Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Mahaprajnaparamitashastra', 'On suicide' and 'Later Letters to Dedekind'

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


3 ideas

4. Formal Logic / F. Set Theory ST / 4. Axioms for Sets / a. Axioms for sets
Cantor gives informal versions of ZF axioms as ways of getting from one set to another [Cantor, by Lake]
     Full Idea: Cantor gives informal versions of the axioms of ZF as ways of getting from one set to another.
     From: report of George Cantor (Later Letters to Dedekind [1899]) by John Lake - Approaches to Set Theory 1.6
     A reaction: Lake suggests that it should therefore be called CZF.
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / a. Virtues
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').
25. Social Practice / F. Life Issues / 4. Suicide
If suicide is wrong because only God disposes of our lives, it must also be wrong to save lives [Hume]
     Full Idea: Were the disposal of human life so much the peculiar province of the Almighty that it were an encroachment on His right, for men to dispose of their own lives; it would be equally criminal to act for the preservation of life as for its destruction.
     From: David Hume (On suicide [1775]), quoted by Jonathan Glover - Causing Death and Saving Lives §13
     A reaction: A characteristically wicked and neat point. Maybe we can intervene in the environment (diverting a falling stone), but not directly in a life? Life is sacred, but stones are not?