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Ideas for 'The Philosophy of Philosophy', 'Contextualism Contested (and reply)' and 'Human, All Too Human'

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3 ideas

24. Political Theory / B. Nature of a State / 1. Purpose of a State
The state aims to protect individuals from one another [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: The state is a clever institution for protecting individuals from one another.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 235)
     A reaction: This is Nietzsche allying with Hobbes, and presumably aiming this remark at Hegel.
24. Political Theory / B. Nature of a State / 5. Culture
Culture cannot do without passions and vices [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: Culture absolutely cannot do without passions, vices and acts of malice.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 477)
     A reaction: I'm not sure how you test the truth of that aphorism, given that humanity is perpetually doomed to live with such things. If those qualities disappeared, I suppose we would drift apart. We are 'dependent' beings, as MacIntyre says.
If languages are intertranslatable, and cognition is innate, then cultures are all similar [Williamson]
     Full Idea: Given empirical evidence for the approximate intertranslatability of all human languages, and a universal innate basis of human cognition, we may wonder how 'other' any human culture really is.
     From: Timothy Williamson (The Philosophy of Philosophy [2007], 8.1)
     A reaction: This seems to be a fairly accurate account of the situation. In recent centuries people seem to have been over-impressed by superficial differences in cultural behaviour, but we increasingly see the underlying identity.