Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
humanity would have been spared infinite crimes, wars, homicides, murders you
are eternally lost if you do not remember that the fruits of the earth are everyones
property and that the land is no-ones property!
Private property was the last step towards injustice and inequality, relates back
to Plato and More
Self-improvement
o How did humanity change?
Different moments and different forms of transition, different factors that come
into play
Creates a deviation, an innovation, the discovery of pride
Hobbes thinks that pride is natural, Rousseau says it is developed
the first time he looked into himself, he felt the first emotion of
pride
Social interactions
o Pride is developed when people start living together
o Must have been natural events that pushed people that were scattered towards each
other, an accident
then they form groups
*not started by compassion, self preservation that drives the formation of
groups
Very counter-intuitive
Society is triggered not by sympathy, but because of the negative
emotion, the antisocial emotion, the original vice, mutual interests
We get together out of selfishness
Out of compassion comes commerce
Not just trade, but circulation of people
Property and family
o There was a time when family, love, care for own children is discovered, would have
been happy if they stayed at this state
Property destroys this
Development of moral qualities
Love comes into existence with the development of jealousy
o Leisure
and this was the first yoke he inadvertently imposed on himself, and the first
source of the evils he prepared for his descendants
When humans are relaxing, plays a crucial role in transition
When they experience leisure and they enjoy themselves, recreation, things
change, begin to compare themselves with others
Develop wants in leisure, pleasure is addictive, the more you enjoy different
things, the more you desire them
From leisure to inequality
o
o
wednesday
Todays lecture:
Declaration of Independence
Politics of Happiness
Plato: the perfect city, Kallipolis is just, thus happy, nut as a whole
o Not a sum total of the happiness of the individuals
o Individual pleasure does not matter
o Pleasure is a threat (think democracy, individual experience of happiness not good)
o Ascetiscism (renouncement of private property, no individual pleasure)
Aristotle: Happiness, the good life, is a natural accomplishment for political animals
o Life in a polis makes you happy, as an individual
o Happiness is the end, supreme good, excellence
o Happiness = feeling good because you are good (virtues)
o Pleasure is a component of happiness
o Eudamonism
Epicurus hedonism
Drink when you are thirsty, for plato desperate attempt to get rid of pain, can never get
satisfaction
o Epicurus rejects this: you stop being thirsty if you drink enough water, you can fill up
and be happy, pleasure is still the fulfillment and end of pain
Listen to the voice of your body! Pleasure is self-evident: says what to do and how to live
o Does not dominate you, can chose your pleasures
o *Pleasures are not absolute v
Immediate pleasure that causes future pain can be discarded
Temporary pain that causes future pleasure, can bear it
o no sympathy for pain, have to cope with it if pleasure is better
Continuous hedonistic calculus is Reason
o Infinite sums of calculating pleasure
Morality is based upon this reasoning
o If an activity is pleasurable, it is also good
o In order to be pleasurable, its pleasure must not cause pain
Laws, education should maximize pleasure and minimize pain
Utopia
Machiavelli
Discourses
What matters in foundation of republics is to come to the point where people are happy
Hobbes
Rousseau
Bentham
nature has placed mankind under the governance of two soverign masters: pleasure and pain
o What we out to do, as well as to determine what we shall do
Self-evidence, what ought to be there
On the one had is standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and
effects
All other justifications of right and wrong are based on pain and pleasure, its
how we are built
They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to
throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it
May reject it in words, but are always subject to it
o
Utility
o By utility is meant that property in any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit,
advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness (all this in the present case comes to the same
thing)
What is good for society, useful for a society
Enemies think this is self-indulgent, selfish
o Or to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose
interest is considered
o Very important for bentham to keep together all of the different aspects of happiness
Dont want to reduce happiness just to moral good, dont want to exclude plea