Sublime

Shaun Gallagher

What’s more, those branches of social theory that make the greatest claims to “scientific status”—“rational choice theory,” for instance—start from the same assumptions about human psychology that economists do: that human beings are best viewed as self-interested actors calculating how to get the best terms possible out of any situation, the most

What we have been calling a fingerprint might just be a stereotype.29

But categorizing people by their politics is another way that our stereotypes of people are much more rigid and extreme than the actual people themselves.

The philosopher Erik Wielenberg argues for this, what he calls “non-natural non-theistic moral realism.”

L’étude philosophique de notre morale – celle du bien et du mal – est l’éthique. Une telle étude peut nous rendre plus avisés dans nos choix.

Here is Eisner’s one-sentence summary of how to halve the homicide rate within three decades: “An effective rule of law, based on legitimate law enforcement, victim protection, swift and fair adjudication, moderate punishment, and humane prisons is critical to sustainable reductions in lethal violence.”

The common criminal is a bad man, but at least he is, as it were, a conditional good man. He says that if only a certain obstacle be removed—say a wealthy uncle—he is then prepared to accept the universe and to praise God. He is a reformer, but not an anarchist.