The Midterm Exam will consist of multiple choice questions and short answer questions covering central concepts. For the short answers, you should write a half page showing you understand the idea. You will not need a blue book or scantron for the test. I will provide you the paper.
Principle, Moral & Law: Kant
Kant
is a positivist with regard to principle, morals and laws. Kant
believes that reason should rule over desire (like the early cosmology
above) and principles that are figured out by reason should always be
followed regardless of the consequences (note that the opposite position
can be found in the Utilitarian/consequentialist position below). Kant
believes that one starts with good will (good in itself without
question) and reasoned principles follow, and one should use this good
beginning regardless of what consequences follow (though he says this
naturally aims at and leads to good consequences even if this is
secondary). Kant calls this “the categorical imperative” and
“unconditional universal law”. The example of this is the guy with the
knife who asks you “Where did your friend go?”, to whom one should not
lie regardless of how easy a good end can come from lying. One must “Do
one’s Duty” even if one goes down with the ship.
Virtue & Merit: Aristotle
Virtue
is like principle in being a good beginning, but it is also a state or
end to obtain. Also, virtue can be individual in a way that principle
is collective and for the group. The idea is that one gains virtue,
merit or “goodness”, and one can then use this ability/capacity to do
good. A virtue-ethicist believes that becoming good or virtuous is more
important than following principles or simply having good consequences.
One should be virtuous even if it means breaking principles or bad
results in a particular situation. The upside of this is a virtue
centered ethic is not slave to principle or always seeking the best
consequences. The downside is that one could believe that oneself or
one’s group is “the virtuous” and ignore principles and consequences to
the degree that it becomes a problem for oneself or others.
Consequence, Utility & End: Mill
Consequentialism
or Utilitarianism argues that one should focus completely on the ends
or results to determine if an act or person is good or bad.
Specifically, one should try to maximize pleasure/happiness and
minimize pain/suffering for everyone, taking a long view (not a short,
15 minute view). Epicurus was an early Greek consequentialist, and he
is followed by the Utilitarian school of Bentham and Mill. While
Bentham leaned towards the positive side of the ‘pleasure principle’,
maximizing happiness, Mill leaned towards the negative, minimizing harm.
Mill is the best known, and has had an important impact on modern
thought and theory of law.
Mill’s
Utilitarianism is opposite yet similar in many ways to Kant. Both see
their side as fundamental and the other side as a secondary consequence.
Kant says always follow principle and you will likely be happy, and
Mill says always try for happiness and you will likely be principled.
Both see their own primary focus as good in itself without the
possibility of proof or question. Attacks on Utilitarianism include:
Paradox of the bad as good example, Marx’s guess who gets to use who
for whose happiness (the rich and elite), Happiness as unobtainable
ideal, Environmental challenge to using the world for human purposes.
Balance & The Mean: Egyptian Wisdom & Confucius
Meaning
and value work through pairs of opposites (good/evil, open/closed,
individual/collective). A reoccurring theme of the world’s wisdom is
that seeking the mean or middle between opposites is better than
clinging to either side of an opposition. We can see some beautiful
examples of this thinking in the Egyptian wisdom and Confucius passages.
In the Egyptian wisdom, moderation of eating and drinking, luxury, and
balancing one’s own interest with others are the clearest examples.
Confucius offers particularly insightful sayings that call for a
balance of one’s self with others for the cultivation of self and
society.
Self Interest, Self Esteem and Drive: Nietzsche & Rand
Self is very much an end, though like Mill it can be phrased as a principle (focus on the ends).
While
early ethics (in accord with ancient cosmology above) focused on the
collective good, modern society has taken a turn towards the individual
good. These two have always been complimentary, but devices and media
have allowed us to be more enabled as individuals than ever before.
Nietzsche and Rand both focus on individual achievement as the central
end of life, but they are completely different as far as trusting
judgment and truth. Nietzsche trusts no truth at all, calling all
collectivism “slave morality” and performing his own misogyny as
“Philosophy is always the personal confession of the author”. Rand
believes her opinions to be objective, and calls her school the
“Objectivists”. Rand’s idea of believing in yourself was repackaged as
“self esteem” in the 1980s. While it is important to have self esteem,
problems can arise when one trusts one’s own judgment and rejects all
opposing judgments entirely.
Perspective & Intersubjectivity: Heraclitus & Zhuangzi
A
balance between thinking our views are completely right or wrong, truth
or illusion, is the concept of perspective. The “objective” is very
much the intersubjective, the similarity and difference of a group of
subjective perspectives. Heraclitus and Zhuangzi are both excellent
thinkers to read to get good examples of this sort of thought. Both use
perspectives of animals to show that collective human opinion is just
that (pigs sleep in mud, birds sleep in trees). The concept of
perspective is good for showing us that all views count, but they are
also each limited and capable of progress and expansion.
List of Short Answer Concepts:
A) Kant and the guy with the butcher knife
B) Bentham’s maximum happiness vs. Mill’s minimum pain
C) Confucius’ Golden Rule
D) Confucius’ Right Mind over Right Act
E) Nietzsche’s Collective Morality is Slave Morality
F) Heraclitus and Zhuang Zi on Animal Perspectives
