display all the ideas for this combination of texts
3 ideas
| 23117 | Love should be partial, and discriminate in favour of its object [Kekes] |
| Full Idea: Love is personal and partial. It is not love if it does not discriminate in favor of its object. | |
| From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 09.4) | |
| A reaction: I agree with that, mainly on the grounds that this is the natural form of human love. Generalised love of mankind seems like a distortion, even if it is well-meaning. |
| 23119 | Sentimental love distorts its object [Kekes] |
| Full Idea: Love is sentimental if it exaggerates the virtues and minimises the vices of its object. | |
| From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 09.5) | |
| A reaction: Not sure about this. It implies that we should retain a streak of cold evaluative objectivity, even about the people we love most. There is difference between knowing a person's qualities, and the importance we attach to those qualities. Forgive vices! |
| 23088 | Evil is not deviation from the good, any more than good is a deviation from evil [Kekes] |
| Full Idea: There is no more reason to think of evil as deviation from the good than there is to think of the good as deviation from evil. | |
| From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 02.2) | |
| A reaction: This is a political moderate right winger defending the concept of evil as a basic and inescapable component of existence, in contrast to liberals who tend to deny 'pure evil'. |