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Full Idea
Good and evil are meaningless to things that have no soul.
Gist of Idea
To understand morality requires a soul
Source
Plato (Letter Seven [c.352 BCE], 334)
Book Ref
Plato: 'Phaedrus and Letters VII and VIII', ed/tr. Hamilton,Walter [Penguin 1973], p.127
A Reaction
That is presumably psuché, and hence includes plants. Soulless things can still function well, but obviously that is not 'meaningful' to them.
| 168 | To understand morality requires a soul [Plato] |
| 5026 | Animals lack morality because they lack self-reflection [Leibniz] |
| 3954 | Immorality is not in the action, but in the deviation of the will from moral law [Berkeley] |
| 5599 | Without God, creation and free will, morality would be empty [Kant] |
| 21415 | Duty is impossible without prior moral feeling, conscience, love and self-respect [Kant] |
| 2902 | Healthy morality is dominated by an instinct for life [Nietzsche] |
| 20739 | Levinas took 'first philosophy' to begin with seeing the vulnerable faces of others [Levinas, by Aho] |
| 6450 | Morality must be motivating, and not because of pre-moral motives [Nagel] |
| 4284 | All moral life depends ultimately on piety, which is our recognition of our own dependence [Scruton] |