5 ideas
| 1556 | By nature people are close to one another, but culture drives them apart [Hippias] |
| Full Idea: I regard you all as relatives - by nature, not by convention. By nature like is akin to like, but convention is a tyrant over humankind and often constrains people to act contrary to nature. | |
| From: Hippias (fragments/reports [c.430 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Protagoras 337c8 |
| 20991 | People prepare our dinner from their own self-interest, not from humanity [Smith,A] |
| Full Idea: It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love. | |
| From: Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations [1776], p.26-7), quoted by Amartya Sen - The Idea of Justice 08 'Narrowing' | |
| A reaction: Sen passionately pleads that this not be taken out of context. It is about the motivation for the relationship of exchange, and not about morality in general, which also includes trust etc. The subsequent lines in Smith show this. |
| 20680 | Selfish profit-seeking increases collective wealth, so greed is good, and egoism is altruism [Smith,A, by Harari] |
| Full Idea: Smith's claim that the selfish human urge to increase private profits is the basis for collective wealth is one of the most revolutionary ideas in human history. …Greed is good …and egoism is altruism. | |
| From: report of Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations [1776]) by Yuval Noah Harari - Sapiens: brief history of humankind 16 'Growing' | |
| A reaction: The central confrontation of political philosophy still seems to be Adam Smith v Karl Marx. Why can't there be altruistic non-greedy profit-seeking? Not 'I want profits' but 'we want profits'. Altruistic capitalists aim to create jobs. |
| 13304 | Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius] |
| Full Idea: In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes. | |
| From: Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]), quoted by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 078 | |
| A reaction: These remarks endorsing the infinite superiority of the educated to the uneducated seem to have been popular in late antiquity. It tends to be the religions which discourage great learning, especially in their emphasis on a single book. |
| 20820 | Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: Posidonius defined time thus: it is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed and slowness. | |
| From: report of Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42 | |
| A reaction: Hm. Can we define motion or speed without alluding to time? Looks like we have to define them as a conjoined pair, which means we cannot fully understand either of them. |