The Data of Ethics, Issue 71Williams and Norgate, 1879 - 288 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
Absolute Ethics accompanying achieved actions activities acts to ends adapted adjustments of acts admitted aggregate altruistic pleasure arises Aristotle becomes belief benefit bodily bring caused claims co-operation complete conceived conception connexions consciousness consequences considered constituted COVENT GARDEN creatures definite degree developed division of labour effects efforts ellipses emotions entailed evils evolved existence feelings fulfilled functions further gratification greater greatest happiness habitually hedonism Hence higher human ideal ideas immediate implied increase individual injurious justice kind labour larvæ less lives maintaining means ment misery moral motions motive nature needs observe offspring organism paradox of Hedonism PATERNOSTER SQUARE physical pleasures and pains principle Principles of Psychology produce prompted pursuit recognize reflex actions relations remote requirements respect restraints sensations sentiency shown social SOCIAL STATICS society structures suffering sympathy theory things thought tion transfigured form truth ultimate Uncon utilitarianism welfare wrong yield
Popular passages
Page 19 - Life is the definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external coexistences and sequences.
Page 210 - I must again repeat what the assailants of utilitarianism seldom have the justice to acknowledge, that the happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct is not the agent's own happiness but that of all concerned. As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator.
Page 50 - Therefore before the names of just and unjust can have place, there must be some coercive power to compel men equally to the performance of their covenants, by the terror of some punishment, greater than the benefit they expect by the breach of their covenant...
Page 111 - For unquestionably the essential trait in the moral consciousness, is the control of some feeling or feelings by some other feeling or feelings.
Page 158 - Thou hast proved mine heart; thou hast visited me in the night; thou hast tried me, and shalt find nothing; I am purposed that my mouth shall not transgress.
Page 224 - Clearly, our conclusion must be that general happiness is to be achieved mainly through the adequate pursuit of their own happinesses by individuals, while, reciprocally, the happinesses of individuals are to be achieved in part by their pursuit of the general happiness.
Page 25 - The foregoing exposition shows that the conduct to which we apply the name good, is the relatively more evolved conduct; and that bad is the name we apply to conduct which is relatively less evolved.
Page 191 - If we define altruism as being all action, which in the normal course of things, benefits others instead of benefiting self, then, from the dawn of life, altruism has been no less essential than egoism. Though primarily it is dependent on egoism, yet secondarily egoism is dependent on it.
Page 206 - That principle is a mere form of words without rational signification, unless one person's happiness, supposed equal in degree (with the proper allowance made for kind), is counted for exactly as much as another's. Those conditions being supplied, Bentharn's dictum, "Everybody to count for one, nobody for more than one," might be written under the principle of utility as an explanatory commentary.