In The Virtue of Selfishness Ayn Rand sets out the basis for her Objectivist ethics. “An organism’s life is its standard of value: that which furthers its life is the good, and that which threatens it is the evil.” The problem with this definition, of course, is that it runs headlong into the is/ought fallacy: we can’t go from descriptions of the world to making prescriptions about how things should be done. Simply describing facts about the world does not give us moral guidlines for our behavior.
Rand, however, is aware of this problem, and provides a response to it …
During the 1930s, the impenetrable Teutonic obscurant esteemed German philosopher Martin Heidegger was notoriously complicit with the Nazi regime. Debates have long been waged over just how deeply involved he was, and this topic is subject matter of the following BBC documentary. Focusing very little on Heidegger’s actual philosophy—other than to offer a few general observations—the documentary instead concentrates on detailing what is now known about his relationship with and true attitude toward Nazism. Covering his 1930s academic career under Hitlerism, campaigns against other academics (including his one-time mentor Husserl), the post-war rehabilitation provided by his former lover, Hannah Arendt, and featuring interviews with a number of prominent figures, it is a very interesting work that appears to remove any doubts about just how unequivocally Heidegger supported the Nazis …
Given the title of this post, you may be wondering what on earth this could possibly be about. Well, deep within the bowels (sorry!) of Aristotle’s œuvre lurks this fragrant little gem regarding the defensive capabilities of the bison.
It tosses up dust and scoops out the ground with its hooves, like the bull. Its skin is impervious to blows. Owing to the savour of its flesh it is sought for in the chase. When it is wounded it runs away, and stops only when thoroughly exhausted. It defends itself against an assailant by kicking and projecting its excrement to a distance of eight yards; this device it can easily adopt over and over again, and the excrement is so pungent that the hair of hunting-dogs is burnt off by it.
In a passage in his essay ‘Of National Character’, David Hume offers this defence of political treachery:
Treachery is the usual concomitant of ignorance and barbarism; and if civilized nations ever embrace subtle and crooked politics, it is from an excess of refinement, which makes them disdain the plain direct path to power and glory…
It is frequently noted (especially around here) that the original meaning of philosophy is philos sophia, ‘love of wisdom’, and that this definition greatly informed how the Greeks practiced the discipline in its earliest days. Therefore, it is sometimes claimed, philosophy today is defined by ‘love of wisdom’ and must pursue similar goals and proceed by similar means as it did in its earliest days…
Arthur Schopenhauer, acclaimed philosophical curmudgeon, was rumoured to be quite the ladies’ man. One wonders how, given the views espoused in the infamous essay On Women:
[N]ature has equipped women, as it has all its creatures, with the tools and weapons she needs for securing her existence, and at just the time she needs them; in doing which nature has acted with its usual economy. For just as the female ant loses it’s wings after mating, since they are then superfluous, indeed harmful to the business of raising the family, so the woman usually loses her beauty after one or two childbeds, and probably for the same reason …
Seeing as it was mentioned in the comments of the Locke on Atheism post, I might as well prolong the recent prominent-philosopher-bashes-atheism theme a while longer by looking at Plato’s comments on the topic. At the beginning of Book 10 of the Laws, Plato turns his attention to the state-imperilling problem of atheism.
…we have already said in general terms what shall be the punishment of sacrilege, whether fraudulent or violent, and now we have to determine what is to be the punishment of those who speak or act insolently toward the Gods…
As anyone with anything more than a passing acquaintance with early modern philosophy knows, Descartes rather famously enlisted the help of God to guarantee the validity of his perceptions (for God would not be so cruel as to deceive us). But did you ever consider what the consequences of this solution would be for non-believers?
A curiosity in my webtraffic stats has brought something to my attention: a recent post on a racialist hate site has lifted the race-related comments of Hume, Hegel, Schopenhauer and Kant that I’ve collected here and posted them in a radically different context …
Many people are aware of President George Bush (senior)’s notorious assertion “I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.” It seems that the 41st president isn’t the only one who basic rights and dignities are not entirely universal. In A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), John Locke places an important caveat on the bounds of religious toleration
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After a lonely decade in his mountaintop cave, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra descends from the clouds to reveal the fruits of his meditations to the intellectually impoverished masses. In the section ‘On Little Old and Young Women’ he shares his insights on females:
“Everything in woman is a riddle, and everything in woman has one solution—that is pregnancy. Man is for woman a means: the purpose is always the child. But what is woman for man?
“A real man wants two things: danger and play. Therefore he wants woman as the most dangerous plaything. Man shall be educated for war, and woman for the recreation of the warrior: all else is folly …
The following excerpt from ‘Of National Characteristics’ finds Kant in something of a quandary. He recognises merit in the sexist bigotry of a “Negro carpenter,” but can’t bring himself to overlook the fact that the fellow “was quite black from head to foot” …
This post is a follow-up to Augustine’s Devils, and best read after the earlier entry, as they are saintly partners in crime. By way of summary, Augustine seemed to have thought that devils, ‘incubi’, were ‘satisfying their lust’ upon wanton women. Here, in Summa Theologica, Aquinas accepts the story without hesitation …
In his 1783 essay On the Immortality of the Soul, David Hume presents the following, somewhat unexpected, argument:
On the theory of the soul’s mortality, the inferiority of women’s capacity is easily accounted for. Their domestic life requires no higher faculties either of mind or body …
Saint Augustine, most revered of Church Doctors, was convinced that devils were fornicating with wanton women:
There is … a very general rumour, which many have verified by their own experience, or which trustworthy persons who have heard the experience of others corroborate, that sylvans and fauns, who are commonly called ‘incubi,’ had often made wicked assaults upon women, and satisfied their lust upon them …