display all the ideas for this combination of texts
2 ideas
| 23874 | Armies and businesses create moralities in which their activity can do no wrong [Marx, by Weil] |
| Full Idea: Marx saw that social groups manufacture moralities for their own use, so their activity is placed outside the reach of evil. Thus the first articles of soldiers and businessmen is to deny that it is possible to do evil while waging war or doing business. | |
| From: report of Karl Marx (works [1860]) by Simone Weil - Fragments: London 1943 p.146 | |
| A reaction: This is especially true of the modern reverence for 'market forces'. It is a key debate in the ethics of warfare - compare Walzer and McMahon. A striking thought, obviously containing a lot of truth. |
| 5271 | Prejudice apart, push-pin has equal value with music and poetry [Bentham] |
| Full Idea: Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and science of music and poetry. | |
| From: Jeremy Bentham (Constitutional Code I [1827], p.139), quoted by J.R. Dinwiddy - Bentham p.114 | |
| A reaction: Mill quoted this with implied outrage, but Bentham was attacking public subsidies to the arts when he said it. It is a basic idea in the debate on pleasure - that pleasures are only distinguished by their intensity, not some other value. |