Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Mahaprajnaparamitashastra', 'Moral Luck' and 'works'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts

---

4 ideas

11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 4. Belief / d. Cause of beliefs

20945	Belief is no more rational than is tasting and smelling [Hamann]
	Full Idea: Belief happens as little in terms of reasons as tasting and smelling.
	From: J.G. Hamann (works [1770], v2:74), quoted by Andrew Bowie - Introduction to German Philosophy
	A reaction: That is one idea definitively expressed! I take it as only a partial truth. Beliefs happen as a result of observation and experience. But someone can draw our attention to something (and we can hunt it out ourselves), which is giving a reason for belief.

22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 1. Goodness / i. Moral luck

23282	If all that matters in morality is motive and intention, that makes moral luck irrelevant [Williams,B]
	Full Idea: The idea that one's whole life can be immune to luck has not prevailed (e.g. in Christianity), …but its place has been taken by the idea that moral value can be immune, …if it is motive that counts, and in actions it is not worldly changes but intention.
	From: Bernard Williams (Moral Luck [1976], p.20)
	A reaction: [compressed] That is, that Kant offers a way to make luck irrelevant to morality. Williams disagrees, but says at least Kant offers 'solace to a sense of the world's unfairness'.

23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / a. Virtues

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').

28. God / A. Divine Nature / 2. Divine Nature

7666	God is not a mathematician, but a poet [Hamann, by Berlin]
	Full Idea: Hamann's fundamental doctrine was that God was not a geometer, not a mathematician, but a poet.
	From: report of J.G. Hamann (works [1770]) by Isaiah Berlin - The Roots of Romanticism Ch.3
	A reaction: [This idea is wonderfully expressed by D.H.Lawrence in his poem 'Red Geranium and Godly Mignonette]. The idea becomes attractive when you ask whether God would need to do mathematics.