Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Unconscious Cerebral Initiative', 'Gravity and Grace (9 extracts)' and 'Against the Ethicists (one book)'

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6 ideas

22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / a. Idealistic ethics
23826 Beauty, goodness and truth are only achieved by applying full attention [Weil]
     Full Idea: The authentic and pure values - truth, beauty and goodness - in the activity of a human being are the result of one and same act, a certain application of the full attention to the object. Teaching should only aim to train the attention for such an act.
     From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace (9 extracts) [1943], p.234)
     A reaction: A distinctive Weil idea, that absorbed 'attention' produces almost mystical results. I am not convinced that a great still life painter (than which there is no higher criterion of attention) achieves contact with goodness thereby. But attention is good!
22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 1. Goodness / a. Form of the Good
23833 The good is a nothingness, and yet real [Weil]
     Full Idea: The good seems to us a nothingness, since there is no thing that is good. But this nothingness is not unreal.
     From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace (9 extracts) [1943], p.278)
     A reaction: A neat move in the notoriously difficult platonic problem of specifying the actual nature of the good.
22754 Saying the good is useful or choiceworth or happiness-creating is not the good, but a feature of it [Sext.Empiricus]
     Full Idea: Asserting that the good is 'the useful', or 'what is choiceworthy for its own sake', or 'that which contributes to happiness', does not teach us what good is but states its accidental property.
     From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Ethicists (one book) [c.180], II.35)
     A reaction: This seems to be a pretty accurate statement of Moore's famous Open Question argument. I read it in an Aristotelian way - that that quest is always for the essential nature of the thing itself, not for its role or function or use.
23808 There are two goods - the absolute good we want, and the reachable opposite of evil [Weil]
     Full Idea: There are two goods - one which is the opposite of evil, and one which is the absolute. …That which we want is the absolute good. That which is within our reach is the good which is correlated with evil.
     From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace (9 extracts) [1943], p.142)
     A reaction: Elsewhere she seems in tune with the thought of Nietzsche (whom she despised) that good and evil are false social constructs which are quite different from healthy values. Weil, of course, sees the absolute as transcendent.
22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 1. Goodness / b. Types of good
22755 Like a warming fire, what is good by nature should be good for everyone [Sext.Empiricus]
     Full Idea: Just as fire which is warmth-giving by nature warms all men, and does not chill some of them, so what is good by nature ought to be good for all, and not good for some but not good for others.
     From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Ethicists (one book) [c.180], II.69)
     A reaction: This is going to confine the naturally good to the basics of life, which we all share. Is a love of chess a natural good? It seems to capture an aspect of human nature, without appealing to everyone. Sextus says nothing is good for everyone.
22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 2. Happiness / d. Routes to happiness
22756 If a desire is itself desirable, then we shouldn't desire it, as achieving it destroys it [Sext.Empiricus]
     Full Idea: If the desire for wealth or health is desirable, we ought not to purse wealth or health, lest by acquiring them we cease to desire them any longer.
     From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Ethicists (one book) [c.180], II.81)
     A reaction: He is investigating whether desires can be desirable, and if so which ones. Roots of this are in Plato's 'Gorgias' on drinking water. Similar to 'if compassion is the highest good then we need lots of suffering'. Desire must be a means, not an end.