63 ideas
19767 | Reason leads to prudent selfishness, which overrules natural compassion [Rousseau] |
20768 | Like spiderswebs, dialectical arguments are clever but useless [Ariston, by Diog. Laertius] |
1553 | No perceptible object is truly straight or curved [Protagoras] |
19757 | No one would bother to reason, and try to know things, without a desire for enjoyment [Rousseau] |
1549 | Everything that exists consists in being perceived [Protagoras] |
1545 | Protagoras was the first to claim that there are two contradictory arguments about everything [Protagoras, by Diog. Laertius] |
1547 | Man is the measure of all things - of things that are, and of things that are not [Protagoras] |
3305 | There is no more purely metaphysical doctrine than Protagorean relativism [Benardete,JA on Protagoras] |
3313 | If my hot wind is your cold wind, then wind is neither hot nor cold, and so not as cold as itself [Benardete,JA on Protagoras] |
3317 | You can only state the problem of the relative warmth of an object by agreeing on the underlying object [Benardete,JA on Protagoras] |
247 | God is "the measure of all things", more than any man [Plato on Protagoras] |
606 | Protagoras absurdly thought that the knowing or perceiving man is 'the measure of all things' [Aristotle on Protagoras] |
612 | Relativists think if you poke your eye and see double, there must be two things [Aristotle on Protagoras] |
19760 | General ideas are purely intellectual; imagining them is immediately particular [Rousseau] |
19759 | Only words can introduce general ideas into the mind [Rousseau] |
19758 | Language may aid thinking, but powerful thought was needed to produce language [Rousseau] |
19773 | Without love, what use is beauty? [Rousseau] |
19769 | Rational morality is OK for brainy people, but ordinary life can't rely on that [Rousseau] |
6016 | Early sophists thought convention improved nature; later they said nature was diminished by it [Protagoras, by Miller,FD] |
19752 | If we should not mistreat humans, it is mainly because of sentience, not rationality [Rousseau] |
1580 | For Protagoras the only bad behaviour is that which interferes with social harmony [Protagoras, by Roochnik] |
19768 | The better Golden Rule is 'do good for yourself without harming others' [Rousseau] |
205 | Protagoras contradicts himself by saying virtue is teachable, but then that it is not knowledge [Plato on Protagoras] |
3049 | The chief good is indifference to what lies midway between virtue and vice [Ariston, by Diog. Laertius] |
19766 | The fact that we weep (e.g. in theatres) shows that we are naturally compassionate [Rousseau] |
3549 | Ariston says rules are useless for the virtuous and the non-virtuous [Ariston, by Annas] |
19756 | Humans are less distinguished from other animals by understanding, than by being free agents [Rousseau] |
19755 | Most human ills are self-inflicted; the simple, solitary, regular natural life is good [Rousseau] |
19762 | Is language a pre-requisite for society, or might it emerge afterwards? [Rousseau] |
19763 | I doubt whether a savage person ever complains of life, or considers suicide [Rousseau] |
19765 | Savages avoid evil because they are calm, and never think of it (not because they know goodness) [Rousseau] |
19779 | Primitive man was very gentle [Rousseau] |
19771 | Savage men quietly pursue desires, without the havoc of modern frenzied imagination [Rousseau] |
19778 | Leisure led to envy, inequality, vice and revenge, which we now see in savages [Rousseau] |
19751 | Our two starting principles are concern for self-interest, and compassion for others [Rousseau] |
19774 | A savage can steal fruit or a home, but there is no means of achieving obedience [Rousseau] |
19772 | In a state of nature people are much more equal; it is society which increases inequalities [Rousseau] |
19789 | It is against nature for children to rule old men, fools to rule the wise, and the rich to hog resources [Rousseau] |
19787 | People accept the right to be commanded, because they themselves wish to command [Rousseau] |
19780 | We seem to have made individual progress since savagery, but actually the species has decayed [Rousseau] |
19747 | Revolutionaries usually confuse liberty with total freedom, and end up with heavier chains [Rousseau] |
19748 | Plebiscites are bad, because they exclude the leaders from crucial decisions [Rousseau] |
19749 | In a direct democracy, only the leaders should be able to propose new laws [Rousseau] |
19775 | People must be made dependent before they can be enslaved [Rousseau] |
19784 | Enslaved peoples often boast of their condition, calling it a state of 'peace' [Rousseau] |
19785 | If the child of a slave woman is born a slave, then a man is not born a man [Rousseau] |
19746 | Like rich food, liberty can ruin people who are too weak to cope with it [Rousseau] |
19786 | Three stages of the state produce inequalities of wealth, power, and enslavement [Rousseau] |
19788 | The pleasure of wealth and power is largely seeing others deprived of them [Rousseau] |
19777 | Persuading other people that some land was 'owned' was the beginning of society [Rousseau] |
19782 | What else could property arise from, but the labour people add to it? [Rousseau] |
19781 | Land cultivation led to a general right of ownership, administered justly [Rousseau] |
19754 | If we have a natural right to property, what exactly does 'belonging to' mean? [Rousseau] |
19750 | Writers just propose natural law as the likely useful agreements among people [Rousseau] |
1659 | Protagoras seems to have made the huge move of separating punishment from revenge [Protagoras, by Vlastos] |
19770 | Primitive people simply redressed the evil caused by violence, without thought of punishing [Rousseau] |
19783 | A state of war remains after a conquest, if the losers don't accept the winners [Rousseau] |
532 | Successful education must go deep into the soul [Protagoras] |
1552 | He spent public money on education, as it benefits the individual and the state [Protagoras, by Diodorus of Sicily] |
19753 | Both men and animals are sentient, which should give the latter the right not to be mistreated [Rousseau] |
19761 | Men started with too few particular names, but later had too few natural kind names [Rousseau] |
19776 | Small uninterrupted causes can have big effects [Rousseau] |
1551 | He said he didn't know whether there are gods - but this is the same as atheism [Diogenes of Oen. on Protagoras] |