Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Mahaprajnaparamitashastra', 'Friendship' and 'fragments/reports'

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3 ideas

22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 2. Happiness / b. Eudaimonia
Critolaus redefined Aristotle's moral aim as fulfilment instead of happiness [Critolaus, by White,SA]
     Full Idea: Critolaus reformulated Aristotelian theory by defining happiness as a 'fulfilment' (sumplêrôma) of psychic, physical, and external goods, where virtue vastly outweighs the rest.
     From: report of Critolaus (fragments/reports [c.170 BCE]) by Stephen A. White - Critolaus
     A reaction: The sounds more like an attempt at clarification than a real change of Peripatetic doctrine. Occasionally 'fulfilment' is offered as a translation for eudaimonia. Maybe we should just take up Critolaus' suggestion when we are discussing Aristotle.
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').
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 4. External Goods / d. Friendship
Friendship is partly universal - the love of a person is like the ideal of loving everyone [Weil]
     Full Idea: Friendship has something universal about it. It consists in loving a human being as we should like to be able to love each soul in particular of all those who go to make up the human race.
     From: Simone Weil (Friendship [1940], p.288)
     A reaction: Hm. Would you like your lover to dream of loving the human race, rather than just loving you? Perhaps only a Christian could see friendship in this way?