7 ideas
1556 | By nature people are close to one another, but culture drives them apart [Hippias] |
Full Idea: I regard you all as relatives - by nature, not by convention. By nature like is akin to like, but convention is a tyrant over humankind and often constrains people to act contrary to nature. | |
From: Hippias (fragments/reports [c.430 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Protagoras 337c8 |
11911 | Some philosophers always want more from morality; for others, nature is enough [Blackburn] |
Full Idea: The history of moral theory is largely a history of battles between people who want more (truth, absolutes...) - Plato, Locke, Cudworth, Kant, Nagel - and people content with what we have (nature) - Aristotle, Epicurus, Hobbes, Hume, Stevenson. | |
From: Simon Blackburn (Précis of 'Ruling Passions' [2002], p.133) | |
A reaction: [Thanks to Neil Sinclair for this one] As a devotee of Aristotle, I like this. I'm always impressed, though, by people who go the extra mile in morality, because they are in the grips of purer and loftier ideals than I am. They also turn into monsters! |
20180 | A happy and joyous life must largely be a quiet life [Russell] |
Full Idea: A happy life must to a great extent be a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (The Conquest of Happiness [1930], 4) | |
A reaction: Most people's image of happiness is absorption in an interesting task, or relaxing in good company. The idea that happiness is wild excitement exists, but is a minority view. |
20177 | Boredom always involves not being fully occupied [Russell] |
Full Idea: It is one of the essentials of boredom that one's faculties must not be fully occupied. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (The Conquest of Happiness [1930], 4) | |
A reaction: He gives running for your life as an example of non-boredom. I suspect that this is only the sort of boredom that troubled Russell, and not the sort of profound boredom that led the actor George Sanders to suicide (according to his last note). |
20178 | Life is now more interesting, but boredom is more frightening [Russell] |
Full Idea: We are less bored than our ancestors were, but we are more afraid of boredom | |
From: Bertrand Russell (The Conquest of Happiness [1930], 4) | |
A reaction: I get the impression that the invention of the powerful mobile phone has largely banished boredom from human life, except when you are obliged to switch it off. The fear of boredom may hence be even greater now. |
20176 | Boredom is an increasingly strong motivating power [Russell] |
Full Idea: Boredom has been, I believe, one of the great motive powers throughout the historical epoch, and is so at the present day more than ever. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (The Conquest of Happiness [1930], 4) | |
A reaction: Most of his essay tells us how to avoid boredom, rather than how it motivates. |
20179 | Happiness involves enduring boredom, and the young should be taught this [Russell] |
Full Idea: A certain power of enduring boredom is essential to a happy life, and is one of the things that ought to be taught to the young. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (The Conquest of Happiness [1930], 4) | |
A reaction: As an example he suggests that Wordsworth would never have written 'The Prelude' is he had never been bored when young. Which suggests that Russell doesn't really get boredom, seeing it merely as a stimulus to work. |