50 ideas
| 1350 | Continuity is needed for existence, otherwise we would say a thing existed after it ceased to exist [Reid] |
| Full Idea: Identity supposes an uninterrupted continuance of existence….Otherwise we must suppose a being to exist after it has ceased to exist, and to have existed before it was produced, which are manifest contradictions. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 4) | |
| A reaction: I take the point to be that if something is supposed to survive a gap in its existence, that must imply that it somehow exists during the gap. If a light flashes on and off, is it really a new entity each time? |
| 21322 | We treat slowly changing things as identical for the sake of economy in language [Reid] |
| Full Idea: All bodies, as they consist of innumerable parts, are subject to continual changes of their substance. When such changes are gradual, because language could not afford a different name for each state, it retains the same name and is considered the same. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 4) | |
| A reaction: This is hard to deny. We could hardly rename a child each morning. Simlarly, we can't have a unique name for each leaf on a tree. Economy of language explains a huge amount in philosophy. |
| 21320 | Identity is familiar to common sense, but very hard to define [Reid] |
| Full Idea: Every man of common sense has a clear and distinct notion of identity. If you ask for a definition of identity, I confess I can give none. It is too simple a notion. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 4) | |
| A reaction: 'Identical' seems to be a two-place predicate, but the only strict way two things can be identical is if there is actually just one thing. In which case just drop the word 'identity' (instead of defining it), and say there is just one thing here. |
| 1367 | Identity can only be affirmed of things which have a continued existence [Reid] |
| Full Idea: Identity can only be affirmed of things which have a continued existence. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 6) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't mean that Reid thinks there is nothing more to the identity than their similitude. But he, like Hume, denies that there is personal identity at any given instant. Reid is better at criticism than at formulating his own theory. |
| 23644 | Without memory we could have no concept of duration [Reid] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible to show how we could acquire a notion of duration if we had no memory. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], 1) | |
| A reaction: We would probably not have a notion of duration if we possessed a memory, but nothing ever changed. Maybe in Shoemaker's frozen worlds they retain memories, but nothing happens? |
| 23643 | We all trust our distinct memories (but not our distinct imaginings) [Reid] |
| Full Idea: Every man feels he must believe what he distinctly remembers, though he can give no other reason for his belief, but that he remembers the thing distinctly; whereas, when he merely distinctly imagines a thing, he has no belief in it upon that account. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], 1) | |
| A reaction: The word 'distinct' is doing some heavy work here. I fear that believing the memory is the only criterion we have for calling it distinct. As a boy I was persuaded to change my testimony about a car accident, and I realised I was not distinct about it. |
| 1356 | A person is a unity, and doesn't come in degrees [Reid] |
| Full Idea: The identity of a person is a perfect identity: wherever it is real, it admits of no degrees; and it is impossible that a person should be in part the same, and in part different; because a person is a 'monad', and is not divisible into parts. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 4) | |
| A reaction: I don't accept this, because I don't accept the metaphysics needed to underpin it. To watch a person with Alzheimer's disease fade out of existence before they die seems sufficient counter-evidence. I believe in personal identity, but it isn't 'perfect'. |
| 1359 | Personal identity is the basis of all rights, obligations and responsibility [Reid] |
| Full Idea: Identity, when applied to persons, has no ambiguity, and admits of no degrees. It is the foundation of all rights and obligations, and of all accountableness. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 4) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me to be one of the key mistakes in all of philosophy - thinking that items must always be all-or-nothing. If a person deteriorates through Alzheimer's, there seem to be obvious degrees of personhood. Responsibility comes in degrees, too. |
| 21319 | I can hardly care about rational consequence if it wasn't me conceiving the antecedent [Reid] |
| Full Idea: The conviction of personal identity is indispensably necessary to all exercise of reason. Reasoning is made up of successive parts. Without the conviction that the antecedent have been seen by me, I could have no reason to proceed to the consequent. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 4) | |
| A reaction: Society needs philosophers precisely to point such things out. It isn't conclusive, but populist waffle about the self not existing undermines the very concept of a 'train of thought', which everybody is signed up to. Trains of thought can take years. |
| 21323 | The identity of a thief is only known by similarity, but memory gives certainty in our own case [Reid] |
| Full Idea: A man challenges a thief in possession of his horse only on similarity. The testimony of witnesses to the identity of a person is commonly grounded on no other evidence. ...Evidence of our own identity is grounded in memory, and gives undoubted certainty. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 4) | |
| A reaction: With other people the best we can hope for is type-identity, hoping that each individual being is a unique type, but with otherselves we are always confident of establishing token identity. Could I have been someone different yesterday, without realising? |
| 21321 | Memory reveals my past identity - but so does testimony of other witnesses [Reid] |
| Full Idea: Although memory gives the most irresistible evidence of my being the identical person that did such a thing, I may have other good evidence of things which befell me. I know who bare me and suckled me, but I do not remember those events. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 4) | |
| A reaction: A splendidly accurate and simple observation. Reid's criticisms of Locke are greatly superior to those of Butler. We now have vast collections of photographs showing our past identities. |
| 21324 | If consciousness is transferable 20 persons can be 1; forgetting implies 1 can be 20 [Reid] |
| Full Idea: If the same consciousness can be transferred from one intelligent being to another, then two or twenty beings may be the same person. If he may lose the consciousness of actions done by him, one intelligent being may be two or twenty different persons. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 6) | |
| A reaction: Reid says Locke was aware of these two implications of his theory of personal identity (based on consciousness). The first example is me replicated like software. The second is if I forget that I turned the light off, then who did turn the light off? |
| 21325 | Boy same as young man, young man same as old man, old man not boy, if forgotten! [Reid] |
| Full Idea: Suppose a brave officer, flogged as a boy for robbing an orchard, to have captured a standard in his first campaign, and become a general in advanced life. [If the general forgets the flogging] he is and at the same time is not the same as the boy. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 6) | |
| A reaction: The point is that strict identity has to be transitive, and if the general forgets his boyhood that breaks the transitivity. If identity is less strict there is no problem. The general may only have memories related to some part of his boyhood. |
| 21327 | If a stolen horse is identified by similitude, its identity is not therefore merely similitude [Reid] |
| Full Idea: When a stolen horse is claimed, the only evidence that this is the same horse is similitude. But would it not be ridiculous from this to infer that the identity of a horse consists in similitude only? | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 6) | |
| A reaction: Actually that is exactly Hume's view of the matter (Idea 21292). For a strict empiricist there is nothing else be close resemblance over time. I prefer Reid's account to Hume's. - but then I am not a 'strict' empiricist. |
| 1366 | If consciousness is personal identity, it is continually changing [Reid] |
| Full Idea: Is it not strange that the identity of a person should consist in a thing (consciousness) which is continually changing? | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 6) | |
| A reaction: This is the panicky slippery slope view of Locke, that sees his doctrine as the first step to the destruction of religion. The fact is, though, that parts of my consciousness changes continually, but other parts stay the same for years on end. |
| 1352 | Thoughts change continually, but the self doesn't [Reid] |
| Full Idea: My thoughts, and actions, and feelings, change every moment: they have no continued, but a successive, existence: but that self, or I, to which they belong, is permanent. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 4) | |
| A reaction: The word 'permanent' may be excessive, but one could hardly say there is nothing more to personal identity than the contents of consciousnes, given how much and how quickly those continually fluctuate. |
| 7222 | It is a crime for someone with a violent disposition to get drunk [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The making himself drunk, in a person whom drunkenness excites to do harm to others, is a crime against others. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This principle (based on knowing your own dispositions) is a very good account of the ethics drunkenness. We have a moral duty to know and remember our own dispositions. Violent people should avoid arguments as well as alcohol. |
| 7214 | Ethics rests on utility, which is the permanent progressive interests of people [Mill] |
| Full Idea: I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of a man as a progressive being. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Mill, writing in praise of personal liberty, is desperate to introduce a paternalistic element into his politics, and the 'maximisation of happiness' will justify such paternalism, while his basic liberal principle (Idea 7211) won't. Mill's Dilemma. |
| 7212 | Individuals have sovereignty over their own bodies and minds [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: If I should not even think about evil deeds, then neither should you. I would prevent you if I could. I would prevent you from drinking yourself to death, if I could. It is just that intrusions into private lives leads to greater trouble. |
| 23262 | Experience, sympathy and history are sensible grounds for laying claim to rights [Grayling] |
| Full Idea: Personal experience, social sympathies, and history together licence laying claim to rights …which we see to make good mutual as well as individual sense. | |
| From: A.C. Grayling (The Good State [2020], 6) | |
| A reaction: There are no such thing as natural rights, but there are clearly natural grounds on which it is very reasonable to base a claim for legal rights. If positive rights are just arbitrary, or expressions of power struggles, that is crazy. |
| 7210 | The will of the people is that of the largest or most active part of the people [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The will of the people practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Hence the nicely coined modern phrase 'the silent majority', on whose behalf certain politicians, usually conservative, offer to speak. It is unlikely that the silent majority are actually deeply opposed to the views of the very active part. |
| 23263 | Politics is driven by power cliques [Grayling] |
| Full Idea: What drives political history is power cliques. | |
| From: A.C. Grayling (The Good State [2020], Conc) | |
| A reaction: A simple ideas which strikes me as accurate. Alternative views are that power is universally distributed (Foucault), or that power resides in a social class (Marx). Grayling's idea strikes me as more accurate. Each class has its cliques. |
| 7227 | It is evil to give a government any more power than is necessary [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Government interference should be restricted because of the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This would need justification, because it might be replied that individuals should not have unnecessary power either. The main problem is that governments have armies, police and money. |
| 7228 | Individuals often do things better than governments [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Government power should be restricted because things are often done better by individuals. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This contains some truth, but it is obvious that innumerable things can be done better by governments, and also (and more importantly) that innumerable other good things might be done by governments which individuals can't be bothered to do. |
| 7230 | Aim for the maximum dissemination of power consistent with efficiency [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The safest practical ideal is to aim for the greatest dissemination of power consistent with efficiency. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This is a very nice principle, which I would think desirable within an institution as well as on the scale of the state. I am becoming a fan of Mill's politics. I still say that freedom is an overrated virtue, so efficiency must be underrated. |
| 20515 | Maximise happiness by an area of strict privacy, and an area of utilitarian interventions [Mill, by Wolff,J] |
| Full Idea: For Mill the greatest happiness will be achieved by giving people a private sphere of interests where no intervention is permitted, while allowing a public sphere where intervention is possible, but only on utilitarian grounds. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 4 'Liberty' | |
| A reaction: This is probably standard liberal practice nowadays. Freely consenting adult sexual activity is agreed to be wholly private. At least some lip-service is paid to increasing happiness when government intervenes. |
| 7229 | People who transact their own business will also have the initiative to control their government [Mill] |
| Full Idea: A people accustomed to transacting their own business is certain to be free; it will never let itself be enslaved by any man or body of men because these are able to seize and pull the reins of the central administration. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: He makes reference to Americans. This is an important idea, because it shows that democratic control is not just a matter of elections (which can be abolished or suborned), but is also a characteristic of a certain way of life. |
| 23254 | Democracies should require a supermajority for major questions [Grayling] |
| Full Idea: A threshhold or supermajority bar (such as 60%) is the appropriate way to deal with highly consequential questions. | |
| From: A.C. Grayling (The Good State [2020], p.23) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a very conservative view, because rejection of a major change is a decision in favour of the status quo. Would this rule apply equally to abolishing capital punishment and to reintroducing it? |
| 23255 | It is essential for democracy that voting is free and well informed [Grayling] |
| Full Idea: A necessary condition for democracy to be realised is that the act of voting should be free and informed. | |
| From: A.C. Grayling (The Good State [2020], p.25) | |
| A reaction: The requirement that voters should be well informed has become an increasing modern problem, because the media are owned by the wealthy, and false rumours can spread at lightning speed. |
| 23260 | A cap on time of service would restrict party control and career ambitions [Grayling] |
| Full Idea: A method by which legislators can be rendered independent of both party control and career ambitions is a cap on the amount of time they can serve as legislators. | |
| From: A.C. Grayling (The Good State [2020], 4) | |
| A reaction: The time of service must allow for learning the job, and then using the wisdom of experience. Presumably some career ambitions are needed if we are to have leaders. Not all party discipline is bad; great achievements are hard without it. |
| 23253 | Majority decisions are only acceptable if the minority interests are not vital [Grayling] |
| Full Idea: A majority being in favour of some course of action is the acceptable means of reaching decisions when no vital interest of a minority is endangered. | |
| From: A.C. Grayling (The Good State [2020], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is generally accepted in extreme cases, such as the majority voting to exterminate the minority. The difficulty is to decide what is a 'vital' interest, and to get the majority to care about it. |
| 7211 | Prevention of harm to others is the only justification for exercising power over people [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others; his own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This is the key idea in Mill's liberalism, though he goes on to offer some qualifications of this absolute prohibition. I don't disagree with this principle, but there may be a lot more indirect harm than we realise (eg. in allowing liberal sex or drugs). |
| 7231 | The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This is a key idea of liberalism, opposed to any idea that we should abandon our own value to that of our state. I agree, but communitarians can subscribe to this too, while disagreeing that maximum freedom is the strategy to follow. |
| 7217 | The main argument for freedom is that interference with it is usually misguided [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The strongest of all the arguments against the interference of the public with purely personal conduct is that, when it does interfere, the odds are that it interferes wrongly, and in the wrong place. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This is also a well known objection to capital punishment. Generalised, well established, legal interferences are perhaps more likely to get it right than ad hoc decisions about individuals by individual officials. |
| 7213 | Liberty arises at the point where people can freely and equally discuss things [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: There is a Victorian (and Enlightenment) optimism here which a glimpse of the freedoms of the early twenty-first century might dampen. I doubt if Mill expected British tabloid newspapers, or porn on cable TV. Education and freedom connect. |
| 20517 | Utilitarianism values liberty, but guides us on which ones we should have or not have [Mill, by Wolff,J] |
| Full Idea: Utilitarianism provides an account of what liberties we should and should not have. Mill argues we should be free to compete in trade, but not to use another's property without consent. Thus he sets limits to liberty, while paying it great respect. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 4 'Intrinsic' |
| 20516 | Mill defends freedom as increasing happiness, but maybe it is an intrinsic good [Wolff,J on Mill] |
| Full Idea: Mill has presented liberty as instrumentally valuable, as a way of achieving the greatest possible happiness in society. But perhaps he should have argued that liberty is an intrinsic good, good in itself. | |
| From: comment on John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 4 'Intrinsic' | |
| A reaction: If freedom is intrinsically good, does this leave us (as Wolff warned earlier) unable to defend its value? Freedom isn't an intrinsic good for infants, so why should it be so for adults? Good because it brings happiness, or fulfils our nature? |
| 7215 | True freedom is pursuing our own good, while not impeding others [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This principle will probably lead up a Prisoner's Dilemma cul-de-sac. The only freedom which deserves the name is the collective agreed freedom of a whole community to live well, when citizens volunteer to restrict their individual freedoms. |
| 7218 | Individuals are not accountable for actions which only concern themselves [Mill] |
| Full Idea: My first maxim is that the individual is not accountable to society for his actions, in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This is a key idea of liberalism, and one which communitarians have doubts about (because it is almost impossible to perform an action which is of no interest, in the short or long term, to others). I share these doubts. |
| 7221 | Blocking entry to an unsafe bridge does not infringe liberty, since no one wants unsafe bridges [Mill] |
| Full Idea: An official could turn a person back from an unsafe bridge without infringeing their liberty; for liberty consists in doing what one desires, and he does not desire to fall into the river. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Seems fair enough, but it justifies paternalist interference. The tricky one is where the official and the citizen disagree over what the citizen 'truly' desires. Asking people may involve too much time, but it could also involve too much effort. |
| 7223 | Pimping and running a gambling-house are on the border between toleration and restraint [Mill] |
| Full Idea: A person being free to be a pimp, or to keep a gambling-house, lies on the exact boundary line between two principles, of toleration and of restraint. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Nothing illuminates a philosopher's principles more than for them to specify cases that lie on their borderlines. Both professions seem, unfortunately, to lead people into worse activities, such as violent bullying, or theft. Tricky.. |
| 7220 | Restraint for its own sake is an evil [Mill] |
| Full Idea: All restraint, qua restraint, is an evil. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: The ultimate justification for this is (presumably) utilitarian, but that would mean that there was nothing wrong with restraint if the person did not mind, or was not aware of the restraint. What is intrinsically wrong with restraint? |
| 23256 | Liberty and equality cannot be reconciled [Grayling] |
| Full Idea: Liberty and equality appear to be irresolvable contradictions. | |
| From: A.C. Grayling (The Good State [2020], 2) | |
| A reaction: [He particularly cites Isaiah Berlin for this view] Hm. The liberty of one is the liberty of all. I don't think I would feel that my liberty was unreasonably infringed if I lived in a society of imposed equality. The greedy hate equality the most. |
| 23258 | The very concept of democracy entails a need for justice [Grayling] |
| Full Idea: The concept of democracy - embodying the principles of participation and equal concern - entails that social justice is a mandatory aim. | |
| From: A.C. Grayling (The Good State [2020], 2) | |
| A reaction: The idea that democracy entails participation in any direct way is what the right wing reject. Sustained participation would presumably entail various sorts of justice. |
| 23259 | There should be separate legislative, executive and judicial institutions [Grayling] |
| Full Idea: The obvious solution is where the legislative, executive and judicial powers are exercised by different institutions, distinguished by function. The executive is answerable to the legislative, and the judicial is controlled by neither. | |
| From: A.C. Grayling (The Good State [2020], 3) | |
| A reaction: Separation by institution, rather than merely by separate individuals exercising the powers. I agree (with Popper etc) that institutions are the way to secure long-term success and justice. Grayling says the judiciary must not paralyse government. |
| 7219 | Society can punish actions which it believes to be prejudicial to others [Mill] |
| Full Idea: My second maxim is that for actions that are prejudicial to the interests of others, the individual is accountable, and subject to social or legal punishment, if society believes that this is requisite for its protection. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: (wording compressed). The trouble with this would seem to be the possible disagreement between the individual and the society over whether the actions actually are prejudicial to others. It would justify a conservative society in being repressive. |
| 7226 | Benefits performed by individuals, not by government, help also to educate them [Mill] |
| Full Idea: It is often desirable that beneficial things should be done by individuals, rather than by the government, as a means to their own mental education. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This raises the important danger, which even those on the political left must acknowledge, of the 'nanny state'. It offers a nicely paternalistic, and even patronising reason for giving people freedom, just as a parent might to a child. |
| 7224 | We need individual opinions and conduct, and State education is a means to prevent that [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Individuality of character, and diversity in opinions and modes of conduct, involves diversity of education; a general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as being particularly true with the advent in Britain of the National Curriculum in the early 1990s. However, if there is a pressure towards conformity in state education, private education is dominated by class and money. |
| 7225 | It is a crime to create a being who lacks the ordinary chances of a desirable existence [Mill] |
| Full Idea: To bestow a life on someone which may be either a curse or a blessing, unless the being on whom it is to be bestowed will have at least the ordinary chances of a desirable existence, is a crime against that being. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard utilitarian attitude to engendering people. I think I have to agree. It is no argument against this to say that we value people with poor life prospects, once they have arrived. Altruism towards children may disguise selfish parents. |
| 7216 | The ethics of the Gospel has been supplemented by barbarous Old Testament values [Mill] |
| Full Idea: To extract from the Gospel a body of ethical doctrine, has never been possible withouth eking it out from the Old Testament, that is, from a system elaborate indeed, but in many respects barbarous, and intended only for a barbarous people. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: 'Barbarous' has a quaint Victorian ring to it, but his point is that the surviving teachings of Jesus are very thin and generalised. Christians would do better to expand their implications, than to borrow from the Old Testament. |