Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Mahaprajnaparamitashastra', 'Friendship' and 'The Ego and Its Own'

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3 ideas

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?
23. Ethics / F. Existentialism / 6. Authentic Self
I am a creative nothing, out of which I myself create everything [Stirner]
     Full Idea: I am not nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing, the nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything.
     From: Max Stirner (The Ego and Its Own [1844]), quoted by Simon Critchley - Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro Ch.2
     A reaction: This appears to be the germ of the entire existentialist view, which gives a helpful gloss on the concept of 'nothing' - as the motivation for human creation, the vacuum in the mind that has to be filled. Call it 'creative boredom'.