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2 ideas
| 22447 | Saying something 'just is' right or wrong creates an illusion of fact and objectivity [Foot] |
| Full Idea: When we say that something 'just is' right or wrong we want to give the impression of some kind of fact or authority standing behind our words, ...maintaining the trappings of objectivity though the substance is not there. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality and Art [1972], p.9) | |
| A reaction: Foot favours the idea that such a claim must depend on reasons, and that the reasons arise out of actual living. She's right. |
| 23115 | We have no natural love of mankind, other than through various relationships [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It may be affirm'd, that there is no such passion in human minds, as the love of mankind, merely as such, independent of personal qualities, of services, or of relation to ourself. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, + Appendix [1740], p.481), quoted by John Kekes - Against Liberalism 9.4 | |
| A reaction: Hume says this is for the best. I can't imagine spontaneous love of human beings we have never met. It takes the teachings of some sort of doctrine - religious or political - to produce such an attitude. I see it as a distortion of love. A hijacking. |