nussbaum, by Flanagan] |
| 7498 | Greeks and early Christians were much more concerned about food than about sex [Foucault] |
| 21025 | Particularism gives no guidance for the future [Nussbaum] |
| 21026 | Compassion is unreliable, because it favours people close to us [Nussbaum] |
| 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] |
| 21019 | Social contracts assume equal powers among the participants [Nussbaum] |
| 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] |
| 21011 | We shouldn't focus on actual preferences, which may be distorted by injustices [Nussbaum] |
| 21008 | Liberalism does not need a comprehensive account of value [Nussbaum] |
| 21125 | Liberals must respect family freedom - but families are the great oppressors of women [Nussbaum] |
| 21012 | Women are often treated like children, and not respected for their choices [Nussbaum] |
| 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] |
| 21015 | Negative liberty is incoherent; all liberties, to do and to be, require the prevention of interference [Nussbaum] |
| 21017 | Political freedom is an incoherent project, because some freedoms limit other freedoms [Nussbaum] |
| 21016 | Political and civil rights are not separate from economic and social rights [Nussbaum] |
| 21009 | Capabilities: Life, Health, Safety, Mental life, Love, Planning, Joining in, Nature, Play, Control [Nussbaum, by PG] |
| 21010 | Justice requires that the ten main capabilities of people are reasonably enabled [Nussbaum] |
| 21013 | Capabilities are grounded in bare humanity and agency; qualifying as rational is not needed [Nussbaum] |
| 21014 | Rights are not just barriers against state interference; governments must affirm capabilities of citizens [Nussbaum] |
| 21116 | Power is used to create identities and ways of life for other people [Foucault, by Shorten] |
| 21020 | Any establishment belief system is incompatible with full respect for all citizens [Nussbaum] |
| 15039 | History lacks 'meaning', but it can be analysed in terms of its struggles [Foucault] |
| 6005 | Animals are dangerous and nourishing, and can't form contracts of justice [Hermarchus, by Sedley] |
| 21023 | We should respect animals in the way that we respect the animal nature in humans [Nussbaum] |
| 21024 | It may be no harm to kill an animal which cannot plan for its future [Nussbaum] |
| 21022 | The Capabilities Approach sees animals as agents, not just as having feelings [Nussbaum] |