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 |
| 23897 | Once money is the main aim, society needs everyone to think wealth is possible [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Money, once it becomes the goal of desires and efforts, cannot tolerate in its domain internal conditions in which it is impossible to be enriched. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Work of a Free Person [1942], p.134) | |
| A reaction: The possibility for everyone that they might become rich seems basic to capitalism, even though it is utterly impossible. In theory we can all set up small successful businesses, but if they are good they nearly all get squeezed out. |
| 16006 | Either Abraham rises higher than universal ethics, or he is a mere murderer [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Either Abraham was a murderer, or we confront a paradox higher than all mediation. His story therefore contains the teleological suspension of the ethical, and he becomes higher than the universal. If not, he is not a tragic hero or the father of faith. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling [1843], p.49) | |
| A reaction: A nice dilemma for Christian thinkers who want to reconcile reason and morality with religion. [SY] |
| 7577 | Abraham was willing to suspend ethics, for a higher idea [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: The story of Abraham (and Isaac) contains a teleological suspension of the ethical. ...In his action he overstepped the ethical altogether, and had a higher idea outside it, in relation to which he suspended it. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling [1843], Prob I) | |
| A reaction: My immediate response is to find this proposal very sinister. I can't remotely understand what Abraham's (or God's) 'higher' idea could be that could justify this crime. Maybe ethics is suspended if you are on the beach and a tidal wave arrives? |