Plato

2020 ◽  
pp. 24-33
Author(s):  
Terence Irwin
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Virtuous Person ◽  
Difficult Case ◽  
Rational Part ◽  
Human Good ◽  
Good For ◽  
Other Regarding

Plato rejects Socrates’ belief that knowledge of the good is sufficient for being virtuous; he argues that human souls have a non-rational part (emotions, impulses), and that the virtues require not only knowledge, but also the correct training of the non-rational part. He rejects Socrates’ belief that virtue is sufficient for happiness. Instead he argues that the virtuous person is always happier than anyone else. He defends this view in the most difficult case, the other-regarding virtue of justice. Plato recognizes that one may plausibly argue that my justice is good for other people, but harmful to me. None the less he rejects this argument. The appropriate relation between the rational and the non-rational parts of the soul promotes both the agent’s good and the good of others; that is why the just person is happier than anyone else. Those who suppose that the just person may be worse off by being just do not understand the character of the human good.

Are People More Important than the Other Animals?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine M. Korsgaard
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Good ◽  
Good For ◽  
Ultimate Purpose

This chapter criticizes the familiar idea that humans are more important than animals. After examining some reasons why we treat humans and animals differently, and showing that they do not imply the superior importance of humans, it argues that the claim of superior human importance is not so much false as (nearly) incoherent. Importance and goodness are “tethered” values: things are only important or good when they are important-to or good-for some creature. To be important or good absolutely is to be important-to or good-for all creatures. One kind of creature could be absolutely more important than others only if the fate of that kind of creature were more important to others than their own fates. Only a teleological picture of the world that made human good the ultimate purpose of the world could support the conclusion that humans are more important than the other animals.

Legalism and Humankind

1992 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-208
Author(s):  
Frank I. Michelman
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Theories ◽  
Human Good ◽  
Good For ◽  
Normative Argument

Prescriptive political and moral theories contain ideas about what human beings are like and about what, correspondingly, is good for them. Conceptions of human “nature” and corresponding human good enter into normative argument by way of support and justification. Of course, it is logically open for the ratiocinative traffic to run the other way. Strongly held convictions about the rightness or wrongness, goodness or badness, of certain social institutions or practices may help condition and shape one's responses to one or another set of propositions about what people are like and what, in consequence, they have reason to value.

Aristotle

2020 ◽  
pp. 34-50
Author(s):  
Terence Irwin
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
Virtuous Person ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Rational Part ◽  
Human Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Right

Aristotle agrees with Plato that virtue requires the cooperation of the rational and the non-rational parts of the soul, and that the virtuous person is always better off than the non-virtuous, even though virtue alone is not sufficient for happiness. To strengthen Plato’s argument for this claim, he offers a more detailed account of the nature of happiness, and of the relation between virtue and happiness. Since happiness is the supreme human good, it should be identified with rational activity in accordance with virtue in a complete life, in which external circumstances are favourable. A virtue of character is the appropriate agreement between the rational and the non-rational parts of the soul, aiming at fine action (i.e., action that promotes the common good). This requirement of appropriate agreement distinguishes virtue from continence (mere control of the rational over the non-rational part). To show that a life of virtue, so defined, promotes the agent’s happiness, Aristotle argues that one’s own happiness requires the right kind of friendship with others, in which one aims at the good of others for their own sake.

The Priority of the Good and the Contrapuntal Character of Aristotle’s Politics I

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-244
Author(s):  
Thomas W. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Human Good ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Good For

Abstract Politics I has been the subject of a number of textual questions about the relation of the Ethics to the Politics. These textual questions involve us in theoretical questions about the differences between contemporary and ancient conceptions of political rule. Resolving the exegetical challenges can help us clarify the theoretical differences. A fresh approach to the textual challenges reveals that Politics I has a contrapuntal character with two reinforcing movements. One explores why and how despotic conceptions of politics fail using case studies of despotic power: slavery and money-making. Aristotle shows dialectically how this despotic approach to rule undermines the requirements for political life. The other movement explores the character of natural human associations, culminating in the polis. The two movements converge in Aristotle’s claim about the centrality of the human good for political rule. This claim challenges modern social contract theory’s understanding of the differences between despotic and political rule.

Fellow Creatures

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine M. Korsgaard
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Moral Standing ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Good For ◽  
Treat All ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship

This book argues that we are obligated to treat all sentient animals as “ends in themselves.” Drawing on a theory of the good derived from Aristotle, it offers an explanation of why animals are the sorts of beings who have a good. Drawing on a revised version of Kant’s argument for the value of humanity, it argues that rationality commits us to claiming the standing of ends in ourselves in two senses. As autonomous beings, we claim to be ends in ourselves when we claim the standing to make laws for ourselves and each other. As beings who have a good, we also claim to be ends in ourselves when we take the things that are good for us to be good absolutely and so worthy of pursuit. The first claim commits us to joining with other autonomous beings in relations of reciprocal moral lawmaking. The second claim commits us to treating the good of every sentient animal as something of absolute importance. The book also argues that human beings are not more important than, superior to, or better off than the other animals. It criticizes the “marginal cases” argument and advances a view of moral standing as attaching to the atemporal subjects of lives. It offers a non-utilitarian account of the relationship between the good and pleasure, and addresses questions about the badness of extinction and about whether we have the right to eat animals, experiment on them, make them work for us, and keep them as pets.

Some Ancient Greek and Twentieth-Century Theories of Value

2020 ◽  
Vol 97 (3) ◽  
pp. 374-385
Author(s):  
Richard Kraut
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Human Good ◽  
Good For ◽  
Definition Of

Abstract Plato puts goodness at the center of all practical thinking but offers no definition of it and implies that philosophy must find one. Aristotle demurs, arguing that there is no such thing as universal goodness. What we need, instead, is an understanding of the human good. Plato and Aristotle are alike in the attention they give to the category of the beneficial, and they agree that since some things are beneficial only as means, there must be others that are non-derivatively beneficial. When G. E. Moore proposed in the early twentieth century that goodness is, as Plato had said, the foundation of ethics, he rejected not only the assumption that goodness needs a definition, but also that goodness is beneficial – that is, good for someone. This article traces the development of this debate as it plays out in the writings of Prichard, Ross, Geach, Thomson, and Scanlon.

The Value Gap

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen
Keyword(s):  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
The Other ◽  
Value Conflicts ◽  
Central Idea ◽  
Good For ◽  
Nuanced Understanding

Evaluations about what is good (period) and what is good for someone shape much of ethics. The two value notions ‘good’ and ‘good for’ mark the deep-rooted divide between the impersonally and personally valuable—the value divide on which The Value Gap centres. Past and contemporary philosophers have argued it is a mistake to believe that these two value notions give rise to unresolvable value conflicts. This book argues that they are wrong. Part I considers two views to that effect, which share the idea that one of the two value notions is either flawed or at best conceptually dependent on the other notion. The views disagree, however, about whether it is good or good-for that is the flawed concept. These approaches deny the central idea of this work, namely that goodness and goodness-for are independent value notions that cannot be fully understood in terms of one another. Part II provides an analysis of impersonal and personal goodness in terms of a fitting-attitude analysis. By elaborating a more nuanced understanding of the analysis’ key elements—reasons and pro- and con-attitudes—the book challenges a common idea, namely that our beliefs about practical and moral dilemmas can be dismissed as being conceptually confused. The gap between favouring what is good and what is good for someone appears insurmountable.

scholarly journals The harm principle and the greatest happiness principle: the missing link

2014 ◽  
Vol 55 (129) ◽  
pp. 99-110
Author(s):  
Cinara Nahra
Keyword(s):  
Harm Principle ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Missing Link ◽  
Prudential Value ◽  
Classic Problem ◽  
Other Regarding ◽  
Legal Force ◽  
The Harm Principle

In this article I present a possible solution for the classic problem of the apparent incompatibility between Mill's Greatest Happiness Principle and his Principle of Liberty arguing that in the other-regarding sphere the judgments of experience and knowledge accumulated through history have moral and legal force, whilst in the self-regarding sphere the judgments of the experienced people only have prudential value and the reason for this is the idea according to which each of us is a better judge than anyone else to decide what causes us pain and which kind of pleasure we prefer (the so-called epistemological argument). Considering that the Greatest Happiness Principle is nothing but the aggregate of each person's happiness, given the epistemological claim we conclude that, by leaving people free even to cause harm to themselves, we still would be maximizing happiness, so both principles (the Greatest Happiness Principle and the Principle of Liberty) could be compatible.

scholarly journals Between health and pleasure

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 182
Author(s):  
Hélène Jawhara Piñer
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Healthy Food ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Good For ◽  
Medical Treatises ◽  
Medical Recommendations

Between pleasure and health, why should we have to choose? Though this combination did not mainly concern the culinary tradition of the Christian Middle Ages, on the other hand, it fits fully into an Arabic tradition of both East and West of the said period. In the late Middle Ages under Islamic domination, doctors, agronomists or botanists, offer –through multiple medical treatises on food or agriculture–, culinary recipes good for health. Thus, for Ibn Rush, Ibn Rāzī, Avicenne or Maimonides –as for many others scholars–, foodstuffs play a key role in its benefits for health. In this way, cookbooks occupy pride of place in this alliance between health and cooking. Therefore, the culinary recipes of half a dozen cookbooks of the Muslim Middle East dating back to the 10th-14th centuries, suggest this combination: listen to your body, take pleasure when you eat, do it according to your health and eat in a measured way. Cookbooks of the Iberian Peninsula written in Arabic in the Dar al-Islam testify to the transmission –from the Muslim Middle East– of the medico-culinary tradition based on humoral theory and culinary practices. This paper will focus on the place occupied by dietetic in the first known cookbook of the Iberian Peninsula: the Kitāb al-ṭabīẖ [The cookbook]. Its anonymous author quote Galen and Hippocrates that, therefore, inscribes the Kitāb al-ṭabīẖ in the influence of the Greek dietetic tradition. Furthermore, the knowledge of the anonymous author concerning medicine, dietetic, and cuisine is undeniable. Through half a thousand recipes, I will first present a reflection on this source commonly named “The Cookbook”, and then underscore the proportion of dishes containing medical recommendations. Then I will offer an approach to frequently used foodstuffs in the recipes where health seems to take precedence over the pleasure of eating the dish. Curing the illness, avoiding it, take pleasure, what is the goal of the culinary recipes? Thus, the aim is to identify both the most common dietetics recommendations and the disease that seem the most important to avoid. Finally, I will provide a glimpse of one of the most characteristic culinary recipes of this alliance health/pleasure that can offer the Andalusian cookbook. A brief reflection can be conducted on the current phenomenon that shows the willingness to return to healthy food which recommendations can be found in the cookbooks dating from the Middle Ages.

scholarly journals ABUSE OF THE RIGHT TO INITIATE BANKRUPTCY PROCEEDINGS

2020 ◽  
pp. 259-264
Author(s):  
В. В. Дутка
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Legal Entity ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Bankruptcy Procedure ◽  
Good For ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Right ◽  
Ordinary Citizens ◽  
Legal Entities

The relevance of the article is that society’s attitude to the bankruptcy procedure is ambiguous: ordinary citizens who have never been involved in bankruptcy proceedings often perceive it as a certain negative phenomenon that should be avoided and avoided. On the other hand, for many debtors, bankruptcy becomes the “lifeline” with which they can repay their claims to creditors and start financial life “from scratch”. At the same time, it should be noted that many debtors and creditors use the bankruptcy procedure not for the purposes provided by the legislator in the relevant legal norms, but to satisfy only their own interests, to the detriment of the interests of other parties to the case. In this regard, the study of the abuse of the right to initiate bankruptcy proceedings becomes relevant. The article is devoted to the study of abuse of the right to initiate bankruptcy proceedings. The purpose of the article is to study the abuse of the right to initiate bankruptcy proceedings and highlight the author’s vision of this issue. According to the results of the study, the author concludes that the application to the debtor of bankruptcy procedures can be both good for the debtor and to the detriment of the interests of his creditors. Entities that could potentially abuse the right to initiate bankruptcy proceedings are: creditors of the debtor – a legal entity, as well as debtors – legal entities, individuals and individuals – entrepreneurs. The fact of exemption of debtors from the court fee for filing an application to initiate bankruptcy proceedings is not only an unjustified luxury for our state, but also only contributes to the abuse of the right to initiate bankruptcy proceedings by unscrupulous debtors. In order to reduce the number of cases of abuse of the right to initiate bankruptcy proceedings, the author justifies the need to complicate the conditions for opening bankruptcy proceedings, for example, by returning the conditions provided by the Law of Ukraine “On Restoration of Debtor’s Solvency or Recognition of Debtor’s Bankruptcy”.

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