5064
|
Rights are moral significance, or liberty, or right not to be restrained, or entitlement [Mawson]
|
|
Full Idea:
A 'right' can mean 'x counts morally', or 'x is permitted to do this' (liberty), or 'x can't be stopped from doing this' (negative right), or 'someone should provide this for x'.
|
|
From:
Tim Mawson (Animal Rights talk [2003]), quoted by PG - lecture notes
|
|
A reaction:
A useful analysis. It is a useful preliminary to considering whether any of these are natural rights. Personally I am sympathetic to that concept. You cannot deny a person's right to self-defence, even when you are sitting on them. Persons have rights.
|
5467
|
Euler said nature is instrinsically passive, and minds cause change [Euler, by Ellis]
|
|
Full Idea:
Euler thought the powers necessary for the maintenance of the changing universe would turn out to be just the passive ones of inertia and impenetrability. There are no active powers, he urged, other than those of God and living beings.
|
|
From:
report of Leonhard Euler (Letters to a German Princess [1765]) by Brian Ellis - The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism Ch.4
|
|
A reaction:
Very significant, I think, for revealing the religious framework behind early theories of natural laws. If there is nothing external to impose powers and movements on nature, the source must be sought within - hence essentialism.
|