Seminar Paper

In Kant’s ‘Groundwork he proclaimed that duty, not happiness was the supreme ethical motive. Bentham’s idea on happiness was slightly different to Kant’s. He identifies happiness with pleasure; he thinks that it is pleasure that is the action behind happiness. He also believed that there is a close link between pain and pleasure. In his book titled ‘The introduction to the principles of morals and legislation’ he says ‘Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.’ ‘It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do’. ‘On the other hand, the standard of right and wrong on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne’. ‘They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think’. My understanding of this is that he believes that pleasure and pain is a natural sensation that we can’t help but feel. It’s a sensation that determines all actions whether that be good or bad. It’s like if you do something that you know is bad or that you know you will suffer serious repercussions for if you do it, if you think that you will feel a great deal of pleasure doing it, you will do it. Therefore for Bentham, to maximize happiness is the same thing as to maximise pleasure.

Unlike Bentham, Aristotle made a distinction between pleasure and happiness.  Bentham not only believed that pleasure was a sensation caused by eating, drinking and sex but also by a multitude of other things such as the acquisition of wealth, kindness to animals or believing in a supreme being. Aristotle believed that pleasure could be identified by the activity that was being enjoyed; whereas Bentham believed that all pleasure was the same no matter how it was caused, but from my understanding he believed that there were different measurements of pleasure depending on how long it last for, how intense it was or if one was more immediate than the other. He thought the same about pain, as he said what went for pleasure, the same went for pain. If I’m correctly understanding what Bentham is saying then I believe that he is contradicting himself because if he saying that all pleasures are the same no matter how they are caused, then surely if there are different measurement for them, that would make the pleasure different. Especially when you are talking about how intense something is. For example if I was to punch a wall very lightly then if I was to punch it again as hard as I could, would that mean that according to Bentham the pain would be the same? Because I don’t think it would. What do you guys think?

In the next part of the chapter we proceed to read about the slogan ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’. Kenny goes on to say that this quote is riddled with ambiguity. The problem with it is defining what the ‘greatest number’ is. Is it the greatest number of ‘Voters’ or ‘females’ or even human beings? It is thought that most people think that the greatest number means ‘human beings’ but it is still a quote that could be flawed because it doesn’t state ‘human beings’ in the quote. Also this quote/slogan is thought to define or sum up utilitarianism to its simplest form. To my understanding Bentham did not include women in his greatest happiness principle because to do so would have provoked outrage to consider women to be as happy as a man without them actually being male. 

In recent years utilitarian’s have extended the happiness principle beyond human beings to other sentient beings, believing animals have equal claims with human beings. Although with Bentham being a great lover of animals he himself would have rejected the ideas that animals have rights as he did not believe in natural rights of any kind.

Kenny then talks about the principle of utility, he asks the question, should individuals or politicians following the greatest happiness principle attempt to control the number of candidates for happiness reasons? I personally would say know because when taking more than one other person into account, happiness doesn’t always come first. I believe sometimes you have to sacrifice your happiness and some other for the greater good. What are your views?

When talking about hedonism there are two types. The first being psychological hedonism, meaning pleasure determines all our actions, the second being ethical hedonism, meaning pleasure is the standard of right and wrong. You could argue that when using the happiness principle, if you do something that is just going to give you pleasure that would be psychological hedonism, but if you were to do something like I mentioned earlier (something that is bad that will give you pleasure that could be considered to be ethical hedonism. Bentham commended utilitarianism by contrasting it with other ethical systems. He did this in his book titled ‘Of principles adverse to that of utility’. The first principle was that of asceticism, the second was the principle of sympathy and antipathy. The principle of asceticism is similar to that of the principle of utility. It means approving actions to the extent that they tend to diminish the quantity of happiness. The principle of sympathy and antipathy judges actions as good or bad to the extent that they accord or not with his own feelings.

John Stuart Mill states that while utilitarianism offers universal happiness as the ultimate moral standard, it does not need to be the aim of every action. The difficulty that Mill takes most seriously is the allegation that utilitarianism is a recipe for preferring expedience to justice. For Mill, it was important for him to make the connection between justice and moral rights. He makes it clear that he thinks there can be legal rights that are unjust, and just claims that conflict with the law.

Now moving onto the ethics of Schopenhauer, he makes a distinction between several kinds of character. There is what he calls the intelligible character, which is the underlying reality, outside time, that determines our response to the situations presented to us in the world. There is also the empirical character; that is to say, what we and others learn, through the course of experience, of the nature of our own intelligible character. These are persons of character in the best sense: people who recognize their own strengths and weaknesses, and tailor their projects and ambitions accordingly. Schopenhauer believes that all bad persons are egoists; he believes that they assert their own will to live whilst from their presence they deny the same to others, in some cases damaging or destroying the lives of others along their way.

Kierkegaard argues that the aesthetic person is deluded in when thinking his existence as one is of freedom, when in fact, he believes it is extremely limited. Kierkegaard then quotes ‘most men pawn themselves to the world ‘. ‘They use their talents, accumulate money, carry on the worldly affairs, calculate shrewdly etc., etc, are perhaps mentioned in history, but themselves they are not; spiritually understood they have no self, no self for whose sake they could venture everything’. Later Kierkegaard talks about the universal man, he says that only when the individual himself is the universal, only then can the ethical be realised. He says ‘ The person who regards life ethically sees the universal, and the person who lives ethically expresses his life in the universal; for then he would be nothing at all, but by clothing himself in it and permeating it with the universal’. The man that Kierkegaard often uses as an example to be the ethical is Socrates. Also Kierkegaard never had a job or got married as those where two marks of the way to live an ethical life.

Moving onto Nietzsche, he believed that Christianity is rooted in weakness, fear and malice, whilst it puts itself forward as a religion of love. He says Christianity dominant motive is what he calls resentment, which is the desire of the weak to take revenge against the strong, which disguises itself as a wish to punish the sinner. I personally don’t agree with Nietzsche on this, throughout this chapter all of his views seem to be very sinister to me. Nietzsche then goes on to talk about his ‘Superhuman’ he says ‘humanity is merely a stage on the way to Superhuman, who is what gives meaning to the world’. ‘Humanity is something that must be surpassed; man is a bridge and not a goal’. ‘Superhuman however, will not come into existence through the forces of evolution, but only through the exercise of will’. ‘Let your will say superhuman is to be the meaning of the earth’.

Aesthetics

The person who is generally considered to be the founder of aesthetics as an independent philosophical discipline is Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten. He believed that the point of beauty was to give pleasure and arouse desire. Edmund burke included into aesthetics that of sublimity.  He said to feel something as sublime is to feel astonishment without fear. On aesthetics Kant makes a distinction between what two kinds of satisfaction. He thinks, as humans we can make a distinction between what is good in itself and what is good only as a means. But we can’t distinguish what is beautiful as a means and what is beautiful as an end.  We then go on to read about Kant in regards to judgements of taste. His ideas are, Judgements of value are related to their purpose. For example if I want to know if the knife I have is a good knife, then first I need to establish what knifes are for, that is how I know what makes a good knife or electrician or plumber. He says that judgements of perfections are similar: I cannot know what makes a perfect x without knowing what is the function of an x. Kant believes that there are two types of beauty, free natural beauty and derivative beauty. Free natural beauty does not pre suppose what the object out to be but derivative beauty does. Kant usually uses a flower as a form to demonstrate free natural beauty. There are what Kant calls formative arts, namely paintings and the plastic arts of sculptures and architecture. He says that there is a third type of art that creates a play on our sensations, this is mainly music and poetry.

No philosopher has given aesthetics a more important role I his total system then Schopenhauer. He says that when we look at a work of art, a nude sculpture, it arouses our sexual desires. If so we are still in a state of will and not of contemplation. It is only when we view something for its beauty without any thought of our personal desirers and needs are we then treating and admiring  it as a work of art and enjoying the aesthetics experience. Schopenhauer had held out art as the most accessible escape from the tyranny of life.

Briefly on Nietzsche, he thought there were two kinds of escape from reality, which were dreaming and intoxication. He also thought that Socrates was the antithesis of all that made Greece great. He thought Socrates instincts were entirely negative and critical, rather than positive and creative. Unlike many others, Nietzsche thought that we should satisfy our deepest desires as it would give us greater pleasure.