80 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] |
| 21032 | Speak truth only to those who deserve the truth [Sandel] |
| 21033 | Careful evasions of truth at least show respect for it [Sandel] |
| 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] |
| 20339 | Classes rarely share properties with their members - unlike universals and types [Wollheim] |
| 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] |
| 20338 | We often treat a type as if it were a sort of token [Wollheim] |
| 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] |
| 20342 | Interpretation is performance for some arts, and critical for all arts [Wollheim] |
| 20343 | A love of nature must precede a love of art [Wollheim] |
| 20348 | A criterion of identity for works of art would be easier than a definition [Wollheim] |
| 20347 | If beauty needs organisation, then totally simple things can't be beautiful [Wollheim] |
| 20345 | Some say art must have verbalisable expression, and others say the opposite! [Wollheim] |
| 20331 | It is claimed that the expressive properties of artworks are non-physical [Wollheim] |
| 20336 | Style can't be seen directly within a work, but appreciation needs a grasp of style [Wollheim] |
| 20337 | The traditional view is that knowledge of its genre to essential to appreciating literature [Wollheim] |
| 20333 | If artworks are not physical objects, they are either ideal entities, or collections of phenomena [Wollheim] |
| 20334 | The ideal theory says art is an intuition, shaped by a particular process, and presented in public [Wollheim] |
| 20335 | The ideal theory of art neglects both the audience and the medium employed [Wollheim] |
| 20340 | A musical performance has virtually the same features as the piece of music [Wollheim] |
| 20341 | An interpretation adds further properties to the generic piece of music [Wollheim] |
| 21939 | The author function of any text is a plurality of selves [Foucault, by Gutting] |
| 20332 | A drawing only represents Napoleon if the artist intended it to [Wollheim] |
| 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] |
| 21038 | Does consent create the obligation, or must there be some benefit? [Sandel] |
| 21039 | Moral contracts involve both consent and reciprocity; making the deal, and keeping it [Sandel] |
| 21036 | Not all deals are fair deals [Sandel] |
| 21030 | The categorical imperative is not the Golden Rule, which concerns contingent desires [Sandel] |
| 22262 | Kant's moral law has no foundation - because that would undermine its priority [Sandel] |
| 21031 | Man cannot dispose of himself, because he is not a thing to be owned [Sandel] |
| 21940 | Nature is not the basis of rights, but the willingness to risk death in asserting them [Foucault] |
| 20594 | Choosers in the 'original position' have been stripped of most human characteristics [Sandel, by Tuckness/Wolf] |
| 15043 | Every society has a politics of truth, concerning its values, functions, prestige and mechanisms [Foucault] |
| 21035 | Just visiting (and using roads) is hardly ratifying the Constitution [Sandel] |
| 21037 | A ratified constitution may not be a just constitution [Sandel] |
| 21034 | A just constitution harmonises the different freedoms [Sandel] |
| 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] |
| 22258 | Passion for progress is always short-lived [Sandel] |
| 22259 | Conservatives are either individualistic, or communal [Sandel] |
| 22264 | Modern liberal rights in democracies protect individuals against the majority [Sandel] |
| 22261 | Liberals say rights always come first, and justice is neutral on social values [Sandel] |
| 21120 | The self is 'unencumbered' if it can abandon its roles and commitments without losing identity [Sandel, by Shorten] |
| 22263 | Liberal justice means the withdrawal of the self, as transcendental or as unencumbered [Sandel] |
| 21049 | Liberal freedom was a response to assigned destinies like caste and class [Sandel] |
| 22805 | Liberalism concerns rights, and communitarianism concerns the common good [Sandel, by Avineri/De-Shalit] |
| 22260 | Modern liberalism fails to articulate a vision of the common good [Sandel] |
| 22265 | I can't defend the view that the majority values of a community are thereby right [Sandel] |
| 22268 | If persons define themselves by a group membership, insults to that group are a real harm [Sandel] |
| 22267 | In the liberal view an insult to my group doesn't hurt me, since I'm defined by choices not groups [Sandel] |
| 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] |
| 21040 | Libertarians just want formal equality in a free market; the meritocratic view wants fair equality [Sandel] |
| 21028 | We can approach justice through welfare, or freedom, or virtue [Sandel] |
| 21027 | Justice concerns how a society distributes what it prizes - wealth, rights, power and honours [Sandel] |
| 21042 | Should we redress wrongs done by a previous generation? [Sandel] |
| 21043 | Distributive justice concern deserts, as well as who gets what [Sandel] |
| 21052 | Justice is about how we value things, and not just about distributions [Sandel] |
| 21048 | Work is not fair if it is negotiated, even in a fair situation, but if it suits the nature of the worker [Sandel] |
| 21116 | Power is used to create identities and ways of life for other people [Foucault, by Shorten] |
| 22266 | The case for religious liberty depends on the religion contributing to a morally good life [Sandel] |
| 15039 | History lacks 'meaning', but it can be analysed in terms of its struggles [Foucault] |
| 21045 | Teleological thinking is essential for social and political issues [Sandel] |