8 ideas
3236 | Equality of opportunity without equality of respect would create a very inhuman society [Williams,B] |
Full Idea: A highly rational, efficient and unmitigated application of the idea of equality of opportunity, while abandoning the idea of equality of respect as vague and nostalgic, would lead to a quite inhuman society. | |
From: Bernard Williams (The Idea of Equality [1962], §3) |
3234 | Equality seems to require that each person be acknowledged as having a significant point of view [Williams,B] |
Full Idea: Equality seems to require that each person is owed an effort at identification; they should not be seen as a surface to which a label can be applied, but one should try to see the world (including the label) from their point of view. | |
From: Bernard Williams (The Idea of Equality [1962], §2) |
3233 | Equality implies that people are alike in potential as well as in needs [Williams,B] |
Full Idea: Supporters of equality have asserted that people are alike in certain things they could do or achieve, as well as in the things that they need and could suffer. | |
From: Bernard Williams (The Idea of Equality [1962], §2) |
3235 | It is a mark of extreme exploitation that the sufferers do not realise their plight [Williams,B] |
Full Idea: It is a mark of extreme exploitation or degradation that those who suffer it do NOT see themselves differently from the way they are seen by the exploiters. | |
From: Bernard Williams (The Idea of Equality [1962], §2) |
1868 | 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. |
1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless. | |
From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3 |
5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime. | |
From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus | |
A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea. |
1867 | Christians presented Jesus as a new kind of logos to oppose that of the philosophers [Celsus] |
Full Idea: Christians put forth this Jesus not only as the son of God, but as the very Logos - not the pure and holy Logos known to the philosophers, but a new kind of Logos. | |
From: Celsus (On the True Doctrine (Against Christians) [c.178], III) |