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.
We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne.
What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
All occasions invite His mercies, and all times are His seasons.
I am sorry my life is so marred and maimed by extravagance. But I cannot live otherwise. I, at any rate, pay the penalty of suffering.
I could never adjust to the separate waiting rooms, separate eating places, separate rest rooms, partly because the separate was always unequal, and partly because the very idea of separation did something to my sense of dignity and self-respect.
"I used to think the world was broken down by tribes," I said. "By black and white. By Indian and white. But I know that isn't true. The world is only broken into two tribes: The people who are assholes and the people who are not."
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