Tuesday, June 14, 2005

As part of the Great Books discussion group, one of the commenters offered this Timeline of Applied Ethics:

Socrates: "Take the pears if your daemon tells you to."
Aristotle: "Don't take the pears unless your reason tells you to."
Plutarch: "Take the pears if you're Caesar, otherwise don't."
Jesus: "Take one pear, but feed twenty people with it."
Augustine: "Don't even think about taking the pears."
Machiavelli: "Don't take the pears unless a neighboring state might get the pears first."
Gargantua: "I'm sorry - were those your pears?"

Any other offerings for this list?

Accountability: I ended up slacking yesterday. Playing racquetball at 11:30 today, so will try to get back up on that horse.

What I've Learned: 1) Even the most informed decision still involves value judgements as to what evidence you choose to believe. 2) Idealism may not be dead, but pessimists have already had the funeral. 3) Motivation would be the most interesting intellectual process to study - not Pavlovian bells, but what really sparks a person to do something (especially vs what they tell themselves sparks the action).
posted by Unknown 10:00 AM | 0 comments