18 ideas
| 2922 | All intelligent Romans were Epicureans [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Every mind of any account in the Roman Empire was an Epicurean. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 58) |
| 2914 | One must never ask whether truth is useful [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: One must never ask whether truth is useful. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], Fore) |
| 23520 | Truth has had to be fought for, and normal life must be sacrificed to achieve it [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Truth has had to be fought for every step of the way, almost everything else dear to our hearts, on which our love and our trust in life depend, has had to be sacrificed to it. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 50) | |
| A reaction: This, in one of his final works, seems to contradict every idea that Nietzsche is the high priest of relativism about truth. He (and Foucault) and interested in the social role of truth, but are not so daft as to reject its possibility. |
| 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? |
| 22445 | Morality shows murder is wrong, but not what counts as a murder [Foot] |
| Full Idea: While one can determine from the concept of morality that there is an objection to murder one cannot determine completely what will count as murder. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality and Art [1972], p.7) | |
| A reaction: She then refers to abortion, but there are military and criminal problem cases, and killings by neglect or side effect. |
| 22444 | A moral system must deal with the dangers and benefits of life [Foot] |
| Full Idea: A moral system seems necessarily to be one aimed at removing particular dangers and securing certain benefits. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality and Art [1972], p.6) | |
| A reaction: I thoroughly approve of this approach to morality, which anchors it in real life, rather than in ideals or principles of reason. |
| 2921 | Philosophy grasps the limits of human reason, and values are beyond it [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: All the supreme problems of value are beyond human reason. …To grasp the limits of human reason, only this is philosophy. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 55) | |
| A reaction: The single most powerful idea in the writings of Nietzsche. Reason and truth are values. Why do we value philosophy? There is no escaping Nietzsche's question. |
| 20138 | Christianity is at war with the higher type of man, and excommunicates his basic instincts [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Christianity has waged a war to the death against the higher type of man, it has excommunicated all the fundamental instincts of this type. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 05) | |
| A reaction: It seems rather insulting to say that the finest and most dedicated altruism practised by the most admirable Christians is the expression of a 'lower' instinct. |
| 22447 | Saying something 'just is' right or wrong creates an illusion of fact and objectivity [Foot] |
| Full Idea: When we say that something 'just is' right or wrong we want to give the impression of some kind of fact or authority standing behind our words, ...maintaining the trappings of objectivity though the substance is not there. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality and Art [1972], p.9) | |
| A reaction: Foot favours the idea that such a claim must depend on reasons, and that the reasons arise out of actual living. She's right. |
| 20375 | Virtues must be highly personal; if not, it is merely respect for a concept [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: A virtue has to be our invention, our most personal defence and necessity: in any other sense it is merely a danger. What does not condition our life harms it: a virtue merely from a feeling of respect for the concept 'virtue', as Kant desires it, is harm | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], §11) | |
| A reaction: Presumably he sees virtue as the cutting edge of stiffling conventional morality. I'm a bit nervous about embracing highly personal virtues, partly because they might isolate me from my community. I ain't no übermensch. |
| 2915 | Each person should devise his own virtues and categorical imperative [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Each one of us should devise his own virtue, his own categorical imperative. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 11) |
| 22448 | We sometimes just use the word 'should' to impose a rule of conduct on someone [Foot] |
| Full Idea: It would be more honest to recognise that the 'should' of moral judgement is sometimes merely an instrument by which we (for our own very good reasons) try to impose a rule of conduct even on the uncaring man? | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality and Art [1972], p.18) | |
| A reaction: This is a good example, I think, of the ordinary language tradition that Foot grew up in. We load a word like 'should' with a mystical power, but the situations in which it is actually used bring us back down to earth. |
| 22446 | In the case of something lacking independence, calling it a human being is a matter of choice [Foot] |
| Full Idea: In the problem of abortion there is a genuine choice as to whether or not to count as a human being, with the rights of a human being, what would become a human being but is not yet capable of independent life. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality and Art [1972], p.7) | |
| A reaction: There must be some basis for the choice. We can't call a dead person a human being. Choosing to call a tiny zygote a human being seems very implausible. Pre-viability strikes me as implausible. |
| 2920 | A God who cures us of a head cold at the right moment is a total absurdity [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: A God who cures a headcold for us at the right moment is so absurd a God he would have to be abolished even if he existed. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 52) |
| 2917 | Christianity is a revolt of things crawling on the ground against elevated things [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Christianity is a revolt of everything which crawls along the ground against everything which is elevated. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 43) |
| 2918 | The story in Genesis is the story of God's fear of science [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Has the famous story which stands at the beginning of the Bible really been understood - the story of God's mortal terror of science? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 48) |
| 2919 | 'Faith' means not wanting to know what is true [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: 'Faith' means not wanting to know what is true. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 52) |
| 2916 | The great lie of immortality destroys rationality and natural instinct [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The great lie of personal immortality destroys all rationality, all naturalness of instinct. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 43) |