display all the ideas for this combination of texts
2 ideas
| 14048 | Astronomical movements are blessed, but they don't need the help of the gods [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: Movements, turnings, risings, settings, and related phenomena occur without any god helping out and ordaining or being about to ordain things, and at the same time have complete blessedness and indestructibility. | |
| From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 76) | |
| A reaction: Epicurus is sometimes accused of atheism for remarks like these, but he is always trying to show piety in his attitudes. We might now call this attitude 'deism' (see alphabetical themes). |
| 21594 | Stoics applied bivalence to sorites situations, so everyone is either vicious or wholly virtuous [Stoic school, by Williamson] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics were prepared to apply bivalence to sorites reasoning, and swallow the consequences. ...For example, they denied that there are degrees of virtue, holding that one is either vicious or perfectly virtuous. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Timothy Williamson - Vagueness 1.2 | |
| A reaction: Williamson sympathises with this view, but the virtue example suggests to me that it is crazy. One of my objections to traditional religion is the sharp (and wickedly unjust) binary judgement between those who go to heaven and those who go to hell. |