Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Community and Citizenship', 'Morals and Modals' and 'Posthumous notes'

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5 ideas

10. Modality / C. Sources of Modality / 1. Sources of Necessity

14629	If we are told the source of necessity, this seems to be a regress if the source is not already necessary [Blackburn]
	Full Idea: If we ask why A must be the case, and A is then proved from B, that explains it if B must be so. If the eventual source cites some truth F, then if F just is so, there is strong pressure to feel that the original necessity has not been explained.
	From: Simon Blackburn (Morals and Modals [1987], 1)
	A reaction: [compressed] Ross Cameron wrote a reply to this which I like. I'm fishing for the idea that essence is the source of necessity (as Kit Fine says), but that essence itself is not necessary (as only I say, apparently!).

14529	If something underlies a necessity, is that underlying thing necessary or contingent? [Blackburn, by Hale/Hoffmann,A]
	Full Idea: Blackburn asks of what theorists propose as underlying the necessity of a proposition, the question whether they themselves are conceived as obtaining of necessity or merely contingently.
	From: report of Simon Blackburn (Morals and Modals [1987], p.120-1) by Bob Hale/ Aviv Hoffmann - Introduction to 'Modality' 1
	A reaction: I've seen a reply to this somewhere: I think the thought was that a necessity wouldn't be any less necessary if it had a contingent source, any more than the father of a world champion boxer has to be a world champion boxer.

11. Knowledge Aims / C. Knowing Reality / 3. Idealism / d. Absolute idealism

21971	Transcendental philosophy is the subject becoming the originator of unified reality [Kant]
	Full Idea: Transcendental philosophy is the act of consciousness whereby the subject becomes the originator of itself and, thereby, of the whole object of technical-practical and moral-practical reason in one system - ordering all things in God
	From: Immanuel Kant (Posthumous notes [1799], 21:78, p.245), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 06 App
	A reaction: This is evidently Kant's last word on the matter (c.1799), and Moore says he was drifting close to Fichte's idealism, in which reality is actually (sort of) created by our own minds. Disappointing! God's role here is unclear.

24. Political Theory / B. Nature of a State / 4. Citizenship

22817	Citizenship involves a group of mutually supporting rights, which create community and equality [Miller,D]
	Full Idea: The idea of citizenship is that rights support each other. Protective and welfare rights provide a basis for a political role. This underpins a sense of membership, and an obligation to provide welfare. Rights confer equal status and self-respect.
	From: David Miller (Community and Citizenship [1989], 3)
	A reaction: A helpful eludation of what a richer concept of citizenship than mere membership might look like. Communitarians have a different concept of rights from that of liberals.

24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 14. Nationalism

22816	Socialists reject nationality as a false source of identity [Miller,D]
	Full Idea: The socialist tradition has been overwhelmingly hostile to nationality as a source of identity, usually regarding it merely as an artificially created impediment to the brotherhood of man.
	From: David Miller (Community and Citizenship [1989], 2)
	A reaction: I have some sympathy with this, especially when nationalism is expressed in terms of enemies, but the question of what community a person can plausibly identify with is difficult. We start in hunter gather tribes of several hundred.