DOCSLIB.ORG

Discursive Matrixes of Motherhood: Cultivating Decency and Emotion In

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Discursive Matrixes of Motherhood: Cultivating Decency and Emotion In Discursive Matrixes of Motherhood I 00_Martisk.pmd 1 24.11.2006, 15:27 University of Helsinki Department of Sociology Discursive Matrixes of Motherhood Cultivating Decency and Emotion in Finnish and French Mother-Talk Heini Martiskainen de Koenigswarter Helsinki 2006 III 00_Martisk.pmd 3 24.11.2006, 15:27 Research Reports No. 249 Department of Sociology University of Helsinki Layout Anssi Sinnemäki / Tamara Press © Heini Martiskainen de Koenigswarter ISSN 0438-9948 ISBN 952-10-3593-5 (paperback) Helsinki University Printing House, Helsinki 2006 IV 00_Martisk.pmd 4 24.11.2006, 15:27 Abstract Discursive Matrixes of Motherhood examines women’s discourse on their ex- periences of new motherhood in Finland and France. It sets out from two cul- turally prevalent turns of speech observed in different social forums: in conver- sations amongst mothers with tertiary education and in the print media. The pool of data includes: 30 interviews, 8 autobiographically inspired novels and 80 items from women’s magazines. With instruments loaned from the toolbox of rhetorical analysis, the recurrence of certain expressions or clichés is analyzed with regard to the national, cultural, biographical, political and daily contexts and settings in which the speaking subjects are immersed. Staying at home is such a short and special time, the first expression under scrutiny, caught the sociological eye because of its salience in Finland and be- cause it appeared as contradictory with a core characteristic of the Finnish con- text: long family leave. The cliché was found to function as a discursive micro- mechanism which swept mothers’ ‘complaints’ under the proverbial carpet. Proper emotions and decency in mother-talk thereby appear as collective achievements. An opposite phenomenon – that of the scaling up of rewards pro- cured by children – was also discerned in the data. Indeed, the French catch- phrase Profiter de mon enfant [‘making the most of my child’/‘enjoying my child’] is interpreted as a crystallization of a hedonist ethos of motherhood in everyday language. Secondly, the recurrence of this utterance is analyzed in the light of a requisite located in child-rearing expert literature: that of pleasure that women should take in mothering. Hence, one of the rules found to structure the discursive matrixes of mother- hood is the laudability and audibility of enjoyment and conversely the discre- tion and discouragement of ‘complaints’. The cultivation of decent matches between certain categories of emotions and certain categories of individuals also appears as a characteristic of discursive matrixes. One of the methodological findings relates to the fact that such matches may be constituted as sociological objects through the identification of recurrent discursive crystallizations in a V 00_Martisk.pmd 5 24.11.2006, 15:27 given culture. Ideal matches may crystallize in turns of speech and mismatches can be managed through clichés. Becoming a mother entails an immersion in such a particular economy of speech. Key words: mothers, motherhood, transition to parenthood, family, emotions, morality, bonds, rhetorical analysis, discourse analysis, media analysis, France, Finland, comparative sociology VI 00_Martisk.pmd 6 24.11.2006, 15:27 Acknowledgements Written in English by a Finn in France, Matrixes has fed upon the social and intellectual umbilical cords provided by my two alma mater: the University of Helsinki and the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. Sustenance during the research project was provided namely by the The Family in Transi- tion project (2003-2005), directed by Riitta Jallinoja and financed by the Finn- ish Academy of Science1; and funding was prolonged by a grant from the Uni- versity of Helsinki (2006). I am therefore indebted to these two institutions. Discussions and comments were provided by all project members along the way. My special gratitude for stimulating conversations on sociological cuisine and for their collegial care in Helsinki goes to Riitta Jallinoja (co-supervisor of this dissertation), Kaisa Ketokivi, Jaana Maksimainen and Anna-Maija Castrén. Mianna Meskus also commented an early version of the dissertation. Riitta’s sociological nose and counselling prompted me, on several occasions, to pur- sue relevant trails of enquiry which surfaced in my analysis. Kiitos. Invaluable support was also provided by my second supervisor (and very first supporter): Jacqueline Heinen. Her corrections, tolerance of eclectic combina- tions and encouragements over the years – not to mention the daily bread that I found in teaching and research positions at the Université de Versailles Saint- Quentin-en-Yvelines in the Gender and Local Management of Change in Seven European Countries and the Egalité des Chances-projects directed by Jac- queline – got me through the first years of this adventure. Working and publish- ing together constituted my primary socialization to the world of sociology-as- profession. Merci. Occasional financing, permanent logistical help and day-to-day collegial support were also provided by members of the Laboratoire Printemps (Profes- sions, institutions, temporalités, ESA 8085, CNRS) and its director, Didier Dumazière, at the Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. Sharing 1 For a presentation of the project, see <http://www.valt.helsinki.fi/sosio/Perhmurros/english/> VII 00_Martisk.pmd 7 24.11.2006, 15:27 experiences and survival tips informally and formally with doctoral students in Paris and Helsinki also lent buoyancy to this task. I also express my gratitude towards Anne Cova and Jaana Vuori, pre-exam- iners of the dissertation, for their accomplishments in a time-crunch; and for cordially doing me the added honour of becoming my examiners for the viva. My acknowledgements also go to Anssi Sinnemäki, who did the layout for the dissertation and the Department of Sociology of the University of Helsinki, for including the work it in its publication series. Last but not least, I thank all the mothers and fathers, the Paris and the Hel- sinki area dwellers, for the gift of their time, which they took to discuss with the researcher their experiences of becoming parents at this rush-hour of their lives. Heini Martiskainen de Koenigswarter Béon, November 15th 2006 VIII 00_Martisk.pmd 8 24.11.2006, 15:27 Matrix • noun [pl. matrices or matrixes] A situation or surrounding substance within which something else originates, develops, or is contained. The womb. Computer science. The network of intersections between input and output leads in a computer, functioning as an encoder or decoder. ORIGIN: Middle English matrice, from Old French, from Late Latin mâtrîx, mâtrîc-, from Latin, breeding-animal, from mâter, mâtr-, mother. IX 00_Martisk.pmd 9 24.11.2006, 15:27 Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................... V Acknowledgements ...................................................................................... VII Introduction ......................................................................................................1 PART ONE: SETTING THE SCENE 1 The power of categories (the sociological clearing)...................................11 1.1 Doing sociology: natural, official and theoretical categories...............12 Banishing categories ..........................................................................13 Frame breaking ..................................................................................15 1.2 Gendered categories ...........................................................................21 1.3 A Genealogy of Categories: ‘Matrix’ & ‘Motherhood’ .......................24 ‘Matrix’ ..............................................................................................24 ‘Motherhood’ .....................................................................................28 2 Data and methods ......................................................................................31 2.1 The research process ..........................................................................31 Connecting issues ...............................................................................32 2.2 Lint combing for comparative details .................................................37 Details as sociological objects ............................................................37 Discursive minutiae & ‘clichés’..........................................................39 2.3 Materials ............................................................................................43 The interview sample .........................................................................43 Recruitment ........................................................................................46 Semi-structured interviews .................................................................47 Preliminary analyses ..........................................................................48 Novels ................................................................................................50 Women’s magazines ...........................................................................53 3 Contexts of motherhood ............................................................................55 3.1 Coping with great expectations: the biographical context ...................56 3.2 Extended context: fashions in childcare ..............................................62 Historical perspective .........................................................................63
Load more

Recommended publications
  • In Defense of Happiness: a Response to the Experience Machine
    In Defense of Happiness: A Response to the Experience Machine Introduction Hedonism has seen better days. As a philosophical doctrine, it flourished in the utilitarian climate maintained by the great nineteenth-century British empiricists Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Henry Sidgwick. And even though utilitarianism continues to hold sway among many contempo­ rary ethical theorists, its hedonistic foundations have been all but abandoned. Nowadays, most philosophers entertain the idea of hedonism just long enough to dismiss it. Traditionally, hedonism has come in many guises. The term itself is derived from the Greek word hoovi] (hedone), meaning pleasure, and theo­ ries are hedonistic in virtue of the central role they assign to the notion of pleasure. Psychological hedonism is a view about human motivation. It holds that pleasure is the only possible object of a desire or pursuit. Moral hedon­ ism contends that pleasure is the only thing one ought to desire or pursue. A third version, rational hedonism, maintains that pleasure is the only thing one has reason to desire and pursue. 1 The most familiar formulation of hedonism, though, and the one with which I am primarily concerned here, is a doctrine about well-being and prudential value. Well-being is itself an elusive concept in need of explanation. An ex­ haustive and reductive definition is, however, beyond the scope of this essay; I offer instead some synonymous expressions. Although these expressions may not dispel all confusion, they will, I hope, help us recognize what is ascribed to a person when we say that he or she has well-being.
    [Show full text]
  • The Methods of Ethics
    The Methods of Ethics Henry Sidgwick Copyright © Jonathan Bennett 2017. All rights reserved [Brackets] enclose editorial explanations. Small ·dots· enclose material that has been added, but can be read as though it were part of the original text. Occasional •bullets, and also indenting of passages that are not quotations, are meant as aids to grasping the structure of a sentence or a thought. Every four-point ellipsis . indicates the omission of a brief passage that seems to present more difficulty than it is worth. Longer omissions are reported between brackets in normal-sized type.—The division of the work into Books, chapters, and numbered sections is Sidgwick’s. —Cross-references follow this system: ‘chapter 3’ means ‘chapter 3 of this Book’. ‘chapter 4.2’ means ‘chapter 4, section 2, of this Book’. ‘II/3’ means ‘Book II, chapter 3’. ‘IV/3.4’ means ‘Book IV, chapter 3, section 4’. An accompanying page-number refers to the page where the passage in question starts.—This version omits most of the 2,000+ cautions that Sidgwick includes, such as ‘I think. ’, ‘I conceive. ’, ‘it seems. ’ and so on. Even with these out of the way, the work doesn’t come across as bullyingly dogmatic.—In this version, most notably on pages 166 and 196, the author addresses the reader (‘you’), but in the original it is always ‘the reader’ and ‘he’.—This version is based on the sixth edition of the work (1901), the last non-posthumous one. The first edition appeared in 1874, the year after Mill died. First launched: October 2011 The Methods of Ethics Henry Sidgwick Contents BOOK I 1 Chapter 1: Introduction........................................................1 Chapter 2: The relation of ethics to politics.............................................7 Chapter 3: Ethical judgments...................................................
    [Show full text]
  • 6. Railton's “Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality”
    6. Railton’s “Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality” Martín Abreu Zavaleta July 14, 2015 Railton is addressing one kind of problem that we raised. In class, we discussed the case of a parent who is offered a choice between saving the life of her own child or saving the life of another child. Saving the life of the other child would produce overall more utility than saving the life of her own, so utilitarian consequentialism claims that she should save the life of the other child. To many people, this seems to be the wrong result: surely, they think, whatever duty she has to save the life of the other child is overridden by her duties and obligations to save the life of her own child. Samuel Scheffler presents us with a less tragic, but related problem for consequentialism. Schef- fler observes that consequentialism demands that we don’t buy new shoes if we can spend that money in ways that will help other people more, or that we don’t watch TV if instead we could be doing more utility maximizing things. These two cases point to one important problem for consequentialism (here, under the guise of utilitarianism). Consequentialism seems to alienate us from the people we love and from things that make our lives richer. By focusing solely on the maximization of utility, it seems to ignore the value that other things bring into our lives: things like friendship, the love for one’s family, entertainment, art appreciation, etc. A life lived in line with consequentialist demands seems to be a very impoverished life, enslaved to the maximization of utility.
    [Show full text]
  • Paradoxes Situations That Seems to Defy Intuition
    Paradoxes Situations that seems to defy intuition PDF generated using the open source mwlib toolkit. See http://code.pediapress.com/ for more information. PDF generated at: Tue, 08 Jul 2014 07:26:17 UTC Contents Articles Introduction 1 Paradox 1 List of paradoxes 4 Paradoxical laughter 16 Decision theory 17 Abilene paradox 17 Chainstore paradox 19 Exchange paradox 22 Kavka's toxin puzzle 34 Necktie paradox 36 Economy 38 Allais paradox 38 Arrow's impossibility theorem 41 Bertrand paradox 52 Demographic-economic paradox 53 Dollar auction 56 Downs–Thomson paradox 57 Easterlin paradox 58 Ellsberg paradox 59 Green paradox 62 Icarus paradox 65 Jevons paradox 65 Leontief paradox 70 Lucas paradox 71 Metzler paradox 72 Paradox of thrift 73 Paradox of value 77 Productivity paradox 80 St. Petersburg paradox 85 Logic 92 All horses are the same color 92 Barbershop paradox 93 Carroll's paradox 96 Crocodile Dilemma 97 Drinker paradox 98 Infinite regress 101 Lottery paradox 102 Paradoxes of material implication 104 Raven paradox 107 Unexpected hanging paradox 119 What the Tortoise Said to Achilles 123 Mathematics 127 Accuracy paradox 127 Apportionment paradox 129 Banach–Tarski paradox 131 Berkson's paradox 139 Bertrand's box paradox 141 Bertrand paradox 146 Birthday problem 149 Borel–Kolmogorov paradox 163 Boy or Girl paradox 166 Burali-Forti paradox 172 Cantor's paradox 173 Coastline paradox 174 Cramer's paradox 178 Elevator paradox 179 False positive paradox 181 Gabriel's Horn 184 Galileo's paradox 187 Gambler's fallacy 188 Gödel's incompleteness theorems
    [Show full text]
  • Obdrzalek, Moral Transformation and the Love of Beauty In
    [Penultimate draft; Journal of the History of Philosophy, 2010 (Vol. 48), 415-44] Moral Transformation and the Love of Beauty in Plato's Symposium Suzanne Obdrzalek 1. Introduction On the day Eros was conceived, the gods were having a party to celebrate the birth of Aphrodite. His father-to-be, Poros (resource), was having a grand old time, and in fact got so carried away with the nectar that he passed out cold in Zeus’ garden. His mother-to-be, Penia (poverty), had not made the guest list, and was skulking around the gates. She was poor but cunning, and on seeing Poros sprawled on the ground, hatched a plot to relieve her poverty. She would sleep with him—after all, Poros was too drunk to know what was going on—and conceive a child who would enable her to escape her penury. The name of this child was Eros. This is the story of the origins of erōs which Diotima offers in her speech in the Symposium, and on the face of it, Plato couldn’t have come up with a stranger, more startling myth (203b1–204c6). Love, we learn, is born when a scheming, desperate woman who takes advantage of a drunk man who lies passed-out in the dirt. There is no mention of marriage, the wedding-bed, affection, beauty, even lust—no mention of any of the things which one would ordinarily associate with a myth about the origins of love. Plato is focusing on the seamier side of erōs; his myth describes just the sort of sexual encounter which might make a man mistrust erōs, in which a man is seduced by a cunning woman for the sake of profit.
    [Show full text]
  • List of Paradoxes 1 List of Paradoxes
    List of paradoxes 1 List of paradoxes This is a list of paradoxes, grouped thematically. The grouping is approximate: Paradoxes may fit into more than one category. Because of varying definitions of the term paradox, some of the following are not considered to be paradoxes by everyone. This list collects only those instances that have been termed paradox by at least one source and which have their own article. Although considered paradoxes, some of these are based on fallacious reasoning, or incomplete/faulty analysis. Logic • Barbershop paradox: The supposition that if one of two simultaneous assumptions leads to a contradiction, the other assumption is also disproved leads to paradoxical consequences. • What the Tortoise Said to Achilles "Whatever Logic is good enough to tell me is worth writing down...," also known as Carroll's paradox, not to be confused with the physical paradox of the same name. • Crocodile Dilemma: If a crocodile steals a child and promises its return if the father can correctly guess what the crocodile will do, how should the crocodile respond in the case that the father guesses that the child will not be returned? • Catch-22 (logic): In need of something which can only be had by not being in need of it. • Drinker paradox: In any pub there is a customer such that, if he or she drinks, everybody in the pub drinks. • Paradox of entailment: Inconsistent premises always make an argument valid. • Horse paradox: All horses are the same color. • Lottery paradox: There is one winning ticket in a large lottery. It is reasonable to believe of a particular lottery ticket that it is not the winning ticket, since the probability that it is the winner is so very small, but it is not reasonable to believe that no lottery ticket will win.
    [Show full text]
  • Hedonism Reconsidered
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. LXXII1, No. 3, November 2006 Hedonism Reconsidered ROGER CRISP St Anne’s College, Oxford Tlus paper is a plea for hedonism to be taken more seriously. It begins by charting hedonism’s decline, and suggests that this is a result of two major objections: the claim that hedonism is the ‘philosophy of swine’, reducing all value to a single common denominator, and Nozick’s ‘experience machine’ objection. There follows some eluci- dation of the nature of hedonism, and of enjoyment in particular. Two types of theory of enjoyment are outlined-internalism, according to which enjoyment has some special ’feeling tone’, and externalism, according to which enjoyment is any kind of experience to which we take some special attitude, such as that of desire. Internalism-the tradi- tional view-is defended against current externalist orthodoxy. The paper ends with responses to the philosophy of swine and the experience machine objections. 1. Hedonism’s Decline Hedonism has a distinguished philosophical history. It was central in ancient philosophy. One interpretation of Plato’s Protugorus has Socrates defending the view, and it is taken seriously in many other dialogues, including the Philebus and the Republic. Aristotle analyses it closely in his Ethics. It was defended vigorously by the Epicureans and Cyrenaics, and attacked equally vigorously by the Stoics. More recently, hedonism was the standard view of the British empiricists from Hobbes to J.S. Mill.’ In the twentieth century, however, hedonism became significantly less popular. There are at least three reasons for this. First, Mill’s attempt to deal with the objection that hedonism was the ‘philosophy of swine’, using his distinction between higher and lower pleasures, was thought to be either an ’ See esp.
    [Show full text]
  • Hedonism and Indian Philosophy of Peace: an Examination
    IDEA – Studia nad strukturą i rozwojem pojęć filozoficznych XXIX/1 Białystok 2017 Aditya Kumar Gupta, Kanika Saraf (Delhi, Indie) HEDONISM AND INDIAN PHILOSOPHY OF PEACE: AN EXAMINATION Human being,like other animals,is a creature who desires pleasure and avoids pain.It is natural for a man to avail or allow only those moments which give pleasure to him and to go away from moments of pain. But despite being pleasure-loving, what do we get in the end?, Do we remain happy after we get pleasure?.Why is it so that a pleasure creates a type of boredom after some time which, later on, develops the desire for another or higher pleasures?What is the mystery of human life -we seek pleasure but remain unsatisfied even after we get it? The Proposed article is the critical study of hedonism in the light of Indian philosophy of Renunciation and Peace. The term ‘Hedonism’ comes from Latin term ‘ Hedone ’, which means pleas- ure. This is the philosophy which believes in pleasure as the aim of life and of any particular human action. Why do we do any particular task which is volun- tary in nature?; What do we want to get in the end? Hedonists answer these questions in one word- pleasure. Here by ‘pleasure’ they mean sensual pleasures which include even mental pleasure 1. There are six commonly accepted sense organs-Eyes, Ears, Nose, Skin, Tongue and Mind. Pleasure is always associated with these six sense organs. Hedonism is based on two assumptions,-a metaphysical and a psychologi- cal. According to Metaphysical assumption, self or mind is purely sensuous in nature, a series of sensations, feelings, appetites, and instincts.
    [Show full text]
  • Plato the Hedonist?
    Plato, The Hedonist? by Brooks A. Sommerville A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Philosophy University of Toronto © Copyright by Brooks A. Sommerville 2014 Plato, The Hedonist? Brooks A. Sommerville Doctor of Philosophy Department of Philosophy University of Toronto 2014 Abstract Most moral philosophers agree that a happy life involves pleasure in some way. Some go so far as to claim that pleasure alone is what makes a life happy or worthwhile. In either case, it seems that any complete account of a desirable life owes us an explanation as to what pleasure is. So, what is pleasure? As the history of moral philosophy attests, answering this question turns out to be surprisingly difficult. Although we all experience pleasures of various kinds, it is by no means clear that a unified account can cover all the things we take to be pleasant. This conceptual question about pleasure has clear implications for the distinct ethical question of pleasure’s value. In short, if we don’t know what pleasure is, then it isn’t at all clear why we should value it. Plato appreciates this. Pleasure’s place in the good life is one of Plato’s enduring ethical concerns, and so it should come as no surprise that he also undertakes to develop a unified account of pleasure. My aim in this dissertation is to argue that Plato arrives at a definitive answer as to what pleasure is, and that this helps us to understand his considered view as to pleasure’s role in the happy life.
    [Show full text]
  • Routledge Dictionary of Philosophy
    The Routledge Dictionary of Philosophy First published in 1976, the Dictionary of Philosophy has established itself as the best available text of its kind, explaining often unfamiliar, complicated and diverse terminology. Thoroughly revised and expan- ded, this fourth edition provides authoritative and rigorous definitions of a broad range of philosophical concepts. Concentrating on the Western philosophical tradition, The Routledge Dictionary of Philosophy offers an illuminating and informed introduc- tion to the central issues, ideas and perspectives in core fields such as metaphysics, epistemology and logic. It includes concise biographical entries for more than one hundred major philosophers, from Plato and Aristotle through to contemporary figures such as Dummett, McDowell, Parfit and Singer. All major entries are followed by helpful suggestions for further reading, including web links, and contain extensive cross-referencing to aid access and comprehension. This edition also features a brand new guide to the most useful philosophy sites on the internet. The Routledge Dictionary of Philosophy is an invaluable and up-to-date resource for all students of philosophy. Michael Proudfoot was Head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Reading, UK, and is now an Honorary Fellow of the Department. A. R. Lacey is formerly a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at King’s College, University of London, UK The Routledge Dictionary of Philosophy Fourth Edition Michael Proudfoot and A. R. Lacey First published 1976 Second edition 1986 Third edition 1996 Fourth edition 2010 by Routledge 2 Milton Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009.
    [Show full text]
  • Hedonism and Happiness 1
    1 HEDONISM AND HAPPINESS Ruut Veenhoven In: Journal of Happiness Studies, 2003 vol. 4. (special issue on 'Art of living') pp. 437-457 ABSTRACT Hedonism is a way of life, characterised by openness to pleasurable experience. There are many qualms about hedonism. It is rejected on moral grounds and said to be detrimental to long-term happiness. Several mechanisms for this 'paradox of hedonism' have been suggested and telling examples of pleasure seekers ending up in despair have been given. But is that the rule? If so, how much pleasure is too much? An overview of the available knowledge is given in this paper. The relation between hedonism and happiness has been studied at two levels: that of the nation and the individual. At the national level average happiness is correlated with moral acceptance of pleasure and with active leisure. At the individual level it is similarly linked with hedonistic attitudes and also correlated with hedonistic behaviours such as frequent sex and use of stimulants. In most cases the pattern is linearly positive. The relation between happiness and consumption of stimulants follows an inverted U-curve, spoilsports and guzzlers are less happy than modest consumers. Yet these data cannot settle the issue, since the observed relations may be spurious or due to the effects of happiness on hedonism rather than the reverse. Even if we can prove a positive effect of (mild) hedonism on happiness, there is still the question of how that gains balances against a possible loss of health. A solution is to assess the effect of hedonistic living on the number of years lived happily.
    [Show full text]
  • Utilitarianism
    Utilitarianism From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Utilitarianism is the ethical doctrine that the moral worth of an action is solely determined by its contribution to overall utility. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined by its outcome—the ends justify the means. Utility — the good to be maximized — has been defined by various thinkers as happiness or pleasure (versus sadness or pain), though preference utilitarians like Peter Singer define it as the satisfaction of preferences. It can be described by the phrase "the greatest good for the greatest number", though the 'greatest number' part gives rise to the problematic mere addition paradox. Utilitarianism can thus be characterized as a quantitative and reductionistic approach to ethics. Utilitarianism can be contrasted with deontological ethics (which focuses on the action itself rather than its consequences) and virtue ethics (which focuses on character), as well as with other varieties of consequentialism. Adherents of these opposing views have extensively criticized the utilitarian view, though utilitarians have been similarly critical of other schools of ethical thought. In general use the term utilitarian often refers to a somewhat narrow economic or pragmatic viewpoint. However, philosophical utilitarianism is much broader than this, for example some approaches to utilitarianism consider non-human animals in addition to people. Contents 1 History 2 Origin of the term 3 Types 3.1 Act vs. rule 3.2 Motive 3.3 Two-level 3.4 Negative 3.5 Average vs. total 3.6 Other species 3.7 Combinations with other ethical schools 4 Biological explanation 5 Criticism and Defense 5.1 Comparing happiness 5.2 Predicting consequences 5.3 Importance of intentions 5.4 Human rights 5.5 Individual interests vs.
    [Show full text]