Mill: Utilitarianism Part 2 and On Liberty 1

It would seem that the main argument against utilitarianism is on the grouds of justice, though it doesn't seem immediately clear as to what the objection is. So I'm going to speculate a bit and say that some would argue that a doctrine that is based on happiness and on the practical means of obtaining happiness for both individuals and a group would be antithetical to the idea of justice because if everyone were constantly seeking would make them happy then there would be a lot of selfish and greed and, by extention, unjust behavior, and that, in short, what is best for the individual isn't necessarily best for the whole group. I think my speculation may be a bit flawed, but I will continue.

I really like the way Mill describes the origin or justice, not as Hume would describe it as an artificial virtue, but as something that is a natural instinct that arises from natural inclinations of right and wrong, or harm fight or flight. If one person takes it to harm them, and it would be universally understood by each individual of the group, or accepted, that they too would consider it a harm towards them, then it is then unjust. Justice is then exacted when the group exacts vengence against the wrongdoer in order to protect or defend those individual members of the group that have been harmed, because (as we saw with the lions and the waterbuffalo) if you hurt one of them you have harmed them all and they will do anything to protect one another.

Yay for individuality! Personally I don't want to be a lemming, zombie, whatever, though I can understand that it is difficult for a society to balance between what is best for the individual and what is best for the society as a whole. I am complete (but never static) and unto myself, though every single one of us, no matter how strong of an individual, has been guilty of following the crowd at some point or other, it's whether or not we find the strength to overcome the peer pressure that's important. And I'm stubborn and outspoken enough that if I had been born a couple of centuries earlier I probably would have been burned at the stake. That's where many outspoken people ended up, because they were obviously in league with the devil. Medieval scare tactics are pretty amusing. I somewhat disagree with Mill on this point, ages such as these really did suppress the individual and those who displayed individuality (at least of those who were not in power) were severly punished. It was when such individuality eventually did flourish that we have such times as the Renaissance, which began when Johannes Gutenburg invented the printing press, when art flourished (under the patronage of the Church and other powerful patrons, think Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel and the Meddici's). But some did run into trouble, like Galileo who's ideas (as I learned in my Astronomy class) weren't what infuriated the church but his satire The Dialogue Concerning the Two Cheif World Systems in which he made a mockery of the Church and their outmoded conception of geocentricity. Even Michelangelo got into trouble, his David was actually very unpopular when it was first made and his fresco of the last judgement in the sistine chapel? (painted many years after he completed the ceiling) made a lot of people angry. I think it was the nudity that was deemed inappropriate, something about angels, saints and martyrs should be clothed. Okay, enough with the art history lesson.
Now for my favorite quote from Mill: "In proportion to the developement of his individuality, each person becomes more valuable to himself, and is therefore capable of being more valuable to others." A perfect statement to illustrate the necessity of individuals in a society, especially those strong independent individuals. Many might say that those people are outspoken or dangerous because they don't always follow the norm, and normality, or mediocrity, is societies security blanket and uppity individuals threaten that security. But as we have seen it is those strong creative individuals who help shape history and can benefit others. Mill's line reminds me of something I read in a book on chakra healing, dealing with the heart chakra, that you can't fully love another person until you have learned to love yourself. A strong individual has integrity and self-respect, and therefore loves themself, and people tend to gravitate towards the strong and that attitude has a tendency to rub off on other people and they become the better for it, it is a person whose strength and self-love (not narcissistic) who has a greater capacity to love other individuals who is the most beneficial and useful to society, and who is more likely to be actively interested in their community.
I would like to make two more points concerning this, and they are going to be more like critisisms. First Mill also pointed out that many strong individuals are also very intelligent individuals (I don't think that intelligence and integrity necessarily go hand in hand, it doesn't take a genius or even someone of mediocre intelligence to make a good moral decision, there are many people out there who we may call unintelligent who stick to their guns in the face of opposition and take an active stance in the wellfare of their community) though many of those individuals are deemed eccentric. Some eccentric people can be fun, some are weird and some are downright strange and people try to avoid them (like Van Gogh). In this instance people would not gravitate towards them no matter how genius they are. Some eccentric people really aren't all that scary, their just offbeat and that makes them more interesting.
Secondly Mill also points out that many strong willed individuals can also be extremly dangerous and bad. And I would say that the difference between the good strong willed individual and the bad one is the point of self-love. It may be a little difficult to make this point so bear with me. As stated before, the person who respects and loves themself has a greater capacity to love others. If this is a true statement than it would only seem to be that those who are strong willed but bad and hurtful to others does not love others and therefore does not really love themselves. Now for examples, and I know that this one has been overused but I'm going to utilize Hitler. Hitler obviously didn't have a lot of love for anyone (definitely not a utilitarian) but I believe that this arises from a lack of self-love. I believe that Hitler was a very self-hating individual, and such individuals can lash out at others who they see as representative of themselves, in this instance the Jews (It is rumored that Hitler had some Jewish heritage) so why kill off your own people? It was a part of himself that he wanted to destroy; then he goes on to idolize physical ethnic attribute by building the Aerean race, blonde hair and blue eyes, which Hitler did not have. (I've read recently that the whole "ethnic cleansing" was Hindler's idea and that Hitler wasn't quite on board with it, but obviously he didn't stop it and definitely propogated it.) Another example comes from a movie Rebel Without a Cause when the character known as Plato who is introduced at the beginning of the movie in a police station having been taken into custody for shooting to death a litter of puppies. I watched this film for my Masculinities in Film class so we analysed his character quite a bit. Plato was from a wealthy family, his parents were never around and he was in the care of a nanny. He is a highschool student who is small and gets picked on a lot and has violent spurts of anger periodically throughout the film and he is slightly effeminate (I thought he was more timid and quiet than really effeminate) but it is pointed out that he may very well be homosexual (there are signifiers in the movie that point to this, and at the time this movie was made there were laws applied to the cinema that banned depictions or references to homosexuality). In short Plato was insecure, angry, and for the most part, helpless and innocent, like the puppies. So why would he take out his anger so violently on creatures that were powerless to defend themselves? It seems to me that he killed them because he saw them as being like himself, it was a way to try and kill that helpless aspect within himself and to take control and dominate those insecurities. In the end of the movie those insecurities get the best of him and he snapps, which leads to his death (sorry to spoil the movie).
Okay I think that is enough for tonight, long story short strong self-loving person is good, strong self-hating person is bad, and as for the eccentrics, there good weird and there is bad weird. And don't kill puppies!

Response to Reading list

To JMc: the series by Piers Anthony that you mentioned is called The Magic of Xanth, which did get pretty silly after a while, and there are far too many of them for them to not get silly (I think I found book 24 of the series in a used bookstore once). The Incarnations of Immortatlity are different than the Xanth novels. It is a collection of only seven books that form an intricately woven story, each book is a different perspective of the same plot, which all cumulate in the the last book. Each one is the story of one of the main characters who are human beings that stepped up to fill the office of the beings that control our world, Death, Time, Fate, Nature, War, Good, and Evil. Throughout the first five books the incarnation of evil (Satan) is the antagonist and you will spend most of the series believing he's a complete asshole, until you get to For Love of Evil, which is his story and you find out why he is doing the things that he does and he will become your favorite character. These books challenge the widely accepted Christian moral doctrine, though the author tends to use outlandish and make believe situations to make his point.
Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged was a great book I really liked the ideas behind it though I can't say that I agree with everything. Everytime we learn something new in this class I always relate back to it in my mind, though the memory of what happened in the book is no longer fresh in my mind, so I'm not going to make a serious attempt to relate it back to Utilitarianism, well maybe, but not yet.
Memnoch the Devil is very religious in nature, the basic plot being that the Devil has been stalking Lestat and wants him to be his right hand man. Memnoch takes Lestat through time to witness the Creation, the Fall, and the Passion and then to Heaven and Hell. It's interesting points are that like Piers Anthony's books, it challenges Catholocism and raises interesting questions about such issues as Creationism v. Evolutionism, fear and death, gender and God, and what it means to be human (that last part is a little vague)

To Nick: I don't know those other books, so I am sorry to dissappoint. Secondly, Ayn Rand is considered one of the most influential philosophical minds of the 20th century, her area is called Objectivism. Richard Bach is also well known, though it is for Illusions but his previous work, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which is also read within an academic setting, though I'm not sure that he is given much thought outside of the highschool level. And I don't think that having a degree in philosophy is all that important when it comes to writing philosophy. Great minds don't always come out of an academic setting, and it doesn't take years of intense study to be able to seriously contemplate the world around us. The very first philosophers weren't schooled in philosophy, it takes thoughtfulness, inquisitiveness, and a mind for abstract thought.

Diane's Suggested Reading List

For those of you who are interested.
I mentioned a book in my last blog, buried somewhere towards the bottom of one of the paragraphs, so I thought I would compile a list of books that I have read which I think are relevant to ethics and morality and even spirituality (since religion and morality have a tendency to go hand in hand). These are mostly novels, which to me is the best way to read philosophical ideas, in story form, it's much more interesting and usually makes more sense (for me at least)

1. Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach
2. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
3. Memnoch the Devil by Anne Rice
4. The Incarnations of Immortality Series by Piers Anthony (especially On a Pale Horse, For Love of Evil, & And Eternity)

Utilitarianism 1

I think I like this book, it takes some concentration but it is a little easier to follow and Mill gets to the point in fewer pages, which is something many philosophers have trouble with. Many of them are far too wordy (I hate you, Descartes...) so their point gets lost and confused. Or Hume, I liked Hume's ideas but I wanted to take the Treatise and throw it against a wall.

Anyway, as of now Utilitariansim makes sense to me (but I don't pretend to have a full understanding of it). Basically Utilitarianism is the logical or reasonable decisions which produce the most amount of good or the least amount of bad for the most people. I take the word utility to mean useful or practical. To use the WWII example from class the other day, if we applied utility to that situation allowing the Germans to bomb the English village in order retain the knowledge of how to crack the german's secret code would have been not the right thing to do but the appropriate thing to do. It would save far more people in the long run. It may seem cold, and I think it is safe to assume that anyone would assume the person who would make the decision to allow the village to be bombed would have made said decision heartlessly. Even I am guilty of this thought. But on second thought I would say that the decision would be very difficult and painful to make and would have haunted that person for the rest of their life.

As for those people who argue against Utilitarianism, saying that happiness is an unreasonable and unachievable goal for human beings I say whatever. As Mill pointed out those things which we find most desirable in life are those things that make us happy. "-if human nature is so constituted as to desire nothing which is not either a part of happiness or a means of happiness, we can have no other proof, and we require no other, that these are the only things desirable. If so, happiness is the sole end of human action, and the promotion of it the test by which to judge of all human conduct; from whence it necessarily follows that it must be the criterion of morality, since a part is included in the whole." (p.213:9) I like this, a practical ethical system that is based on not only on what is needed for our society to function as a group but that happiness is the goal for both the group and the individual.
Another interesting claim against Utilitarianism is that it is a godless philosophy. I like how Mill counters this as well. "If it be a true belief that God desires, above all things, the happiness of his creatures, and this was his purpose in their creation, utility is not only not a godless doctrine, but more profoundly religious than any other." (198:22) It was the first part of this sentence that struck me in particular to the rest, because it reminded me of one of my favorite books (and probably one of the greatest books ever written), Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach. If anyone is reading this blog, please read this book, and if you decide not to read the whole thing (it's barely 100 pages) at least read the first chapter, which is what I referring to, but I won't explain further because I don't want to spoil it.

There was something in Mill's writing which I found a little puzzling or more intriguing. When he was talking about education or intelligence and basically said that those with greater intellectual faculties have a more acute sense of what happiness and pain are than say a fool, and therefore experience happiness to a greater degree and seek to attain more because it takes more to make them happy, and on the same turn experience pain more acutely than others. Maybe I am misunderstanding the point he is making, and he makes his argument well but I can't say that I totally agree with it.

Kant: On Suicide and on Lust

Okay, I'm going to get caught up on my blog, so here goes.
Duties to one's self as an animal being: First I would like to say that I like this phrase, few moralists give any credance to the animal aspect of human beings, they see this as being a baser aspect that has been demonized and should be overcome through means of morality. It is interesting that the human race believes itself to be above nature, man is the only animal that doesn't believe that it is an animal and yet is always damning itself for being one.
Kant's first issue in this section is the issue of suicide. Suicide goes against the most basic of animal instincts-the instinct of self-preservation. It goes against nature itself. Rarely do you see any other species of animal kill itself (one of my professors once told of an old newspaper article from the late 1800's/early 1900's of an abused circus elephant that ended it's miserable life by walking into a lake and drowning). I know that suicide is antithetical to self-preservation, fight or flight, and that in doing so you forgo your responsibilities for your life, and by extention God who has given you life, and your responsibilities to other people such as your children who need you to care for them, but who can measure the extent of one man's pain? I'm not condoning suicide in any way, shape or form, but wouldn't ending one's suffering be a rational duty? Everyone tries to avoid pain and it can be considered to be a duty to oneself to avoid suffering needlessly (I suppose it all depends on what your suffering for) so couldn't suicide be considered as an act of self-preservation in the sense that it is an act of ending needless suffering? Many would say suicide is an act of cowardice, which even Kant says though he openly acknowledges that actually commiting suicide also takes courage. How do we justify war then? Volunteering for war seems to me an act of glorified suicide (I only say this in reference to those who volunteer for war, not those who are drafted because free will is out of the question, their death is on someone elses hands) and glorified murder. As for the duty to God in the topic of suicide, God had given every one a life and the free will to do with it as they may. And the duty to others, yes suicide is a selfish act, especially when there is more than just one person's life involved, it effects everyone around them and leaving behind loved ones who are now irrevocably damaged, such as children deprived of a parent whom they need not just for physical care but for emotional care.
It is also interesting that Kant should add maiming oneself and depriving oneself of those things needed for a healthy life to the topic of suicide, because most would not really think this a moral issue, disturbing yes, but not so serious as killing oneself. Especially considering that many of the world's religions, Christianity included, all practice some form of self-denial whether it be fasting or celibacy or, in some extreme cases, self-flaggelation.
On Defiling Oneself By Lust-I think that on this point I will have to disagree with Kant and anyone else who implies that sex solely for pleasure is a bad thing. I think that denying oneself this sort of pleasure is more harmful than indulging in it. However, like everything else, it must be subject to moderation, having lots of (responsible) sex exclusively with one person is great, being promiscuous is bad and (in my opinion) shows more lack of self-respect than it does a healthy sexual attitude, and as far as celibacy goes well, it depends under what context, for example a rape victim choosing celibacy is perfectly understandable, some one choosing to be celibate because they believe sex is sinful or that chastity is more holy is taking on a harmful attitude and denying themselves a very natural inclination (I would liken the need for sex to the need for food or sleep) and it can only lead to trouble (take the Catholic church pedophile scandal for example), and then there are those who choose to remain celibate until marriage, fine, whatever it's their choice.
I don't believe that having sex without procreation in mind is in anyway debasing and I don't believe that in doing so we forgo our personality or our humanity. Sexuality is a big part of my personal identity and I think I am all the better for it. Even Kant, at the end of this section seems to relinquish his attack on non-procreative sex (more broadly defined as sodomy which is any unnatural sex acts, which are defined as acts that are non-procreative i.e. homosexuality, oral sex, etc.) and loosely defines love as a "sexual inclination" (p.180, [6:426]) "It is rather a pleasure from the enjoyment of another person, which therefore belongs to the faculty of desire and, indeed, to its highest stage, passion." (p.180 [6:426]) I may be interpreting Kant's meaning loosely.
Meaningful erotic attachment is one of the most important aspects of romantic love.

Hume An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals

Yay!!! I finished it! Since I didn't post on the first reading of this book I'm just going to post on the whole book now. This one was much easier to read and it was really more of a condenced version of the Treatise of Human Nature, so I may get a little confused as to what was said in what book.
I think my biggest problem concerning Hume is not his ideas and philosophies, it is more trying to make sense of his philosophies. Trying to fight through an archaic writing style, especially when the content is so complex.
In Sections 1-4 Hume continues with his themes of virtue and the origins of virtue (or the general source of morals). Hume's main argument is that morals and virtuous behavior are a product of the passions (feelings/emotions) and not of reason. As in the first book, the passions are responsible for what we want, pleasure is our goal and pain is what we try to avoid, the passions decide what we want and reason, which wants nothing, directs the passions in the appropriate fashion in order to fulfill the goals of the passions. He argues that the ancients' theory that virtue is a conformity to reason is false, reason cannot discern between vice and virtue because it cannot feel.
Moral theory, which teaches the difference between virtue (beautiful/amiable) and vice (ugly/odious) which begs the question: Is morality conditioned? Hume answers that moral beauty is an inherent sense that is conditioned by reasoning. Morals (at least those natural virtues) must be naturally inherent in every human being, because if we lacked the capacity to recognize right from wrong, or to recognize different virtues, then we would have had no basis for comparison, the concept of morality would not exist.
Justice is a main focus for Hume. Hume says that if there was abundance every where and humans wanted for nothing there would be no need for the artificial concept of justice. Justice arises when there is scarcity there is need and people begin to fight and steal and justice keeps them in line. Punishment, however, is a suspension of justice...
Hume also tackles the leveling principal, or the idea of the communist society, where everything, all resources are distributed equally among the population. Hume says this is impossible and I agree, for the same reasons that he gives. Equally distributing resources would actually cause starvation of the masses, there would no longer be a system of merit so all those people that are useful are held back by their ability and those who are not benifit off the sweat of others. There would also be no one in charge because a leader would naturally be above everyone else. So personal property is a good thing; if it is bought, earned or inherited it is your's and no one should contest that right.

It is late and I have more homework. I'll add to this post or make a new one for sections 5-9