Tag Archives: philosophy

Education

IMMANUEL KANT’S MORAL THEORY

The philosophy of Kant centered around the significance of non-public autonomy which persons tough to not be simply used.

Kant was a German philosophy professor who taught at the University of Konigsberg. he’s now considered a central figure within the history of contemporary philosophy. He was a firm believer within the ideas of the Enlightened especially reason and freedom. Kant asserted that we must always not think about the human knower as revolving around objects known. The knowledge he believed wasn’t the passive perception of things even as they’re Forms within the mind determine the spatial and temporal nature of our world and provides experience its basic structures.

MORAL WORTH OF AN ACT

Kant believed the moral worth of an act to be determined not by the implications caused by it but by our motives or intentions. the concept behind this is often that we generally ought to not be blamed or praised for what’s not in our control. He believed the implications of our acts to not be in our control, unlike our motives. Another objection raised by Kant has supported his views that as rational beings or persons mustn’t be seen as having only instrumental value but also intrinsic value.

Kant’s analysis of the common moral concepts of “duty” and “goodwill” led him to believe that we are free and autonomous as long as morality, itself, isn’t an illusion. Yet within the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant also tried to point out that each event encompasses a cause. Kant recognized that there seems to be a deep tension between these two claims: If causal determinism is true then, it seems, we cannot have the sort of freedom that morality presupposes, which is “a quite causality” that “can move, independently of alien causes determining it” (G 4:446).

Kant thought that the sole thanks to resolving this apparent conflict are to tell apart between phenomena, which is what we all know through experience, and noumena, which we will consistently think but not know through experience. Our knowledge and understanding of the empirical world, Kant argued, can only arise within the bounds of our perceptual and cognitive powers. we must always not assume, however, that we all know all that will be true about “things in themselves,” although we lack the “intellectual intuition” that might be needed to find out about such things.

These distinctions, consistent with Kant, allow us to resolve the “antinomy” about power by interpreting the “thesis” that power is feasible as about noumena and also the “antithesis” that each event features a cause as about phenomena. Morality thus presupposes that agents, in an incomprehensible “intelligible world,” are able to make things happen by their own free choices in an exceedingly “sensible world” during which causal determinism is true.

Many of Kant’s commentators, who are skeptical about these apparently exorbitant metaphysical claims, have attempted to create a sense of his discussions of the intelligible and sensible worlds in less metaphysically demanding ways. On one interpretation (Hudson 1994), one and also the same act may be described in wholly physical terms (as an appearance) and also in irreducibly mental terms (as a thing in itself). On this compatibilist picture, all acts are causally determined, but a free act is one that may be described as determined by irreducibly mental causes, and particularly by the causality of reason. A second interpretation holds that the intelligible and sensible worlds are used as metaphors for 2 ways of conceiving of 1 and also the same world (Korsgaard 1996; Allison 1990; Hill 1989a, 1989b). once we are engaged in scientific or empirical investigations, we frequently take up a perspective during which we predict of things as subject to natural causation, but after we deliberate, act, reason and judge, we regularly take up a unique perspective, during which we predict of ourselves et al as agents who don’t seem to be determined by natural causes. Continue reading IMMANUEL KANT’S MORAL THEORY →

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Education

ANALYSING MILLS UTILITARIANISM-2

THE GREATEST HAPPINESS PRINCIPLE

Mill says in keeping with the best happiness principle, the last word ends with relation to and for the sake of which all other things are desirable whether of ourselves or of others is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain and as rich as possible in enjoyment both in point of quality and quality. in a very very imperfect state of the world’s arrangements that anyone can best serve the happiness of others by absolutely the sacrifice of his own, Mill recognizes the readiness to form such a sacrifice because of the highest virtue in man. The utilitarian morality does recognize in individuals the facility of sacrificing their own greatest good for the great of others but refuses to admit it as an honest. It doesn’t glorify the sacrifices pretty much as good nor applaud it as this sacrifice doesn’t increase the accumulation of happiness i.e. the ratio becomes 0:1 which is taken into account a d wasted. the sole self-renunciation applauds is devotion to the happiness The utilitarian standard for what’s right conduct isn’t the agent’s own happiness which of others. Utilitarianism requires us to be an as strictly impartial and as disinterested and benevolent spectator

Mill’s Greatest Happiness Principle (Principle of Utility) establishes that happiness is that the ultimate criterion to ascertain what’s moral and what’s not, i.e., the best moral society is that the one where everybody is happy and everybody is freed from pain. Such an inspiration, however, can be problematic, since it’s a fact of life that the happiness of people sometimes conflicts. for example, if individual A thinks that cash may be a fundamental means of accelerating his/her happiness and decreasing his/her suffering and decides to steal from B he/she will, then, be probably happier after he/she has successfully concluded the robbery. the matter is that B is going to be probably less happy and suffering more after being robbed and, thus, if the criterion of utility were based only on the happiness of every individual, it might be completely useless to guide people’s actions, especially those where there’s a conflict of interests. Mill was cognizant of this, which is why he makes it clear that the utilitarian standard isn’t the agent’s own happiness, but the best amount of happiness altogether.2

But what does “the greatest amount of happiness altogether” mean? It seems that Mill provides a solution to the current question when he attempts to prove the principle of utility in chapter 4 of “Utilitarianism”. He says:3

No reason is often given why the overall happiness is desirable, except that every person, thus far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness. This, however, is a fact, we’ve got not only all the proof which the case admits of, but all which it’s possible to need, that happiness is good; that every person’s happiness could be a good to it personally, and also the general happiness, therefore, a decent to the combination of all persons. within the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth “To do as you’d be done by”and to like your neighbor as you’d love yourself. Continue reading ANALYSING MILLS UTILITARIANISM-2 →

Education, English Literature, Research Paper

Philosophical meaning of “LOVE”

Love is the most powerful emotion a human being can experience. The strange thing is, almost nobody knows what love is. Why is it so difficult to find love? That is easy to understand, if you know that the word “love” is not the same as one’s feeling of love.

“The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard,but must be felt with the heart” – Hellen Keller

What great Philosophers say about Love?

Aristotle : Of the classic ideas on love, for Aristotle , none of this love and friendship is attainable without first achieving self-love. The good person must be a self-lover, for he himself will profit from doing fine things, and he will benefit the others.

Sadhguru :
When you talk about love, it has to be unconditional. There is really no such thing as conditional love and unconditional love. It is just that there are conditions and there is love. The moment there is a condition, it just amounts to a transaction. Maybe a convenient transaction, maybe a good arrangement – maybe many people made excellent arrangements in life – but that will not fulfill you; that will not transport you to another dimension. It is just convenient.
When you say “love,” it need not necessarily be convenient; most of the time it is not. It takes life. Love is not a great thing to do, because it eats you up. If you have to be in love, you should not be. You as a person must be willing to fall, only then it can happen. If your personality is kept strong in the process, it is just a convenient situation, that’s all. We need to recognize what is a transaction and what is truly a love affair. A love affair need not be with any particular person; you could be having a great love affair, not with anybody in particular, but with life.

Simpne de Beauvoir : “The reciprocal recognition of two freedoms” Beauvoir’s thought on love is between authentic and inauthentic love. For her, loving inauthentically is an existential threat. When we believe that love will complete us, or when we lose ourselves in our beloved, we erase ourselves as independent beings. This is what de Beauvoir called loving in bad faith. In her society, men were encouraged much more than women to have interests and ambitions outside of their relationships, with the result that women were especially vulnerable to the dangers of inauthentic love.
Authentic love, on the other hand, involves partnerships in which both parties recognize each others’ independence, and pursue aims and interests outside of their relationship. Authentic love must be based on “reciprocal recognition of two freedoms”. This means that neither partner is subordinate to the other, nor takes all of their meaning from their love for that partner. Instead, each is an independent whole who freely chooses the other anew with every day without trying to possess them entirely.

Bell Hooks :
In All About Love: New Visions (2000) , she argues that our modern definition of love is too watered down by overuse of the word. Working from the idea that love is a verb, she then suggests ways to improve our modern concept of love and prevent what hinders it. She notes with a fervor that power discrepancies and the differences in how men and women are expected to approach love are a particular problem.

“The fear of being alone, or of being unloved, had caused women of all races to passively accept sexism and sexist oppression.” — Ain’t I a Woman? (1981)

Jean – Paul Sartre :
Sartre and Simone De Beauvoir had, quite possibly, the most famous open relationship of all time. Sartre first proposed the idea in a letter: “What we have is an essential love; but it is a good idea for us also to experience contingent love affairs.”
Sartre wrote extensively on love, especially in terms of the tension between freedom and objectivity, and seemed to struggle with the idea throughout his entire relationship. True love, Sartre felt, can come to fruition when both partners have a deep, mutual respect for the other’s freedom and resist the desire to “possess” each other as objects. For him, if all romantic relationships centered on the idea of ownership, there would be little room for introspection. Wrapped up in the pursuit of love is the idea that we are not only seeking a partner, but deeper insight into ourselves. Put more plainly: We’re looking for the “other half,” the “being” to our “nothingness.” Either way, Sartre got a whole lot of insight, especially for a guy with an oddly shaped head and a lazy eye.

“Love asks me no questions, and gives me endless support – William Shakespeare”