[lbo-talk] Blue Dogs cashing in

Chris Doss lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com
Sat Jul 25 18:48:48 PDT 2009


Nobody ever simply wants something, unless your brain is on the fritz and just firing neurons randomly. You want food because you are hungry. You want to live because you are biologically organized to want to live. You want money becase you want to buy stuff, or because of social pressure, or because you like to hoard for whatever reason.

People (hell, probably all animals) feel the urge to "ought," if I can make it into a verb, because they have this thing that the Greeks called "thumos," "desire." People see the world, and they see the way that they desire that the world should be. There is a gap. Thumos makes them want to close the gap.

--- On Sat, 7/25/09, Joseph Catron <jncatron at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Not necessarily. "Ought" implies some external or objective
> imperative - if
> not God, then a convenient substitute. But one can also
> advocate a change
> simply because one wants it, or because it serves one's
> interests.



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