Combining Texts

Ideas for 'works', 'The Communist Manifesto' and 'The Philosopher's Toolkit'

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2 ideas

13. Knowledge Criteria / B. Internal Justification / 4. Foundationalism / b. Basic beliefs
Basic beliefs are self-evident, or sensual, or intuitive, or revealed, or guaranteed [Baggini /Fosl]
     Full Idea: Sentence are held to be basic because they are self-evident or 'cataleptic' (Stoics), or rooted in sense data (positivists), or grasped by intuition (Platonists), or revealed by God, or grasped by faculties certified by God (Descartes).
     From: J Baggini / PS Fosl (The Philosopher's Toolkit [2003], §1.01)
     A reaction: These are a bit blurred. Isn't intuition self-evident? Isn't divine guarantee a type of revelation? How about reason, experience or authority?
13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 4. Cultural relativism
For the proletariate, law, morality and religion are just expressions of bourgeois interests [Marx/Engels]
     Full Idea: Law, morality, religion are to the proletarian so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.
     From: K Marx / F Engels (The Communist Manifesto [1848], §1)
     A reaction: This Marxist idea has been the main driving force in spreading relativist views through modern culture. There is a lot of truth here, but philosophy is plausibly the search for truths which both the bourgeois and the proletarian will accept.