An extravagance is something that your spirit thinks is a necessity.
Bernard WilliamsRead
Contemporary moral philosophy has found an original way of being boring, which is by not discussing moral issues at all.
Interpretation
This quote critiques contemporary moral philosophy for avoiding discussion on moral issues.
Bernard Williams highlights a significant problem in modern moral philosophy: the tendency to ignore the very ethical questions that should be at its core. By calling out this perceived flaw, he emphasizes the importance of engaging with moral issues rather than evading them, suggesting that a lack of discussion leads to a dull and ineffective philosophy that fails to address real-world ethical dilemmas.
In practice
In a philosophy class discussing the relevance of ethics today.
An extravagance is something that your spirit thinks is a necessity.
There was never a night or a problem that could defeat sunrise or hope.
The majority of philosophers are totally humorless. That's part of their trouble.
People have been predicting the death of philosophy since the 17th century. When I was a student, people were saying, 'We're in the last days of philosophy.' Then we were told in the '60s it would be replaced by sociology, then by literary criticism.
Virtually the only subject in which one could ever get a scholarship to Oxford or Cambridge was classics. So I went to Oxford to study classics and, unlike Cambridge, it had a philosophy component, and I became completely transported by it.
If we try and fail, we have temporary disappointments. But if we do not try at all, we have permanent regrets.
The reason we care so much about what happens to the likes of Lady Gaga is not because her shenanigans will ever impact our lives; rather because our brain doesn't realize there's a difference between rock stars we know about and relatives we know.
A man far oftener appears to have a decided character from persistently following his temperament than from persistently following his principles.
A society is in decay, final or transitional, when common sense really becomes uncommon.
No race has a monopoly on vice or virtue, and the worth of an individual is not related to the color of his skin.
The physical body is acknowledged as dust, the personal drama as delusion. It is as if the world we perceive through our senses, the whole gorgeous and terrible pageant, were the breath-thin surface of a bubble, and everything else, inside and outside, is pure radiance. Both suffering and joy come then like a brief reflection, and death like a pin.
When prayer removes distrust and doubt and enters the field of mental certainty, it becomes faith; and the universe is built on faith.
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