lowerclassbrat/philosophy

i like this one:

"do one thing every day that scares you."

discussion with professor noam chomsky on the the legitimacy of violence as a political act.

from the page:

"any rational person would agree that violence is not legitimate unless the consequences of such action are to eliminate a still greater evil. now there are people of course who go much further and say that one must oppose violence in general, quite apart from any possible consequences. i think that such a person is asserting one of two things. either he's saying that the resort to violence is illegitimate even if the consequences are to eliminate a greater evil; or he's saying that under no conceivable circumstances will the consequences ever be such as to eliminate a greater evil. the second of these is a factual assumption and it's almost certainly false. one can easily imagine and find circumstances in which violence does eliminate a greater evil. as to the first, it's a kind of irreducible moral judgment that one should not resort to violence even if it would eliminate a greater evil. and these judgments are very hard to argue. i can only say that to me it seems like an immoral judgment."