Gentlemanly, principled, helpful behaviour by older men vis-a-vis young women goes unnoticed, but it deserves real moral credit, and we could use more first-person testimony from the beneficiaries and practitioners about that too.
Catherine WilsonIn the old systems, hierarchies emanate power from above to below through forms of line management and are ideologically supported by cosmologies and theologies featuring celestial rulers and their deputies - the 'rule of the best.'
Catherine WilsonAtomism had no absolute 'above' and 'below' and no such rulers, so favoured the undersranding of justice as an agreement amongst equals.
Catherine WilsonIt used to be that nobody would really argue with a woman, because what she thought (unless it was by way of providing helpful comments about one's own work) just didn't matter.
Catherine WilsonEpicurus recommends bread and cheese as the staple, and his emphasis is more on avoiding pain than on seeking pleasure, insofar as pleasure-seeking tends to be followed by painful after-effects.
Catherine WilsonHuman courtship has some wild extremes. At one end of the spectrum, there is harassment, pestering, blackmail, and an abuse of institutional power, which its targets rightly fear and loathe. At the other end is love, which as Nietzsche said, is beyond good and evil and always deserves our respect and compassion even when it is doomed or destructive. In the wide middle of the spectrum are all the ambiguous and tragi-comic goings-on of our species.
Catherine Wilson