Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Mahaprajnaparamitashastra', 'Answer to 'What is Enlightenment?'' and 'A world of truthmakers?'

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3 ideas

3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 6. Making Negative Truths
If it were true that nothing at all existed, would that have a truthmaker? [Lewis]
     Full Idea: If there was absolutely nothing at all, then it would have been true that there was nothing. Would there have been a truthmaker for this truth?
     From: David Lewis (A world of truthmakers? [1998], p.220)
     A reaction: This is a problem for Lewis's own claim that 'truth supervenes on being', as well as the more restricted truthmakers invoked by Armstrong.
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / a. Virtues
The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna]
     Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom.
     From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88)
     A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate').
25. Social Practice / A. Freedoms / 3. Free speech
Enlightenment requires the free use of reason in the public realm [Kant]
     Full Idea: The public use of man's reason must always be free, and it alone can bring about enlightenment among men; the private use of reason may quite often be very narrowly restricted (…in a particular civil post or office).
     From: Immanuel Kant (Answer to 'What is Enlightenment?' [1784], p.55)
     A reaction: The private aspect seems to be the common restriction on speech by employees of the state. Does free speech have only instrumental value? Is the life of virtue possible without it?