Human Flourishing: Exam 2 Study Guide (Weeks 6-9)

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the key terms, philosophical concepts, and figures across Weeks 6-9 of Human Flourishing Exam 2.

Prometheanism

The project of seeking godlike power and mastery to transform and reshape the world.

Choosing-controlling

A stance toward the world emphasizing deciding what should change and using power to make it happen.

Accepting-appreciating

A stance toward the world emphasizing attending to and recognizing goods already present so they can guide action.

Disenchantment

Seeing nature as lacking intrinsic value, meaning, or moral purposes that constrain human will.

Intrinsic value

The worth something has in itself, beyond its usefulness to another goal.

Greatest happiness principle

The utilitarian principle that actions are evaluated by their contribution to overall happiness, promoting pleasure and preventing pain.

Hedonism

The ethical view that pleasure and freedom from pain are the single ultimate positive good.

Impartiality (Utilitarian)

Giving one's own happiness no automatic priority over the happiness of any other sentient being.

Sentience

The capacity to feel pleasure and pain.

Qualitative hedonism

Mill's doctrine that pleasures differ in quality (higher intellectual/moral pleasures vs. lower bodily pleasures), not just in quantity.

Competent judge

A person qualified to evaluate pleasures by having experienced both higher and lower kinds and developed the capacity to appreciate them.

External sanction

A source of moral motivation consisting of praise, blame, rewards, or punishments from other people or God.

Internal sanction

Conscience and fellow-feeling, consisting of a sense of unity with others, distress at failing duty, and satisfaction at fulfilling it.

Religion of humanity

Mill's proposal that shared devotion to human welfare can fulfill the motivational and social role of traditional religion.

Consequentialism

A broad family of ethical views that evaluates actions solely by their valuable or harmful outcomes.

Justice objection

The concern that maximizing aggregate welfare under utilitarianism can permit violating the rights of or wronging an individual.

Supererogatory

An admirable moral action that goes beyond what duty strictly requires.

Value monism

An ethical framework that treats only one kind of thing (such as pleasure) as the ultimate positive value.

Integrity / self-alienation

The concern that utilitarian demands require abandoning personal commitments and projects, losing connection with what makes life one's own.

Deontology

An ethical theory that gives moral duties authority independent of and prior to beneficial consequences.

Good will

A will guided by duty and respect for the moral law, possessing intrinsic moral worth independent of outcomes.

From duty

Choosing an action specifically because respect for the moral law requires it.

In accordance with duty

Doing what duty requires externally, but from an underlying motive such as inclination or self-interest.

Maxim

The subjective principle of action describing what an agent proposes to do and the reason why.

Hypothetical imperative

A conditional command of reason specifying what action to take as a means to achieve a desired goal.

Categorical imperative

An unconditional command of reason that binds all rational agents regardless of desires or ends.

Universal law formula

The principle to act only on a maxim that you can at the same time consistently will as a universal law.

Humanity as an end formula

The imperative to treat humanity, whether in oneself or in others, always as an end and never merely as a means.

Autonomy

Rational self-legislation; acting by following a universal law given by reason rather than being governed by inclination.

Perfect duty

A strict duty that allows no exceptions for convenience or inclination, whose violation produces a contradiction in conception.

Imperfect duty

A moral duty allowing latitude in fulfillment, whose violation produces a contradiction in willing.

Contradiction in conception

A test failure under the universal-law formula where a maxim, when universalized, destroys the very practice or concept it relies on.

Contradiction in willing

A test failure under the universal-law formula where a universalized maxim creates a world that is conceivable, but cannot consistently be willed by a rational agent.

Kingdom of ends

Kant's ideal moral community whose rational members legislate universal laws and respect each other as ends in themselves.

Duty-happiness problem

The philosophical challenge of reconciling moral duty with human happiness when happiness is defined as subjective desire-satisfaction.

Death of God

Nietzsche's cultural diagnosis that belief in God has lost its credibility and authority for modern educated people.

Existential disorientation

The psychological and philosophical loss of bearings regarding meaning, values, and life's direction following the loss of traditional beliefs.

Existential liberation

The experience of being freed from inherited moral restraints, opening the possibility and responsibility to create new values.

Nihilism

The threat or philosophical view that existence, life, and moral principles lack objective meaning, purpose, or value.

Revaluation of values

Nietzsche's project of reassessing inherited moral standards to determine whether they enhance or weaken life.

Overman (Ubermensch)

Nietzsche's ideal of transcending human mediocrity through self-overcoming, value-creation, and exceptional achievement.

Last man

Nietzsche's characterization of the comfortable, cautious conformist who is satisfied with small pleasures and abandons higher aspirations.

Amor fati

Love of fate; the wholehearted affirmation of life as a whole, including its suffering, limitations, and necessity.

Cosmodicy

The challenge of justifying and affirming the world and life as worthwhile and good despite the existence of evil and suffering.

Will to power

Nietzsche's concept of life as a striving to grow, expand, and increase power by confronting and overcoming resistance.

Master morality

An evaluative framework arising from strength and abundance that values greatness, strength, self-respect, and value-creation.

Slave morality

An evaluative framework interpreted by Nietzsche as originating in weakness and resentment, elevating humility, pity, and the relief of suffering.

Resentment (Ressentiment)

Reactive hostility by which the weak turn their vulnerability into a perceived moral superiority over the strong.

Ethic of power

An ethical perspective that ranks that which heightens strength and power as good and that which springs from weakness as bad.

Virtue ethics

An ethical approach centered on character, human excellence, and what constitutes living a good human life.

Neo-Aristotelian

A modern philosophical approach that revives Aristotle's focus on character traits, virtues, and human flourishing.

Natural normativity

The view that standards of goodness and flourishing are inherent in and derived from a species' specific form of life.

Fact-value divide

The philosophical separation between descriptive statements about what is and normative statements about what ought to be.

Scientism

The philosophical stance that gives natural science an exclusive or overly dominant authority in defining reality and valid knowledge.

Re-enchantment

The philosophical recovery of real objective meaning, purpose, and value in the world.

Meaning-seeking animal

McPherson's view of human beings as agents who evaluate desires and pursue meaning within life, a meaningful life, and the meaning of life.

Strong evaluative meaning

Value that provides objective standards for what deserves concern and should orient life, independent of contingent desires.

Strong good

A good possessing objective authority and worth that does not depend on whether a person happens to desire or prefer it.

Weak good

Something whose goodness is based solely on the contingent fact that someone happens to desire, enjoy, or prefer it.

Categorical feature

The property of strong goods whereby they make valid claims on an agent whether or not that agent currently desires or cares about them.

Incommensurability

The feature of strong goods meaning they cannot be traded off against mere subjective preferences on a single, uniform scale of value.

Instrumentalist account of virtue

The position that virtue is purely an effective means or tool to achieve external rewards, status, or desire-satisfaction.

Weak constitutive account

The view that virtue constitutes happiness only if an individual happens to have a subjective preference for valuing virtue.

Strong constitutive account

McPherson's defended view that virtuous responsiveness to strong goods inherently constitutes happiness understood as a meaningful, noble life.

Proper responsiveness

The recognition of an objective good's intrinsic worth accompanied by feeling and acting appropriately toward it.

Letter-Writers

Anti-Nazi resisters executed for their actions whose tragic fate tests whether virtue guarantees happiness or entails genuine loss.

Genuine loss

The real sacrifice of an authentic good (such as life, safety, or relationships) that is not cancelled out by making a virtuous choice.

Existential vertigo

A crisis of disorientation triggered by catastrophic loss where one's evaluative framework collapses and life appears meaningless.

Buoyancy of the good

Cottingham's theistic concept expressing confidence that human efforts toward goodness belong to and matter within an ultimate moral order.