BRIEF NOTES ON REASONS FOR ACTION IN JOHN STUART MILL’S UTILITARIAN ETHICS
Our aim in this essay is to make some reflections on John Stuart Mill’s utilitarian ethics’ possible contributions about the discussion on reasons for action. We tried to do this mainly exposing the arguments from the chapters “What utilitarianism is” and “Of the ultimate sanction of the principle o...
| Autor: | |
|---|---|
| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2022 |
| País: | Brasil |
| Institución: | Universidade de Brasília (UnB) |
| Repositorio: | Pólemos (Brasília) |
| Idioma: | portugués |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:ojs.pkp.sfu.ca:article/44667 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/polemos/article/view/44667 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Razões para agir. Utilitarismo. Consequencialismo. Agência humana. Racionalidade prática. Reasons for action. Utilitarianism. Consequentialism. Human agency. Practical rationality. |
| Sumario: | Our aim in this essay is to make some reflections on John Stuart Mill’s utilitarian ethics’ possible contributions about the discussion on reasons for action. We tried to do this mainly exposing the arguments from the chapters “What utilitarianism is” and “Of the ultimate sanction of the principle of Utility” from his “Utilitarianism”. Our efforts for this attempt are spent at three different ways: in the first two, we tried to reconstruct the argument put forward by the Victorian philosopher and, from this basis, the third way in turn consists in postulate some thoughts about these issues that in according to our observations can be asked in order to comprehend the structuring of human agency. In summary we argue that for Stuart Mill rationality of action constitutes itself in that: if happiness is the greatest good, individuals act for their own happiness, and because of that they seek their own good; however, as this is not an agent-relative perspective but insofar a neutral-agent one, this reasoning must be extended to the general scope. Thus, understanding happiness in the sense that it is a design of every single human act, Stuart Mill consequentialism argues regarding the whole general amount of happiness and not only subjective self-realization of a particular human being. Actions, therefore, which in the personal domain do not aim at anything other than the happiness or good of the own individual him/herself, have a rational justification to be guided in order to what promotes the good or general happiness. |
|---|