The Methods of Ethics
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David Hume on Norms and Institutions"
Max Weber Programme Conference "David Hume on Norms and Institutions" San Domenico di Fiesole, Villa la Fonte, 17 April 2008 Justice as Unintended Consequence Please do not cite without prior permission Russel Hardin Department of Politics, New York University © 2006, Russell Hardin 2008.04.14 Justice As Unintended Consequence Russell Hardin* NYU - Politics One of the most neglected of all major legal philosophers is David Hume. His neglect as a specifically legal philosopher has followed from at least two unrelated causes. First, Hume’s work on ethics and on political philosophy was widely opposed and even dismissed in his own time. Second, a generation or so after his death, the positive law tradition of Jeremy Bentham and John Austin took center-stage in legal philosophy and dominated the Anglo-Saxon tradition for more than a century thereafter. This latter phenomenon might not have occluded attention to Hume except that Bentham ([1789] 1970) and Austin ([1832] 1954) took over a continental and quasi Hobbesian principle that was not necessary for their approach but which came to define it in the view of many. That principle is that there must be a primary law giver who is above the law. One could read this principle as analogous to the Aristotelian assumption that there must be a first mover, in this case, a first mover to get law started. Or one could read it as a Hobbesian assumption that we require an all powerful sovereign who is above the law but who gives and enforces the law for all other citizens. Hobbes sees his requirement as both logically and causally necessary. -
Heroic Individualism: the Hero As Author in Democratic Culture Alan I
Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2006 Heroic individualism: the hero as author in democratic culture Alan I. Baily Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Baily, Alan I., "Heroic individualism: the hero as author in democratic culture" (2006). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 1073. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/1073 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. HEROIC INDIVIDUALISM: THE HERO AS AUTHOR IN DEMOCRATIC CULTURE A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Political Science by Alan I. Baily B.S., Texas A&M University—Commerce, 1999 M.A., Louisiana State University, 2003 December, 2006 It has been well said that the highest aim in education is analogous to the highest aim in mathematics, namely, to obtain not results but powers , not particular solutions but the means by which endless solutions may be wrought. He is the most effective educator who aims less at perfecting specific acquirements that at producing that mental condition which renders acquirements easy, and leads to their useful application; who does not seek to make his pupils moral by enjoining particular courses of action, but by bringing into activity the feelings and sympathies that must issue in noble action. -
Egoism and Altruism: the “Antagonists” Or the “Brothers”?
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by InfinityPress Journal of Studies in Social Sciences ISSN 2201-4624 Volume 7, Number 2, 2014, 164-188 Egoism and Altruism: the “Antagonists” or the “Brothers”? Levit L. Z., Ph. D. The Centre for Psychological Health and Education, Minsk, Belarus Abstract. The article under consideration deals with the theoretical analysis and the practical research of the ratio between the two notions: egoism and altruism. The author shows the inadequacy of the one-sided, morally loaded interpretations of both terms. The scores of two ESM-investigations mostly show the positive correlation between the “egoism” and the “altruism” scales in a person’s everyday activity. The results obtained give the opportunity to replace the inadequate view on egoism and altruism as opposites by a more appropriate metaphor of the older and the younger brother. Such an approach removes the idea of antagonism which is usually ascribed to the egoism-altruism interrelation. Key words: egoism, altruism, meaning, happiness, personal uniqueness, positive psychology. © Copyright 2014 the authors. 164 Journal of Studies in Social Sciences 165 Person-oriented conception of happiness: introduction and the brief explanation. In the years 2006 – 2012 the author (Leonid Levit) elaborated a synthesizing conception of self-realization and happiness, which is based on the ideas of the systemic approach and combines biological, psychological, social and spiritual (the highest) levels of individual life and activity. The results of our seven-year work on the problem are summarized in five monographs (Levit, 2010; 2011a; 2011c; 2012 a; 2013 c) and articles (Levit, 2009; 2011 b, 2012 b, 2012 c; 2013 a; 2013 b; 2013 e; Levit, Radchikova, 2012 a). -
The Profoundest Problem of Ethics: About the Possibility of a Profound Solution
Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Master's Theses Graduate School April 2019 The rP ofoundest Problem of Ethics: About the Possibility of a Profound Solution Pol Pardini Gispert [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses Part of the Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Pardini Gispert, Pol, "The rP ofoundest Problem of Ethics: About the Possibility of a Profound Solution" (2019). LSU Master's Theses. 4915. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/4915 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Master's Theses by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE PROFOUNDEST PROBLEM OF ETHICS: ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF A PROFOUND SOLUTION A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in The Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies by Pol Pardini Gispert B.A., Universitat de Girona, 2001 May 2019 For my mother and father, For as many books as I read, your actions are still my moral compass. ii Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... iv Preface ............................................................................................................................................ -
Understanding Rational Egoism
Understanding Rational Egoism CRAIG BIDDLE Copyright © 2018 by The Objective Standard. All rights reserved. The Rational Alternative to “Liberalism” and Conservatism OBAMACARE v. GOVERNMENT’S ASSAULT ANDY KESSLER ON Ayn Rand THE BRILLIANCE THE CONSTITUTION (p.11) ON CAREER COLLEGES (p.53) “EATING PEOPLE” (p.75) Contra Nietzsche CEO Jim Brown’s Vision OF LOUIS PASTEURTHE OBJECTIVE STANDARD THE WAR BETWEEN STANDARD OBJECTIVE THE for the Ayn Rand Institute EDUCATION IN INTELLECTUALS AND CAPITALISM Capitalism A FREE SOCIETY Because Science Alex Epstein on How to The Objective StandardVOL. 6, NO. 2 • SUMMER 2011 THE OBJECTIVE STANDARD The Objective Standard Improve Your World – 2014 VOL. 8, NO. 4 • WINTER 2013 Robin Field on Objectivism Forand theProfit Performing Arts The Objective Standard VOL. 12, NO. 1 • SPRING 2017 “Ayn Rand Said” Libertarianism It is Is Not an Argument VOL. 11, NO. 2 • SUMMER 2016 vs. THE OBJECTIVE STANDARD Time: The Objective Standard Radical Capitalism America CONSERVATIVES’FAULT at Her The Iranian & Saudi Regimes Best Plus: Is SPRING 2017 ∙ VOL. 12, NO. 1 NO. 12, VOL. ∙ 2017 SPRING (p.19) SUMMER 2011 ∙ VOL. 6, NO. 2 NO. 6, ∙ VOL. SUMMER 2011 MUST GO WINTER 2013–2014 ∙ VOL. 8, NO. 4 Plus: Ex-CIA Spy Reza Kahlili on Iran’s Evil Regime (p.24)Hamiltonian Ribbon, Orange Crate, and Votive Holder, 14” x 18” Historian John D. Lewis on U.S. Foreign Policy (p.38) LINDA MANN Still Lifes in Oil SUMMER 2016 ∙ VOL. 11, NO. 2 lindamann.com ∙ 425.644.9952 WWW.CAPITALISTPIG.COM POB 1658 Chicago, IL 60658 An actively managed hedge fund. -
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. -
Three Dimensions of Classical Utilitarian Economic Thought ––Bentham, J.S
July 2012 Three Dimensions of Classical Utilitarian Economic Thought ––Bentham, J.S. Mill, and Sidgwick–– Daisuke Nakai∗ 1. Utilitarianism in the History of Economic Ideas Utilitarianism is a many-sided conception, in which we can discern various aspects: hedonistic, consequentialistic, aggregation or maximization-oriented, and so forth.1 While we see its impact in several academic fields, such as ethics, economics, and political philosophy, it is often dragged out as a problematic or negative idea. Aside from its essential and imperative nature, one reason might be in the fact that utilitarianism has been only vaguely understood, and has been given different roles, “on the one hand as a theory of personal morality, and on the other as a theory of public choice, or of the criteria applicable to public policy” (Sen and Williams 1982, 1-2). In this context, if we turn our eyes on economics, we can find intimate but subtle connections with utilitarian ideas. In 1938, Samuelson described the formulation of utility analysis in economic theory since Jevons, Menger, and Walras, and the controversies following upon it, as follows: First, there has been a steady tendency toward the removal of moral, utilitarian, welfare connotations from the concept. Secondly, there has been a progressive movement toward the rejection of hedonistic, introspective, psychological elements. These tendencies are evidenced by the names suggested to replace utility and satisfaction––ophélimité, desirability, wantability, etc. (Samuelson 1938) Thus, Samuelson felt the need of “squeezing out of the utility analysis its empirical implications”. In any case, it is somewhat unusual for economists to regard themselves as utilitarians, even if their theories are relying on utility analysis. -
University of Birmingham Review of Katarzyna De Lazari-Radek And
University of Birmingham Review of Katarzyna De Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer's The point of view of the universe - Sedgwick and contemporary ethics Suikkanen, Jussi DOI: 10.5840/tpm201467125 License: None: All rights reserved Document Version Early version, also known as pre-print Citation for published version (Harvard): Suikkanen, J 2014, 'Review of Katarzyna De Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer's The point of view of the universe - Sedgwick and contemporary ethics', The Philosophers' Magazine, vol. 67, no. 4, pp. 114-118. https://doi.org/10.5840/tpm201467125 Link to publication on Research at Birmingham portal General rights Unless a licence is specified above, all rights (including copyright and moral rights) in this document are retained by the authors and/or the copyright holders. The express permission of the copyright holder must be obtained for any use of this material other than for purposes permitted by law. •Users may freely distribute the URL that is used to identify this publication. •Users may download and/or print one copy of the publication from the University of Birmingham research portal for the purpose of private study or non-commercial research. •User may use extracts from the document in line with the concept of ‘fair dealing’ under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (?) •Users may not further distribute the material nor use it for the purposes of commercial gain. Where a licence is displayed above, please note the terms and conditions of the licence govern your use of this document. When citing, please reference the published version. Take down policy While the University of Birmingham exercises care and attention in making items available there are rare occasions when an item has been uploaded in error or has been deemed to be commercially or otherwise sensitive. -
Sidgwick's Philosophical Intuitions
Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, X, 2008, 2, pp. 185-209 Sidgwick’s Philosophical Intuitions Anthony Skelton Department of Philosophy University of Western Ontario [email protected] ABSTRACT Sidgwick famously claimed that an argument in favour of utilitarianism might be provided by demonstrating that a set of defensible philosophical intuitions undergird it. This paper focuses on those philosophical intuitions. It aims to show which specific intuitions Sidgwick endorsed, and to shed light on their mutual connections. It argues against many rival interpretations that Sidgwick maintained that six philosophical intuitions constitute the self- evident grounds for utilitarianism, and that those intuitions appear to be specifications of a negative principle of universalization (according to which differential treatments must be based on reasonable grounds alone). In addition, this paper attempts to show how the intuitions function in the overall argument for utilitarianism. The suggestion is that the intuitions are the main positive part of the argument for the view, which includes Sidgwick's rejection of common-sense morality and its philosophical counterpart, dogmatic intuitionism. The paper concludes by arguing that some of Sidgwick's intuitions fail to meet the conditions for self-evidence which Sidgwick himself established and applied to the rules of common-sense morality. 0. One aim of Henry Sidgwick’s The Methods of Ethics is to provide an argument for utilitarianism, the view that an agent acts rightly insofar as she performs that -
UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations
UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Perfectionism, value pluralism, and the human good Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/05w5h7mb Author Stedman, Jeffrey N. Publication Date 2006 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Perfectionism, Value Pluralism, and the Human Good A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy by Jeffrey N. Stedman Committee in charge: Professor Richard Arneson, Co-chair Professor David Brink, Co-Chair Professor Alan Houston Professor Richard Madsen Professor Donald Rutherford 2006 Copyright Jeffrey N. Stedman, 2006 All rights reserved. The dissertation of Jeffrey N. Stedman is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm: _________________________________ _________________________________ _________________________________ _________________________________ Co-chair _________________________________ Co-chair University of California, San Diego 2006 iii DEDICATION For Adam iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page..........................................................................................................................iii. Dedication.................................................................................................................................iv. Table of Contents.......................................................................................................................v. -
Reconciling Epicurean Friendship and Egoism Through a Rule Egoist Reading
Volume 9 Issue 1 (2020) AP Research Reconciling Epicurean Friendship and Egoism Through a Rule Egoist Reading Aashka Gupta1 1McDowell High School, Erie, Pennsylvania, USA ABSTRACT Ancient Greece gave rise to many prominent philosophical figures. Of these, a notable academic was Epicurus (341 - 270 BC), a Samoan who was influential in the development of the Stoic school of thought. While Epicurus’s scholar- ship includes several subject areas, he is most notable for his work in ethics and egoism. As a subset of this philosoph- ical field, Epicurus investigates the role of a selfless, virtuous friendship in the cultivation of a moral life, as well as the need for a selfish and rational egoism. Thus, as scholars have pointed out, the notions of selfless friendship and self-interest egoism, while maintained parallelly by Epicurus, seem to be in tension with each other. This paper ex- amines the relationship between an ideal Epicurean friendship and Epicurus’s concept of egoism, and attempts to resolve both notions under a reading of rule egoism. Introduction The concept of friendship was important to Epicurus; few philosophers had developed the view of philia1 prior to Epicurus. Maintaining an Epicurean friendship requires the needs of a friend to be valued no differently than the needs of his or her own. Not only must a friendship be choiceworthy for itself, but, if necessary, sacrifices must also be made for a friend.2 Diogenes Laertius’3 Lives of Philosophers 10.12 even holds, “He on occasion will die for his friend.” However, equally important to Epicurus was his paradigm of egoism; Epicurus was a staunch egoist and held that the only goal intrinsically valuable to oneself was obtaining pleasure. -
On Sidgwick's Demise: a Reply to Professor Deigh
On Sidgwick’s Demise: A Reply to Professor Deigh ANTHONY SKELTON The University of Western Ontario In ‘Sidgwick’s Epistemology’, John Deigh argues that Henry Sidgwick’s The Methods of Ethics ‘was not perceived during his lifetime as a major and lasting contribution to British moral philosophy’ and that interest in it declined considerably after Sidgwick’s death because the epistemology on which it relied ‘increasingly became suspect in analytic philosophy and eventually [it was] discarded as obsolete’. In this article I dispute these claims. In a recent article in this journal, John Deigh1 argues that Henry Sidgwick’s The Methods of Ethics2 ‘was not perceived during his lifetime as a major and lasting contribution to British moral philosophy’ (438), and that interest in it declined considerably after Sidgwick’s death because the epistemology on which it relied ‘increasingly became suspect in analytic philosophy and eventually [it was] discarded as obsolete’ (439). In this article I dispute these claims. I Deigh argues that Sidgwick’s Methods ‘was not perceived during his lifetime as a major and lasting contribution to British moral philosophy’ (438). However, this is far from clear. First, to make his point Deigh relies on an article in Encyclopaedia Britannica and an obituary in Mind by Leslie Stephen.3 These are not decisive. Stephen announces at the outset of his obituary that he is not concerned to provide an estimate of Sidgwick’s work in philosophy, though he notes that Methods is a ‘great book’ and that Sidgwick’s work in ethics gave ‘the most important of all modern contributions towards a clear realisation of the conditions of approaching the problems involved’.4 The encyclopaedia article does not deny that Methods is a major contribution; instead, it merely fails to single it out.5 Second, a number of important philosophers were sent copies of Methods when the first edition was published in 1874, 1 John Deigh, ‘Sidgwick’s Epistemology’, Utilitas 19 (2007), pp.