Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'The Rejection of Consequentialism' and 'The Sublime and the Good'

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2 ideas

22. Metaethics / B. Value / 2. Values / g. Love
Love is realising something other than oneself is real [Murdoch]
     Full Idea: Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.
     From: Iris Murdoch (The Sublime and the Good [1959], p.215)
     A reaction: I suspect that this is a necessary condition for love, but not the thing itself. The realisation she describes may not be love. You would attain her realisation if you shared a prison cell with a terrifying psychopath.
22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 1. Goodness / g. Consequentialism
If the aim is good outcomes, why are killings worse than deaths? [Scheffler, by Foot]
     Full Idea: It is not clear why, in the measurement of the goodness of states of affairs or total outcomes, killings for instance should count so much more heavily than deaths.
     From: report of Samuel Scheffler (The Rejection of Consequentialism [1982], pp.108-12) by Philippa Foot - Utilitarianism and the Virtues p.61
     A reaction: Or drunken drivers worse than careless drivers. Or stolen bracelets than lost bracelets. The point is that morality is about the behaviour of people, and not about consequences.