Monday, January 19, 2009

Aristotle on the benefit of examining the nature of the good life

 Will not the knowledge of [the good] , then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is ...
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 1, Chapter 2

Derek Parfit's Optimism about the future of Ethics

[In the long-term future,] there could be higher achievements in all of the Arts and Sciences. But the progress could be greatest in what is now the least advanced of these Arts or Sciences. This, I have claimed, is Non-Religious Ethics. Belief in God, or in many gods, prevented the free development of moral reasoning. Disbelief in God, openly admitted by a majority, is a recent event, not yet completed. Because this event is so recent, Non-Religious Ethics is at a very early stage. We cannot yet predict whether, as in Mathematics, we will all reach agreement. Since we cannot know how Ethics will develop, it is not irrational to have high hopes.

-- Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons, pp.453-454.

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Richard Branson on his attitude to life

"However hard I'm working and however tired I am I make sure I just
enjoy every single second of my life"

Richard Branson

Quoted in Laurence Shorter: 'Life has never been so good'

Independent on Sunday Sunday, 4 January 2009

Laurence Shorter on true optimism

*
**True optimism, I realised, is about accepting the world as it is,
letting go of our obsession with the future, and

setting oneself free with that knowledge.*

Quoted in Laurence Shorter: 'Life has never been so good'

/Independent on Sunday/ Sunday, 4 January 2009

Saturday, January 03, 2009

As a country, we seem to be suffering from an empathy deficit

As a country, we seem to be suffering from an empathy deficit
Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, page 67