display all the ideas for this combination of texts
3 ideas
19646 | Values don't accumulate; they are ruthlessly replaced [Cioran] |
Full Idea: Values do not accumulate: a generation contributes something new only by trampling on what was unique in the preceding generation. | |
From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 6 'We') | |
A reaction: That may seem true for a Frenchman or a Romanian, but it doesn't feel true of British culture, which seems to me to have accumulated values over the last five hundred years. Before 1500 it seems to me to be a foreign country. We may be near the end! |
19614 | Lovers are hateful, apart from their hovering awareness of death [Cioran] |
Full Idea: As for lovers, they would be hateful if among their grimaces the presentiment of death did not hover. | |
From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Gamut') | |
A reaction: A nice existential corrective, if you were planning to build an ethical system around a rather sentimental idea of love! If you are not gripped by a latent fear that your beloved may die, I doubt whether you are in love. |
552 | Empedocles said good and evil were the basic principles [Empedocles, by Aristotle] |
Full Idea: Empedocles was the first to give evil and good as principles. | |
From: report of Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 985a | |
A reaction: Once you start to think that good and evil will only matter if they have causal powers, it is an easy step to the idea of a benevolent god, and a satanic anti-god. Otherwise the 'principles' could be ignored. |