Philosophy Essay - Is it possible to explain human morality by means of just one principle
Philosophy Essay – Is it possible to explain human morality by means of just one principle?
The top group of moral theories are very in-depth and each of them tries to explain the whole of human morality within their own theory. This is an extremely hard task to accomplish, the whole of the workings of human morality within a few simple rules and ideas. There have been many questions asked and objections raised about all of these theories, however, many of them do come close to a well rounded ideal.
The argument that brought about the main distinction in moral theories first appeared in ancient Greece. The famous nomos - physis debate spurned philosophers who began to believe that morality could be reduced down to the view point of an individual person. Thos suggested that everyone has their own set of values and that meant that nothing was wrong or right as it was all based on custom. For example, the people of Ionia used to sell their daughters off as prostitutes so they could collect money for their wedding. Was this right or wrong? In Ionia it seemed to be a perfectly fine thing to do, maybe suggesting that morality is relative and is determined by local communities and customs. Either side of this debate are the moral theories. Deontological ethics are placed more on the physis way of thinking, with it being concerned with the rules for moral behaviour, independent of individuals and their selfish desires. Relativism can be rooted to being selfish, as the moral ideas are brought about the individual mind and therefore it is possible for some one to decide that all their moral standards are in place to help themselves and not others. Contractarianism is a theory that is based on selfishness, it states that everyone is selfish and they are just trying to do better for themselves in their own lives, but in order to maximise this the must try and enlist the help of others to help them achieve this ultimately selfish goal. A slogan which could interpret this theory fundamentally is “If you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” Utilitarianism plainly states that maximising happiness is the best way to go about living our lives. This theory, without investigating it deeply is clearly the best moral theory, maximising happiness? Surely that is the best way of living, because if everyone is happy, then that is a good way to live. But if we really look into the theory we will see the problems that arise from trying to maximise happiness.
Pleasure is the main driving force behind utilitarianism is pleasure. The strive for pleasure sums up the whole theory, if we can produce as much pleasure as we can than the world would be a better place. But it calls into conflict the relationship between pleasure and goodness. Morality is trying to draw a distinction between the good and the bad. How does pleasure have to be good? People’s pleasure may contain an evil that we all condemn in everyday life. Plato raises the point of having bad pleasures, sadism being the obvious example. In the time of Plato and Socrates, pleasure-seeking by most was seen as animalistic. Socrates saw pleasure as just a by-product of an action being completed, and he said the need drove us to perform the action not the pleasure we will gain out of the completion. He saw pleasure addiction as a leaky jar, you fill it up and as it begins to leak it constantly needs toping up. These earlier philosophers saw it as humiliating to be constantly looking for pleasure. Jeremy Bentham, one of the pioneers of the utilitarianism theory, made a clear distinction between the pleasure of ourselves and the pleasure of others. He said that the seeking of pleasure at the expense of others is wicked, i.e. selfishness, the aim of achieving pleasure for everybody is the aim of morality. He used the fact that we dislike pain and enjoy pleasure to base his theory on. Therefore we look to create as much pleasure, which everybody likes and the least amount of pain, which everyone dislikes. This theory mixes altruism (self-sacrifice), with hedonism to make a practical theory. The theory has been refined and is now to just do the best and try and maximise happiness, not to increase happiness, but to maximise it. Utilitarianism is also centred entirely on consequences, leaving completely out intentions; something can be good even it had evil intentions and a good outcome. It means that people’s intentions, their feelings and even their character does not matter, just their actions define whether they are a good person or not. So therefore, when judging an action the only thing that comes into account is the consequence of that particular action. Despite this being a very altruistic theory with its central theme being based upon the happiness of others and general happiness, there are quite a few problems as far as this being the one principle on which to base all of human morality. A few main problems are based around the way in which utilitarianists calculate how to make the best decision. They have a way of calculating the happiness of others and then adding up all the happiness that would be created by making a certain decision. Say, for example that we were told to distribute £200 to a group of 20 people to create the most happiness. If we evenly distribute it, then everyone gets £10 and say they get a ‘happiness point’ of 5 each because they are quite happy that they’ve been given £10 for nothing. Then again, if we give one person in the group who is particularly hard off all the money he gets 150 ‘happiness points’ because he needs that money to pay for him to live. Therefore the money would go to him as more happiness has been created by giving the money to him than spreading the money out evenly. If the whole group were strict utilitarianists, they would not mind that decision as the happiness has been maximised, but as normal human beings, they would be moved by the unfairness of giving it to just one person. There are also other problems that have arisen due to this calculating the happiness method, for instance the coliseum in ancient Rome. A large portion of the city went to the coliseum quite regularly to watch a gladiator be ripped to shreds by another gladiator or a wild animal. That is a horrible way to die, and must create a large number of negative ‘happiness points’, for the gladiator on the losing side. However, a large number of people in the audience loved to watch this, the capacity was something around 50,000 people and the ‘happiness points’ created by watching this man being brutally killed far surpass the number of negative ‘happiness points’ created by the pain involved in the gladiators death. Does this make it right? Does it make it morally correct to place a man in an arena to watch him die because other people enjoy it? One more problem case, there is a tramp in a village that everyone dislikes. The tramp has no friends and in his sleep you murder him and take his body away and dump it somewhere. He doesn’t know what hit him and they villagers wake up the next day just thinking he has moved on to another village. Everyone in the village is happy because the tramp has left and is not disturbing them, and he didn’t know what had hit him. Once again in utilitarian eyes I have done the best thing possible by maximising the happiness. Is it right? It still seems evidently wrong. This also raises another problem, death. What value can you place on death; can you give a calculation for death? What if you did not even know that your life was being taken from you? It is hard to place a value on a painless, unknown death even though it is very clearly wrong.
