Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Mahaprajnaparamitashastra', 'Goodness and Choice' and 'Letters to Varignon'

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4 ideas

22. Metaethics / B. Value / 2. Values / b. Successful function

22381	Being a good father seems to depend on intentions, rather than actual abilities [Foot]
	Full Idea: Being a good father, or daughter, or friend seems to depend on one's intentions, rather than on such things as cleverness and strength.
	From: Philippa Foot (Goodness and Choice [1961], p.138)
	A reaction: Not sure about that. In wartime a good father might need to be actually brave, and in times of hardship be actually economically successful. 'He meant well, but he was a hopeless father'?

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').

26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 3. Natural Function

22380	Some words, such as 'knife', have a meaning which involves its function [Foot]
	Full Idea: The word 'knife' names an object in respect of its function. That is not to say (simply) that it names an object which has a function, but also that the function is involved in the meaning of the word.
	From: Philippa Foot (Goodness and Choice [1961], p.134)
	A reaction: It seems faintly possible that someone (a child, perhaps) could know the word and recognise the object, but not know what the object is for. Ditto with other things which have functional names.

27. Natural Reality / G. Biology / 3. Evolution

19414	Men are related to animals, which are related to plants, then to fossils, and then to the apparently inert [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: Men are related to animals, these to plants, and the latter directly to fossils which will be linked in their turn to bodies which the senses and the imagination represent to us as perfectly dead and formless.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Varignon [1702], 1702)
	A reaction: Leibniz would be a bit surprised to find the way in which this has turned out to be largely true, since he is basing it on his picture of a hierarchy of monads. Nevertheless, the idea that we are all related wasn't invented in 1859.