Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'The German Ideology' and 'The Vocation of Man'

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3 ideas

23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 1. Virtue Theory / d. Virtue theory critique
When aristocracy or the bourgeoisie dominate, certain values dominate with them [Marx/Engels]
     Full Idea: During the time that the aristocracy was dominant, the concepts honour, loyalty etc. were dominant, and during the dominance of the bourgeoisie the concepts of freedom, equality etc.
     From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], §1.B)
     A reaction: This is a very anti-Aristotelian view, based on a very different idea of human nature. It must, to some extent, be true, but freedom and equality will be a value for the proletariat, and loyalty will be a key value if the family is central.
23. Ethics / F. Existentialism / 6. Authentic Self
Freedom means making yourself become true to your essential nature [Fichte]
     Full Idea: I want to be free means: I myself want to make myself be whatever I will be. I would therefore …already have to be, in a certain sense, what I am to become, so that I could make myself be it.
     From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1)
     A reaction: This is much closer to the existenial picture of the malleable self, which Fichte arrives out once he commits to his desperate desire to have free will. [Not sure if my gist captures what he says].
Young Hegelians proposed changing our present consciousness for liberating critical consciousness [Marx/Engels]
     Full Idea: The Young Hegelians logically put to men the moral postulate of exchanging their present consciousness for human, critical or egoistic consciousness, and thus removing their limitations.
     From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], §1.A)
     A reaction: It seems there are three views here: this one (that we can change our consciousness), the Aristotelian view (that consciousness is 'given'), and the Marxist view (that society determines consciousness). The truth is somewhere between them.