3 ideas
| 22269 | We must fight fiercely to hang on to the few pleasures which survive into old age [Montaigne] |
| Full Idea: I am training and sharpening my appetite for those pleasures that are left. ...We must cling tooth and claw to the use of the pleasures of this life which the advancing years, one after another, rip from our grasp. | |
| From: Michel de Montaigne (I.39 On Solitude [1580], p.276) | |
| A reaction: That may be one of the most inspiring ideas I have read about pleasure. |
| 16745 | No one even knows the nature and properties of a fly - why it has that colour, or so many feet [Bacon,R] |
| Full Idea: No one is so wise regarding the natural world as to know with certainty all the truths that concern the nature and properties of a single fly, or to know the proper causes of its color and why it has so many feet, neither more nor less. | |
| From: Roger Bacon (Opus Maius (major works) [1254], I.10), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 23.6 | |
| A reaction: Pasnau quotes this in the context of 'occult' qualities. It is scientific essentialism, because Bacon clearly takes it that the explanation of these things would be found within the essence of the fly, if we could only get at it. |
| 20713 | God must be fit for worship, but worship abandons morally autonomy, but there is no God [Rachels, by Davies,B] |
| 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. | |
| 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' | |
| 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? |