“Hume describes (E, 235) as a “fancied monster” a man who has “no manner of concern to his fellow-creatures but to regard the happiness and misery of all sensible beings with greater indifference than even two contiguous shades of the same color” (ibid.). To limit one's concern to those sensible beings who are of one's own species is to be part-monster, but such monsters, alas, are not merely fancied ones.”
Source: Knowing Our Place in the Animal World, p. 75
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Annette Baier 5
New Zealand philosopher 1929–2012Related quotes
Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Some Statements and Truisms about Neologisms, Newisms, Postisms, Parasitisms, and other small Seismisms, The States of Theory, ed. David Carroll, New York: Columbia University Press, 1989.
Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
“Who needs make-believe monsters when there are so many real ones.”
Source: The Winter Rose
"The Reasons for My Involvement in the Peace Movement" (1972) http://www.shalomctr.org/node/61; later included in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity (1996)
Context: There is immense silent agony in the world, and the task of man is to be a voice for the plundered poor, to prevent the desecration of the soul and the violation of our dream of honesty.
The more deeply immersed I became in the thinking of the prophets, the more powerfully it became clear to me what the lives of the Prophets sought to convey: that morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.
Source: "Einstein's Reply to Criticisms" (1949), The World As I See It (1949)
Context: What is the meaning of human life, or of organic life altogether? To answer this question at all implies a religion. Is there any sense then, you ask, in putting it? I answer, the man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.
“He who fight monsters must take care that he doesn't become one himself.”
Variant: A German philosopher once wrote that he who fights monsters must take care that he doesn't become one himself.
Source: Scorpia Rising