Utilitarianism: Happiness as the Ultimate Goal in Ethics
John Stuart Mill’s Principle of Utility
The first question that arises is to clarify the principle which Mill called the principle of utility, or the greatest happiness principle. Mill argued that ethical and political principles had been formulated earlier by Bentham and responded to the name of utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is the theory that advocates happiness as the moral criterion, and happiness for the greatest number of people as a political criterion. Utilitarianism upholds the principle
Read MoreKant’s Critique of Metaphysics: Is it a Science?
The Problem of Metaphysics
The problem of metaphysics, which Immanuel Kant called into question, is its lack of progress compared to other sciences such as mathematics and physics. These sciences, especially physics, were making great strides in the eighteenth century. However, metaphysics was in the midst of chaos between the dogmatism of the rationalists and the skepticism of the empiricists. That is why the German Enlightenment sought to find out, through critical analysis of reason, what prevents
Aristotle’s Philosophy: Truth, Principles, and Categories
Aristotle’s Five Ways to Stay in Truth
Aristotle states that there are five ways to stay in truth:
- Science: Is able to show from first principles.
- Intuition: In philosophy, it is considered as direct knowledge of the axioms, that is, knowledge is necessary.
- Wisdom: Is the set of all the other ways of being in truth.
- Technique: It is a knowledge produced by rules and is to bring something into existence, i.e., produce anything, not necessarily.
- Prudence: Is a live act to know, is contingent but it is not
Nietzsche’s Critique of Western Philosophy
Hatred of the Notion of Becoming
In this passage, Nietzsche discusses one of the characteristic features of Western philosophy: “His hatred of the notion of becoming,” with the exception of Heraclitus. Heraclitus, a philosopher of becoming, stated that everything flows and nothing remains, and that reality is subject to constant transformation. This rejection of the notion of evolution is evident in the Eleatics. It must be remembered that, for Parmenides, the Self was immutable and eternal, and
Read MoreImmanuel Kant’s Philosophy: Ethics, Knowledge, and Reality
Immanuel Kant’s Moral Philosophy
Kant posits that within humans, there exists a moral conscience, a moral law that compels us to question how we should act. This is the realm of practical reason, which concerns itself not with what things *are* (the domain of pure theoretical reason), but with how they *should be*. Practical reason’s function is to investigate the principles governing human action.
While pure reason forms judgments, practical reason, as we will see, formulates imperatives—commands
Read MoreMajor Philosophical Movements: From Ancient Greece to Modernity
Sophism
Sophism, a cultural, political, and philosophical movement of the fifth century BC, was characterized politically and culturally by:
- Being linked to Athenian democracy. Sophists met the demand for information required by the democratic system.
- Revolutionizing traditional Greek paideia. The Greek philosophers were the first professional teachers.
Philosophically, Sophism occupied a middle position between pre-Socratic philosophy and classical philosophy. Faced with the aforementioned philosophy’
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