Quoth I more...
The "group project" is finally done, we had the "viva" yesterday, and I was a bit disappointed at the (well, one of the) teachers reaction to my work, it was more a case of "you could have done this in one line" rather than "well done for getting this to work" (and get everything to work I did): I'm aiming to become a good programmer, I know I'm not there yet, please mark me on the functionality of my programs and not the gracefulness-that will come (maybe?)!
I'm so in awe of Bergmans films (I've just discovered MORE of them on Lovefilm hidden away and not even credited to him - including his first film - here's my current "rental queue"), I'll have to devote a blog to him, hell, to Sweden itself, that place I'd love to see: home to Bergman, Hallstrom, Moodysson, Abba and Ikea!
I've read more wonderful things from "What is Good?", this time from the pen of Grayling himself. So here we are with some random quotes from chapters 7 and 8:
"The most famous formulation of the categorical imperative is: 'Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.' Kant thinks of the moral community of persons as a 'kingdom of ends', a mutual association of free beings, in which each individual seeks to realize freely chosen goals compatibly with the freedom of everyone else to do likewise."
"There have always been Hitlers and Stalins...if the atom bomb had been available in the fifth century BC, it would have been dropped. If Zyklon B had been available in the tenth century AD, it would have been used...those who think that modern times are wickeder than previous times [my note: even the Bible councils against thinking like this in Ecclesiastes 7:10] are apt to identify the cause as the weakening of a sense of moral law, associated with the departure of religious traditions of morality...this reprises the usual muddle that getting people to accept [my note: various biblical miracles are mentioned] will somehow give them a logical reason for living morally...it is scarcely needful to repeat that the morality and the metaphysics here separately at stake do not justify or even need one another, and that the moral questions require to be grounded and justified on their own merits in application to what they concern, namely, the life of human beings in their social settings."
"It is a principal part of according respect to individuals that we treat them as autonomous, and when in some respect we cease to treat them so, we are being what has aptly called 'paternalistic'...(Mill says) 'the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection...the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.' A powerful argument supports this liberal tenet: it is that if one granted that a given body such as the state were licensed to decide what is in others' interests, there would be no obvious limit to the authority it could exercise over them."
Good eh? My next book, ordered today, is one mentioned by Grayling within the context of the above - I need this book, as an antidote to "Straw Dogs", which reduces us to animals - or asserts that as we ARE animals, we act (as we truly are) as animals when in extreme circumstances - "Dogs" focuses on the darkest reactions of man under the darkest circumstances: maybe all is not lost after all (maybe it never was...) and maybe it's a matter of where you look, who you talk to, what you read (isn't it always the case?)
I'm so in awe of Bergmans films (I've just discovered MORE of them on Lovefilm hidden away and not even credited to him - including his first film - here's my current "rental queue"), I'll have to devote a blog to him, hell, to Sweden itself, that place I'd love to see: home to Bergman, Hallstrom, Moodysson, Abba and Ikea!
I've read more wonderful things from "What is Good?", this time from the pen of Grayling himself. So here we are with some random quotes from chapters 7 and 8:
"The most famous formulation of the categorical imperative is: 'Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.' Kant thinks of the moral community of persons as a 'kingdom of ends', a mutual association of free beings, in which each individual seeks to realize freely chosen goals compatibly with the freedom of everyone else to do likewise."
"There have always been Hitlers and Stalins...if the atom bomb had been available in the fifth century BC, it would have been dropped. If Zyklon B had been available in the tenth century AD, it would have been used...those who think that modern times are wickeder than previous times [my note: even the Bible councils against thinking like this in Ecclesiastes 7:10] are apt to identify the cause as the weakening of a sense of moral law, associated with the departure of religious traditions of morality...this reprises the usual muddle that getting people to accept [my note: various biblical miracles are mentioned] will somehow give them a logical reason for living morally...it is scarcely needful to repeat that the morality and the metaphysics here separately at stake do not justify or even need one another, and that the moral questions require to be grounded and justified on their own merits in application to what they concern, namely, the life of human beings in their social settings."
"It is a principal part of according respect to individuals that we treat them as autonomous, and when in some respect we cease to treat them so, we are being what has aptly called 'paternalistic'...(Mill says) 'the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection...the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.' A powerful argument supports this liberal tenet: it is that if one granted that a given body such as the state were licensed to decide what is in others' interests, there would be no obvious limit to the authority it could exercise over them."
Good eh? My next book, ordered today, is one mentioned by Grayling within the context of the above - I need this book, as an antidote to "Straw Dogs", which reduces us to animals - or asserts that as we ARE animals, we act (as we truly are) as animals when in extreme circumstances - "Dogs" focuses on the darkest reactions of man under the darkest circumstances: maybe all is not lost after all (maybe it never was...) and maybe it's a matter of where you look, who you talk to, what you read (isn't it always the case?)
posted by John Doran-Armstrong at 6:33 PM
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