Philosophy 12 Ethics Notes

Aquinas

Epistemology

• All knowledge originates from the senses.
• Ideas serve as the means through which we understand things; everything is categorized as either a means or an end.

Ethics

• Understanding one's purpose in life allows us to find value in all things and happenings.
• Aquinas proposes 8 candidates for summum bonum (the greatest good), ranked from least to most wise:
  1. Wealth: Limited by its purchasing power; cannot buy immaterial things such as love. The desire for wealth is unlimited.
  2. Honour: A sign of virtue, but not virtue itself. People desire honour to possess virtue, but honour is external.
  3. Glory: A kind of immortality, but can be given by fools. After death, glory exists only in the minds of others and will eventually be forgotten.
  4. Power: Attractive because we attribute power to God. We endure suffering if we feel we freely choose it; powerlessness hinders our good use of it and is a means to an end.
  5. Health: Greater than any external good but lesser than the good of the soul. Animals can surpass humans' bodily good but cannot surpass our potential happiness.
  6. Pleasure: Attributed to happiness and sought for its own sake. More of a consequence of happiness since we are pleased by possessing something good. We can regret pleasure, while we never regret happiness.
  7. Wisdom/Virtue: Happiness is internal, involving the good of mind and will. However, the good of the soul cannot be its own end because it is through the soul that we attain it.
  8. God: No one is perfectly happy, but all seek happiness, indicating a desire for something beyond ourselves (God).

Aristotle and the Good Life

• Central to understanding ethics is determining what is "good" and the purpose of life.
• Our desire is at the root of this; we desire the "good," even if it is moral or immoral.
• Sometimes something appears to be good but is not.
• We seek things either as a means to an end or as an end in itself.
• The good of something is found in its purpose (e.g., a good saw cuts well).
• A good man functions well with intellect and will.
• Happiness is the perfection of the highest and lowest powers in man, including the intellect, the will, and the concupiscible and irascible appetites.
• All men by nature desire to know; we must strive to develop our minds and enjoy truth.
• Man is a rational animal, not a separate substance of "pure evil."

Concupiscible Appetite

• Sense appetite whose object is good or evil, giving rise to emotions of love, desire, satisfaction, and sorrow.

Irascible Appetite

• Sense appetite whose object (good or evil) is difficult to achieve.
• Gives rise to emotions of daring, hope, despair, fear, and anger.

Ethics of Niccolo Machiavelli

• Unlike Aristotle and Aquinas, Machiavelli does not connect success with virtue.
• Virtù: Strength, power, and ability to impose one’s will on others, in order to succeed.
• Fortuna: Luck, chance, and fate.
• The formula for success is to maximize virtù and minimize fortuna, or to transfer fortuna to virtù.
• There is no God, so one ought to control their destiny
• Argues to be practical, lowering standards if ideals cannot be reached.
• Science and history are all that is needed, not ethics or virtue.
• One should only be virtuous if it suits them.
• Ethics should be based on others’ sense of ethics; if men were good, then guilt of sin would outweigh the fear of death.
• Appearance is more important than reality in order to impose will. This allows conquering fortuna (society) with virtù (policy).

Thomas Hobbes, Jean Jacques Rousseau

• Hobbes believed humans are innately bad; society is needed to turn them good.
• Rousseau believed humans are innately good; society makes them bad.
• Both believed that society is artificial; before society, one lived in a state of nature.
• Then, a social contract is formed in order to have a functioning world to live in.

Can Virtue Be Taught?

• Hobbes: No, because virtue is against our evil nature, so we must be forced into being good.
• Rousseau: Virtue is in our nature, so we don’t need to be taught.
• Aristotle: Virtue comes with practice, training our will by enlightening our intellect.
• In many cases we act good but in others brutish
• An argument for innate goodness (Rousseau) would respond by asking whether we could even recognize something as evil if we did not have good.

Science and Ethics: Descartes, Hume, Mill

• They take a purely scientific approach to ethics.
• Once we saw the power of science, it wasn’t a surprise that we would test ethics with it.

Hume

• Ideas are not real; only sense impressions are—just vivid copies of sense impressions.
• Ethics can’t be sensed tangibly (i.e., right and wrong).
• All we know is what we feel, so ethics comes down to what we feel.
• For example, if I see stabbing, I do not see evil; what you see is a knife and blood.
• It is you—the subjective feeling of bad—that makes you call it evil, so ethics is subjective, not objective.
  1. No ethics: feelings are subjective.
  2. No causality: cannot get
  3. No substance: there is only hardness, brownness (i.e., wood), bundle theory.
  4. No sense of ourselves (aka no self).

Mill

• Ethics can be scientifically determined by empirical observation and mathematical measurement.
  • All people desire happiness.
  • Happiness gained by pleasure (e.g., good friendships) can be sensed.
  • Actions affect others (can be sensed).
  • Therefore, happiness/ethics can be measured scientifically.
• No sense of universals/forms; morals are relative (can change).
• The one absolute is HAPPINESS (but a different concept of it than Aristotle’s). But what makes man happy is virtue (Aristotle).
• Criteria for good/evil is to maximize pleasure and minimize displeasure (for most people).
• He does acknowledge that there are varying levels of pleasure.
• Good and evil are determined by the consequences (good/bad), which can be calculated.

Immanuel Kant

• Also sees all reality through a scientific framework.
• Develops deontological ethics but denies metaphysics.
• Liked Hume and Descartes except: Disagrees with truth as conforming mind and reality ex: To your right is _ but not actually there.
• Instead, truth = Conforming reality to the mind. Ex: All what mind says
• For Kant, thought creates structure and meaning, like art.
• The role of thoughts are to create a world of forms, not discover it (subjective).
• Rejects traditional metaphysics for a sort of sense-based metaphysics ex: making cookies (mind gives things in themselves) We structure knowledge on…
  1. Forms of sense perception
  2. Categories of abstract thought
  3. Ideas of world, self, and God.
• These three are subjective but universally in our minds.
• Does not deny these; only denies that we can know these by reasoning.
• In short, Kant denies:
  1. Essences
  2. Objective reality

Ethics

• Identifies absolute good with a good will intention.
• Courage, compassion, and generosity are not inherently good. WHY?
• because they can be used for bad (intentional)
• He rejects morality based on nature of goodness (Aristotle) and consequences (Mill).
• Something is good for the reason that motivates it; searches for the principle of morality.
• It is our DUTY doing what is right because it is morally right.
• Duty is the best motive because we can will it (unlike emotions).
• Moral Duty is respect for moral law.
• Kant rejects universals, so generosity is not good because it participates in goodness.
• Rather, we have a duty to be generous, and we do good when we do our duty.

Categorical Imperative:

1. Only do what you think should be a universal law, or will for all people to do.

• We have a duty not to murder, etc.
• Evil is inequality—wanting others to act differently as you do
• Categorical imperative becomes the first principle to ethics of Kant

1. Persons are not subjective ends but objective ends—ends in themselves (do not use people not objects, people are end to themselves)

• Always treat others and yourself as an end, never as a means.
• Gives a sense of humanity for people of all thoughts (atheist, religious, etc.) to share a common standard.

Sartre

1. Reality of freedom
2. Unreality of God.

• Sartre's concept of freedom must exclude the existence of God
• Sartre’s freedom is a metaphysical freedom
• Distinguishes between being in itself (BII) = everything else Being for itself (BFI) = humans

Being in Itself:

• Perfect, pure, full
• Its essence can’t change or fail to be what it is.
• This being starts by being nothing and then constructs nature (Aristotle would say second nature) by its choices
• Waiter trying to be BII (perfect essence) but in trying he fails because he's willing and trying to
• BFI can never escape itself since escaping is act of BFI, and BII can’t escape itself either (not conscious)
• Objects have essences (defined), and persons have no essence—no such thing as human nature.
• Man is totally free of boundaries and makes his own essence by his choices.
• Existence precedes essence: Sartre’s formula for existentialism
• Most Modern: Essence = humanness precedes existence Felipe.
• Things defined by essence, and existence only applies to humans are not bound by anything
• The statue (BII) is made by the mind of others.
• EX: Intrinsically, so it’s essence precedes existence (coming into being)
• Michelangelo (BFI) self defying agent (since no God) existence precedes essence.
• This is self-contradictory with his metaphysical dualism
• Man wants to join BII/BFI to be perfect and personal, but it’s impossible, so life has no meaning and is absurd.

Ethics

• Man is free from essence; nature not given by God, made by us.
• To choose (good or evil) is to affirm oneself.
• It’s the choosing that makes it good.
• Freedom is absolute (freedom from); not binding to anything.
• To receive anything (gift) is incompatible with being free since it binds.
• True freedom is a no, not a yes.
• There is not ethics nor progress because that implies betterment, but to what?
• Life is meaningless and absurd (no truth) can’t come from anything.
• Each person is their own “I” that others revolve around. Others are ontologically opposed to you.

Nietzsche

• Famous destructionist—raised by females (mom, sister).
• Professor of classics at 24: Horrible health problems; died insane with syphilis.
• Fell into egoism—called himself “the crucified one” and “Dionysus.”
• Other philosophers just expressed their biases.
• Will to truth falls apart because of the death of God.
• Belief in God grounds reality in truth, and philosophers fight over their versions of it.
• We can’t bear that he sees our inadequacy from a God-centered worldview.
• So good and evil are hinged on some kind of belief system.
• God is dead: God is a crutch, and his absence is too much for people looking to system for guidance.
• This death is a reality that we must face and stop depending on others.
• But this could lead to nihilism, which he also criticizes.
• We must evolve into our destiny and move away from the “last man.”
• SOLUTION IS UBERMENSCH (SUPERMAN)
• Thus spoke Zaratrustra (book)
• Theme is on the Ubermensch (superman) man without religion or traditional morality
• Last man is nothing to Ubermensch just like the ape is nothing to the last man.
• The last man is tired, indifferent, and cowardly and the antithesis of Ubermensch.
• Ubermensch rejects transcendental goodness, categorical imperative, form, substance Socrates and Jesus: the two enemies of man
• Socrates was a loser and tricked the world to bow down to reason, goodness, truth.
• Led to the greatest trick of all—God.
• Rather, envy is good as it motivates us to get what we want
• Slave morality vs Master morality
• Christianity main culprit for slave morality as the have-nots are jealous of the fortunate.
• So they convinced the world to embrace charity, equality, selflessness, sacrifice, meekness, etc.
• Nietzche says unnatural “sheep” persuaded the “wolves” to feel guilty for their superiority
• Morality is naturally healthy and values heroism in battle and joy in expressing will to power.
• God is only useful so Ubermensch can overcome Christianity.
• Argues stop depending on people

Eternal Return

• For Nietzshe, there is no being, only becoming
• Matter is finite therefore there is finite
• But there is no God or creations
• All has happened before and will happen again.

Aristotle

• Virtue: A habit that makes its possessor good
• Vice: a habit that makes its possessor bad or deficient

Terms

• Optimist: Sees less and less room for government
• Pessimist: Sees more and more room for government
• Ontological Good: One is good in nature regardless of choices made
• Ontological evil: One is worthless, miserable and destructive
• Moral Goodness: Virtue and virtuous acts/ choices
• Moral evil: wickedness and sin.
• Premodern, Aristotle/socrates: Form (makes things actual)-> matter (receptive principles
• Modern, (Kant,Hume) etc: Matter (concrete)-> Forms ( arrangements) Machiavelli
• Metaphysics: Reality is only material, no ideas.
• Anthropology: Man is wicked, competitive (matter is competitive)
• Epistemology: Only sense observation reveals reality (scientism)
• Scientific formula for success

Rene Descartes

• Rationalist: Only the mind can be trusted, the senses judged by the mind

David Hume

• Empiricist: Only trust the senses. The mind is judged by the senses

John Stuart Mill

• Utilitarian/Empiricist: Only trust the senses and measure ethical acts.

Sartre

• Being in itself: Perfect pure full
• Its essence can’t change or fail to be what it is.
• Being for itself: Contains negativity you can call people in human because he is conscious and free
• Metaphysical Dualism: Being-In-itself=tree (perfect and impersonal) Being for itself= Personal and imperfect
• Satre on God: God is impossible because he would be both personal and perfect.