Sentences with phrase «human excellence just»

Not exact matches

His aim, just as that of Homeric religion, was for human excellence, but whereas for Homeric religion this meant of public excellence of manner and action, for Socrates this meant the perfection of the soul as such.

In his recent book, Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity, he offers «four benefits» of mortality: interest and engagement, suggesting that adding, say, twenty years to the human life span would not proportionately increase the pleasures of life; seriousness and aspiration, proposing that the knowledge that our life is limited is what leads us to take life seriously and passionately; beauty and love, presenting the idea that it is precisely their perishability that makes, for instance, flowers beautiful to us, just as the coming and going of spring makes that season all the more meaningful; and, finally, virtue and moral excellence, by which he means the virtuous and noble deeds that mortality makes possible, including the sacrifice of our own life for a worthy cause.

Just as there are standards of excellence for being a doctor and a teacher, so there are knowable standards of excellence for being human.

«the art of making knots, which is the peak of both mental abstraction and manual work, could be seen as the human characteristic par excellence, just as much and perhaps even more than language...» Italo Calvino