3 ideas
| 4870 | The most beautiful hand seen through the microscope will appear horrible [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The most beautiful hand seen through the microscope will appear horrible. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (Letters to Hugo Boxel [1674], 1674?) | |
| A reaction: Spinoza offers this nicely expressed point to support his view that beauty is strictly relative to observers, but I am unconvinced. If the outline of the hand is its key aesthetic feature, the viewer through the microscope cannot see it. |
| 7903 | The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna] |
| Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom. | |
| From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88) | |
| A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate'). |
| 21137 | Rawls rejected cosmopolitanism because it doesn't respect the autonomy of 'peoples' [Rawls, by Shorten] |
| Full Idea: Rawls rejected the cosmopolitan extension of his theory because he thought it failed to respect the political autonomy of 'peoples', which was his term of art for societies or political communities. | |
| From: report of John Rawls (The Law of Peoples [1999], p.115-8) by Andrew Shorten - Contemporary Political Theory 09 | |
| A reaction: Interesting that you might well start with the concept of 'a people', prior to some sort of social contract, but end up with rather alarming conflicts or indifference between rival peoples. Why should my people help in the famine next door? |