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Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'On the Moral and Legal State of Abortion' and 'fragments/reports'

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4 ideas

20. Action / B. Preliminaries of Action / 2. Willed Action / a. Will to Act
23323 Earlier Stoics speak of assent, but not of choice, let alone of a will [Stoic school, by Frede,M]
     Full Idea: Stoics [before Epictetus] have a notion of assent, and hence the appropriate notion of a willing, but we do not yet have a notion of a choice [prohairesis], let alone of a will.
     From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Michael Frede - A Free Will 3
     A reaction: The assent is just giving in to a desire, which is either rational or irrational. Choice implies a second-level thinking, of weighing the two desires. The will would then be a faculty which can do this (which seems to be the invention of Epictetus).
20. Action / B. Preliminaries of Action / 2. Willed Action / d. Weakness of will
20850 Passions are judgements; greed thinks money is honorable, and likewise drinking and lust [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Chrysippus says (in his On Passions) that the passions are judgements; for greed is a supposition that money is honorable, and similarly for drunkennes and wantonness and others.
     From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.111
     A reaction: This is an endorsement of Socrates's intellectualist reading of weakness of will, as against Aristotle's assigning it to overpowering passions.
20. Action / C. Motives for Action / 4. Responsibility for Actions
23305 Stoics said responsibility depends on rationality [Stoic school, by Sorabji]
     Full Idea: It is the Stoics who made responsibility depend on rationality.
     From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Richard Sorabji - Rationality 'Ethical'
     A reaction: Aristotle's account of responsibility in 'Ethics' needs a high degree of rationality, far beyond even a rational non-human animal. And no one thinks small children are responsible.
20. Action / C. Motives for Action / 5. Action Dilemmas / c. Omissions
20869 The highest degree of morality performs all that is appropriate, omitting nothing [Chrysippus]
     Full Idea: He who makes moral progress to the highest degree performs all the appropriate actions in all circumstances, and omits none.
     From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Sophocles - Sophocles' Electra 4.39.22
     A reaction: Hence concerns about omission as well as commission in the practice of ethics can be seen in the light of character and virtue. The world is fully of nice people who act well, but don't do so well on omissions. Car drivers, for example.