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Ideas for 'poems', 'Dialectic of Enlightenment' and 'The Structure of Science'

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22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / b. Rational ethics

20572	De Sade said it was impossible to rationally argue against murder [Adorno/Horkheimer]
	Full Idea: De Sade trumpeted far and wide the impossibility of deriving from reason any fundamental argument against murder.
	From: T Adorno / M Horkheimer (Dialectic of Enlightenment [1944], p.118)
	A reaction: [They focus on 'Juliette'] This is a big problem for utilitarians, because murdering an unhappy person may maximise happiness. Presumably a maniac could will universal carnage, and thus thwart Kant.

22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / j. Ethics by convention

6017	Nomos is king [Pindar]
	Full Idea: Nomos is king.
	From: Pindar (poems [c.478 BCE], S 169), quoted by Thomas Nagel - The Philosophical Culture
	A reaction: This seems to be the earliest recorded shot in the nomos-physis wars (the debate among sophists about moral relativism). It sounds as if it carries the full relativist burden - that all that matters is what has been locally decreed.