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.
