16415
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Esoteric metaphysics aims to be top science, investigating ultimate reality [Hofweber]
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Full Idea:
Esoteric metaphysics appeals to those, I conjecture, who deep down hold that philosophy is the queen of sciences after all, since it investigates what the world is REALLY like.
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From:
Thomas Hofweber (Ambitious, yet modest, Metaphysics [2009], 2)
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A reaction:
He mentions Kit Fine and Jonathan Schaffer as esoteric metaphysicians. I see a pyramid of increasing generality and abstraction, with metaphysics at the top. This doesn't make it 'queen', though, because uncertainties multiply higher up.
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22808
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Liberalism is minimal government, or individual rights, or equality [Avineri/De-Shalit]
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Full Idea:
Liberalism has been defended as a theory of minimal government, or as a theory of basic individual rights, or as an egalitarian philosophy.
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From:
Avineri,S/De-Shalit,A (Intro to 'Communitarianism and Individualism' [1992], §5)
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A reaction:
Minimal government tends towards anarchist liberalism, but then what grounds the right to be free of government? Presumably any sensible theory of rights has to be egalitarian. What could ground unequal rights?
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22806
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Communitarians avoid oppression for the common good, by means of small mediating communities [Avineri/De-Shalit]
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Full Idea:
Because of the mediating structures of small communities, communitarians are less fearful [than liberals] of the emergence of an oppressive government as a result of the politics of the common good.
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From:
Avineri,S/De-Shalit,A (Intro to 'Communitarianism and Individualism' [1992], §5)
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A reaction:
A politics of the common good has an obvious implicit conservatism because the central consensus is always likely to disapprove of errant individuals, of all sorts. Only individual rights can block an oppressive government.
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22807
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If our values are given to us by society then we have no grounds to criticise them [Avineri/De-Shalit]
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Full Idea:
If communitarians are right that we are not free to choose, but rather that our values are determined by our community, the individualists say, then there is no reason to criticise the values of one's society.
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From:
Avineri,S/De-Shalit,A (Intro to 'Communitarianism and Individualism' [1992], §5)
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A reaction:
This is an obvious challenge, but if one's concept of community is a forum for free debate then it can be overcome. There is no avoiding the fact, though, that a good community always needs a high degree of consensus.
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20713
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God must be fit for worship, but worship abandons morally autonomy, but there is no God [Rachels, by Davies,B]
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Full Idea:
Rachels argues 1) If any being is God, he must be a fitting object of worship, 2) No being could be a fitting object of worship, since worship requires the abandonment of one's role as an autonomous moral agent, so 3) There cannot be a being who is God.
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From:
report of James Rachels (God and Human Attributes [1971], 7 p.334) by Brian Davies - Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion 9 'd morality'
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A reaction:
Presumably Lionel Messi can be a fitting object of worship without being God. Since the problem is with being worshipful, rather than with being God, should I infer that Messi doesn't exist?
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