Quotes

In approaching the problem of incontinence it is a good idea to dwell on the cases where morality simply doesn’t enter the picture as one of the contestants for our favour—or if it does, it is on the wrong side. Then we shall not succumb to the temptation to reduce incontinence to such special cases as being overcome by the beast in us, or of failing to heed the call of duty, or of succumbing to temptation.

Donald Davidson, How Is Weakness of the Will Possible?, in Joel Feinberg (ed.) Moral Concepts, Oxford, 1969, p. 102

As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races.

Charles Darwin, The descent of man, Amherst, N.Y, 1871, pp. 100-101

In common parlance, ‘hedonism’ suggests something a bit vulgar and risqué. We may think of someone like the former publisher of a slightly scandalous girlie magazine. He apparently enjoyed hanging out with bevies of voluptuous young women, drinking and dining perhaps to excess, travelling to tropical resorts where the young women would reveal extensive amounts of tanned flesh, and revelling till dawn. In an earlier era the motto was ‘wine, women, and song’. Nowadays, we are required to substitute the somewhat more P.C. ‘sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll’. No matter what the motto, the vision is misguided. It reveals a misconception of the views of most serious hedonists[.]

Fred Feldman, Pleasure and the good life, Oxford, 2004, p. 21

Does life have meaning? Are there objective ethical truths? Do we have free will? What is the nature of our identity as selves? Must our knowledge and understanding stay within fixed limits? These questions moved me, and others, to enter the study of philosophy. I care what their answers are. While such other philosophical intricacies as whether sets or numbers exist can be fun for a time, they do not make us tremble.

Robert Nozick, Philosophical explanations, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1981, p. 1

Until this century, most of mankind lived in small communities. What each did could affect only a few others. But conditions have now changed. Each of us can now, in countless ways, affect countless other people. We can have real though small effects on thousands or millions of people. When these effects are widely dispersed, they may be either trivial, or imperceptible. It now makes a great difference whether we continue to believe that we cannot have greatly harmed or benefited others unless there are people with obvious grounds for resentment or gratitude.

Derek Parfit, Reasons and persons, Oxford, 1984, p. 86

If I had to sum up philosophy in a sentence I’d say that philosophy is the theory of the form of the proposition ‘p supports q’.

Bryan Magee and Anthony Quinton (eds.), Modern British philosophy, Oxford [Oxfordshire] ; New York, 1986, p. 84

It is the principle of antipathy which leads us to speak of offences as deserving punishment. It is the corresponding principle of sympathy which leads us to speak of certain actions as meriting reward. This word merit can only lead to passion and error. It is effects good or bad which we ought alone to consider.

Jeremy Bentham,

Rawls’s writing in moral philosophy has had many effects, but one has been to encourage a style of argumentation that is more high-flown than it is productive.

Brian Leiter (ed.), The future for philosophy, Oxford, 2004, p. 261

When aggregate wealth is increasing, the condition of those at the bottom of society, and in the world, can improve, even while the distance between them and the better off does not diminish, or even grows. Where such improvement occurs (and it has occurred, on a substantial scale, for many disadvantaged groups), egalitarian justice does not cease to demand equality, but that demand can seem shrill, and even dangerous, if the worse off are steadily growing better off, even though they are not catching up with those above them. When, however, progress must give way to regress, when average material living standards must fall, then poor people and poor nations can no longer hope to approach the levels of amenity which are now enjoyed by the world’s well off. Sharply falling average standards mean that settling for limitless improvement, instead of equality, ceases to be an option, and huge disparities of wealth become correspondingly more intolerable, from a moral point of view.

Gerald A. Cohen, If you're an egalitarian, how come you're so rich?, Cambridge, Mass., 2000, pp. 113-114

I regard Peter as one of the great moralists, because I suspect that more than anyone he has helped to change the attitudes of very many people to the sufferings of animals. Peter is a utilitarian in normative ethics, and a humane attitude to animals is a natural corollary of utilitarianism. Utilitarian concern for animals goes back to Bentham, who, presumably alluding to the Kantians, said that the question was not whether animals can reason, but whether they can suffer.

J. J. C. Smart et al. (ed.), Metaphysics and morality: essays in honour of J.J.C. Smart, Oxford, UK ; New York, NY, USA, 1987, p. 192

Very few people deliberately do what, at the moment, they believe to be wrong; usually they first argue themselves into a belief that what they wish to do is right. They decide that it is their duty to teach so-and-so a lesson, that their rights have been grossly infringed that if they take no revenge there will be an encouragement to injustice, that without a moderate indulgence in pleasure a character cannot develop in the best way, and so on and so on.

Bertrand Russell, Philosophical essays, London ; New York, 1910

[P]robing and manipulation […] has seriously antihumanistic implications. Much of it seems to represent regress rather than progress for man in his long struggle to become a rational and self-guiding being. Something new, in fact, appears to be entering the pattern of American life with the growing power of our persuaders.

Vance Packard, The hidden persuaders, Brooklyn, N.Y, 1957, p. 6

Salvo algunos momentos fugaces y de escaso relieve histórico, la nación nuca fue en la Argentina–como lo es en los países logrados–la unidad integrada de todos sus componentes, sino más bien la visión absoluta y excluyente que cada uno de éstos tenía de sí mismo.

Pablo Giussani, Los días de Alfonsín, Buenos Aires, 1986, p. 8

[T]he major source of useless experimentation, animal or otherwise, namely the dearth of clear original hypotheses, is still strong. This offers philosophers of science an opportunity of being kind to animals by way of being ruthless to mindless empiricists.

Mario Bunge, Treatise on basic philosophy: Volume 8: Ethics: The good and the right, Dordrecht, 1989

It is important to learn to be surprised by simple things—for example, by the fact that bodies fall down, not up, and that they fall at a certain rate; that if pushed, they move on a flat surface in a straight line, not a circle; and so on. The beginning of science is the recognition that the simplest phenomena of ordinary life raise quite serious problems: Why are they as they are, instead of some different way?

Noam Chomsky, Language and problems of knowledge: the Managua lectures, Cambridge, Mass, 1988, p. 43

‘Méchanique Sociale’ may one day take her place along with ‘Mécanique Celeste’, throned each upon the double-sided height of one maximum principle, the supreme pinnacle of moral as of physical science. As the movements of each particle, constrained or loose, in a material cosmos are continually subordinated to one maximum sum-total of accumulated energy, so the movements of each soul, whether selfishly isolated or linked sympathetically, may continually be realizing the maximum energy of pleasure, the Divine love of the universe.

F. Y. Edgeworth, Mathematical psychics: An essay on the application of mathematics to the moral sciences, London, 1881, p. 12

Ira Gershwin, Isn, 1993

If I had doubts of being able to light up a room by quicksilver intelligence, something I both envied and suspected, I was confident of having an ability to find my way to clear things of my own to say, some of which might produce a longer light. But what was definitely also needed in order to produce these goods was the onward marching.

Ted Honderich, Philosopher: a kind of life, London ; New York, 2001, p. 96

If sub spece aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair.

Thomas Nagel, Mortal questions, Cambridge, 1979, p. 23

In these days of intense academic competition, which is supposed to keep us all on our toes, one has to publish or be damned; and for advancing one’s career it is more important that what one publishes should be new, than that it should be true.

L. W. Sumner and Joseph M. Boyle (eds.), Philosophical perspectives on bioethics, Toronto ; Buffalo, 1996, p. 18