Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'When Does a Life Begin?' and 'Symposium'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts


5 ideas

21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 7. Art and Morality
Musical performance can reveal a range of virtues [Damon of Ath.]
     Full Idea: In singing and playing the lyre, a boy will be likely to reveal not only courage and moderation, but also justice.
     From: Damon (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B4), quoted by (who?) - where?
22. Metaethics / B. Value / 2. Values / h. Fine deeds
Niceratus learnt the whole of Homer by heart, as a guide to goodness [Xenophon]
     Full Idea: Niceratus said that his father, because he was concerned to make him a good man, made him learn the whole works of Homer, and he could still repeat by heart the entire 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey'.
     From: Xenophon (Symposium [c.391 BCE], 3.5)
     A reaction: This clearly shows the status which Homer had in the teaching of morality in the time of Socrates, and it is precisely this acceptance of authority which he was challenging, in his attempts to analyse the true basis of virtue
25. Social Practice / F. Life Issues / 3. Abortion
I may exist before I become a person, just as I exist before I become an adult [Lockwood]
     Full Idea: It makes perfectly good sense to say that I existed before I became a person, just as I existed before I became an adult, or a philosopher.
     From: Michael Lockwood (When Does a Life Begin? [1985], p.13)
     A reaction: The word 'I' needs thought here. I was once a non-adult, but was I ever a non-person? 'Person' is not a clear concept, despite what many philosophers since Locke may think.
If the soul is held to leave the body at brain-death, it should arrive at the time of brain-creation [Lockwood]
     Full Idea: Any Christian who feels that body and soul go their separate ways at brain death ought in consistency to hold that they come together only at the point when whatever is destroyed at brain death first came into being.
     From: Michael Lockwood (When Does a Life Begin? [1985], p.24)
     A reaction: Hence Christians probably focus less on brain-death than do doctors and the rest of us.
It isn't obviously wicked to destroy a potential human being (e.g. an ununited egg and sperm) [Lockwood]
     Full Idea: A week-old embryo without a brain may be a potential human being, but so are a sperm and an ovum that are about to meet in a dish, and it wouldn't be wicked to keep those apart.
     From: Michael Lockwood (When Does a Life Begin? [1985], p.19)
     A reaction: Sounds fine, but it may be a slippery slope. Is it acceptable to deny a place at music school to a potentially great musician?