SUBJECT: FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS IN ETHICS (C 211 COG)
1. HOW DO YOU COMPARE THE ETHICS OF SOCRATES OF ETHICS OFPLATO
WHO IS MORE ACCEPTABLE TO YOUWhen looking at virtue, both Plato and
Aristotle start with the views of what counted as virtues in Greek
society. The virtues Aristotle lists in the Nichomachean Ethics are
derived from this, as are the virtues that Plato focuses on in many
of his dialogues (but most famously, the Republic). Foremost for
both were wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice, though
Aristotle meant much further in delimiting them.
For both Plato and Aristotle, and indeed for most Greeks, virtue
was essential for happiness (eudaimonia, which means "happiness" or
"good character," more broadly self-fulfillment or the good life).A
key difference arises when it comes to how we acquire those
virtues. 1) Plato seems to have held what we'd call a Socratic
conception of virtue (acquired from his teacher, Socrates) that
knowledge is virtue. In other words, to know the good is to do the
good. 2) This means that all the virtues boil down to wisdom. If
I'm really wise, all the other virtues will follow. Plato, in other
words, believed in the unity of the virtues. Socrates was the best
example of this for Plato, as his dialogues illustrate. 3) Finally,
Plato believed that virtue was sufficient for happiness --- there
is no such thing as moral luck.Aristotle differed on each of these
points. 1) Knowing the good wasn't enough for Aristotle. Although
Aristotle doesn't necessarily have a concept of a free will (this
is a later, largely Christian idea), he does believe that I need to
practice virtue --- that I need to habituate myself to virtue in
order to truly be virtuous. 2) For this reason, although wisdom is
the highest form of virtue, it is by no means the key to possessing
all virtues. In other words, Aristotle denies the unity of the
virtues. 3) Finally, Aristotle thinks that although virtue is
necessary to the good life, it isn't sufficient. That is to say, I
can be virtuous but still unhappy (think of Oedipus). In
particular, if I need good fellow citizens to truly achieve
happiness.Interestingly, Aristotle's views on all these points
represented the more mainstream views of Greek society, whereas
Plato's were more radical.At the most general difference, Aristotle
and Plato placed different values on the human being. Whereas
Aristotle generally saw the positives in society, and therefore
prescribed freedom and equality, Plato saw the negatives and
prescribed various illiberal and discriminatory ideals.
2. If Jesus loves the poor, does it follow that Jesus hates the
rich, why?Jesus comes to seek and to save that which was lost. In
an occasion, "Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man
was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector
and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was
short he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed
a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him,
Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.
So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. All the people saw
this and began to mutter, He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.
But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, Look, Lord! Here and
now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have
cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the
amount. Jesus said to him, Today salvation has come to this house,
because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came
to seek and to save the lost.In the bible, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,
Job, Solomon and Davidthey were all rich men, and loved by God.
They were called the man after Gods own heart.Jesus loves people,
rich or poor; but the poor people received the LOVE of Jesus better
than the rich. The rich do not feel their need of anything that is
Gods. In Revelation 3:17 the bible says, Because thou sayest, I am
rich, and increased with good, and have need of nothing; and
knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor , and
blind, and naked. It is not a matter as to the Jesus not loving the
rich it is a matter of the people not willing to accept Jesus love.
John 3:16 states Whosoever , Jesus has already made His choice
whosoever. It is up to that individual to accept the love of
Jesus.What Jesus hates are the following, a proud look, a lying
tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, heart that deviseth wicked
imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, false
witness that speaketh lies, and a person that soweth discord among
brethren. Jesus hates a sinful or self-righteous attitude in
anyone. A rich person who did good deed sin the sight of God and
did not put wealth or power ahead of faith and duty, would tend to
find favor and not hatred. All people are loved equally by God
regardless of their social standing or bank balance. What Jesus
hates is sin, whether form a poor or wealthy individual. The bible
makes the point that a rich person can have a selfish and proud
heart due to their reliance on self and pre-occupation with
material possessions. It does not, however mean that they are not
loved. Many wealthy person have had a relationship with Jesus
Christ. It is what is in their heart that matter to Jesus.
3. WHAT IS THE PLAC EOF ETHICS IN THE LIFE OF CONTEMPORARY
MAN.Ethics is necessary to contemporary man in most walks of life.
Any social activity in which it is possible to harm another person
in some way has rules of behavior which have the purpose of
limiting pain and suffering within the community. Each profession
has its own special set of rules detailing how such a professional
should behave as he carries on with his work. These rules and
behaviors are grouped together under the term ethics.
Ethics are in many cases dependent upon the particular people
involved. For example, what is ethical between a husband and wife,
might not be ethical between the wife and her doctor or between the
husband and his son's school teacher.
There are innumerable degrees of ethical behavior. In some cases
the behaviors are deemed so important that the society has made
them into laws, such as laws against murder.
The more complicated a society, the more complicated are its
laws and ethics.
4. JEREMY BENTAHMWas a British philosopher, jurist, and social
reformer. He is regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism.
Bentham became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of
law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development
of welfarism. He advocated individual and economic freedom, the
separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights
for women, the right to divorce, and the decriminalising of
homosexual acts. He called for the abolition of slavery, the
abolition of the death penalty, and the abolition of physical
punishment, including that of children. He has also become known in
recent years as an early advocate of animal rights.[3] Though
strongly in favour of the extension of individual legal rights, he
opposed the idea of natural law and natural rights, calling them
"nonsense upon stilts".He attended Westminster School and, in 1760,
at age 12, was sent by his father to The Queen's College, Oxford,
where he completed his Bachelor's degree in 1763 and his Master's
degree in 1766. He trained as a lawyer and, though he never
practised, was called to the bar in 1769. He became deeply
frustrated with the complexity of the English legal code, which he
termed the "Demon of Chicane".Among his many proposals for legal
and social reform was a design for a prison building he called the
Panopticon. He spent some sixteen years of his life developing and
refining his ideas for the building, and hoped that the government
would adopt the plan for a National Penitentiary, and appoint him
as contractor-governor. Although the prison was never built, the
concept had an important influence on later generations of
thinkers. Twentieth-century French philosopher Michel Foucault
argued that the Panopticon was paradigmatic of several 19th-century
"disciplinary" institutions.Bentham became convinced that his plans
for the Panopticon had been thwarted by the King and an
aristocratic elite acting in their own interests. It was largely
because of his brooding sense of injustice that he developed his
ideas of "sinister interest" that is, of the vested interests of
the powerful conspiring against a wider public interest which
underpinned many of his broader arguments for reform.Bentham was in
correspondence with many influential people. Adam Smith, for
example, opposed free interest rates before he was made aware of
Bentham's arguments on the subject. As a result of his
correspondence with Mirabeau and other leaders of the French
Revolution, Bentham was declared an honorary citizen of France. He
was an outspoken critic of the revolutionary discourse of natural
rights and of the violence that arose after the Jacobins took power
(1792). Between 1808 and 1810, he held a personal friendship with
Latin American Independence Precursor Francisco de Miranda and paid
visits to Miranda's Grafton Way house in London.In 1823, he
co-founded the Westminster Review with James Mill as a journal for
the "Philosophical Radicals" a group of younger disciples through
whom Bentham exerted considerable influence in British public life.
One such young writer was Edwin Chadwick, who wrote on hygiene,
sanitation and policing and was a major contributor to the Poor Law
Amendment Act. Bentham employed him as a secretary and bequeathed
him a large legacy.Works.Bentham's ambition in life was to create a
"Pannomion", a complete utilitarian code of law. He not only
proposed many legal and social reforms, but also expounded an
underlying moral principle on which they should be based. This
philosophy of utilitarianism took for its "fundamental axiom", it
is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the
measure of right and wrong". Bentham claimed to have borrowed this
concept from the writings of Joseph Priestley, although the closest
that Priestley in fact came to expressing it was in the form "the
good and happiness of the members, that is the majority of the
members of any state, is the great standard by which every thing
relating to that state must finally be determined".The "greatest
happiness principle", or the principle of utility, forms the
cornerstone of all Bentham's thought. By "happiness", he understood
a predominance of "pleasure" over "pain". He wrote in The
Principles of Morals and Legislation: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 one 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 ... He also suggested a procedure for
estimating the moral status of any action, which he called the
Hedonistic or felicific calculus. Utilitarianism was revised and
expanded by Bentham's student John Stuart Mill. In Mill's hands,
"Benthamism" became a major element in the liberal conception of
state policy objectives.In his exposition of the felicific
calculus, Bentham proposed a classification of 12 pains and 14
pleasures, by which we might test the "happiness factor" of any
action. Nonetheless, it should not be overlooked that Bentham's
"hedonistic" theory (a term from J.J.C. Smart), unlike Mill's, is
often criticized for lacking a principle of fairness embodied in a
conception of justice. In Bentham and the Common Law Tradition,
Gerald J. Postema states: "No moral concept suffers more at
Bentham's hand than the concept of justice. There is no sustained,
mature analysis of the notion..." Thus, some critics object, it
would be acceptable to torture one person if this would produce an
amount of happiness in other people outweighing the unhappiness of
the tortured individual. However, as P.J. Kelly argued in
Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice: Jeremy Bentham and the
Civil Law, Bentham had a theory of justice that prevented such
consequences. According to Kelly, for Bentham the law "provides the
basic framework of social interaction by delimiting spheres of
personal inviolability within which individuals can form and pursue
their own conceptions of well-being". It provides security, a
precondition for the formation of expectations. As the hedonic
calculus shows "expectation utilities" to be much higher than
natural ones, it follows that Bentham does not favour the sacrifice
of a few to the benefit of the many.Bentham's An Introduction to
the Principles of Morals and Legislation focuses on the principle
of utility and how this view of morality ties into legislative
practices. His principle of utility regards "good" as that which
produces the greatest amount of pleasure and the minimum amount of
pain and "evil" as that which produces the most pain without the
pleasure. This concept of pleasure and pain is defined by Bentham
as physical as well as spiritual. Bentham writes about this
principle as it manifests itself within the legislation of a
society. He lays down a set of criteria for measuring the extent of
pain or pleasure that a certain decision will create.The criteria
are divided into the categories of intensity, duration, certainty,
proximity, productiveness, purity, and extent. Using these
measurements, he reviews the concept of punishment and when it
should be used as far as whether a punishment will create more
pleasure or more pain for a society. He calls for legislators to
determine whether punishment creates an even more evil offence.
Instead of suppressing the evil acts, Bentham argues that certain
unnecessary laws and punishments could ultimately lead to new and
more dangerous vices than those being punished to begin with, and
calls upon legislators to measure the pleasures and pains
associated with any legislation and to form laws in order to create
the greatest good for the greatest number. He argues that the
concept of the individual pursuing his or her own happiness cannot
be necessarily declared "right", because often these individual
pursuits can lead to greater pain and less pleasure for a society
as a whole. Therefore, the legislation of a society is vital to
maintain the maximum pleasure and the minimum degree of pain for
the greatest number of people.
IMMANUEL KANTWas a German philosopher who is widely considered
to be a central figure of modern philosophy. He argued that
fundamental concepts structure human experience, and that reason is
the source of morality. His thought continues to have a major
influence in contemporary thought, especially the fields of
metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, and
aesthetics. Kant's major work, the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik
der reinen Vernunft, 1781),[3] aimed to explain the relationship
between reason and human experience. With this project, he hoped to
move beyond what he took to be failures of traditional philosophy
and metaphysics. He attempted to put an end to what he considered
an era of futile and speculative theories of human experience,
while resisting the skepticism of thinkers such as David Hume.Kant
argued that our experiences are structured by necessary features of
our minds. In his view, the mind shapes and structures experience
so that, on an abstract level, all human experience shares certain
essential structural features. Among other things, Kant believed
that the concepts of space and time are integral to all human
experience, as are our concepts of cause and effect. One important
consequence of this view is that one never has direct experience of
things, the so-called noumenal world, and that what we do
experience is the phenomenal world as conveyed by our senses. These
claims summarize Kant's views upon the subjectobject problem. Kant
published other important works on ethics, religion, law,
aesthetics, astronomy, and history. These included the Critique of
Practical Reason (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, 1788), the
Metaphysics of Morals (Die Metaphysik der Sitten, 1797), which
dealt with ethics, and the Critique of Judgment (Kritik der
Urteilskraft, 1790), which looks at aesthetics and teleology.Kant
aimed to resolve disputes between empirical and rationalist
approaches. The former asserted that all knowledge comes through
experience; the latter maintained that reason and innate ideas were
prior. Kant argued that experience is purely subjective without
first being processed by pure reason. He also said that using
reason without applying it to experience only leads to theoretical
illusions. The free and proper exercise of reason by the individual
was a theme both of the Age of Enlightenment, and of Kant's
approaches to the various problems of philosophy. His ideas
influenced many thinkers in Germany during his lifetime, and he
moved philosophy beyond the debate between the rationalists and
empiricists. Kant is seen as a major figure in the history and
development of philosophy.Immanuel Kant was born in 1724 in
Knigsberg, Prussia (since 1946 the city of Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad
Oblast, Russia), as the fourth of nine children (four of them
reached adulthood). Baptized 'Emanuel', he changed his name to
'Immanuel' after learning Hebrew. Contrary to a widespread myth
that in his entire life he never traveled more than 10 miles (16km)
from Knigsberg, he worked between 1750 and 1754 as a "Hauslehrer"
(tutor) in Judtschen (now Veselovka, Russia, approx. 20km) and in
Gro-Arnsdorf (now near Elblg, Poland, approx. 105km). His father,
Johann Georg Kant (16821746), was a German harnessmaker from Memel,
at the time Prussia's most northeastern city (now Klaipda,
Lithuania). His mother, Anna Regina Reuter (16971737), was born in
Nuremberg. Kant's paternal grandfather, Hans Kant,[10] had
emigrated from Scotland to East Prussia, and his father still
spelled their family name "Cant". In his youth, Kant was a solid,
albeit unspectacular, student. He was brought up in a Pietist
household that stressed intense religious devotion, personal
humility, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. Kant received
a stern education strict, punitive, and disciplinary that preferred
Latin and religious instruction over mathematics and science.
Despite his upbringing in a religious household and still
maintaining a belief in God, he was skeptical of religion in later
life; various commentators have labelled him agnostic. The common
myths concerning Kant's personal mannerisms are enumerated,
explained, and refuted in Goldthwait's introduction to his
translation of Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and
Sublime. It is often held that Kant lived a very strict and
predictable life, leading to the oft-repeated story that neighbors
would set their clocks by his daily walks. He never married, but
did not seem to lack a rewarding social life he was a popular
teacher and a modestly successful author even before starting on
his major philosophical works.Kant is best known for his work in
the philosophy of ethics and metaphysics, but he made significant
contributions to other disciplines. He made an important
astronomical discovery, namely a discovery about the nature of the
Earth's rotation, for which he won the Berlin Academy Prize in
1754.It is often held that Kant was a late developer, that he only
became an important philosopher in his mid-50s after rejecting his
earlier views. While it is true that Kant wrote his greatest works
relatively late in life, there is a tendency to underestimate the
value of his earlier works. Recent Kant scholarship has devoted
more attention to these "pre-critical" writings and has recognized
a degree of continuity with his mature work.Kant published a second
edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft)
in 1787, heavily revising the first parts of the book. Most of his
subsequent work focused on other areas of philosophy. He continued
to develop his moral philosophy, notably in 1788's Critique of
Practical Reason (known as the second Critique) and 1797's
Metaphysics of Morals. The 1790 Critique of Judgment (the third
Critique) applied the Kantian system to aesthetics and teleology.In
1792, Kant's attempt to publish the Second of the four Pieces of
Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, in the journal
Berlinische Monatsschrift, met with opposition from the King's
censorship commission, which had been established that same year in
the context of the French Revolution. Kant then arranged to have
all four pieces published as a book, routing it through the
philosophy department at the University of Jena to avoid the need
for theological censorship. Kant got a now famous reprimand from
the King, for this action of insubordination. When he nevertheless
published a second edition in 1794, the censor was so irate that he
arranged for a royal order that required Kant never to publish or
even speak publicly about religion. Kant then published his
response to the King's reprimand and explained himself, in the
preface of The Conflict of the Faculties. He also wrote a number of
semi-popular essays on history, religion, politics and other
topics. These works were well received by Kant's contemporaries and
confirmed his preeminent status in eighteenth century philosophy.
There were several journals devoted solely to defending and
criticizing the Kantian philosophy. But despite his success,
philosophical trends were moving in another direction. Many of
Kant's most important disciples (including Reinhold, Beck and
Fichte) transformed the Kantian position into increasingly radical
forms of idealism. The progressive stages of revision of Kant's
teachings marked the emergence of German Idealism. Kant opposed
these developments and publicly denounced Fichte in an open letter
in 1799. It was one of his final acts expounding a stance on
philosophical questions. In 1800 a student of Kant named Gottlob
Benjamin Jsche (17621842) published a manual of logic for teachers
called Logik, which he had prepared at Kant's request. Jsche
prepared the Logik using a copy of a textbook in logic by Georg
Freidrich Meier entitled Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre, in which
Kant had written copious notes and annotations. The Logik has been
considered of fundamental importance to Kant's philosophy, and the
understanding of it. The great nineteenth century logician Charles
Sanders Peirce remarked, in an incomplete review of Thomas
Kingsmill Abbott's English translation of the introduction to the
Logik, that "Kant's whole philosophy turns upon his logic."[32]
Also, Robert Schirokauer Hartman and Wolfgang Schwarz, wrote in the
translators' introduction to their English translation of the
Logik, "Its importance lies not only in its significance for the
Critique of Pure Reason, the second part of which is a restatement
of fundamental tenets of the Logic, but in its position within the
whole of Kant's work." Kant's health, long poor, took a turn for
the worse and he died at Knigsberg on 12 February 1804, uttering
"Es ist gut" ("It is good") before expiring.[34] His unfinished
final work was published as Opus Postumum.Kant wrote a book
discussing his theory of virtue in terms of independence which he
believed was a viable modern alternative to more familiar Greek
views about virtue. His book is often criticized because it is
written in a hostile manner and fails to articulate his thoughts on
autocracy in a comprehensible manner. In the self-governance model
presented by Aristotelian virtue, the non-rational part of the soul
can be brought to listen to reason through training. Although
Kantian self-governance appears to involve a rational crackdown on
appetites and emotions with lack of harmony between reason and
emotion, Kantian virtue denies to require self-conquest,
self-suppression, or self-silencing. They dispute that the
self-mastery constitutive of virtue is ultimately mastery over our
tendency of will to give priority to appetite or emotion
unregulated by duty, it does not require extirpating, suppressing,
or silencing sensibility in generalIn Kant's essay "Answering the
Question: What is Enlightenment?", Kant defined the Enlightenment
as an age shaped by the Latin motto Sapere aude ("Dare to be
wise"). Kant maintained that one ought to think autonomously, free
of the dictates of external authority. His work reconciled many of
the differences between the rationalist and empiricist traditions
of the 18th century. He had a decisive impact on the Romantic and
German Idealist philosophies of the 19th century. His work has also
been a starting point for many 20th century philosophers.Kant
asserted that, because of the limitations of argumentation in the
absence of irrefutable evidence, no one could really know whether
there is a God and an afterlife or not. For the sake of morality
and as a ground for reason, Kant asserted, people are justified in
believing in God, even though they could never know God's presence
empirically. He explained:All the preparations of reason,
therefore, in what may be called pure philosophy, are in reality
directed to those three problems only [God, the soul, and freedom].
However, these three elements in themselves still hold independent,
proportional, objective weight individually. Moreover, in a
collective relational context; namely, to know what ought to be
done: if the will is free, if there is a God, and if there is a
future world. As this concerns our actions with reference to the
highest aims of life, we see that the ultimate intention of nature
in her wise provision was really, in the constitution of our
reason, directed to moral interests only. The sense of an
enlightened approach and the critical method required that "If one
cannot prove that a thing is, he may try to prove that it is not.
And if he succeeds in doing neither (as often occurs), he may still
ask whether it is in his interest to accept one or the other of the
alternatives hypothetically, from the theoretical or the practical
point of view. Hence the question no longer is as to whether
perpetual peace is a real thing or not a real thing, or as to
whether we may not be deceiving ourselves when we adopt the former
alternative, but we must act on the supposition of its being
real."[37] The presupposition of God, soul, and freedom was then a
practical concern, for "Morality, by itself, constitutes a system,
but happiness does not, unless it is distributed in exact
proportion to morality. This, however, is possible in an
intelligible world only under a wise author and ruler. Reason
compels us to admit such a ruler, together with life in such a
world, which we must consider as future life, or else all moral
laws are to be considered as idle dreams... ."[38]Kant claimed to
have created a "Copernican revolution" in philosophy. This involved
two interconnected foundations of his "critical philosophy": the
epistemology of Transcendental Idealism and the moral philosophy of
the autonomy of practical reason.These teachings placed the active,
rational human subject at the center of the cognitive and moral
worlds. Kant argued that the rational order of the world as known
by science was not just the fortuitous accumulation of sense
perceptions.Conceptual unification and integration is carried out
by the mind through concepts or the "categories of the
understanding" operating on the perceptual manifold within space
and time. The latter are not concepts, but are forms of sensibility
that are a priori necessary conditions for any possible experience.
Thus the objective order of nature and the causal necessity that
operates within it are dependent upon the mind's processes, the
product of the rule-based activity that Kant called, "synthesis."
There is much discussion among Kant scholars on the correct
interpretation of this train of thought.The 'two-world'
interpretation regards Kant's position as a statement of
epistemological limitation, that we are not able to transcend the
bounds of our own mind, meaning that we cannot access the
"thing-in-itself". Kant, however, also speaks of the thing in
itself or transcendental object as a product of the (human)
understanding as it attempts to conceive of objects in abstraction
from the conditions of sensibility. Following this line of thought,
some interpreters have argued that the thing in itself does not
represent a separate ontological domain but simply a way of
considering objects by means of the understanding alone this is
known as the two-aspect view.The notion of the "thing in itself"
was much discussed by those who came after Kant. It was argued that
since the "thing in itself" was unknowable its existence could not
simply be assumed. Rather than arbitrarily switching to an account
that was ungrounded in anything supposed to be the "real," as did
the German Idealists, another group arose to ask how our
(presumably reliable) accounts of a coherent and rule-abiding
universe were actually grounded. This new kind of philosophy became
known as Phenomenology, and its founder was Edmund Husserl.With
regard to morality, Kant argued that the source of the good lies
not in anything outside the human subject, either in nature or
given by God, but rather is only the good will itself. A good will
is one that acts from duty in accordance with the universal moral
law that the autonomous human being freely gives itself. This law
obliges one to treat humanity understood as rational agency, and
represented through oneself as well as others as an end in itself
rather than (merely) as means to other ends the individual might
hold. This necessitates practical self-reflection in which we
universalize our reasons.These ideas have largely framed or
influenced all subsequent philosophical discussion and analysis.
The specifics of Kant's account generated immediate and lasting
controversy. Nevertheless, his theses that the mind itself
necessarily makes a constitutive contribution to its knowledge,
that this contribution is transcendental rather than psychological,
that philosophy involves self-critical activity, that morality is
rooted in human freedom, and that to act autonomously is to act
according to rational moral principles have all had a lasting
effect on subsequent philosophy.Kant defines his theory of
perception in his influential 1781 work the Critique of Pure
Reason, which has often been cited as the most significant volume
of metaphysics and epistemology in modern philosophy. Kant
maintains that our understanding of the external world had its
foundations not merely in experience, but in both experience and a
priori concepts, thus offering a non-empiricist critique of
rationalist philosophy, which is what he and others referred to as
his "Copernican revolution".Firstly, Kant's distinction between
analytic and synthetic propositions:1. Analytic proposition: a
proposition whose predicate concept is contained in its subject
concept; e.g., "All bachelors are unmarried," or, "All bodies take
up space."2. Synthetic proposition: a proposition whose predicate
concept is not contained in its subject concept; e.g., "All
bachelors are happy," or, "All bodies have weight."Analytic
propositions are true by nature of the meaning of the words
involved in the sentence we require no further knowledge than a
grasp of the language to understand this proposition. On the other
hand, synthetic statements are those that tell us something about
the world. The truth or falsehood of synthetic statements derives
from something outside of their linguistic content. In this
instance, weight is not a necessary predicate of the body; until we
are told the heaviness of the body we do not know that it has
weight. In this case, experience of the body is required before its
heaviness becomes clear. Before Kant's first Critique, empiricists
(cf. Hume) and rationalists (cf. Leibniz) assumed that all
synthetic statements required experience to be known.Kant, however,
contests this: he claims that elementary mathematics, like
arithmetic, is synthetic a priori, in that its statements provide
new knowledge, but knowledge that is not derived from experience.
This becomes part of his over-all argument for transcendental
idealism. That is, he argues that the possibility of experience
depends on certain necessary conditions which he calls a priori
forms and that these conditions structure and hold true of the
world of experience. In so doing, his main claims in the
"Transcendental Aesthetic" are that mathematic judgments are
synthetic a priori and in addition, that Space and Time are not
derived from experience but rather are its preconditions.Once we
have grasped the concepts of addition, subtraction or the functions
of basic arithmetic, we do not need any empirical experience to
know that 100 + 100 = 200, and in this way it would appear that
arithmetic is in fact analytic. However, that it is analytic can be
disproved thus: if the numbers five and seven in the calculation 5
+ 7 = 12 are examined, there is nothing to be found in them by
which the number 12 can be inferred. Such it is that "5 + 7" and
"the cube root of 1,728" or "12" are not analytic because their
reference is the same but their sense is not that the mathematic
judgment "5 + 7 = 12" tells us something new about the world. It is
self-evident, and undeniably a priori, but at the same time it is
synthetic. And so Kant proves a proposition can be synthetic and
known a priori.Kant asserts that experience is based both upon the
perception of external objects and a priori knowledge.[43] The
external world, he writes, provides those things that we sense. It
is our mind, though, that processes this information about the
world and gives it order, allowing us to comprehend it. Our mind
supplies the conditions of space and time to experience objects.
According to the "transcendental unity of apperception", the
concepts of the mind (Understanding) and the perceptions or
intuitions that garner information from phenomena (Sensibility) are
synthesized by comprehension. Without the concepts, perceptions are
nondescript; without the perceptions, concepts are meaningless thus
the famous statement, "Thoughts without content are empty,
intuitions (perceptions) without concepts are blind."[44]Kant also
makes the claim that an external environment is necessary for the
establishment of the self. Although Kant would want to argue that
there is no empirical way of observing the self, we can see the
logical necessity of the self when we observe that we can have
different perceptions of the external environment over time. By
uniting all of these general representations into one global
representation, we can see how a transcendental self emerges. "I am
therefore conscious of the identical self in regard to the manifold
of the representations that are given to me in an intuition because
I call them all together my representations.
JOHN STUART MILLWas a British philosopher, political economist
and civil servant. He was an influential contributor to social
theory, political theory and political economy. He has been called
"the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the
nineteenth century".[3] Mill's conception of liberty justified the
freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control.
Mill expresses his view on freedom by illustrating how an
individual's amelioration of personal quality and self-improvement
is the sole source of true freedom. Only when an individual is able
to attain such a beneficial standard of one's self, whilst in the
absence of rendering external onerosity upon others, in their own
journey to procure a higher calibre of self-worth, that true
freedom prevails. Mill's attitude toward freedom and individual
accomplishment through self-improvement has inspired many. By
establishing an appreciable level of worthiness concerned with
one's ability to fulfill personal standards of notability and
merit, Mill was able to provide many with a principal example of
how they should achieve such particular values.He was a proponent
of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by Jeremy Bentham.
He worked on the theory of the scientific method. Mill was also a
Member of Parliament and an important figure in liberal political
philosophy.John Stuart Mill was born on Rodney Street in the
Pentonville area of London, the eldest son of the Scottish
philosopher, historian and economist James Mill, and Harriet
Burrow. John Stuart was educated by his father, with the advice and
assistance of Jeremy Bentham and Francis Place. He was given an
extremely rigorous upbringing, and was deliberately shielded from
association with children his own age other than his siblings. His
father, a follower of Bentham and an adherent of associationism,
had as his explicit aim to create a genius intellect that would
carry on the cause of utilitarianism and its implementation after
he and Bentham had died. Mill was a notably precocious child. He
describes his education in his autobiography. At the age of three
he was taught Greek. By the age of eight, he had read Aesop's
Fables, Xenophon's Anabasis, and the whole of Herodotus, and was
acquainted with Lucian, Diogenes Lartius, Isocrates and six
dialogues of Plato. He had also read a great deal of history in
English and had been taught arithmetic, physics and astronomy.At
the age of eight, Mill began studying Latin, the works of Euclid,
and algebra, and was appointed schoolmaster to the younger children
of the family. His main reading was still history, but he went
through all the commonly taught Latin and Greek authors and by the
age of ten could read Plato and Demosthenes with ease. His father
also thought that it was important for Mill to study and compose
poetry. One of Mill's earliest poetry compositions was a
continuation of the Iliad. In his spare time, he also enjoyed
reading about natural sciences and popular novels, such as Don
Quixote and Robinson Crusoe.His father's work, The History of
British India was published in 1818; immediately thereafter, about
the age of twelve, Mill began a thorough study of the scholastic
logic, at the same time reading Aristotle's logical treatises in
the original language. In the following year he was introduced to
political economy and studied Adam Smith and David Ricardo with his
father, ultimately completing their classical economic view of
factors of production. Mill's comptes rendus of his daily economy
lessons helped his father in writing Elements of Political Economy
in 1821, a textbook to promote the ideas of Ricardian economics;
however, the book lacked popular support. Ricardo, who was a close
friend of his father, used to invite the young Mill to his house
for a walk in order to talk about political economy.At the age of
fourteen, Mill stayed a year in France with the family of Sir
Samuel Bentham, brother of Jeremy Bentham. The mountain scenery he
saw led to a lifelong taste for mountain landscapes. The lively and
friendly way of life of the French also left a deep impression on
him. In Montpellier, he attended the winter courses on chemistry,
zoology, logic of the Facult des Sciences, as well as taking a
course of the higher mathematics. While coming and going from
France, he stayed in Paris for a few days in the house of the
renowned economist Jean-Baptiste Say, a friend of Mill's father.
There he met many leaders of the Liberal party, as well as other
notable Parisians, including Henri Saint-Simon.This intensive study
however had injurious effects on Mill's mental health, and state of
mind. At the age of twenty[9] he suffered a nervous breakdown. In
chapter V of his Autobiography, he claims that this was caused by
the great physical and mental arduousness of his studies which had
suppressed any feelings he might have developed normally in
childhood. Nevertheless, this depression eventually began to
dissipate, as he began to find solace in the Mmoires of
Jean-Franois Marmontel and the poetry of William Wordsworth. Mill
had been engaged in a pen-friendship with Auguste Comte, the
founder of positivism and sociology, since Mill first contacted
Comte in November 1841. Comte's sociologie was more an early
philosophy of science than we perhaps know it today, and the
positive philosophy aided in Mill's broad rejection of Benthamism.
As a nonconformist who refused to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine
Articles of the Church of England, Mill was not eligible to study
at the University of Oxford or the University of Cambridge. Instead
he followed his father to work for the East India Company until
1858, and attended University College, London, to hear the lectures
of John Austin, the first Professor of Jurisprudence. He was
elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences in 1856. In 1851, Mill married Harriet Taylor after 21
years of an intimate friendship. Taylor was married when they met,
and their relationship was close but generally believed to be
chaste during the years before her first husband died. Brilliant in
her own right, Taylor was a significant influence on Mill's work
and ideas during both friendship and marriage. His relationship
with Harriet Taylor reinforced Mill's advocacy of women's rights.
He cites her influence in his final revision of On Liberty, which
was published shortly after her death. Taylor died in 1858 after
developing severe lung congestion, after only seven years of
marriage to Mill.Between the years 1865 and 1868 Mill served as
Lord Rector of the University of St. Andrews. During the same
period, 186568, he was a Member of Parliament for City and
Westminster, sitting for the Liberal Party. During his time as an
MP, Mill advocated easing the burdens on Ireland. In 1866, Mill
became the first person in the history of Parliament to call for
women to be given the right to vote, vigorously defending this
position in subsequent debate. Mill became a strong advocate of
such social reforms as labour unions and farm cooperatives. In
Considerations on Representative Government, Mill called for
various reforms of Parliament and voting, especially proportional
representation, the Single Transferable Vote, and the extension of
suffrage. He was godfather to the philosopher Bertrand Russell. In
his views on religion, Mill was an atheist. Mill died in 1873 of
erysipelas in Avignon, France, where he was buried alongside his
wife.WorksMill's On Liberty addresses the nature and limits of the
power that can be legitimately exercised by society over the
individual. However Mill is clear that his concern for liberty does
not extend to all individuals and all societies. He states that
"Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with
barbarians".Mill states that it is acceptable to harm oneself as
long the person doing so is not harming others. He also argues that
individuals should be prevented from doing lasting, serious harm to
themselves or their property by the harm principle. Because no one
exists in isolation, harm done to oneself may also harm others, and
destroying property deprives the community as well as oneself. Mill
excuses those who are "incapable of self-government" from this
principle, such as young children or those living in "backward
states of society".Though this principle seems clear, there are a
number of complications. For example, Mill explicitly states that
"harms" may include acts of omission as well as acts of commission.
Thus, failing to rescue a drowning child counts as a harmful act,
as does failing to pay taxes, or failing to appear as a witness in
court. All such harmful omissions may be regulated, according to
Mill. By contrast, it does not count as harming someone if without
force or fraud the affected individual consents to assume the risk:
thus one may permissibly offer unsafe employment to others,
provided there is no deception involved. (Mill does, however,
recognise one limit to consent: society should not permit people to
sell themselves into slavery). In these and other cases, it is
important to bear in mind that the arguments in On Liberty are
grounded on the principle of Utility, and not on appeals to natural
rights.The question of what counts as a self-regarding action and
what actions, whether of omission or commission, constitute harmful
actions subject to regulation, continues to exercise interpreters
of Mill. It is important to emphasise that Mill did not consider
giving offence to constitute "harm"; an action could not be
restricted because it violated the conventions or morals of a given
society.On Liberty involves an impassioned defence of free speech.
Mill argues that free discourse is a necessary condition for
intellectual and social progress. We can never be sure, he
contends, that a silenced opinion does not contain some element of
the truth. He also argues that allowing people to air false
opinions is productive for two reasons. First, individuals are more
likely to abandon erroneous beliefs if they are engaged in an open
exchange of ideas. Second, by forcing other individuals to
re-examine and re-affirm their beliefs in the process of debate,
these beliefs are kept from declining into mere dogma. It is not
enough for Mill that one simply has an unexamined belief that
happens to be true; one must understand why the belief in question
is the true one. Along those same lines Mill wrote, "unmeasured
vituperation, employed on the side of prevailing opinion, really
does deter people from expressing contrary opinions, and from
listening to those who express them.Mill believed that "the
struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous
feature in the portions of history." For him, liberty in antiquity
was a "contest... between subjects, or some classes of subjects,
and the government." Mill defined "social liberty" as protection
from "the tyranny of political rulers." He introduced a number of
different concepts of the form tyranny can take, referred to as
social tyranny, and tyranny of the majority respectively.Social
liberty for Mill meant putting limits on the ruler's power so that
he would not be able to use his power on his own wishes and make
decisions which could harm society; in other words, people should
have the right to have a say in the government's decisions. He said
that social liberty was "the nature and limits of the power which
can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual". It
was attempted in two ways: first, by obtaining recognition of
certain immunities, called political liberties or rights; second,
by establishment of a system of "constitutional checks".However, in
Mill's view, limiting the power of government was not enough. He
stated, "Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it
issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in
things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social
tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression,
since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it
leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the
details of life, and enslaving the soul itself." John Stuart Mill's
view on liberty, which was influenced by Joseph Priestley and
Josiah Warren, is that the individual ought to be free to do as he
wishes unless he harms others. Individuals are rational enough to
make decisions about their well being. Government should interfere
when it is for the protection of society. Mill explained:The sole
end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively,
in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number,
is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be
rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community,
against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good,
either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot
rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better
for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the
opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right...The only
part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society,
is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns
him, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over
his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. Mill added:
"Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with
barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means
justified by actually effecting that end. Liberty, as a principle,
has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when
mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal
discussion." An influential advocate of freedom of speech, Mill
objected to censorship. He says:I choose, by preference the cases
which are least favourable to me In which the argument opposing
freedom of opinion, both on truth and that of utility, is
considered the strongest. Let the opinions impugned be the belief
of God and in a future state, or any of the commonly received
doctrines of morality... But I must be permitted to observe that it
is not the feeling sure of a doctrine (be it what it may) which I
call an assumption of infallibility. It is the undertaking to
decide that question for others, without allowing them to hear what
can be said on the contrary side. And I denounce and reprobate this
pretension not the less if it is put forth on the side of my most
solemn convictions. However, positive anyone's persuasion may be,
not only of the faculty but of the pernicious consequences, but (to
adopt expressions which I altogether condemn) the immorality and
impiety of opinion. yet if, in pursuance of that private judgement,
though backed by the public judgement of his country or
contemporaries, he prevents the opinion from being heard in its
defence, he assumes infallibility. And so far from the assumption
being less objectionable or less dangerous because the opinion is
called immoral or impious, this is the case of all others in which
it is most fatal. Mill outlines the benefits of 'searching for and
discovering the truth' as a way to further knowledge. He argued
that even if an opinion is false, the truth can be better
understood by refuting the error. And as most opinions are neither
completely true nor completely false, he points out that allowing
free expression allows the airing of competing views as a way to
preserve partial truth in various opinions. Worried about minority
views being suppressed, Mill also argued in support of freedom of
speech on political grounds, stating that it is a critical
component for a representative government to have in order to
empower debate over public policy. Mill also eloquently argued that
freedom of expression allows for personal growth and
self-realization. He said that freedom of speech was a vital way to
develop talents and realise a person's potential and creativity. He
repeatedly said that eccentricity was preferable to uniformity and
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