6 ideas
468 | Musical performance can reveal a range of virtues [Damon of Ath.] |
Full Idea: In singing and playing the lyre, a boy will be likely to reveal not only courage and moderation, but also justice. | |
From: Damon (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B4), quoted by (who?) - where? |
20887 | A rape disregards the status of being a person - but so does all assault [Foa] |
Full Idea: In a rape a person is used without proper regard for her personhood - but this is true of every kind of assault. | |
From: Pamela Foa (What's Wrong with Rape? [1977], 1) | |
A reaction: This is a good step towards her attempt to pin down what is specifically wrong with rape, which strikes me as an extremely important question, and not merely in order to justify punishments. |
20888 | Rape of children is dreadful, but no one thinks children should have a right of consent [Foa] |
Full Idea: Rape of children is at least as heinous as rape of adults, though few believe that children have or ought to have the same large domain of consent adults (male and female) ought to have. | |
From: Pamela Foa (What's Wrong with Rape? [1977], 1) | |
A reaction: A powerful point. She is not quite spelling out the crux, which is that no one thinks children should have a right to consent to sexual intercourse, which means that consent is irrelevant in such a case of rape. So it can't be the key to adult rape? |
20889 | If men should lust and women shouldn't, that makes rape the prevalent sexual model [Foa] |
Full Idea: We are taught that sexual desires are desires women ought not to have and men must have. This is the model which makes necessary an eternal battle of the sexes. It explains why rape is the prevalent model of sexuality. | |
From: Pamela Foa (What's Wrong with Rape? [1977], 3) | |
A reaction: A striking thought. See 'The Origins of Sex' by F.Dabhoiwala, which claims that women used to be seen as the sexual predators, and the balance shifted in the 18thC. Are women obliged to exhibit lust, in order to defuse rapacious desires? |
7829 | God no more has human perfections than we have animal perfections [Spinoza] |
Full Idea: To ascribe to God those attributes which make a man perfect would be as wrong as to ascribe to a man the attributes that make perfect an elephant or an ass. | |
From: Baruch de Spinoza (Letters to Blijenburgh [1665], 1665), quoted by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.10 | |
A reaction: This would be a difficulty for Aquinas's Fourth Way (Idea 1432), and one which I think Aquinas might acknowledge, given his desire that we should be humble when trying to comprehend God (Idea 1410). It leaves us struggling to grasp the concept of God. |
7830 | A talking triangle would say God is triangular [Spinoza] |
Full Idea: If a triangle could speak it would say that God is eminently triangular. | |
From: Baruch de Spinoza (Letters to Blijenburgh [1665], 1665), quoted by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.10 | |
A reaction: Spinoza had a rather appealing waspish wit. This nicely dramatises an ancient idea (Idea 407). You can, of course, if you believe in God, infer some of His characteristics from His creation. But then see Hume: Ideas 1439, 6960, 6967, 1440. |