summertime

Aristotle on Pleasure

According to Aristotle, there are two types of pleasure. Pleasure of the soul and pleasure of the body. Pleasure of the soul deals with study and honor while pleasure of the body deals with senses and condition, condition meaning touch and sense. When it comes to study there is no excess of pleasure. Honor may be something that you have too much pleasure in. Aristotle continues by claiming that pleasure is not a transformation of a state from one to another. Pleasure is a sign of our state, completes an activity. That is to say with every activity we complete we receive a type of pleasure. To connect pleasure to virtue, virtuous acts produce a type of pleasure that further enables us to act virtuous.
Along with being a sign of the state of our soul, pleasure is socially determined. A point that is very valid, even in modern day. What is seen as pleasurable will be defined by those around us. But the most valid point made by Aristotle is the fact that pleasures are not a process. They don't lead to our completeness, only happiness can lead to our completeness. Pleasures are merely accompany activities. With virtuous acts come pleasures and even though pleasures is not the most important aspect, it is essential because life in itself is an activity and since pleasures perfect our activities, they are essential to life.

The Rights and Wrongs of Warfare

In Thomas Nagel's War and Massacre Nagel discusses two different types of reasoning which are the Utilitarian and the Absolutist reasoning. Utilitarian reasoning deals with the ends of an action while Absolutist reasoning assesses the action itself. At the very beginning, it seems that the two are substitutes of each other where only either one is used in certain situations. But later on, we discover that Absolutist reasoning is actually a limitation of Utilitarian reasoning. The existence of these two is also the reason why we have dilemmas that we have to decide on. As Nagel says, there is nobody who completely neglects either reasoning when making a decision. This forces one to have to choose between the end and the action itself. For example, when one decides to rob a bank, he or she needs to decide between being able to feed his family or not stealing because it is not acceptable. Up until now, Utilitarianism aims to maximize good and minimize evil but it doesn't really discuss the means by which you maximize the good and minimize evil. This is where Absolutist reasoning comes in and tries to account for the lack of limitations in Utilitarianism by making the thinker consider the acceptability of his or her action while trying to maximize good and minimize evil.


Moving onto the absolutist restrictions in warfare, Nagel says that there are two types. One type is the restrictions on the manner of the attack. The second is the restrictions on the class of people at whom the aggression or violence may be directed. (Massacre 62) Before we make any acts of aggression or hostility, we need to first determine the true object that deserves this type of treatment. A scenario that can be used to explain these two restrictions would be a situation where someone is throwing grenades at someone else. The person being thrown at should only retaliate to the grenadier and not to anything else that the grenadier may be vulnerable. To distinguish whether an individual is the true object that is rightfully subject to these hostile acts, one must decide whether that individual is the one posing the threat to him or her. The grenadier in this scenario is the true object but the person who is providing the grenades to him is not rightfully subject to hostile treatments because he is not directly causing the harm. As for the restrictions on the manner of attack, there are acts of hostility that Nagel says are never permissible. These acts are the types that aim to "attack the men, not the soldier." (Massacre 70) What I took from this is that the impermissible acts are the ones that cause so much damage to someone to a point where they don't feel like a normal person anymore. So as Nagel says, using a flamethrower against someone is an absolute atrocity because it does so much permanent damage to someone. While Nagel was able to analyze the acceptability of certain acts during warfare, there are still many things that simply cannot be explained by just Utilitarian and Absolutist reasoning.

The Lack of Universal Utilitarianism

The Utilitarianism that Sedgwick advocates, is a philosophy which seeks the greatest happiness for the greatest amount of people, operating off of a morality system which is based off of a universal understanding or common sense morality. However he realizes in this section that “Humanity is not something that exhibit’s the same properties always and everywhere,” meaning that it is “Absurd to lay down a set of utilitarian rules for mankind generally.” I feel that Sedgwick, although he clearly realizes that this is an issue, belittles it by believing that even though Utilitarianism is not able to transcend different cultures or belief systems it can still work within a certain culture. He believes that we have our own “Societies morality,” and that when looking at others “We can realize imperfections.”

This is a problem however because in the modern world not only is there no universal common sense or common morality that can transcend culture, today there is not one uniform culture even within a defined geographical location. So nowhere can a Utilitarian world exist. In his writing he proposes a rather absurd idea, that if everybody was to be “Converted at once to utilitarianism and if everybody left behind there own old moralities, then it would work.” I agree with him on this point in both that it would work if it could ever be possible, and that it is completely unrealistic. There will never be a universal morality it is impossible even if we were all born into a culture of the same set of beliefs people are always going to challenge moralities that they are given, I think that Sedgwick belittles the significance of an individuals life experiences and individual beliefs in determining morality. Since no two people have the same experiences in life there will never be a universal common sense or universal morality.

I really like Mr. Stephens scientific take on morality, that the ultimate end is not happiness but instead preservation of oneself and the community. I like this not necessarily because I agree with it, but merely because it is such a different take on morality which I have never seen or thought of. Even when he speaks of common sense it can barely hold because if different societies have different values then common sense is going to change as well. If in my society there is an extreme shortage of water and to bring the rains we must sacrifice a cow and in another society cows are seen as holy and if you kill the cow you will have bad fortunes in this life and the next, then common sense is no doubt going to be varied. Also again even within our own cultures these contradictions will exist.

We're Not All Perfect

Sidgwick understands the natural flaws that we all have as human beings. These flaws can possibly prevent us from reaching our happiness and attain our Common Sense. These imperfections come from our intelligence and our sympathy.

For intelligence, “We must also allow further for the limitation of intelligence: for in all ages ordinary men have had a very inadequate knowledge of natural sequences; so that such indirect consequences as have been felt have been frequently traced to wrong causes, and have been met by wrong moral remedies, owing to imperfect apprehension of the relation of means to ends. (459)” We as humans do not have the best education in life on life experiences. We learn as we go. Thus, we have to make our mistake with intelligence in order to learn. Sidgwick believes that this type of education needs to be limited so that it does not affect our ability for proper Common Sense.

But in the end he believes that these imperfections are not really affecting his proof unless they happen in extremes. (459) Utilitarianism ideals still stand.

I think that Sidgwick is making a good argument in understanding our flaws as humans, but not using it as an excuse. We need to realize that we have these possible flaws. But, we have to control them so that we can work towards happiness.

So, Justice Can't be Universalized??

In John Stuart Mill’s digestion of the relationship between justice and utility, it is evident that the main point he is trying to make is that the notion of justice is not something that is not and never will be universalized. Mill states that the reason for this impossibility is that justice varies in different persons because we all have different notions of utility (Utilitarianism, 46). In other words, what we think is wrong or right, depends on what we each find to be pleasurable to us. Mill uses a very good example to illustrate this idea. His example of how the payment of taxes should be distributed amongst society members is actually an issue that is present even in today’s society. While some people think that it is unjust to tax the poor as much as the rich, others believe that it is only just to equally tax everybody. Which one, therefore, is really just? Mill purposely leaves this question unanswered because the answer purely depends on that person’s utility.

While Mill ultimately believes that social utility is the deciding factor of what is just, he highlights a few common grounds that must hold for everyone’s notion of justice at the beginning of the chapter. He names 5 “general rules” that universally hold when analyzing what is just/unjust: (1) “It is unjust to deprive anyone of his personal liberty, his property, or any other thing which belongs to him by law” (44), (2) Law is not the deciding factor for what justice is because there may exist “bad laws” (44), (3) “Each person should obtain that which he deserves” (45), (4) “It is unjust to break faith with anyone” (45), (5) “It is unjust to show favor or preference to one person over another in matters to which favor and preference do not properly apply” (45).

I found that the point Mill is trying to make is that we can determine if people are wrong or right depending on what we think they ought to be doing (49). However, it seems to me that Mill is contradicting himself when he says this because he previously outlines 5 universal guidelines that hold for justice. If we call people wrong based on what we think they ought to be doing, there is a possibility that others will not think the same way. It seems as though Mill transitions from talking about justice in a universal light to ending the chapter clearly denoting that justice is incapable of being universal because “justice bends to every person’s ideas of social expediency” (63).

Modern Constructivism

It’s a little late but, better late than never. Kant’s form of deontology can be seen as a kind of moral constructivism. According to Rawls, what Kant “constructs” is “the content of the doctrine”(3.2). This means that the universality of a particular categorical imperative that pass the laws of universality are considered to be constructed by “a procedure of construction worked through by rational agents subject to various reasonable constraints”(3.2). Kant believes that the procedure to construct these doctrines is not what is being constructed. This procedure, the categorical imperative procedure, is derived from our everyday understanding and our implicit awareness of the need for practical reason. Judgments made like this are not correct because the outcome is correct. These judgments are correct because the procedure and all the rational agents at work in the procedure make that outcome correct.

These thoughts have a basis which upon they work. The basis is that everyone is free, reasonable, and rational. With this basis in mind, the categorical imperative procedure can be followed to construct doctrines. Besides needing people to be both reasonable and rational, this categorical imperative procedure demonstrates that everyone is both reasonable and rational. We are rational in the beginning when we rationalize the procedure in order to follow it. We are reasonable because we are using the categorical imperative procedure to begin with. Rawls believes that Kant thinks that if we were not reasonable, we would not both to check our maxims against this procedure in order to see if it holds up to the law of universality (3.3). It also shows that we are reasonable when, if our maxim follows this procedure and is rejected by the law of universality, we go back and take an interest in trying to fix it.

I believe that this procedure is not as fixed as Kant would like to think it is. It only works when the person putting it to use is both rational and reasonable. I believe that this is a much harder thing to ask for humanity than Kant does. Kant simply assumes that all of humanity, with a few exceptions of course, are rational and reasonable beings. I do not believe that most of humanity is as reasonable and rational as Kant would like to think. Think about all the times that you have stopped and thought to yourself, “What was he thinking?” or “That really isn’t fair.” It happens quite a lot, does it not? Most of the time, thoughts like these are based on decisions other people made, decision where they were clearly not being reasonable or rational enough to use the procedure that Kant believes everyone naturally can and does use.