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Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Critique of Practical Reason' and 'On the True Doctrine (Against Christians)'

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2 ideas

25. Social Practice / F. Life Issues / 4. Suicide
A permanent natural order could not universalise a rule permitting suicide [Kant]
     Full Idea: The maxim of freely disposing of my life could not hold as a universal law of nature, …because no one could choose to end his life, for such an arrangement could not constitute a permanent natural order.
     From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.1.1.I)
     A reaction: This sort of claim brings out the advantanges of Aristotelian 'particularism' (expounded by Dancy). Obviously universal suicide isn't promising, but no one wants that. A few suicides in extreme cases will have no effect at all on the natural order.
25. Social Practice / F. Life Issues / 6. Animal Rights
The world was made as much for animals as for man [Celsus]
     Full Idea: The world was made as much for the irrational animals as for men.
     From: Celsus (On the True Doctrine (Against Christians) [c.178], §V)
     A reaction: A good remark. It seems to be a classic distortion of European Christianity that the world is made for us, and that animals only exist to fill our sandwiches.