It is an assumption that there is always one single dimension for assessing persons and their actions that … - Raymond Geuss

evil" is supposed always to trump any other form of evaluation, but that is an assumption, probably the result of the long history of the Christianisation and then gradual de-Christianisation of Europe, which one need not make. Evaluation need not mean moral evaluation, but might include assessments of efficiency,. . . simplicity, perspicuousness, aesthetic appeal, and so on.">

Same topic Authors

Quote of the day

Whenever an earthquake or tsunami takes thousands of innocent lives, a shocked world talks of little else. I'll never forget the wrenching days I spent in Haiti last year for Save the Children just weeks after the earthquake.

Raymond Geuss

It is an assumption that there is always one single dimension for assessing persons and their actions that has canonical priority. This is the dimension of moral evaluation; "good
evil" is supposed always to trump any other form of evaluation, but that is an assumption, probably the result of the long history of the Christianisation and then gradual de-Christianisation of Europe, which one need not make. Evaluation need not mean moral evaluation, but might include assessments of efficiency,. . . simplicity, perspicuousness, aesthetic appeal, and so on.

Appeal, Assessment, Christianisation, Europe, Long, Mean

Same Author Quotes

Asking what the question is, and why the question is asked, is always asking a pertinent question.

Asked, Asking, Pertinent, Pertinent Questions, Question

Nietzsche seems sometimes to replace the "transcendence" which stands at the center of traditional accounts the existence of a transcendent God, or, failing that, a transcendental viewpoint with that of a continually transcending activity. . . . There is no single, final perspective, but given any one perspective, we can always go beyond it.

Finals, Given, God, Perspective, Stands, Viewpoints

In some central and important cases,. . . the existence of specific power relations in the society will produce an appearance of a particular kind. Certain features of the society that are merely local and contingent, and maintained in existence only by the continual exercise of power, will come to seem as if they were universal, necessary, invariant, or natural features of all forms of human social life, or as if they arose spontaneously and uncoercedly by free human action.

Action, Exercise, Important, Relations, Social, Spontaneously

Humans in modern societies are driven by a perhaps desperate hope that they might find some way of mobilizing their theoretical and empirical knowledge and their evaluative systems so as both to locate themselves and their projects in some larger imaginative structure that makes sense to them. . . . Furthermore, many modern agents would like it to be the case that the form of orientation which their life has is, if not true, at least compatible with the best available knowledge.

Agents, Driven, Evaluative, Might, True, Way

Monotheistic religions in the West have tended to conflate having a general orientation in life, having a specific theory of the world, having a sense of the positive meaningfulness of one's existence, and having a fixed set of rules for behavior, but these elements are in principle separable. . . . The "metaphysical need,". . . both Marx and Nietzsche held, is a historical phenomenon that arises under determinate circumstances, and could be expected to disappear under other circumstances that we could relatively easily envisage.

Arises, Historical, Life, Nietzsche, Principles, West