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, John Locke places an important caveat on the bounds of religious toleration …
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 …
The sacred texts of Hermeticism, the Corpus Hermeticum, were a key component of the renaissance occult tradition. They were authored by Hermes Trismegistus, a mythical figure who was supposedly an Egyptian priest and coeval of Moses. As such, the Corpus Hermeticum was considered by renaissance scholar-magicians to be as significant and authoritative as any ancient religious texts, including the Bible. This story, however, did not hold up …
As reported in Xenophon’s Symposium, Socrates and Critobulus engaged in a discussion of beauty. Socrates, quite famously no beauty himself, was described in Plato’s Theaetetus as having “a snub nose and projecting eyes”. Yet the philosopher did not consider his physical deficiencies a problem; rather, he argued that his flared nostrils enhanced his sense of smell and his bulging eyes gave him enhanced peripheral vision …
Here are a couple of quotes that fit in with the general ethic of this site. First, the words with which Karl Popper began his classic study The Open Society and Its Enemies:
French feminist and social theorist Luce Irigaray has issues with Einstein’s theory of relativity:
Is E=Mc² a sexed equation? Perhaps it is. Let us make the hypothesis that it is insofar as it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us. What seems to me to indicate the possible sexed nature of the equation is not directly its uses by nuclear weapons, rather it is having privileged that which goes faster …
There is a persistent rumour, perpetuated primarily by historians of astronomy, that G.W.F. Hegel provided a logical proof that there could only be seven planets in the solar system. This diabolical proof supposedly lurks within his doctoral dissertation. However, in the only section that could possibly contain such a claim, that entitled ‘De orbitis planetarum’, the proof is difficult to spot …
According to Kant, it is better for a woman to die resisting rape than suffer the ‘dishonour’ of submitting:
No matter what torments I have to suffer, I can live morally. I must suffer them all, including the torments of death, rather than commit a disgraceful action. The moment I can no longer live in honour but become unworthy of life by such an action, I can no longer live at all. Thus it is far better to die honoured and respected than to prolong one’s life … by a disgraceful act …
In his posthumous work On Certainty, Ludwig Wittgenstein made a number of statments regarding the possiblity/impossibility of travelling to the moon. There is no small amount of confusion about his comments amongst philosophers, due in part to Wittgenstein making more than one reference to moon travel …