Sublime

There must be strict monogamy; polygyny is unfair to women, and polyandry makes paternity uncertain. Incest is to be forbidden because it would complicate family life. Against brother-sister incest there is a very curious argument: that if the love of husband and wife were combined with that of brother and sister, mutual attraction would be so stro

Socrates, in Plato’s works, always pretends that he is only eliciting knowledge already possessed by the man he is questioning; on this ground, he compares himself to a midwife. When, in the Phaedo and the Meno, he applies his method to geometrical problems, he has to ask leading questions which any judge would disallow.

CHAPTER XI Socrates

MOST modern men take it for granted that empirical knowledge is dependent upon, or derived from, perception. There is, however, in Plato and among philosophers of certain other schools, a very different doctrine, to the effect that there is nothing worthy to be called “knowledge” to be derived from the senses, and that the only real knowledge has t

Reason, as Locke uses the term, consists of two parts: first, an inquiry as to what things we know with certainty; second, an investigation of propositions which it is wise to accept in practice, although they have only probability and not certainty in their favour. “The grounds of probability,” he says, “are two: conformity with our own experience

Against the more insane forms of subjectivism in modern times there have been various reactions. First, a half-way compromise philosophy, the doctrine of liberalism, which attempted to assign the respective spheres of government and the individual. This begins, in its modern form, with Locke, who is as much opposed to “enthusiasm”—the individualism

But so long as it is held that there is an ethical distinction between right actions and wrong ones, we can say: Natural law decides what actions would be ethically right, and what wrong, in a community that had no government; and positive law ought to be, as far as possible, guided and inspired by natural law.

As for the argument that, if each man is the measure of all things, one man is as wise as another, Socrates suggests, on behalf of Protagoras, a very interesting answer, namely that, while one judgement cannot be truer than another, it can be better, in the sense of having better consequences. This suggests pragmatism.I

Albert Einstein once said, “Insofar as the propositions of mathematics give an account of reality they are not certain; and insofar as they are certain they do not describe reality.”