5 ideas
| 1655 | If goodness needs true opinion but not knowledge, you can skip the 'examined life' [Vlastos on Plato] |
| Full Idea: If true opinion without knowledge does suffice to guide action aright, the great mass of men and women may be spared the pain and hazards of the "examined" life. | |
| From: comment on Plato (The Apology [c.383 BCE], 38a) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.125 |
| 22474 | Unlike aesthetic evaluation, moral evaluation needs a concept of responsibility [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Moral, as opposed to aesthetic, evaluation does require some distinction between actions for which we are responsible and those for which we are not responsible. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Nietzsche's Immoralism [1991], p.154) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to disagree with this, but difficult to give a precise account of responsibility, probably because it is not an all-or-nothing matter. If we accept responsibility for our controlled actions, why not for our considered aesthetic judgements? |
| 22472 | The practice of justice may well need a recognition of human equality [Foot] |
| Full Idea: I wonder whether the practice of justice may not absolutely require a certain recognition of equality between human beings, not a pretence of the equality of talents, but something deeper. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Nietzsche's Immoralism [1991], p.152) | |
| A reaction: {My 'something deeper' is expressed by Foot in a quotation from Gertrude Stein]. This may well be the most fundamental division which runs across a society - between those who accept and those reject human equality. |
| 1472 | The propositions that God is good and omnipotent, and that evil exists, are logically contradictory [Mackie, by PG] |
| Full Idea: There is a contradiction between the propositions that God is wholly good, God is omnipotent, and evil exists, and one of them has got to give way (assuming good eliminates evil, and omnipotence has no limit). | |
| From: report of J.L. Mackie (Evil and Omnipotence [1955], Pref.) by PG - Db (ideas) |
| 1473 | Is evil an illusion, or a necessary contrast, or uncontrollable, or necessary for human free will? [Mackie, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps evil is an illusion, or it is necessary for good to exist, or in humans it is required because we have free will, or God lacks the full power to control it, but none of these looks convincing. | |
| From: report of J.L. Mackie (Evil and Omnipotence [1955], §B) by PG - Db (ideas) |