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3 ideas
| 23059 | Self-interest is not rational, if the self is just a succession of memories and behaviour [Sidgwick, by Gray] |
| Full Idea: Sidgwick said self-interest is not self-evidently rational. Unless we invoke a religious idea of the soul, human personality is no more than a succession of continuities in memory and behaviour. In that case, why should anyone favour their future self? | |
| From: report of Henry Sidgwick (The Methods of Ethics (7th edn) [1874]) by John Gray - Seven Types of Atheism 2 | |
| A reaction: This sounds like Locke's account of the self, as psychological continuity. We can say that our continuous self is a fiction, the hero of our own narrative. Personally I think of the self as a sustained set of brains structures which change very little. |
| 4129 | It is self-evident (from the point of view of the Universe) that no individual has more importance than another [Sidgwick] |
| Full Idea: It is a self-evident principle that the good of one individual is of no more importance, from the point of view of the Universe, than the good of any other, ..and as a rational being I am bound to aim at good generally, not merely at a particular part. | |
| From: Henry Sidgwick (The Methods of Ethics (7th edn) [1874], III.XIII.3) | |
| A reaction: Showing that even a very empirical theory like utilitarianism has an a priori basis. Of course, the principle is false. What about animals, the senile, criminals, androids? What bestows 'importance'? |
| 23236 | 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]. |