63 ideas
| 13773 | For the truth you need Prodicus's fifty-drachma course, not his one-drachma course [Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates: If I'd attended Prodicus's fifty-drachma course, I could tell you the truth about names straightway, but as I've only heard the one-drachma course, I don't know the truth about it. | |
| From: Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Cratylus 384b |
| 7421 | A philosopher is one who cares about what other people care about [Socrates, by Foucault] |
| Full Idea: Socrates asks people 'Are you caring for yourself?' He is the man who cares about the care of others; this is the particular position of the philosopher. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Michel Foucault - Ethics of the Concern for Self as Freedom p.287 | |
| A reaction: Priests, politicians and psychiatrists also care quite intensely about the concerns of other people. Someone who was intensely self-absorbed with the critical task of getting their own beliefs right would count for me as a philosopher. |
| 23027 | Ideals and metaphysics are practical, not imaginative or speculative [Green,TH, by Muirhead] |
| Full Idea: To T.H. Green an ideal was no creation of an idle imagination, metaphysics no mere play of the speculative reason. Ideals were the most solid, and metaphysics the most practical thing about a man. | |
| From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State I | |
| A reaction: This is despite the fact that Green was an idealist in the Hegelian tradition. I like this. I see it not just as ideals having practical guiding influence, but also that ideals themselves arising out of experience. |
| 1649 | Socrates opened philosophy to all, but Plato confined moral enquiry to a tiny elite [Vlastos on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: To confine, as Plato does in 'Republic' IV-VII, moral inquiry to a tiny elite, is to obliterate the Socratic vision which opens up the philosophic life to all. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.18 | |
| A reaction: This doesn't mean that Plato is necessarily 'elitist'. It isn't elitist to point out that an activity is very difficult. |
| 5842 | Philosophical discussion involves dividing subject-matter into categories [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: Self-discipline and avoidance of pleasure makes people most capable of philosophical discussion, which is called 'discussion' (dialegesthai - sort out) because people divide their subject-matter into categories. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 4.5.12 | |
| A reaction: This could be the original slogan for analytical philosophy, as far as I am concerned. I don't think philosophy aims at complete and successful analysis (cf. Idea 2958), but at revealing the structure and interconnection of ideas. This is wisdom. |
| 648 | Socrates began the quest for something universal with his definitions, but he didn't make them separate [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Socrates began the quest for something universal in addition to the radical flux of perceptible particulars, with his definitions. But he rightly understood that universals cannot be separated from particulars. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1086b |
| 164 | It is legitimate to play the devil's advocate [Socrates] |
| Full Idea: It is legitimate to play the devil's advocate. | |
| From: Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Phaedrus 272c |
| 1647 | In Socratic dialogue you must say what you believe, so unasserted premises are not debated [Vlastos on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates' rule of "say only what you believe"….excluded debate on unasserted premises, thereby distinguishing Socratic from Zenonian and earlier dialectics. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.14 |
| 115 | Socrates was pleased if his mistakes were proved wrong [Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates: I'm happy to have a mistaken idea of mine proved wrong. | |
| From: Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Gorgias 458a |
| 22099 | The method of Socrates shows the student is discovering the truth within himself [Socrates, by Carlisle] |
| Full Idea: Socrates tended to prefer the method of questioning, for this made it clear that the student was discovering the truth within himself. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 7 | |
| A reaction: Sounds like it will only facilitate conceptual analysis, and excludes empirical knowledge. Can you say to Socrates 'I'll just google that'? |
| 5844 | Socrates always proceeded in argument by general agreement at each stage [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: When Socrates was setting out a detailed argument, he used to proceed by such stages as were generally agreed, because he thought that this was the infallible method of argument. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 4.6.16 | |
| A reaction: This sounds right, and shows how strongly Socrates perceived philosophy to be a group activity, of which I approve. It seems to me that philosophy is clearly a spoken subject before it is a written one. The lonely speculator comes much later. |
| 11389 | Socrates sought essences, which are the basis of formal logic [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is not surprising that Socrates sought essences. His project was to establish formal reasoning, of whose syllogisms essences are the foundations. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1078b22 | |
| A reaction: This seems to reinforce the definitional view of essences, since definitions seem to be at the centre of most of Socrates's quests. |
| 23030 | Truth is a relation to a whole of organised knowledge in the collection of rational minds [Green,TH, by Muirhead] |
| Full Idea: When we speak of anything as true or false, we do so on the ground of its relation to a whole of organised knowledge existing actually in no human mind, but prefigured in every mind which is possessed of reason. | |
| From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State I n1 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the super-idealist view of the coherence account of truth. I have no idea what 'prefigured' means here. |
| 639 | Socrates developed definitions as the basis of syllogisms, and also inductive arguments [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Socrates aimed to establish formal logic, of whose syllogisms essences are the foundations. He developed inductive arguments and also general definitions. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1078b |
| 1652 | Socrates did not consider universals or definitions as having separate existence, but Plato made Forms of them [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Socrates did not regard the universals or the objects of definitions as separate existents, while Plato did separate them, and called this sort of entity ideas/forms. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1078b30 |
| 23044 | All knowledge rests on a fundamental unity between the knower and what is known [Green,TH, by Muirhead] |
| Full Idea: All knowledge is seen on ultimate analysis to rest upon the idea of a fundamental unity between subject and object, between the knower and that which there is to be known. | |
| From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State III | |
| A reaction: I don't really understand this thought, but I think it embodies the essence of Hegelian idealism. If I know a tree in the wood, any 'unity' between us strikes as merely imaginary. If the tree isn't separate, what does 'knowing' it mean? |
| 23633 | Many truths seem obvious, and point to universal agreement - which is what we find [Reid] |
| Full Idea: There are many truths so obvious to the human faculties, that it should be expected that men should universally agree in them. And this is actually found to be the case with regard to many truths, against which we find no dissent. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 1: Preliminary [1785], 2) | |
| A reaction: He says that a few sceptical philosophers may disagree. This is a nice statement of his creed of common sense. I agree with him, and Aristotle observes the same fact. |
| 23034 | The ultimate test for truth is the systematic interdependence in nature [Green,TH, by Muirhead] |
| Full Idea: Systematic interdependence in the world of nature is the ultimate test of truth. | |
| From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |
| A reaction: Green (or Muirhead) drifts between coherence as the nature of truth and coherence as the nature of justification. He it is the 'test' for truth, which was Russell's view. |
| 1650 | For Socrates our soul, though hard to define, is our self [Vlastos on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: For Socrates our soul is our self - whatever that might turn out to be. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.55 | |
| A reaction: The problem with any broad claim like this is that we seem to be able to distinguish between essential and non-essential aspects of the self or of the soul. |
| 23252 | Socrates first proposed that we are run by mind or reason [Socrates, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: It would seem that historically the decisive step was taken by Socrates in conceiving of human beings as being run by a mind or reason.. …He postulated an entity whose precision nature and function then was a matter of considerable debate. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Michael Frede - Intro to 'Rationality in Greek Thought' p.19 | |
| A reaction: This is, for me, a rather revelatory idea. I am keen on the fact the animals make judgements which are true and false, and also that we exhibit rationality when walking across uneven ground. So pure rationality is a cultural construct! |
| 23630 | Only philosophers treat ideas as objects [Reid] |
| Full Idea: The vulgar allow that an 'idea' implies a mind that thinks, an act of mind which we call thinking, and an object about which we think. But the philosopher conceives a fourth - the idea, which is the immediate object. …I believe this to be a mere fiction. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 1: Preliminary [1785], 1) | |
| A reaction: Another example, to add to Yablo's list, of abstract objects invented by philosophers to fill holes in their theories. This one is illuminating, because we all say 'I've got an idea'. Cf discussions of the redundancy of truth. Cf propositions. |
| 23629 | The ambiguity of words impedes the advancement of knowledge [Reid] |
| Full Idea: There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 1: Preliminary [1785], 1) | |
| A reaction: He means that ambiguity leads to long pointless disagreements. |
| 199 | The common belief is that people can know the best without acting on it [Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Most people think there are many who recognise the best but are unwilling to act on it. | |
| From: Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Protagoras 352d |
| 195 | No one willingly commits an evil or base act [Socrates] |
| Full Idea: I am fairly certain that no wise man believes anyone sins willingly or willingly perpetrates any evil or base act. | |
| From: Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Protagoras 345e |
| 1653 | Socrates did not accept the tripartite soul (which permits akrasia) [Vlastos on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Xenophon indirectly indicates that he does not associate Socrates in any way with the tripartite psychology of the 'Republic', for within that theory akrasia would be all too possible. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.102 |
| 5843 | People do what they think they should do, and only ever do what they think they should do [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: There is no one who knows what they ought to do, but thinks that they ought not to do it, and no one does anything other than what they think they ought to do. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 4.6.6 | |
| A reaction: This is Socrates' well-known rejection of the possibility of weakness of will (akrasia - lit. 'lack of control'). Aristotle disagreed, and so does almost everyone else. Modern smokers seem to exhibit akrasia. I have some sympathy with Socrates. |
| 5253 | Socrates was shocked by the idea of akrasia, but observation shows that it happens [Aristotle on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates thought it a shocking idea that when a man actually has knowledge in him something else should overmaster it, ..but this is glaringly inconsistent with the observed facts. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics 1145b24 | |
| A reaction: Aristotle seems very confident, but it is not at all clear (even to the agent) what is going on when apparent weakness of will occurs (e.g. breaking a diet). What exactly does the agent believe at the moment of weakness? |
| 5839 | For Socrates, wisdom and prudence were the same thing [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: Socrates did not distinguish wisdom from prudence, but judged that the man who recognises and puts into practice what is truly good, and the man who knows and guards against what is disgraceful, are both wise and prudent. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 3.9.3 | |
| A reaction: Compare Aristotle, who separates them, claiming that prudence is essential for moral virtue, but wisdom is pursued at a different level, closer to the gods than to society. |
| 5867 | For Socrates, virtues are forms of knowledge, so knowing justice produces justice [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Socrates thought that the virtues were all forms of knowledge, and therefore once a man knew justice, he would be a just man. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Eudemian Ethics 1216b07 | |
| A reaction: The clearest possible statement of Socrates' intellectualism. Aristotle rejected the Socrates view, but I find it sympathetic. Smokers who don't want to die seem to be in denial. To see the victims is to condemn the crime. |
| 5069 | Socrates was the first to base ethics upon reason, and use reason to explain it [Taylor,R on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates was the first significant thinker to try basing ethics upon reason, and to try uncovering its natural principles solely by the use of reason. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Richard Taylor - Virtue Ethics: an Introduction Ch.7 | |
| A reaction: Interesting. It seems to me that Socrates overemphasised reason, presumably because it was a novelty. Hence his view that akrasia is impossible, and that virtue is simply knowledge. Maybe action is not just rational, but moral action is. |
| 5836 | All human virtues are increased by study and practice [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: If you consider the virtues that are recognised among human beings, you will find that they are all increased by study and practice. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 2.6.41 | |
| A reaction: 'Study' is the intellectualist part of this remark; the reference to 'practice' fits with Aristotle view that virtue is largely a matter of good habits. The next question would be how theoretical the studies should be. Philosophy, or newspapers? |
| 5840 | The wise perform good actions, and people fail to be good without wisdom [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: It is the wise who perform truly good actions, and those who are not wise cannot, and, if they try to, fail. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 3.9.6 | |
| A reaction: The essence of Socrates' intellectualism, with which Aristotle firmly disagreed (when he assert that only practical reason was needed for virtuous actions, rather than wisdom or theory). Personally I side more with Socrates than with Aristotle on this. |
| 185 | Socrates despised good looks [Socrates, by Plato] |
| Full Idea: Socrates despises good looks to an almost inconceivable extent. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Plato - The Symposium 216e |
| 23032 | What is distinctive of human life is the desire for self-improvement [Green,TH, by Muirhead] |
| Full Idea: All that is distinctively human in the life of man springs not from the desire to possess this or that object, and so far to realise a better, but to be something more and better than he is. | |
| From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |
| A reaction: An example of Victorian optimism, I think. I'm guessing that people who are not motivated by this impulse are not behaving in a way that is 'distinctively human'. That said, this is an interesting aspect of human nature. |
| 5070 | Socrates conservatively assumed that Athenian conventions were natural and true [Taylor,R on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates' moral philosophy was essentially conservative. He assumed that the principles the Athenians honoured were true and natural, so there was little possibility of conflict between nature and convention in his thinking. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Richard Taylor - Virtue Ethics: an Introduction Ch.8 | |
| A reaction: Taylor contrasts Socrates with Callicles, who claims that conventions oppose nature. This fits with Nietzsche's discontent with Socrates, as the person who endorses conventional good and evil, thus constraining the possibilities of human nature. |
| 5838 | A well-made dung basket is fine, and a badly-made gold shield is base, because of function [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: A dung-basket is fine, and a golden shield contemptible, if the one is finely and the other badly constructed for carrying out its function. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 3.8.6 | |
| A reaction: This is the basis of a key idea in Aristotle, that virtue (or excellence) arises directly from function. I think it is the most important idea in virtue theory, and seems to have struck most Greeks as being self-evident. |
| 5837 | Things are both good and fine by the same standard [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: Things are always both good and fine by the same standard. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 3.8.5 | |
| A reaction: This begs many questions, but perhaps it leads to what we call intuitionism, which is an instant ability is perceive a fine action (even in an enemy). This leads to the rather decadent view that the aim of life is the production of beauty. |
| 3017 | The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance [Socrates, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: There is only one good, namely knowledge, and there is only one evil, namely ignorance. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.4.14 | |
| A reaction: Ignorance of how to commit evil sounds quite good. |
| 1646 | Socrates was the first to put 'eudaimonia' at the centre of ethics [Socrates, by Vlastos] |
| Full Idea: Socrates' true place in the development of Greek thought is that he is the first to establish the eudaimonist foundation of ethical theory, which became the foundation of the schools which sprang up around him. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.10 | |
| A reaction: I suspect that he was the first to fully articulate a widely held Greek belief. The only ethical question that they asked was about the nature of a good human life. |
| 23033 | Hedonism offers no satisfaction, because what we desire is self-betterment [Green,TH, by Muirhead] |
| Full Idea: Hedonism failed because it offered as an end of human aspiration an object in which the human spirit, pledged by its own nature to self-betterment, …could never find satisfaction. | |
| From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |
| A reaction: It is always both sad and amusing to see that 150 years ago someone wrote of a doctrine that is still with us that it has 'failed'. Nowadays they try to say the same of physicalism. His objection rests on optimism about humanity. |
| 1663 | By 'areté' Socrates means just what we mean by moral virtue [Vlastos on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates uses the word 'areté' to mean precisely what we mean by moral virtue. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.200 |
| 4323 | Socrates is torn between intellectual virtue, which is united and teachable, and natural virtue, which isn't [PG on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates worries about the unity and teachability of virtue because he is torn between virtue as intellectual (unified and teachable) and virtue as natural (plural and unteachable). | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: Admittedly virtue could be natural but still unified and teachable, but Socrates clearly had a dilemma, and this seems to make sense of it. |
| 8003 | Socrates agrees that virtue is teachable, but then denies that there are teachers [Socrates, by MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Socrates' great point of agreement with the sophists is his acceptance of the thesis that areté is teachable. But paradoxically he denies that there are teachers. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: This is part of Socrates's presentation of himself as 'not worthy'. Virtue would be teachable, if only anyone knew what it was. He's wrong. Lots of people have a pretty good idea of virtue, and could teach it. The problem is in the pupils. |
| 126 | We should ask what sort of people we want to be [Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates: What sort of person should one be? | |
| From: Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Gorgias 487e |
| 4111 | Socrates believed that basically there is only one virtue, the power of right judgement [Socrates, by Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: Socrates believed that basically there is only one virtue, the power of right judgement. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Bernard Williams - Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: Which links with Aristotle's high place for 'phronesis' (prudence?). The essence of Socrates' intellectualism. Robots and saints make very different judgements, though. |
| 7808 | Socrates made the civic values of justice and friendship paramount [Socrates, by Grayling] |
| Full Idea: In Socrates' thought, the expressly civic values of justice and friendship became paramount. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by A.C. Grayling - What is Good? Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This is the key move in ancient ethics, away from heroism, and towards the standard Aristotelian social virtues. I say this is the essence of what we call morality, and the only one which can be given a decent foundational justification (social health). |
| 23907 | Courage is scientific knowledge [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Socrates thought that courage is scientific knowledge. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Eudemian Ethics 1230a06 | |
| A reaction: Aristotle himself says that reason produces courage, but he also says it arises from natural youthful spirits. I favour the view that there is a strong rational component in true courage. |
| 7585 | Socrates emphasises that the knower is an existing individual, with existence his main task [Socrates, by Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: The infinite merit of the Socratic position was precisely to accentuate the fact that the knower is an existing individual, and that the task of existing is his essential task. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Søren Kierkegaard - Concluding Unscientific Postscript 'Inwardness' | |
| A reaction: Always claim Socrates as the first spokesman for your movement! It is true that Socrates is always demanding the views of his interlocutors, and not just abstract theories. See Idea 1647. |
| 23045 | Politics is compromises, which seem supported by a social contract, but express the will of no one [Green,TH] |
| Full Idea: Where laws and institutions are apparently the work of deliberate volition, they are in reality the result of a compromise, which while by a kind of social contract it has the acquiescence of all, expresses the will of none. | |
| From: T.H. Green (works [1875]), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State III | |
| A reaction: Politicians who claim to be enacting the 'will of the people' (e.g. when they won a referendum 52-48) are simply lying. Committees usually end up enacting one person's will, but often without realising what has happened. |
| 23050 | The ideal is a society in which all citizens are ladies and gentlemen [Green,TH] |
| Full Idea: With all seriousness and reverence we may hope and pray for a condition of English society in which all honest citizens will recognise themselves and be recognised by each other as gentlemen. | |
| From: T.H. Green (works [1875]), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State IV | |
| A reaction: Call me old fashioned but, as long as we expand this to include ladies, I like this thought. Chaucer's knight (in his Prologue) should be our national role model. The true gentleman is an Aristotelian ideal. |
| 23052 | Enfranchisement is an end in itself; it makes a person moral, and gives a basis for respect [Green,TH] |
| Full Idea: Enfranchisement of the people is an end in itself. …Only citizenship makes the moral man; only citizenship gives that respect which is the true basis of the respect for others. | |
| From: T.H. Green (works [1875], iii:436), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State IV | |
| A reaction: Should people respect their betters? If so, that is a sort of deferential respect which is different from the mutual respect between equals. That said, I wholly approve of this idea. |
| 23036 | The good is identified by the capacities of its participants [Green,TH, by Muirhead] |
| Full Idea: The modern idea of the good has developed in respect of the range of persons who have the capacity and therefore the right to participate in this good. | |
| From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |
| A reaction: Green is a notable Victorian liberal, starting from an idealist metaphysics. This is an intriguing view of liberal values. The concept of the good should be what suits persons with full capacity. Having the capacity bestows the right of access to it. Hm. |
| 23039 | A true state is only unified and stabilised by acknowledging individuality [Green,TH, by Muirhead] |
| Full Idea: In so far as society commits itself to the principle of individuality of its citizens does it realise the unity and stability that constitute it a true 'State'. | |
| From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |
| A reaction: This asserts the liberal vision of a state, rather than asserting a fact. A state consistently mostly of slaves still seems to be a state, and may achieve a lot. |
| 5841 | Obedience to the law gives the best life, and success in war [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: A city in which the people are most obedient to the laws has the best life in time of peace and is irresistible in war. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 4.4.15 | |
| A reaction: This is a conservative view, with the obvious problem case of bad laws, but in general it seems to me clearly right. This is why it is so vital that nothing should be done to bring the law into disrepute, such as petty legislation or prosecution. |
| 23038 | People only develop their personality through co-operation with the social whole [Green,TH, by Muirhead] |
| Full Idea: In so far as the individual commits himself to the principle of co-operation in a social whole does he realise his end as individual personality. | |
| From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |
| A reaction: This makes for a very communitarian type of liberalism. The question is whether we create insitutions which suck our free citizens into a communal way of life, or whether that is a matter of their own initiative. |
| 1661 | Socrates was the first to grasp that a cruelty is not justified by another cruelty [Vlastos on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates was the first Greek to grasp the truth that if someone has done a nasty thing to me, this does not give the slightest moral justification for doing anything nasty to him. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.190 |
| 5846 | A lover using force is a villain, but a seducer is much worse, because he corrupts character [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: The fact that a lover uses not force but persuasion makes him more detestable, because a lover who uses force proves himself a villain, but one who uses persuasion ruins the character of the one who consents. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Symposium 8.20 | |
| A reaction: A footnote says that this distinction was enshrined in Athenian law, where seduction was worse than rape. This is a startling and interest contrast to the modern view, which enshrines rights and freedoms, and says seduction is usually no crime at all. |
| 23040 | If something develops, its true nature is embodied in its end [Green,TH] |
| Full Idea: To anyone who understands a process of development, the result being developed is the reality; and it is its ability to become this that the subject undergoing development has its true nature. | |
| From: T.H. Green (works [1875], iii: 224), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |
| A reaction: Although this contains the dubious Hegelian idea that development tends towards some 'end', presented as fixed and final, it still seems important that anything accepted as a 'development' is the expression of some natural potential. |
| 23632 | Similar effects come from similar causes, and causes are only what are sufficient for the effects [Reid] |
| Full Idea: A first principle is that similar effects proceed from the same or similar causes; that we ought to admit of no other causes …but such as are sufficient to account for the effects. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 1: Preliminary [1785], 2) | |
| A reaction: He treats these as a priori axioms of natural philosophy. In evolution similar causes seem to produce startlingly divergent effects, such as the mating needs of male birds. |
| 23031 | God is the ideal end of the mature mind's final development [Green,TH] |
| Full Idea: God is a subject which is eternally all that the self-conscious subject as developed in time has the possibility of becoming. | |
| From: T.H. Green (works [1875]), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State I | |
| A reaction: [Ethics p.197] Reminiscent of Peirce's account of truth, as the ideal end of enquiry. If God is a human ideal, we either limit God, or exaggerate our powers of idealisation. |
| 1657 | Socrates holds that right reason entails virtue, and this must also apply to the gods [Vlastos on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: It is essential to Socrates' rationalist programme in theology to assume that the entailment of virtue by wisdom binds gods no less than men. He would not tolerate one moral standard for me and another for gods. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.164 |
| 1662 | A new concept of God as unswerving goodness emerges from Socrates' commitment to virtue [Vlastos on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Undeviating beneficent goodness guides Socrates' thought so deeply that he applies it even to the deity; he projects a new concept of god as a being that can cause only good, never evil. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.197 |
| 23041 | God is the realisation of the possibilities of each man's self [Green,TH] |
| Full Idea: God is identical with the self of every man in the sense of being the realisation of its determinate possibilities.…In being conscious of himself man is conscious of God and thus knows that God is, but only in so far as he knows what he himself really is. | |
| From: T.H. Green (works [1875], iii:226-7), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |
| A reaction: Does this, by the transitivity of identity, imply the identity of all individual men? Do we all contain identical possibilities, which converge on a unified concept of God? I always take the monotheistic God to far exceed mere human possibilities. |