Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'The Actual and the Virtual' and 'On suicide'

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3 ideas

7. Existence / E. Categories / 5. Category Anti-Realism
We don't want another new set of categories; we want a variety of flexible categories [Deleuze, by May]
     Full Idea: For Deleuze, the task is not one of replacing a single set of categories with another set. It is one of being able to create and move among various sets of categories, and even to cross between them.
     From: report of Gilles Deleuze (The Actual and the Virtual [1977]) by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 4.05
     A reaction: This sounds fun, but I'm not clear why we need this anarchic mix of categories. The motto of Deleuze seems to be 'at all costs, keep moving'. He loved the idea of nomads. Is Rimbaud our role model? The influence of Foucault is obvious.
21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 7. Art and Morality
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?
25. Social Practice / F. Life Issues / 4. Suicide
If suicide is wrong because only God disposes of our lives, it must also be wrong to save lives [Hume]
     Full Idea: Were the disposal of human life so much the peculiar province of the Almighty that it were an encroachment on His right, for men to dispose of their own lives; it would be equally criminal to act for the preservation of life as for its destruction.
     From: David Hume (On suicide [1775]), quoted by Jonathan Glover - Causing Death and Saving Lives §13
     A reaction: A characteristically wicked and neat point. Maybe we can intervene in the environment (diverting a falling stone), but not directly in a life? Life is sacred, but stones are not?