Dissertations and Discussions: Political, Philosophical, and Historical, Volume 3Henry Holt and Company, 1882 - History |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
action admitted appears asserted Athenian Athens Bentham capable character civilized common conduct consequences consider Constitution cultivation democracy Deontology desire despotism doctrine duty England equally ethical evil exist expediency fact faculties favor feeling foreign France freedom French FRENCH REVOLUTION give Grecian Greece Grote happiness human idea individual influence injustice institutions interest justice labor Lamartine legislation liberty Lord Brougham Louis Blanc Louis Philippe mankind means ment mind mode moral philosophy moral rules nation nature never object obligation oligarchical opinion pain party Pericles person philosophy Plato pleasure political popular practical present principle of utility produce profess Provisional Government punishment question reason regard Republic Revolution selfish sense sentiment slave Slave Power slavery social society Sparta standard supposed sympathy theory thing thought Thucydides tion treaties truth unjust utilitarian virtue Westminster Review Whewell Whewell's whole women writers wrong
Popular passages
Page 270 - The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.
Page 311 - ... general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness. This, however, being a fact, we have not only all the proof which the case admits of, but all which it is possible to require, that happiness is a good : that each person's happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all
Page 285 - 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 127 - The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may...
Page 329 - This, therefore, being the characteristic difference which marks off, not justice, but morality in general, from the remaining provinces of Expediency and Worthiness; the character is still to be sought which distinguishes justice from other branches of morality. Now it is known that ethical writers divide moral duties into two classes, denoted by the illchosen expressions, duties of perfect and of imperfect obligation; the latter being those in which, though the act is obligatory, the particular...
Page 300 - The internal sanction of duty, whatever our standard of duty may be, is one and the same — a feeling in our own mind ; a pain, more or less intense, attendant on violation of duty, which in properly cultivated moral natures rises, in the more serious cases, into shrinking from it as an impossibility.
Page 293 - ... other than oneself) from great and unmerited evil, and when the withholding can only be effected by denial. But in order that the exception may not extend itself beyond the need, and may have the least possible effect in weakening reliance on veracity, it ought to be...
Page 338 - We do not call anything wrong, unless we mean to imply that a person ought to be punished in some way or other for doing it; if not by law, by the opinion of his fellow-creatures ; if not by opinion, by the reproaches of his own conscience.
Page 288 - ... no known ethical standard decides an action to be good or bad because it is done by a good or a bad man, still less because done by an amiable, a brave, or a benevolent man, or the contrary. These considerations are relevant, not to the estimation of actions, but of persons ; and there is nothing in the utilitarian theory inconsistent with the fact that there are other things which interest us in persons besides the...
Page 363 - ... government, than the poor, and indeed would probably be successful in converting the poor into their slaves. Others, again, so far defer to the same conception of justice, as to maintain that all should pay an equal capitation tax for the protection of their persons (these being of equal value to all), and an unequal tax for the protection of their property, which is unequal. To this others reply, that the all of one man is as valuable to him as the all of another. From these confusions there...