11 ideas
| 19730 | Epistemic virtues: love of knowledge, courage, caution, autonomy, practical wisdom... [Kvanvig] |
| Full Idea: Virtue theorists may focus on the particular habits or virtues of successful cognizers, such as love of knowledge, firmness, courage and caution, humility, autonomy, generosity, and practical wisdom. | |
| From: Jonathan Kvanvig (Virtue Epistemology [2011], III) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Roberts and Wood 2007] It is interesting that most of these virtues do not merely concern cognition. How about diligence, self-criticism, flexibility...? |
| 19731 | If epistemic virtues are faculties or powers, that doesn't explain propositional knowledge [Kvanvig] |
| Full Idea: Conceiving of the virtues in terms of faculties or powers doesn't help at all with the problem of accounting for propositional knowledge. | |
| From: Jonathan Kvanvig (Virtue Epistemology [2011], IV B) | |
| A reaction: It always looks as if epistemic virtues are a little peripheral to the main business of knowledge, which is getting beliefs to be correct and well-founded. Given that epistemic saints make occasional mistakes, talk of virtues can't be enough. |
| 19732 | The value of good means of attaining truth are swamped by the value of the truth itself [Kvanvig] |
| Full Idea: The Swamping Problem is that the value of truth swamps the value of additional features of true beliefs which are only instrumentally related to them. True belief is no more valuable if one adds a feature valuable for getting one to the truth. | |
| From: Jonathan Kvanvig (Virtue Epistemology [2011], IV B) | |
| A reaction: His targets here are reliabilism and epistemic virtues. Kvanvig's implication is that the key to understanding the nature of knowledge is to pinpoint why we value it so much. |
| 3031 | The greatest good is not the achievement of desire, but to desire what is proper [Menedemus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Hearing someone assert that the greatest good was to succeed in everything that one desires, he said,"It is a much greater good to desire what is proper". | |
| From: report of Menedemus (fragments/reports [c.310 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.16.12 |
| 20937 | The state should produce higher civilisations for all, in tune with the economic apparatus [Gramsci] |
| Full Idea: The role of the State is always that of creating new and higher types of civilisation; of adapting the 'civilisation' and the morality of the broades popular masses to the necessities of the continuous development of the economic apparatus of production. | |
| From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Collective') | |
| A reaction: This makes education virtually the prime role of the state. Reminiscent of Sir John Reith's original dream, in the 1930s, for the BBC. Many marxists feel that the economy is in direct conflict with morality and civilisation. |
| 20935 | Eventually political parties lose touch with the class they represent, which is dangerous [Gramsci] |
| Full Idea: At a certain point in their lives, social classes become detached from their traditional parties. In that particular form ...the parties are no longer recognised by their class as its exopression. ...The field is then open for violent solutions. | |
| From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Parties') | |
| A reaction: Left wing parties pursue ideologies that don't connect with the actual current interests of the working class, and righ wing parties are taken over by rich elites who don't value safe traditonal communities. (This thought is resonant in the 2018 UK). |
| 20936 | Caesarism emerges when two forces in society are paralysed in conflict [Gramsci] |
| Full Idea: Caesarism (as the emergence of a 'heroic' personality) expresses a situation in which the forces in conflict balance each other in a catastrophic manner ...which can only terminate in their reciprocal destruction. | |
| From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Caesarism') | |
| A reaction: He goes on to distinguish progressive and reactionary versions of Caesarism. Gramsci's interest is in the circumstances that throw up such people. Marx had identified 'Bonapartism'. |
| 20941 | Totalitarian parties cut their members off from other cultural organisations [Gramsci] |
| Full Idea: A totalitarian party ensures that members find in that particular party all the satisfactions that they formerly found in a multiplicity of organisations. They break the threads that bind them to extraneous cultural organisms. | |
| From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Organisation') | |
| A reaction: British parties traditionally had a 'club house', where you could do most of your socialising. Presumably Nazis left the church, and various interest groups. |
| 20939 | What is the function of a parliament? Does it even constitute a part of the State structure? [Gramsci] |
| Full Idea: The question has to be asked: do parliaments, even in fact constitute a part of the State structure? In other words, what is the real function? | |
| From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Parliament') | |
| A reaction: Nice question. In the UK it is only the cabinet which has active power. Backbench MPs are usually very frustrated, especially if their party has a comfortable majority, and their vote is not precious. They are privileged lobbyists. |
| 20938 | Liberalism's weakness is its powerful rigid bureaucracy [Gramsci] |
| Full Idea: Liberalism's weakness is the bureacracy - the crystallisation of the leading personnel - which exercises power, and at a certain point it becomes a caste. | |
| From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Hegemony') | |
| A reaction: This sounds more like what is called 'the Establishment' in Britain, which is the hidden controllers of power, rather than the administrators (whose role is only despised by right-wingers). |
| 20940 | Perfect political equality requires economic equality [Gramsci] |
| Full Idea: The idea that complete and perfect political equality cannot exist without economic equality ...remains correct. | |
| From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'The State') | |
| A reaction: In the west we are living in a period (2018) when the top 0.1% of the wealthy are racing away, creating huge inequality. Their wealth controls the media, and it seems unrestrainable. The belief that we live in a 'democracy' is an illusion. |