I am giving the George Ross Memorial lecture tomorrow (Sunday) at 2pm, Conway Hall, London, part of the Philosophy Now Festival. I'll be talking about stuff from my book The War For Children's Minds, which George liked, I'm told. I didn't meet him but I have discovered a lot about him and clearly I missed out.
Here are George's Ten Commandments. Discuss...!
[With
due acknowledgements to the ancient (pre-Socratic) Greeks, Socrates, Plato,
Horace, Dante, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Kant, Flaubert, G. B. Shaw, Popper,
Joseph Brodsky and … S. J. Simon (Why You
Lose at Bridge)
Here are George's Ten Commandments. Discuss...!
THE
NEW TEN COMMANDMENTS
Published in Humanism Scotland Winter 2001, p. 11
1.
Sapere aude - Dare to know. Take the risk of
discovery, exercise the right of unfettered criticism, accept the loneliness of
autonomy. Have the courage to use independently your own understanding, without
recourse to anyone else's guidance. Always question, always examine critically
your thoughts and deeds. Always ask 'why?' Try also to ask 'why not?' Be
creative.
2.
Know thyself. To thine own self be true. Remember
that an unexamined life is not worth living.
3.
Universalize your actions: never do anything which
you would not want to say that anybody and everybody should be able to do in a
similar situation. Treat your fellow human beings as you want them to treat
you. Do not have double standards: apply to yourself the principles and laws
that you yourself formulate. Never treat people as a means to an end: only as
an end in itself.
4.
Be kind and compassionate, and be involved:
remember that the hottest place in hell is destined to those who adopt a
neutral attitude in a moral conflict.
5.
Take very seriously your duty towards others, but
do not take yourself seriously. Always aim for the best result possible, not
for the best possible result.
6.
Remember that all human opinions, values, tenets
and beliefs are of necessity subjective and relative. Always treat them as
hypotheses or premises. Never bestow upon an opinion, doctrine, dogma or belief
of any sort an absolute character: this is the cause of most heinous crimes
against humanity. Beware of peddlers of absolutes, for people have been – and
are – exterminated in the name of absolutes. Nobody has ever been killed for a
hypothesis, so far at least.
7.
Be regular and ordinary in your life, like a
bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work. Do not make a
virtue of banality, by calling it 'common sense'. Remember that the surest
defence against evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking,
whimsicality.
8.
Tolerate any stance, except intolerance itself. To
detest another man's opinions is one thing. To suppress them is quite another.
This distinction is the essence of liberalism. Plan for freedom, and not only
for security, if for no other reason than that only freedom can make security
secure.
9.
Treat with respect the planet on which we live. It is
the only one we've got at present and we must bequeath it to our children – and
our children's children.
10.
Strive to live in such a way that the world you
leave behind you is a better place, freer, wiser, more tolerant, than the world
you found when you were born. Try to make a difference – however small.
©George
Ross 2000
Comments
Commandment No 2 is quite dodgy...because if you think about it...
If the unexamined life is not worth living it then follows that that no other kind of life is worth living...
This would inevitably lead to a society becoming morally abased.
Think about it....
I was actually going to comment on his use of "the hottest place in hell is destined to those who adopt a neutral attitude in a moral conflict. " as published in a humanist publication - it always makes me smile to see how hard it is to escape religious language, it pervades so much of our thinking.
We only examine ourselves when we fail, so logically a life without failure is not worth living.
I think they're very good. Number 8 is very relevant: the limits of tolerance are the intolerance of others. In other words, it's others' intolerance that I won't tolerate.
Regards, Paul.
Otherwise, I like these much more than the originals!!
I'm an Aussie, so No 5 would be taken very seriously indeed in my culture, where taking yourself too seriously is generally considered an unpardonable sin.
Regards, Paul.
Your Socratic point is interesting...
But say, one fails and doesn't examine one's life?
Is that still classed as a life worth living?
Liddell and Scott's decision to link Plato to (b) and not (a) does not in itself prove anything. I assume that they simply followed the opinion of Plato scholars as to the translation. But if that is a good way to read the text, the prescription looks quite different. It would amount to saying that you should enquire into things and strive to find out the truth about the world. You might yourself be a main object of your enquiry, or you might turn your gaze outwards. The point would be that the intellectually slothful life was not worth living.
But I would say that when translating the phrase one also has to take into account the culture of Ancient Greece...
After all it was a society that emphasised the concept of "symmetria prisca" in all things.
Meaning that it was an "elitist" society...after all Socrates did find the Hesoid "metal myth" expressing a useful truth about the world.
I think this is the danger of the quote, i.e. its sentiment is that it differentiates between the right sort of person and the wrong sort of person...because the trajectory of that phrase I think does lead to moral debasement.
"The un-criticised life is not worth living."
This changes the aspect of the quote.