Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation' and 'Capitalist Realism'

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4 ideas

25. Social Practice / C. Rights / 4. Property rights
The ground of property ownership is not force but the power to use it for social ends [Green,TH, by Muirhead]
     Full Idea: It is not the power of forcible tenure but the power of utilisation for social ends that is the ground of the permanent recognition that constitutes a right to property.
     From: report of T.H. Green (Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation [1882]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State III
     A reaction: Tell that to the aristocratic owners of British grouse moors! This just seems to be wishful thinking. Does that mean that I have no right to property if my ends are not 'social'?
Property is needed by all citizens, to empower them to achieve social goods [Green,TH]
     Full Idea: The rationale of property is that every one should be secured by society in the power of getting and keeping the means of realising a will which in possibility is a will directed to social good.
     From: T.H. Green (Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation [1882], §220), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State III
     A reaction: An interesting argument. If you want free citizens in a liberal society to be capable of achieving social good, you must allow them the right to acquire the means of doing so.
25. Social Practice / E. Policies / 5. Education / a. Aims of education
Are students consumers or products of education? [Fisher]
     Full Idea: Are students the consumers of education, or its product?
     From: Mark Fisher (Capitalist Realism [2009], 6)
     A reaction: As a teacher I have been increasingly obliged to treat pupils as customers, meaning that my main task is to keep them happy. Admittedly, pupils who are interested are usually happy pupils, but as a main objective happiness seems wrong.
25. Social Practice / E. Policies / 5. Education / b. Education principles
Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius]
     Full Idea: In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes.
     From: Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]), quoted by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 078
     A reaction: These remarks endorsing the infinite superiority of the educated to the uneducated seem to have been popular in late antiquity. It tends to be the religions which discourage great learning, especially in their emphasis on a single book.