7 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? |
4581 | Virtues and vices are like secondary qualities in perception, found in observers, not objects [Hume] |
Full Idea: Vice and virtue may be compared to sounds, colours, heat and cold, which, according to modern philosophy, are not qualities in objects but perceptions in the mind. | |
From: David Hume (Letters [1739], to Hutcheson 1740) | |
A reaction: Very revealing about the origin of the is/ought idea, but this is an assertion rather than an argument. Most Greeks treat value as a primary quality of things (e.g. life, harmony, beauty, health). |
4580 | All virtues benefit either the public, or the individual who possesses them [Hume] |
Full Idea: I desire you to consider if there be any quality that is virtuous, without having a tendency either to the public good or to the good of the person who possesses it. | |
From: David Hume (Letters [1739], to Hutcheson 1739) | |
A reaction: Obviously this is generally true. How, though, does it benefit the individual to secretly preserve their integrity? I go round to visit a friend to repay a debt; I am told they have died; I quietly leave some money on the table and leave. Why? |
21947 | Power is localised, so we either have totalitarian centralisation, or local politics [Foucault, by Gutting] |
Full Idea: Foucault's analysis suggests that meaningful revolution, hence genuine liberation, is impossible: the only alternative to the modern net of micro-centres of power is totalitatian domination. Hence his politics, even when revolutionary, is always local. | |
From: report of Michel Foucault (Discipline and Punish [1977]) by Gary Gutting - Foucault: a very short introduction 8 | |
A reaction: It is hard to disagree with this. |
21946 | Prisons gradually became our models for schools, hospitals and factories [Foucault, by Gutting] |
Full Idea: Foucault's thesis is that disciplinary techniques introduced for criminals became the model for other modern sites of control (schools, hospitals, factories), so that prison discipline pervades all of society. | |
From: report of Michel Foucault (Discipline and Punish [1977]) by Gary Gutting - Foucault: a very short introduction 8 | |
A reaction: Someone recently designed Foucault Monopoly, where every location is a prison. All tightly controlled organisations, such as a medieval monastery, or the Roman army, will inevitably share many features. |
4579 | The idea of a final cause is very uncertain and unphilosophical [Hume] |
Full Idea: Your sense of 'natural' is founded on final causes, which is a consideration that appears to me pretty uncertain and unphilosophical. | |
From: David Hume (Letters [1739], to Hutcheson 1739) | |
A reaction: This is the rejection of Aristotelian teleology by modern science. I agree that the notion of utterly ultimate final cause is worse than 'uncertain' - it is an impossible concept. Nevertheless, I prefer Aristotle to Hume. Nature can teach us lessons. |
20705 | That events could be uncaused is absurd; I only say intuition and demonstration don't show this [Hume] |
Full Idea: I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that anything might arise without a cause: I only maintained that our certainty of the falsehood of that proposition proceeded neither from intuition nor from demonstration, but from another source. | |
From: David Hume (Letters [1739], 1754), quoted by Brian Davies - Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion 5 'God' | |
A reaction: Since the other source is habit, he is being a bit disingenuous. While rational intuition and demonstration give a fairly secure basis for the universality of causation, mere human habits of expectation give very feeble grounds. |