4 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 |
7495 | Apart from the fear, dying is an easy duty [Montaigne] |
Full Idea: If our fears did not lend it weight, dying would be one of our lighter duties. | |
From: Michel de Montaigne (III.12 On physiognomy [1580], p.1191) | |
A reaction: An Epicurean thought. 'Duties' is nice - presumably death qualifies as a duty, because Nature requires it of us (we each of us 'owe nature a death'). The remark appears to me to be true. |
21997 | In Marxism the state will be superseded [Singer] |
Full Idea: It is a famous Marxist doctrine that the state will be superseded. | |
From: Peter Singer (Marx [1980], 9) | |
A reaction: Why is that final state communism rather than anarchism? |
21993 | Materialist history says we are subject to incomprehensible forces [Singer] |
Full Idea: The materialist conception of history tells us that human beings are totally subject to forces they do not understand and control. | |
From: Peter Singer (Marx [1980], 6) | |
A reaction: How does Marx know the forces? An exceptionally influential idea, because it is a modern commonplace that we have very little control over our own lives (apart from right wingers asserting that 'you can have anything if you really really want it'). |