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Ideas for 'works', 'works' and 'Introduction to 'Language Truth and Logic''

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3 ideas

22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / e. Human nature
Aristotle never actually says that man is a rational animal [Aristotle, by Fogelin]
     Full Idea: To the best of my knowledge (and somewhat to my surprise), Aristotle never actually says that man is a rational animal; however, he all but says it.
     From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.1
     A reaction: When I read this I thought that this database would prove Fogelin wrong, but it actually supports him, as I can't find it in Aristotle either. Descartes refers to it in Med.Two. In Idea 5133 Aristotle does say that man is a 'social being'. But 22586!
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / i. Prescriptivism
Moral approval and disapproval concerns classes of actions, rather than particular actions [Ayer]
     Full Idea: The common objects of moral approval and disapproval are not particular actions so much as classes of actions.
     From: A.J. Ayer (Introduction to 'Language Truth and Logic' [1946], p.27)
     A reaction: This 1946 revision of his pure emotivism looks like a move towards Hare's prescriptivism, where classes, rules and principles are seen as the window-dressing of emotivism. It's still a bad theory.
22. Metaethics / B. Value / 2. Values / g. Love
True love is ironic, in the contrast between finite limitations and the infinity of love [Schlegel,F]
     Full Idea: True irony is the irony of love. It arises from the feeling of finitude and one's own limitation, and the apparent contradiction of these feelings with the concept of infinity inherent in all true love.
     From: Friedrich Schlegel (works [1798], Vol.10 p.357), quoted by Ernst Behler - Early German Romanticism
     A reaction: [c.1827] This is more about idealist philosophy and its yearning for the Absolute than it is about the actual nature of love. Love is the door to the Absolute. The irony is our inability to pass through it.