《公正课》笔记

Justice

Moral Reasoning:

后果主义道德原则Consequentialist moral reasoning: locates morality in consequences of an act——Jeremy Bentham

绝对主义道德原则Categorical moral reasoning: locates morality in certain duties and rights——Immanuel Kant

Philosophy teaches us and unsettles us by confronting us with what we already know. It works by taking what we know from familiar unquestioned settings and making it strange. Philosophy estranges from the familiar, not by supplying us information, but by inviting and provoking a new way of seeing. Once the familiar turns strange, it is never quite the same again. Self knowledge is like the lost innocence. However unsettling you find it, it can never be un-thought or unknown. Political philosophy can make you a worse citizen, not a better one, or at least a worse citizen before it makes you a better one and that’s because philosophy is a distancing, even debilitating, activity. Philosophy distances us from conventions, from established assumptions, and from settled beliefs.——Skepticism （not the solution to problems）Immanuel Kant: “Skepticism is the resting place for human reason where it can reflect upon its dogmatic wanderings but it is no dwelling place for permanent settlement. Simply to acquiesce in skepticism can never suffice to overcome the restlessness of reason.” <纯粹理性批判>

Jeremy Bentham: 18th philosopher in England

The philosophy of utilitarianism: the right thing to do, the highest morality is to maximize utility, which means the balance of pleasure over pain, happiness over suffering. (“The greatest good for the greatest number”)

Cost-benefit analysis

Objections to utilitarianism:

1. Fails to respect individual/ minority rights

2. Not possible to aggregate all values into dollar terms

Is there a distinction between higher and lower pleasures?

“The quantity of pleasure being equal, pushpin is as good as poetry.”Jeremy Bentham (He believed that it’s a presumptuous to judge whose pleasures are higher or worthier or better.)

John Stuart Mill: “Utilitarianism”

He tried to humanize utilitarianism. He tried to find out whether the utilitarian calculus could be enlarged and modified to accommodate humanitarian concerns, like the concern to respect individual rights and also to address the distinction between higher and lower pleasures.

“T he sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable is that

people actually do desire it.” (Our de facto actual empirical desires are the only basis for moral judgment.)

He agrees that higher pleasures need education, cultivation and appreciation. Once having been cultivated and educated, people would finally prefer the higher to the lower.

“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied. Better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool or the pig are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their side of the question.”

“While I dispute the pretentions of any theory which sets up an imaginary standard of justice not founded on utility, I account the justice which is grounded n utility to be the chief part and incomparably the most sacred and binging part, of all morality.”

It is possible within the utilitarian framework to distinguish between higher and lower pleasures. It is possible to make qualitative distinctions of worth.

Individual rights are worthy of special respect. In fact, he goes so far as to say that justice is the most sacred part and the most incomparably binding part of morality. (Why? Because in the long run, if we do justice and if we respect rights, society as a whole will be better off. ) Further objection: suppose utilitarian calculus in the long works out as he says it will such that respecting people’s rights is a way of making everyone better off in the long wrong, would that be the only reason, the right reason to respect people?