more from this thinker     |     more from this text


Single Idea 6924

[filed under theme 22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / d. Biological ethics ]

Full Idea

Plotinus, according to his biographers, was ashamed to have a body.

Gist of Idea

Plotinus was ashamed to have a body

Source

Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §29)

Book Ref

Feuerbach,Ludwig: 'Principles of the Philosophy of the Future', ed/tr. Vogel,M [Hackett 1986], p.48


A Reaction

When Feuerbach draws our attention to this, we see what an astonishing state it is for a human being to have got into. Modern thought is appalled by it, but it also has something heroic about it, like swimming all the time because you want to be a fish.


The 10 ideas with the same theme [ethics derived from needs of evolution]:

Natural law is supplied to the human mind by reality and human nature [Cumberland]
Plotinus was ashamed to have a body [Feuerbach]
Nietzsche felt that Plato's views downgraded the human body and its brevity of life [Nietzsche, by Roochnik]
Values are innate and inherited [Nietzsche]
Our values express an earlier era's conditions for survival and growth [Nietzsche]
We created meanings, to maintain ourselves [Nietzsche]
Evolution suggests prevailing or survival as a new criterion of right and wrong [James]
Human defects are just like plant or animal defects [Foot]
Genetic behaviours that have enhanced human success include aggression, rape and xenophobia [Wilson,EO, by Okasha]
Human exceptionalism plagues biology, and most other human thinking [Seth]