Personal Identity, Freedom, and Responsibility in Ethics
Personal Identity, Freedom, and Responsibility
Human beings, as moral subjects, become themselves with their ethical and moral choices. These choices can lead to a happy and fulfilled life or a bitter and frustrated one. The good that all persons want to achieve in their moral life is, as Aristotle and St. Thomas believed, to achieve the best for their life. The morally wise and good person always tries to do good, not bowing to good or bad fortune, to ensure their emotional and psychological inner
Read MoreHume’s Philosophy: Enlightenment, Empiricism, and Ethics
Hume: Historical Context and Core Ideas
Hume sought a scientific view of man and the world, proclaiming confidence in progress with the intention of extending his vision so that the world could be understood. Man is in a process of improvement, and reason should guide his life. Enlightenment liberalism can be categorized as English (proclamation of the rights of individuals as natural and inalienable against state power, which no human society can prohibit) and Deism (proclamation of faith in a creator
Read MoreNietzsche’s Philosophy: Apollonian vs. Dionysian, Knowledge, and Nihilism
The Apollonian and Dionysian
Nietzsche believed that the forces originating in Greek culture had been two aesthetic forces that fight each other but cannot exist without the other: the Apollonian, which represents order, light, as the limit, the principle of individuation, and its opposite, the Dionysian, which is the symbol of the deep flow of the vita itself, which breaks all barriers and ignores all the constraints, which reflects the primary unity above all the principle of individuation. With
Read MoreKant’s Philosophy: A Copernican Revolution in Epistemology
Kant’s Copernican Revolution
Kant called his “Copernican revolution” a radical change which states in its conception of the process of knowledge.
Knowledge is a process between man (subject) and the world (objective reality or object), a process by which man captures and interprets the world, that is, perceives reality and explains it. We call the man who knows the “knower” and the reality that is known the “object known.”
Knowing is not that the subject grasps the object as it is, making it an image
Read MoreKant’s Philosophy: Metaphysics, Ethics, and Political Ideals
Kant’s Examination of Metaphysics and the Sciences
Kant examines the conditions that enabled the physical and mathematical sciences to develop and attempts to apply these conditions to metaphysics.
Classification of Judgments
The study of the qualifications of physics and mathematics requires an examination of judgments within these disciplines. This leads Kant to a classification of judgments according to two criteria:
According to the relationship between subject and predicate, there are two types
Read MoreUtilitarianism: Happiness and Moral Responsibility in a Globalized World
Utilitarianism: Happiness and Moral Responsibility
Mill’s Definition of Happiness
1. Explain briefly: In this fragment, Mill defines happiness from a utilitarian perspective. According to him, it is not the happiness that the act provides the agent of the action, but the happiness of all those whom this action will affect. To make this notion of happiness effective, Mill argues that whoever performs the action must be able to distance themselves from their own action, as if they were a mere external
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