John Stuart Mill Essay

The principle of utility states that social welfare is the pre-eminent social value. Utilitarianism describes what is “good” being synonymous with what is overall best for the community and maximizes what is ethically right. Utilitarianism also focuses on the consequences of an action. According to Bentham’s Utilitarianism, by nature, maximizing pleasure and minimalizing pain is the metric individuals use when determining the morality of an action. When assessing the scenario described,…

Finding the Good Life in Symposium There are a wide range of translations of what the great life genuinely is. Individualists trust that the great life is satisfying oneself, while utilitarians trust that the great life is representing the benefit of whatever is left of society. Rationalists, as well, have their own understanding. Plato suggests the logician's great life when he utilizes the expression "my most noteworthy delight." The inalienable subjectivity of "my" tells the peruser that…

According to Sigmund Freud, the purpose of life is to find happiness and avoid suffering. He claims that civilization is “the achievements and the regulations which distinguish our lives from those of our animal ancestors.” Through his analysis of people, he came to the conclusion that civilization is counter-productive to the ultimate goal of pleasure. We will attempt to determine how Euripides believes civilization relates to individuality through a Freudian analysis of The Bacchae. To do this…

The article From on Violence by Hannah Arendt discusses the theoretical view of violence being uses simply as an “instrumental character” (Hannah Arendt, 1969). I believe this is correct, however, this definition is over simplified allowing the effects of violence to be neglected. By plainly saying that violence is an instrumental character and the impacts of violence on terror are ignored. When Hannah Arendt says that violence is an instrumental character, this could mean that violence is…

The concept of existing in an ideal utopian society is an objective that a reasonable amount of people strive toward. Many individuals form a sense of idealism in which they aim for unrealistic notions of republics and principalities rather than focusing on more practical and rational matters. Machiavelli discusses this conception in his piece, The Prince, where he finds that people should focus on current and realistic matters that should be done, rather than more fanciful matters that people…

“When you know how to use it, disobedience can be a virtue” (Coelho). This is what Wilde also similarly claims about disobedience being someone's virtue. Disobedience and virtue are known as two different things and are very opposite of each other, because of their meaning. But Wilde puts it into one category which determines disobedience as a good thing next to the list of goodness, righteous, honesty, kindness, and obedience. Since virtue already is determined as a high moral standard,…

Over the years people have been overusing the First Amendment as source of defense. Since the first amendment entitles people the freedom of speech, people like to use it as an excuse to express their emotions about a certain situation knowing that the first amendment protects them. Therefore, they take less responsibility for their actions and blame the constitution for their slip-ups. In Free-Speech Follies by Stanley Fish, Fish addresses the First Amendment issue. Fish states that people use…

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher most famous for his deontological ethics, also known as Kantian ethics. Kant believed that whether an action was right or wrong did not depend on the consequences, but on whether they fulfilled our duty as rational beings. Kant’s ethics are guided from the philosophical concept that is the Categorical Imperative, a wholly binding rule of morality that is justified as an end in itself. In the spelunker case, Kant would ultimately have the choice of killing…

Locke and Mills say that people will never agree on what exactly happiness is giving no agreement on who should rule. Instead on agreeing on what is and what isn’t happiness, the state’s primary goal should be liberty and nothing else. Unlike Aristotle and Plato, Mills and Locke knew that forcing people to agree on one single item was probably never going to occur, and that the people in society should have free choice. Which is why they both believe that in order for a society to function,…

What is justice? The common good? Are they just words of idealistic thinking, or do they have a deeper meaning? The way of life is difficult and full of fright. One of the new ways to think of this problem is communitarianism. It is a political ideology that is not only critical of classical liberalism, but a better way of life for humans to live and understand the freedoms that they deserve. Freedom and justice for the individual are something that communitarianism thrives on, unlike other…