QuoteProject
The line between lawful and unlawful abortion will be marked by the fact of having sensation and being alive.
Aristotle
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote suggests that the ethical distinction regarding abortion hinges on the capacity for sensation and the state of being alive.

Aristotle's quote highlights the moral and philosophical considerations surrounding abortion. It implies that the defining factor in the legality and morality of abortion is whether the fetus can feel pain and possesses a life state, thereby raising questions about personhood and the ethical implications of terminating a pregnancy. This perspective invites a deeper exploration of what it means to be alive and sentient, emphasizing the significance of these attributes in ethical decision-making.

Themes

AbortionLawfulUnlawfulSensationAlive

In practice

Example use cases

Discussing the ethical implications of abortion in a debate.

More from Aristotle

Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
AristotleRead
Those who cannot bravely face danger are the slaves of their attackers.
AristotleRead
For often, when one is asleep, there is something in consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but a dream.
AristotleRead
You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.
AristotleRead
But if nothing but soul, or in soul mind, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if change can exist without soul.
AristotleRead
The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
AristotleRead

Similar quotes

Quantum theory also tells us that the world is not _x000D_ simply objective; somehow it's something more subtle than that. In some _x000D_ sense it is veiled from us, but it has a structure that we can _x000D_ understand.
John PolkinghorneRead
When the white man came to Africa, the white man had the Bible and the African had the land, but now it is the white man who is being, reluctantly and bloodily, separated from the land, and the African who is still attempting to digest or to vomit up the Bible.
James A. BaldwinRead
Where there is no imagination there is no horror.
Arthur Conan DoyleRead
The fact that a cloud from a minor volcanic eruption in Iceland—a small disturbance in the complex mechanism of life on the Earth—can bring to a standstill the aerial traffic over an entire continent is a reminder of how, with all its power to transform nature, humankind remains just another species on the planet Earth.
Slavoj IekRead
There is a kind of elevation which does not depend on fortune; it is a certain air which distinguishes us, and seems to destine us for great things; it is a price which we imperceptibly set upon ourselves.
Francois De La RochefoucauldRead
There seem to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth. The first is by war, as the Romans did, in plundering their conquered neighbors. This is robbery. The second by commerce, which is generally cheating. The third by agriculture, the only honest way, wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle, wrought by the hand of God in his favor, as a reward for his innocent life and his virtuous industry.
Benjamin FranklinRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.