3 ideas
| 5958 | The sun is always bright; it doesn't become bright when it emerges [Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: The sun doesn't become bright when it emerges from the clouds; it always is bright. | |
| From: Plutarch (26: Oracles in Decline [c.85], §39) | |
| A reaction: Not an argument, but a nice appeal to common sense, like Russell's example of the cat that disappears behind the furniture and then reappears. To disagree with Plutarch here strikes me as the road to philosophical absurdity. |
| 22489 | 'Good' is an attributive adjective like 'large', not predicative like 'red' [Geach, by Foot] |
| Full Idea: Geach puts 'good' in the class of attributive adjectives, such as 'large' and 'small', contrasting such adjectives with 'predicative' adjectives such as 'red'. | |
| From: report of Peter Geach (Good and Evil [1956]) by Philippa Foot - Natural Goodness Intro | |
| A reaction: [In Analysis 17, and 'Theories of Ethics' ed Foot] Thus any object can simply be red, but something can only be large or small 'for a rat' or 'for a car'. Hence nothing is just good, but always a good so-and-so. This is Aristotelian, and Foot loves it. |
| 22456 | Maybe virtues conflict with each other, if some virtue needs a vice for its achievement [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Maybe so far from forming a unity ...., the virtues actually conflict with each other: that is, if someone has one of them he inevitably fails to have some other. ...Maybe he a man can only be good in one way be being bad in another. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Moral Realism and Moral Dilemma [1983], p.57) | |
| A reaction: She suggests the self-loathing needed to rein in evil desires. She cites Nietzsche having a similar thought. Presumably the ideal virtuous person has no such conflicts, and the self-loathing undermines eudaimonia. Unity in theory but not in practice? |