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Morality: Building on the Summum Bonum Discourse, Color Key - Coggle…

- - - - “The motive has nothing to do with the morality of the action, though much with the worth of the agent” (109)
        
        "All action is for the sake of some end, and rules of action, it seems natural to suppose, must take their whole character and color from the end to which they are subservient." (96)
      - Universality
        
        From the formation of "an indissoluble association between his own happiness and the good of the whole" (108)
        
        From Self-Interest
        
        "The great majority of good actions are intended not for the benefit of the world, but for that of individuals, of which the world is made up" (109)
      - Versus: Virtue (ie ends-based logic)
        
        Virtue in the summum bonum tradition takes on its own importance as a motive to the highest good. Unlike utilitarianism, there is an emphasis on the importance of the motive (towards the end) and the attainment of the end itself. In utilitarianism, all that matter is the attainment of the end (utility/happiness).
    - - Happiness: "pleasure and the absence of pain" (99)
    - - How can objectivity be found?
        
        NOT be found in pure reason: "One cannot act according to determinate principles in order to be happy" (28)
        
        "Empirical counsels, e.g. of diet, frugality, politeness, reserve, etc., which are shown by experience to contribute on the average the most to well-being." (28)
        
        "The problem of determining certainly and universally what action will promote the happiness of a rational being is completely insoluble" (28)
        
        "regarding such action no imperative that in the strictest sense could command what is to be done to make one happy is possible" (28)
        
        These "empirical counsels" or "counsels...of reason" closely relate to virtue in the sense that they are habitual practices that lead to summum bonum.
        
        Utilitarianism is partially built upon these "empirical counsels," but does not necessarily subscribe to these more traditional virtues. It, however, uses empiricism and "experience" to quantify utility in order to realize society-wide happiness.
  - - - “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law” (30)
        
        Supreme Practical Principle
        
        “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means” (36)
        
        Kingdom of Ends
        
        Duty
        
        .
        
        Duty is connected to the "practical law" element of the categorical imperative
        
        "a practical, unconditioned necessity of action" (33)
        
        Universality element of categorical imperative is also critical
        
        "No system of ethics requires that the sole motive of all we do shall be a feeling of duty; on the contrary, ninety-nine hundredths of all our actions are done from other motives, and rightly so done if the rule of duty does not condemn them." (109)
        
        There is only one categorical imperative:
        
        "But when he begins to deduce from this precept any of the actual duties of morality, he [Kant] fails, almost grotesquely to show that there would be any contradiction, any logical (not to say physical) impossibility, in the adoption by all rational beings of the most outrageously immoral rules of conduct" (97)
      - "A priori synthetic practical proposition" (29)
        
        A priori: "we do not here have the advantage of having its [i.e. the categorical imperative's] reality given in experience and consequently of thus being obligated merely to explain its possibility rather than establish it." (29)
        
        "Practical Law": "An unconditional command does not leave the will free to choose the opposite at its own liking. Consequently, only such a command carries with it that necessity which is demanded from law." (29)
  - - - DUTY: Categorical Imperative
      - UTILITY: "Greatest Happiness Principle"
      - How?
        
        REASON
        
        Platonic View: Through a process of Platonic ascent according to the Divided Line, a person can grasp the form of the good.
        
        Christian View: The good can only be grasped through God's grace
        
        VIRTUE
        
        Aristotelian doctrine of the mean: virtue is the mean between any two extremes and should be cultivated through habituation
        
        More Generally: Means of attaining Summum Bonum (conceived through reason)
    - - How can the Summum Bonum attain a truly universalized definition?
      - Kant's Critique:
      - Summum Bonum is subjective because reason, too, is subjective.
      - Mill's Critique: