Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
THE FIRST PREMISE of this book is that understanding our selves—our natures, capacities, and possibilities—is the hardest thing in the world and yet endlessly fascinating because it cannot be finally settled by empirical research.
Anthony A. Long • Greek Models of Mind and Self
Self-authorizing morality, which holds personal choice as the highest good, is a natural extension of this self-oriented outlook on life.
Josh Chatraw • Apologetics at the Cross: An Introduction for Christian Witness
50 Philosophy Classics: Thinking, Being, Acting Seeing - Profound Insights and Powerful Thinking from Fifty Key Books (50 Classics)
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But when it comes to questions about our most elemental freedoms, we should avoid arguments about personal morality and sin and focus on our fundamental right to live according to our own beliefs.
Daniel Chandler • Free and Equal: A Manifesto for a Just Society
Liberals believe that freedom is born of acknowledged eccentricity, complexity and nuance; that, as Mill puts it, ‘different persons also require different conditions for their spiritual development; and can no more exist healthily in the same moral, than all the variety of plants can in the same physical, atmosphere and climate’.
Adam Phillips • On Wanting to Change
the subjective experience of being a conscious agent—for a conceptual understanding of ourselves as persons.
Sam Harris • Free Will
The notion that ‘it all somehow must make sense’, or ‘there is a best decision here’, preserves from despair:
Iris Murdoch • The Sovereignty of Good (Routledge Great Minds)
What is fascinating in this argument is it comes back to metaphysics and assumptions about humans in their current state.