quotes against utilitarianism

… [I]t is especially true when our ethical priorities hinge on these conceptual models; when they can determine, for instance, whether we find it acceptable to allow astronomical amounts of suffering to occur in order to create “even greater” amounts of happiness.”, “The reaction against utilitarianism was a second romanticism, in which the fight against social injustice and the opposition to the actual theories of the "dismal science" played a much smaller part than the urge to escape from the present, whose problems the anti-utilitarians had no ability and no desire to solve, into the irrarionalism of Burke, Coleridge, and German romanticism.”, “They will tell you you're useless, if they can't use you.”, “There are some things so useless it is impossible to live without them.”, Their Morals and Ours: The Class Foundations of Moral Practice, Suffering-Focused Ethics: Defense and Implications. I'm gathering quotes by N on utilitarianism, which I see as the "decadence" hiding behind the ideal of "enforcing laissez faire on individuals". Dale Jamieson. Abeautiful object had value independent of any pleas… “In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected." Find the Perfect Quote. Best Utilitarianism Quotes to Explore and Share. Letters on an Address Delivered by Sir Robert Peel, Bart., M.P. Whatever we adopt as the fundamental principle of morality, we require subordinate principles to apply it by: the impossibility of doing without them, being common to all systems, can afford no argument against any one in particular: but gravely to argue as if no such secondary principles could be had, and as if mankind had remained till now, and always must remain, without drawing any general conclusions from the experience of human life, is as high a pitch, I think, as absurdity has ever reached in philosophical controversy.”, “Being forced to endure torture rather than dreamless sleep, or an otherwise neutral state, would be a tragedy of a fundamentally different kind than being forced to “endure” a neutral state instead of a state of maximal bliss.”, “If then, merely out of regard to population, it were right that paederasts should be burnt alive, monks ought to be roasted alive over a slow fire. The psychology of his day was hedonistic and he worked in that framework and passed … Utilitarian Quotes The ego must be able to listen attentively and to give itself, without any further design or purpose, to that inner urge toward growth. All Quotes Mill is keen to refute the claim that utilitarianism allows for the sacrifice of one person's happiness in order to secure happiness for "the greater good." J. S. Mill quotes are required reading for libertarians. It only refuses to admit that the sacrifice is itself a good. But he can learn to bear its imperfections, if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify. Mar 14, 2013 - Explore Rachel Shupe's board "Utilitarianism" on Pinterest. If one of these gave him no pleasure, and the other no pain, he would not love or desire virtue, or would desire it only for the other benefits which it might produce to himself or to persons whom he cared for.”, “Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure.”, “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. But they lack the ability to symbolically par­ticipate in others' existence and thus communalize their own. “Bernard Williams (...) concluded a lengthy attack on utilitarianism by remarking: ‘The day cannot be too far off in which we hear no more of it.’ It is now more than forty years since Williams made that comment, but we continue to hear plenty about utilitarianism.” - Peter Singer & Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek 1 Utilitarianism Summary and Study Guide. “From the dawn of philosophy, the question concerning the summum bonum , or, what is the same thing, concerning the foundation of morality, has been accounted the main problem in speculative thought, has occupied the most gifted intellects, and divided them into sects and schools, … “When we say that humans have a “right” not to be used for these purposes, this means simply that the interest of humans in not being used as non-consenting subjects in experiments will be protected even if the consequences of using them would be very beneficial for the rest of us. And this, as long as foresight is a human quality, it is to be presumed they will continue to do. But though in science the particular truths precede the general theory, the contrary might be expected to be the case with a practical art, such as morals or legislation. To inform a traveler respecting the place of his ultimate destination, is not to forbid the use of land-marks and direction-posts on the way. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure (Utilitarianism, ii, 1863). They are desired and desirable in and for themselves; besides being means, they are a part of the end. Men really ought to leave off talking a kind of nonsense on this subject, which they would neither talk nor listen to on other matters of practical concernment. فيدمنون على اللذات الحسية ليس بسبب أنهم يفضلونها بعد المداولة، بل لأنها هي الوحيدة التي لديهم إمكانية الوصول إليها أو الوحيدة التي يمكن الاستمتاع بها”, “إن القدرة على أسمى المشاعر هي في معظم الطبائع، نبتة رقيقة جداً، وسهلة الفناء، ليس فحسب من خلال التأثيرات السيئة والمعادية لها، بل بسبب نقص بسيط في تغذيتها. (Offences Against One's Self,”, “That a feeling is bestowed on us by Nature, does not necessarily legitimate all its promptings. ", “...the rarest of all human qualities is consistency.”. John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism (Chapter 1–“General Remarks”) CHAPTER I. We assign a color and icon like this one to each theme, making it easy to track which themes apply to … Deontology is the moral theory that an action is right or wrong depending on the nature of the act itself. “The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.”, “In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected. The ascendancy of Faith may be impracticable, but the reign of Knowledge is incomprehensible. Buy Study Guide. The problem for statesmen of this age is how to educate the masses, and literature and science cannot give the solution.”, “… a problematic feeling is indeed the exact opposite of an unproblematic feeling. He was a pluralist, ratherthan a monist, regarding intrinsic value. and asserted the theory of utilitarianism against the popular morality of the so-called ‘sophist’ (I’m assuming here that Plato’s dialogue is based on a real conversation). If we have intellectual instincts, leading us to judge in a particular way, as well as animal instincts that prompt us to act in a particular way, there is no necessity that the former should be more infallible in their sphere than the latter in theirs: it may as well happen that wrong judgments are occasionally suggested by those, as wrong actions by these. The feeling of justice might be a peculiar instinct, and might yet require, like our other instincts, to be controlled and enlightened by a higher reason. Consider, by analogy, the states of being below and above water respectively. “...the rarest of all human qualities is consistency.”. Yet the fact that two states are each others’ opposites in this sense does not imply they are symmetric in the sense of being able to morally outweigh each other or meaningfully cancel each other out. Refresh and try again. To do as one would be done by, and to love one’s neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality.” – Utilitarianism pg. 19 Mill's aim in the book is to explain what utilitarianism … For example, the best justification that we have for killing the billions of nonhumans that we eat every year is that we enjoy the taste of animal flesh and animal products. on the Establishment of a Reading Room at Tamworth. Mankind are always predisposed to believe that any subjective feeling, not otherwise accounted for, is a revelation of some objective reality.”, “There is not the same willingness to admit that our desires and should be our own likewise, or that to possess impulses of our own, and of any strength, is anything but a peril and a snare. Quotes By John Stuart Mill. John Stuart Mill Quotes on Liberty, Utilitarianism, and More. The entire history of social improvement has been a series of transitions by which one custom or institution after another, from being a supposed primary necessity of social existence, has passed into the rank of a universally stigmatized injustice and tyranny. The principle of utility does not mean that any given pleasure, as music, for instance, or any given exemption from pain, as for example health, is to be looked upon as means to a collective something termed happiness, and to be desired on that account. Utilitarianism, in normative ethics, a tradition stemming from the late 18th- and 19th-century English philosophers and economists Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill according to which an action is right if it tends to promote happiness and wrong if it tends to produce the reverse of happiness. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. Yet we have to be extremely cautious about such naively intuitive moves of conceptualization. There is no need to say that people have their arguments in favor as well as in against the abortion and both the views seem to be right in specific circumstances. John Stuart Mill was one of his era’s preeminent philosophers concerning liberty, utilitarianism, and freedom of speech. I understand that the community is seen by N in a negative light, being an ideal of the weak that pretends to bring about impossible equality among different, varied men and women, but I … send. “It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low, has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect. Let Benthamism reign, if men have no aspirations; but do not tell them to be romantic, and then solace them with glory; do not attempt by philosophy what once was done by religion. been tolerated; forgetful that they themselves perhaps tolerate other inequalities under an equally mistaken notion of expediency, the correction of which would make that which they approve seem quite as monstrous as what they have at last learnt to condemn.”, “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”, “The art of music is good, for the reason, among others, that it produces pleasure; but what proof is it possible to give that pleasure is good? For example, hebelieved that ‘beauty’ was an intrinsic good. (10 marks) Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that pivots around the belief that morality should be judged by consequence and the way in which an action can be deemed moral or immoral, depends upon the number to which it brings the … by Catholicus [i.E. LitCharts makes it easy to find quotes by chapter, character, and theme. Suggestions. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.”, “All social inequalities which have ceased to be considered expedient, assume the character not of simple inexpediency, but of injustice, and appear so tyrannical, that people are apt to wonder how they ever could have. Virtue, according to the utilitarian doctrine, is not naturally and originally part of the end, but it is capable of becoming so; and in those who love it disinterestedly it has become so, and is desired and cherished, not as a means to happiness, but as a part of their happiness.”. Mankind are always predisposed to believe that any subjective feeling, not otherwise accounted for, is a revelation of some objective reality.”, “Next to selfishness, the principal cause which makes life unsatisfactory, is want of mental cultivation.”, “we do not call anything justice which is not a virtue,”, “In the case of abstinences indeed—of things which people forbear to do from moral considerations, though the consequences in the particular case might be beneficial—it would be unworthy of an intelligent agent not to be consciously aware that the action is of a class which, if practiced generally, would be generally injurious, and that this is the ground of the obligation to abstain from it.”, “since persons, even of considerable mental endowment, often give themselves so little trouble to understand the bearings of any opinion against which they entertain a prejudice, and men are in general so little conscious of this voluntary ignorance as a defect that the vulgarest misunderstandings of ethical doctrines are continually met with in the deliberate writings of persons of the greatest pretensions both to high principle and to philosophy.”, “Whatever may be the opinion of utilitarian moralists as to the original conditions by which virtue is made virtue; however they may believe (as they do) that actions and dispositions are only virtuous because they promote another end than virtue; yet this being granted, and it having been decided, from considerations of this description, what is virtuous, they not only place virtue at the very head of the things which are good as means to the ultimate end, but they also recognise as a psychological fact the possibility of its being, to the individual, a good in itself, without looking to any end beyond it; and hold that the mind is not in a right state, not in a state conformable to Utility, not in the state most conducive to the general happiness, unless it does love virtue in this manner—as a thing desirable in itself, even although, in the individual instance, it should not produce those other desirable consequences which it tends to produce, and on account of which it is held to be virtue. . All action is for the sake of some end, and rules of action, it seems natural to suppose, must take their whole … The proposition that happiness is the end and aim of morality, does not mean that no road ought to be laid down to that goal, or that persons going thither should not be advised to take one direction rather than another. However, there are some weaknesses in this theory. Apart from different opinions, law of a society has its own views on the issue which cannot be ignored. إن البشر يفقدون تطلعاتهم العالية لأنهم يفقدون أذواقهم الفكرية وذلك بسبب ضيق الوقت أو عدم توفر الفرص السانحة لهم بالتدليل عليها. In the first part of the book Professor Smart advocates a modern and sophisticated version of classical utilitarianism; he tries to formulate a consistent and persuasive elaboration of the doctrine that the rightness and … Men really ought to leave off talking a kind of nonsense on this subject, which they would neither talk nor listen to on other matters of practical concernment. Within moral philosophy it represents a position one must struggle against if one wishes to avoid it. (10 marks) Examine and consider criticisms that have been made against Utilitarianism. Quotes tagged as "utilitarianism" Showing 1-30 of 64. Below are quotes from what some people say was the father of Utilitarianism; Epicurus, a Greek philosopher (341–270 B.C.E) "I never desired to please the rabble. It may, of course, seem intuitive to assume that some kind of symmetry must obtain, and to superimpose a certain interval of the real numbers onto the range of happiness and suffering we can experience — from minus ten to plus ten, say. “The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest-Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. The essay first appeared as a series of three articles published in Fraser's Magazine in 1861 (vol. "To be a utilitarian means that you judge actions as right or wrong in accordance … But though it is one thing to believe that we have natural feelings of justice, and another to acknowledge them as an ultimate criterion of conduct, these two opinions are very closely connected in point of fact. [...], “People say to me, that it is but a dream to suppose that Christianity should regain the organic power in human society which it once possessed. This is exactly as if any one were to say that it is impossible to guide our conduct by Christianity, because there is not time, on every occasion on which anything has to be done, to read through the Old and New Testaments.”, “imputation; for if the sources of pleasure were precisely the same to human beings and to swine, the”, “Society between equals can only exist on the understanding that the interests of all are to be regarded equally.”, “All persons are deemed to have a right to equality of treatment, except when some recognized social expediency requires the reverse. “I do not care about the greatest good for the greatest number . This is not an acceptable justification if we take seriously, as we purport to, that it is wrong to inflict unnecessary suffering or death on animals, and it illustrates the confused thinking that I characterize as our “moral schizophrenia” when it comes to nonhumans. 64, p. 391–406, 525–534, 659–673); the articles were collected and reprinted as a single book in 1863. The ingredients of happiness are very various, and each of them is desirable in itself, and not merely when considered as swelling an aggregate. Characters. The proposition that happiness is the end and aim of morality, does not mean that no road ought to be laid down to that goal, or that persons going thither should not be advised to take one direction rather than another. ... Topic: Utilitarianism and Abortion. It may, then, be said truly, that money is desired not for the sake of an end, but as part of the end. Written by Alex Horsman. Yet desires and impulses are as much a part of a perfect human being as beliefs and restraints; and strong impulses are only perilous when not properly balanced.”, “Apes do evidently understand what others are doing, and they can prudently do the same, in which sense they "cooperate"—for their own reasons. “One of the main arguments that I make is that although almost everyone accepts that it is morally wrong to inflict “unnecessary” suffering and death on animals, 99% of the suffering and death that we inflict on animals can be justified only by our pleasure, amusement, or convenience. J. H. Newman], Etc. But this does not mean, quite obviously, that a symmetry exists between these respective states in terms of their value and moral significance. Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Study Guide of “Utilitarianism” by John Stuart Mill. A hedonistic theory of the value of life is found in the early 5th century bce in the ethics of Aristippus of Cyrene, founder of the Cyrenaic school, and a century later in that of Epicurus, founder of … Utilitarianism - Utilitarianism - Historical survey: The ingredients of utilitarianism are found in the history of thought long before Bentham. Enjoy the best Peter Singer Quotes at BrainyQuote. Error rating book. Share with your friends. Yes; but he must first find out another earth to stand upon.”, “In a world in which there is so much to interest, so much to enjoy, and so much also to correct and improve, everyone who has this moderate amount of moral and intellectual requisites is capable of an existence which may be called enviable; and unless such a person, through bad laws, or subjection to the will of others, is denied the liberty to use the sources of happiness within his reach, he will not fail to find the enviable existence”, “Settle, for sure and universally, what conduct will promote the happiness of a rational being.”, “The utilitarian behaves sensibly in all that is required for preservation but never takes account of the fact that he must die...His whole life is absorbed in avoiding death, which is inevitable, and therefore he might be thought to be the most irrational of men, if rationality has anything to do with understanding ends or comprehending the human situation as such. John Stuart Mill's book Utilitarianism is a classic exposition and defence of utilitarianism in ethics. This is so in spite of the fact that the implications of act utilitarianism are wildly at variance with firmly held moral convictions, while rule utilitarianism, the most common alternative formulation, strikes most people as … A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality study guides that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes… Two essays on utilitarianism, written from opposite points of view, by J. J. C. Smart and Bernard Williams. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.”, “Happiness is a very pretty thing to feel, but very dry to talk about.”, “Is it possible for a man to move the earth? To inform a traveler respecting the place of his ultimate destination, is not to forbid the use of land-marks and direction-posts on the way. The Tamworth Reading Room. John Stuart Mill Utilitarianism Quotes “In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. This opinion is not, in the smallest degree, a departure from the Happiness principle. The feeling of justice might be a peculiar instinct, and might yet require, like our other instincts, to be controlled and enlightened by a higher reason. A sacrifice which does not increase, or tend to increase, the sum total of happiness, it considers as wasted.”, “It results from the preceding considerations, that there is in reality nothing desired except happiness. “The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.”. Utilitarian quotes from YourDictionary: The evolution of culture issynonymous with theremoval of ornament from utilitarian objects. And hence all social inequalities which have ceased to be considered expedient assume the character, not of simple inexpediency, but of injustice, and appear so tyrannical that people are apt to wonder how they ever could have been tolerated - forgetful that they themselves, perhaps, tolerate other inequalities under an equally mistaken notion of expediency, the correction of which would make that which they approve seem quite as monstrous as what they have at last learned to condemn. I am not a politician; I am proposing no measures, but exposing a fallacy, and resisting a pretence. Being rational creatures, they go to sea with it ready calculated; and all rational creatures go out upon the sea of life with their minds made up on the common questions of right and wrong, as well as on many of the far more difficult questions of wise and foolish. Most people are poop-heads I do not care about them. So it has been with the distinctions of slaves and freemen, nobles and serfs, patricians and plebians; and so it will be, and in part already is, with the aristocracies of color, race, and sex.”, “A state of exalted pleasure lasts only moments or in some cases, and with some intermissions, hours or days, and is the occasional brilliant flash of enjoyment, not its permanent and steady flame.”, “The happiness which they meant was not a life of rapture, but moments of such, in an existence made up of few and transitory pains, many and various pleasures, with a decided predominance of the active over the passive, and having as the foundation of the whole not to expect more from life than it is capable of bestowing.”, “Yet the love of money is not only one of the strongest moving forces of human life, but money is, in many cases, desired in and for itself; the desire to possess it is often stronger than the desire to use it, and goes on increasing when all the desires which point to ends beyond it, to be compassed by it, are falling off. By clicking "Send", … “In my opinion, if, as the result of certain combinations, “The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest-Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. Explore Utilitarian Quotes by authors including Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Peter Singer, and Claude Debussy at BrainyQuote. The evaluation of particular acts was hardly his concern. ― John Stuart Mill, quote from Utilitarianism “That a feeling is bestowed on us by Nature, does not necessarily legitimate all its promptings. Being rational creatures, they go to sea with it ready calculated; and all rational creatures go out upon the sea of life with their minds made up on the common questions of right and wrong, as well as on many of the far more difficult questions of wise and foolish. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. The calculation of utility is said to be self-defeating as by the time the best utilitarian course of action has been calculated and decided, the opportunity to take this action may well have passed. In Classical philosophy, things like virtue, knowledge, wisdom and temperance are good in and of themselves. Whatever is desired otherwise than as a means to some end beyond itself, and ultimately to happiness, is desired as itself a part of happiness, and is not desired for itself until it has become so. “Instead of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, one should demand, more modestly, the least amount of avoidable suffering for all; and further, that unavoidable suffering—such as hunger in times of an unavoidable shortage of food—should be distributed as equally as possible.”, “It is a strange notion that the acknowledgment of a first principle is inconsistent with the admission of secondary ones. The philosophy is known as utilitarianism. Nobody argues that the art of navigation is not founded on astronomy, because sailors cannot wait to calculate the Nautical Almanack. Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select. Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and they addict themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but because they are either the only ones to which they have access, or the only ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying.”, “Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their position in life has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown them, are not favourable to keeping that higher capacity in exercise.”, “To those who have neither public nor private affections, the excitements of life are much curtailed, and in any case dwindle in value as the time approaches when all selfish interests must be terminated by death: while those who leave after them objects of personal affection, and especially those who have also cultivated a fellow-feeling with the collective interests of mankind, retain as lively an interest in life on the eve of death as in the vigour of youth and health.”, “: إن البشر يفقدون تطلعاتهم العالية لأنهم يفقدون أذواقهم الفكرية وذلك بسبب ضيق الوقت أو عدم توفر الفرص السانحة لهم بالتدليل عليها. Bentham spent much of his life writing constitutions and proposing legal reform in the light of his utilitarianism. Another problem with utilitarianism is the impracticality of calculating the utility of actions in real time. In utilitarianism, they are only good if they have a demonstrable utility; otherwise, they may be discarded. Utilitarianism Quotes Next. I cannot help that; I never said it could. Welcome back. . Indeed, there is a sense in which it matters much more to have one’s head just above the water surface than it does to get it higher up still.”, “... when we take into account what we know about happiness and suffering in psychological and neuroscientific terms, we find reasons to doubt that (to use Popper’s phrase) we can treat degrees of pain as “negative degrees of pleasure”, and to doubt that pleasure can ethically “cancel out” pain — any more than putting people far above a water surface can cancel out or outweigh the bad of putting people far below it.”, “When people who are tolerably fortunate in their outward lot, “... the notion that happiness and suffering are morally symmetric deserves our most meticulous scrutiny. Whatever we adopt as the fundamental principle of morality, we require subordinate principles to apply it by: the impossibility of doing without them, being common to all systems, can afford no argument against any one in particular: but gravely to argue as if no such secondary principles could be had, and as if mankind had remained till now, and always must remain, without drawing any general conclusions from the experience of human life, is as high a pitch, I think, as absurdity has ever reached in philosophical controversy.”, “Again, defenders of utility often find themselves called upon to reply to such objections as this—that there is not time, previous to action, for calculating and weighing the effects of any line of conduct on the general happiness. From a general summary to chapter summaries to explanations of famous quotes, the SparkNotes Utilitarianism Study Guide has everything you need to ace quizzes, tests, and essays.

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