Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Natural Goodness', 'A Thousand Small Sanities' and 'Fath and Love, or the King and Queen'

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34 ideas

1. Philosophy / A. Wisdom / 1. Nature of Wisdom
Wisdom only implies the knowledge achievable in any normal lifetime [Foot]
     Full Idea: Wisdom implies no more knowledge and understanding than anyone of normal capacity can and should acquire in the course of an ordinary life.
     From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 5)
     A reaction: Have philosophers stopped talking about wisdom precisely because you now need three university degrees to be considered even remotely good at phillosophy? Hence wisdom is an inferior attainment, because Foot is right.
20. Action / C. Motives for Action / 3. Acting on Reason / a. Practical reason
All criterions of practical rationality derive from goodness of will [Foot]
     Full Idea: I want to say, baldly, that there is no criterion for practical rationality that is not derived from that of goodness of will.
     From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 1)
     A reaction: Where does that put the successful and clever criminal? Presumably they are broadly irrational, but narrowly rational - but that is not very clear distinction. She says Kant's concept of the good will is too pure, and unrelated to human good.
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / b. Rational ethics
Moral reason is not just neutral, because morality is part of the standard of rationality [Foot, by Hacker-Wright]
     Full Idea: In her late period she again reverses her thoughts on moral rationalism; …rather than a neutral rationality which fulfils desires, she argues that morality ought to be thought of as part of the standard of rationality itself.
     From: report of Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001]) by John Hacker-Wright - Philippa Foot's Moral Thought Intro
     A reaction: This comes much closer to the Greek and Aristotelian concept of logos. They saw morality as inseparable from our judgements about how the world is. All 'sensible' thinking will involve what is good for humanity.
Practical rationality must weigh both what is morally and what is non-morally required [Foot]
     Full Idea: Different considerations are on a par, in that judgement about what is required by practical rationality must take account of their interaction: of the weight of the ones we call non-moral as well as those we call moral.
     From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 1)
     A reaction: Her final settled view of rationalism in morality, it seems. The point is that moral considerations are not paramount, because she sees possible justifications for ignoring moral rules (like 'don't lie') in certain practical situations.
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / e. Human nature
Moral virtues arise from human nature, as part of what makes us good human beings [Foot, by Hacker-Wright]
     Full Idea: In her later work she offers a view of the relationship of morality to human nature, arguing that the moral virtues are part of what makes us good as human beings.
     From: report of Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001]) by John Hacker-Wright - Philippa Foot's Moral Thought Intro
     A reaction: In this phase she talks explicitly of the Aristotelian idea that successful function is the grounding of what is good for any living being, including humans.
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / k. Ethics from nature
Sterility is a human defect, but the choice to be childless is not [Foot]
     Full Idea: Lack of capacity to reproduce is a defect in a human being. But choice of childlessness and even celibacy is not thereby shown to be defective choice, because human good is not the same as plant or animal good.
     From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 3)
     A reaction: Is failure to reproduce a defect in an animal? If goodness and virtue derive from function, it is hard to see how deliberate childlessness could be a human good, even if it is not a defect. Choosing to terminate a hereditary defect seems good.
Virtues are as necessary to humans as stings are to bees [Foot]
     Full Idea: Virtues play a necessary part in the life of human beings as do stings in the life of a bee.
     From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 2)
     A reaction: This presumably rests on the Aristotelian idea that humans are essentially social (as opposed to solitary humans who choose to be social, perhaps in a contractual way, as Plato implies).
22. Metaethics / B. Value / 1. Nature of Value / b. Fact and value
Moral evaluations are not separate from facts, but concern particular facts about functioning [Foot]
     Full Idea: A moral evaluation does not stand over against the statement of a matter of fact, but rather has to do with facts about a particular subject matter, as do evaluations of such things as sight and hearing in animals.
     From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 1)
     A reaction: She avoids the word 'function', and only deals with living creatures, but she uses a 'good knife' as an example, and this Aristotelian view clearly applies to any machine which has a function.
22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 2. Happiness / a. Nature of happiness
Deep happiness usually comes from the basic things in life [Foot]
     Full Idea: Possible objects of deep happiness seem to be things that are basic in human life, such as home, and family, and work, and friendship.
     From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 6)
     A reaction: I've not encountered discussion of 'deep' happiness before. I heard of an old man in tears because he had just seen a Purple Emperor butterfly for the first time. She makes it sound very conservative. How about mountaineering achievements?
Happiness is enjoying the pursuit and attainment of right ends [Foot]
     Full Idea: In my terminology 'happiness' is understood as the enjoyment of good things, meaning the enjoyment in attaining, and in pursuing, right ends.
     From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 6)
     A reaction: A modified version of Aristotle's view, which she contrasts with McDowell's identification of happiness with the life of virtue. They all seem to have an optimistic hope that the pleasure in being a bit wicked is false happiness.
23. Ethics / A. Egoism / 1. Ethical Egoism
Good actions can never be justified by the good they brings to their agent [Foot]
     Full Idea: There is no good case for assessing the goodness of human action by reference only to good that each person brings to himself.
     From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 1)
     A reaction: She observes that even non-human animals often act for non-selfish reasons. The significance of this is its rejection of her much earlier view that virtues are justified by the good they bring their possessor.
23. Ethics / B. Contract Ethics / 5. Free Rider
We all know that just pretending to be someone's friend is not the good life [Foot]
     Full Idea: We know perfectly well that it is not true that the best life would consist in successfully pretending friendship: having friends to serve one but without being a real friend oneself.
     From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 7)
     A reaction: For some skallywags the achieving of something for nothing seems to be very much the good life, but not many of them want to exploit people who are seen to be their friends.
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 2. Elements of Virtue Theory / e. Character
Someone is a good person because of their rational will, not their body or memory [Foot]
     Full Idea: To speak of a good person is to speak of an individual not in respect of his body, or of faculties such as sight and memory, but as concerns his rational will (his 'will as controllable by reason').
     From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 5)
     A reaction: She more or less agrees with Kant that the only truly good moral thing is a good will, though she has plenty of other criticisms of his views.
23. Ethics / F. Existentialism / 7. Existential Action
Refraining from murder is not made good by authenticity or self-fulfilment [Foot]
     Full Idea: If a stranger should come on us when we are sleeping he will not think it all right to kill us. …In human life as it is, this kind of action is not made good by authenticity or self-fulfilment in the one who does it.
     From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 7)
     A reaction: A rare swipe from Foot at existentialism, which she hardly ever mentions. I find it hard to see these existential virtues as in any way moral. It means nothing to other citizens whether one of their number is 'authentic'.
24. Political Theory / C. Ruling a State / 2. Leaders / b. Monarchy
The whole point of a monarch is that we accept them as a higher-born, ideal person [Novalis]
     Full Idea: The distinguishing character of the monarchy lies precisely in the fact of belief in a higher-born person, of voluntary acceptance of an ideal person. I cannot choose a leader from among my peers.
     From: Novalis (Fath and Love, or the King and Queen [1798], 18)
     A reaction: Novalis was passionately devoted to the new king and queen of Prussia, only a few years after the French Revolution. This attitude seems to me unchanged among monarchists in present day Britain. Genetics has undermined 'higher-born'.
24. Political Theory / C. Ruling a State / 4. Changing the State / c. Revolution
Most good social changes are incremental, rather than revolutionary [Gopnik]
     Full Idea: More permanent positive social change is made incrementally rather than by revolutionary transformation.
     From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1)
     A reaction: This is the standard liberal response to revolution. Revolutionaries obviously consider such a claim to be very naïve, and a failure to grasp how deep the changes need to go.
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 3. Conservatism
Conservatives often want peace, prosperity and tolerance, but not social fairness [Gopnik]
     Full Idea: Many conservatives want their world to be peaceful, properous, and pluralist, just as liberals do, but they don't particularly care that it be fair.
     From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1)
     A reaction: Every conservative will have a sense of what is fair (such as appropriate punishments, and keeping of contracts), but they are more inclined to think that fairness must be fought for by individuals, not imposed by governments.
Conservatives believe obedience and rank are essential to social order [Gopnik]
     Full Idea: The idea that the appearance of submission and obedience and rank are essential to order is at the heart of the conservative ideal.
     From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2)
     A reaction: [He has just quoted Edmund Burke writing of Marie Antoinette] I once heard Richard Hare say that he thought social order would be best modelled on the army. A colleague once told me that obedience is a prime duty of a school teacher.
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 6. Liberalism / a. Liberalism basics
People are fallible, so liberalism tries to distribute power [Gopnik]
     Full Idea: Liberalism makes the idea of fallibility into a political practice by trying not to have too much power concentrated in one place or part of the system.
     From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3)
     A reaction: There is a potential inefficiency and failure to focus on key goals implicit in this aim. It may be a good idea for a peacetime democracy, but a terrible idea for a wartime army. To stop corruption, don't let anyone do anything?
Liberals have tried very hard to build a conscience into their institutions [Gopnik]
     Full Idea: What liberalism can say on its own behalf is that no system of power in human history has tried harder to insert a corrective conscience into its institutions.
     From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3)
     A reaction: What we are learning in recent years is that wonderful liberal institutions can be quietly eroded by the forces of darkness, once those forces have sufficient control of the media to hide what they are doing. The 'rule of law' is wobbling.
The opposite of liberalism is dogmatism [Gopnik]
     Full Idea: The opposite of liberalism is not conservatism but dogmatism.
     From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1)
     A reaction: Nice. It pinpoints the liberal opposition to both extremes of normal politics. It might make anarchists their allies, though!
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 6. Liberalism / c. Liberal equality
Left-wingers are inconsistent in their essentialist descriptions of social groups [Gopnik]
     Full Idea: A criticism of the left is that it is essentialist at some moments, and wildly anti-essentialist at others. We can call this opportunistic essentialism. Gender is fluid - except for transgender kids. Race is a construction - except for white races.
     From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3)
     A reaction: [compressed] Interesting. Gopnik's solution seems to be to abandon all social essentialism as wicked. In this context he is probably right, but I am firmly committed to the idea that many entities in the world have essential natures. 'Bourgeois'.
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 6. Liberalism / e. Liberal community
Liberal community is not blood ties or tradition, but shared choices, and sympathy for the losers [Gopnik]
     Full Idea: The liberal idea of community is not one, as it is for many conservatives, of blood ties or traditional authority. It rest on the idea of shared choices …including even a sense of sympathy for those caught on the losing side of the argument.
     From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1)
     A reaction: The key point is that most liberals (other than extreme libertarians) have a strong sense of community, contrary to the standard criticisms offered by communitarians.
Liberal community includes flight from the family, into energetic reforming groups [Gopnik]
     Full Idea: Where conservatives believe in the renewal of traditional community, liberals believe as well in the flight from family and tradition into new kinds of communal order. …It is an idea of assembling confidence and energies for reform.
     From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1)
     A reaction: He cites Greenwich Village as an example. This suggests that his vision is a little narrow. His communities are for radicals who flee to join like minds in big cities. Politics must care about community for those left behind. Pubs, sport and pets.
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 6. Liberalism / g. Liberalism critique
Right-wingers attack liberal faith in reason, left-wingers attack its faith in reform [Gopnik]
     Full Idea: The right-wing critique of liberalism is largely an attack on its overreliance on reason; the left-wing one, mostly an attack on its false faith in reform.
     From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2)
     A reaction: I doubt whether sensible liberals do rely too much on reason, though they do rely of scientific evidence (after peer review!). No one can doubt that lots of reforms have occurred, so it must be frustration with the very slow process.
Cosmopolitan liberals lack national loyalty, and welcome excessive immigration [Gopnik]
     Full Idea: Critics say liberal cosmopolitanism is indifference to national loyalty, making them easily contemplate going elsewhere and, worse still, welcoming in the world through unsifted immigration.
     From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2)
     A reaction: There is certainly some truth in this. Not all liberals are so cosmopolitan, though. It is interesting to observe whether people who retire stay in their old community or move to somewhere quite new.
Modern left-wingers criticise liberalism's control of culture [Gopnik]
     Full Idea: Most left-wing critiques of liberalism now turn more often on its cultural power and its cultural illusions.
     From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3)
     A reaction: As opposed to older Marxists critiques of the exploitation of workers. This is certainly fertile ground for interesting studies of our culture. It is very hard to grasp the influence had by the endless stories we expose ourselves to.
Liberalism's attempt to be neutral and colour-blind erases cultural identities [Gopnik]
     Full Idea: The 'colour-blind' universe of 'neutral' liberalism is actually an attempt to erase cultural identity and history.
     From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3)
     A reaction: This is the modern critique of liberalism [centred on the Intersectionality of Bell Hooks or Kimberlé Crenshaw], which analyses alienated minorities, and their emphasis on their difference in response. It can lead to 'identity politics'.
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 9. Communism
Classic Marxists see liberalism as the ideology of the bourgeoisie [Gopnik]
     Full Idea: The classic Marxist account shows liberalism as merely the ideology of the bourgeoisie.
     From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3)
     A reaction: The word 'merely' does an awful lot of work in philosohy! I suspect that 'bourgeoisie' is self-defining here - as the believers in liberalism - given that lots of Marxists emerge from the middle classes.
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 11. Capitalism
Environmental disasters result not from capitalism, but from a general drive for growth [Gopnik]
     Full Idea: It is the drive for growth, not capitalism in particular, that makes environmental disasters happen. Those caused by the command economics of Eastern Europe were far greater than even the worst known in Western Europe.
     From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3)
     A reaction: So the next question is whether you can have capitalism without a drive for growth. I would have thought not, given the role recycled profit plays in driving capitalism. Command economies are more easily swept away.
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 14. Nationalism
Popular imperialism gives the poor the belief that their acts have world historical meaning [Gopnik]
     Full Idea: Popular imperialism is the cosmopolitanism of the poor, the lever by which the small and impotent come to believe that their acts have world historical meaning.
     From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2)
     A reaction: It is not only the poor who like imperialism. The focus of this popular attitude is the armed forces, and especially the army, where personal bravery is most obvious. The army gets strong support, no matter how dubious are its activities.
Patriots love their place, but nationalists have a paranoid ethnic hostility [Gopnik]
     Full Idea: The patriot loves his place and its cheeses; …the nationalist has not particular affection for the place, but employs his obsessive sense of encirclement and grievance on behalf of acts of ethnic vengeance.
     From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2)
     A reaction: 'Vengeance' seems a bit strong. John Le Carré said nationalists are distinguished by the need to have enemies. Russia is particularly obsessed with 'encirclement'.
25. Social Practice / A. Freedoms / 3. Free speech
Liberal free speech is actually paid speech [Gopnik]
     Full Idea: What liberals call free speech or a free press is invariably paid speech.
     From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3)
     A reaction: He give this as the left-wing view of liberalism. The much-hated social media are a substantial breech in this tendency. Sales of newspapers are declining everywhere, so the battle is for television channels.
25. Social Practice / A. Freedoms / 4. Free market
A 'free' society implies a free market, which always produces predatory capitalism and inequalities [Gopnik]
     Full Idea: 'Free societies', as a matter of practical fact, always mean free-market societies - and free markets will never sponsor more than predatory capitalism. Inequalities always emerge.
     From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3)
     A reaction: This is part of his account of left-wing objections to liberalism. The crux of the liberal view is a conviction that the worst of capitalism can be restrained. This began to look doubtful once huge multinational companies emerged. What to do?