Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Diogenes Laertius, Danielle Macbeth and Friedrich Nietzsche

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4 ideas

23. Ethics / E. Utilitarianism / 1. Utilitarianism
In Homer it is the contemptible person, not the harmful person, who is bad [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: In Homer, both the Trojan and the Greek are good. Not the man who inflicts harm on us, but the man who is contemptible, is bad.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 045)
Talk of 'utility' presupposes that what is useful to people has been defined [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: All this chat about 'utility' already presupposes that what is useful to people has been defined: in other words, useful for what! i.e. the people's purposes are already taken for granted.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[030])
     A reaction: When they stopped talking about utility they talked instead about 'benefit', but the same objection applies. This is the problem of paternalism in Utilitarianism, which leads to Preference Utilitarianism, which probably doesn't help.
23. Ethics / E. Utilitarianism / 3. Motivation for Altruism
Utilitarianism criticises the origins of morality, but still believes in it as much as Christians [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: Utilitarianism (socialism, democracy) criticises the origins of moral evaluations, but it believes them just as much as the Christian does.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §253)
     A reaction: It is a critique of both utilitarianism and Kantian deontology that they seem to rest on unquestioned assumptions about what has value (pleasure, happiness, reason). I think Aristotle offers a better answer to this problem than 'divine' authority.
The morality of slaves is the morality of utility [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: Slave morality is essentially the morality of utility.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §261)