Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'works' and 'Rights of Man'

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4 ideas

13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 2. Knowledge as Convention

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

22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 1. Nature of Ethics / a. Preconditions for ethics

20739	Levinas took 'first philosophy' to begin with seeing the vulnerable faces of others [Levinas, by Aho]
	Full Idea: Levinas forwarded a notion of 'ethics as first philosophy' that begins from the concete exposure and openness to 'the face' of the other, an experience of vulnerability and suffering that undercuts our ordinary egoistic and objectifying tendencies.
	From: report of Emmanuel Levinas (works [1956]) by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 1 'Existentialism'
	A reaction: Iris Murdoch speaks of seeing a falcon in flight as having a similar effect of diminishing the ego. If the main focus is on potential 'suffering' does this eventually cash out as utilitarianism? I bet not!

24. Political Theory / B. Nature of a State / 3. Constitutions

23261	A people, not government, creates a constitution, which is essential for legitimacy [Paine]
	Full Idea: A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government, and a government without a constitution is power without right.
	From: Thomas Paine (Rights of Man [1792], Ch.7), quoted by A.C. Grayling - The Good State 5
	A reaction: A constitution looks like the ultimate focus of a social contract (though Greeks had them long ago). It is hard to say why a government should consider itself to be sovereign if it hasn't got it in writing.

24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 9. Communism

20445	Levinas says Marxism is the replacement of individualist ethics, by solidarity and sociality [Levinas, by Critchley]
	Full Idea: For Levinas, Marxism is the absorption of the ethical in the socioeconomic, and so it is the disappearance of the face-to-face relation and the privileging of relations of solidarity and anonymous sociality, which he calls 'socialism'.
	From: report of Emmanuel Levinas (works [1956]) by Simon Critchley - Impossible Objects: interviews 1
	A reaction: Startling, if you are not used to this sort of thing. If you are in trouble, I should help you, not because you are you, or a human being, but because you are a member of my group? So what about the Good Samaritan? Or solidarity with humanity? Animals?