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Single Idea 24094

[filed under theme 22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 1. Goodness / g. Consequentialism ]

Full Idea

How weakly human beings feel responsible for their indirect and distant effects! And how cruelly and exaggeratedly the closest effect that we exert pounces on us - the effect we see, for which our myopic vision is still just sharp enough!

Gist of Idea

Humans are vividly aware of short-term effects, and almost ignorant of the long-term ones

Source

Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 15[11])

Book Ref

Nietzsche,Friedrich: 'The Joyful Science, and 1881-82 fragments (v 6)', ed/tr. Del Caro,Adrian [Stanford 2023], p.478

A Reaction

This strikes me as both accurate and important, because consequentialist ethics is largely committed to judging by a very distorted image of their own objective.

The 34 ideas with the same theme [only good consequences matter in morality]:

23395 Mohists desire wealth, population and social order as the best consequences [Mozi, by Norden]
1562 It is right to lie to someone, to get them to take medicine they are reluctant to take [Anon (Diss)]
265 An action is only just if it is performed by someone with a just character and outlook [Plato]
109 Clearly perfect conduct will involve both good intention and good action [Aristotle]
5877 We judge people from their deeds because we cannot see their choices (which matter more) [Aristotle]
22555 The function of good men is to confer benefits [Aristotle]
1851 Good applies to goals, just as truth applies to ideas in the mind [Aquinas]
19366 You can't assess moral actions without referring to the qualities of character that produce them [Leibniz]
6233 A person isn't good if only tying their hands prevents their mischief, so the affections decide a person's morality [Shaftesbury]
6246 My action is not made good by a good effect, if I did not foresee and intend it [Hutcheson]
23674 If an attempted poisoning results in benefits, we still judge the agent a poisoner [Reid]
3712 A good will is not good because of what it achieves [Kant]
3725 The good of an action is in the mind of the doer, not the consequences [Kant]
6197 Morality involves duty and respect for law, not love of the outcome [Kant]
3767 Motive shows the worth of the agent, but not of the action [Mill]
2872 In the earliest phase of human history only consequences mattered [Nietzsche]
24094 Humans are vividly aware of short-term effects, and almost ignorant of the long-term ones [Nietzsche]
4509 Utilitarians prefer consequences because intentions are unknowable - but so are consequences! [Nietzsche]
23529 Conduct is not isolated from its effect on the moral code [Hart,HLA]
22458 Consequentialists can hurt the innocent in order to prevent further wickedness [Foot]
22460 Why might we think that a state of affairs can be morally good or bad? [Foot]
22461 Good outcomes are not external guides to morality, but a part of virtuous actions [Foot]
22464 The idea of a good state of affairs has no role in the thought of Aristotle, Rawls or Scanlon [Foot]
22457 If the aim is good outcomes, why are killings worse than deaths? [Scheffler, by Foot]
22408 Consequentialism assumes that situations can be compared [Williams,B]
22411 For a consequentialist massacring 7 million must be better than massacring 7 million and one [Williams,B]
4120 It is an error of consequentialism to think we just aim at certain states of affairs; we also want to act [Williams,B]
5122 Maybe consequentialism is a critique of ordinary morality, rather than describing it [Harman]
3785 You can't separate acts from the people performing them [Glover]
6698 Negative consequences are very hard (and possibly impossible) to assess [Graham]
23097 What matters for morality is the effects of action, not the psychological causes [Kekes]
7590 Consequentialism emphasises value rather than obligation in morality [Scruton]
4337 Teenagers are often quite wise about ideals, but rather stupid about consequences [Hursthouse]
6853 Consequentialism wrongly assumes a clear line between an act and its consequences [Crisp,R]