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Single Idea 7407

[filed under theme 22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 1. Nature of Ethics / d. Ethical theory ]

Full Idea

We call good and evil the things that please and displease us; and so we call goodness and badness, the qualities of powers whereby they do it.

Gist of Idea

Good and evil are what please us; goodness and badness the powers causing them

Source

Thomas Hobbes (The Elements of Law [1640], I.7.3), quoted by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Ch.2

Book Ref

Tuck,Richard: 'Hobbes: a very short introduction' [OUP 2002], p.62

A Reaction

It is pointed out by Tuck that this is just like his treatment of colour terms (values as secondary qualities). I would have thought it was obvious that I could say 'x pleases me, although I disapprove of it' (e.g. black humour).

The 101 ideas from Thomas Hobbes

23609 I act justly if I follow my Prince in an apparently unjust war, and refusing to fight would be injustice [Hobbes]
17233 Particulars contain universal things [Hobbes]
17234 Motion is losing one place and acquiring another [Hobbes]
17235 A cause is the complete sum of the features which necessitate the effect [Hobbes]
17236 Words are not for communication, but as marks for remembering what we have learned [Hobbes]
17238 Science aims to show causes and generation of things [Hobbes]
17237 Definitions of things that are caused must express their manner of generation [Hobbes]
17239 Definition is resolution of names into successive genera, and finally the difference [Hobbes]
17240 Definitions are the first step in philosophy [Hobbes]
17241 A defined name should not appear in the definition [Hobbes]
17242 'Petitio principii' is reusing the idea to be defined, in disguised words [Hobbes]
17243 Past times can't exist anywhere, apart from in our memories [Hobbes]
17244 To make a whole, parts needn't be put together, but can be united in the mind [Hobbes]
17245 A part of a part is a part of a whole [Hobbes]
14960 Bodies are independent of thought, and coincide with part of space [Hobbes]
16670 Accidents are just modes of thinking about bodies [Hobbes]
16621 Accidents are not parts of bodies (like blood in a cloth); they have accidents as things have a size [Hobbes]
17246 Some accidental features are permanent, unless the object perishes [Hobbes]
17248 If a whole body is moved, its parts must move with it [Hobbes]
17247 The only generalities or universals are names or signs [Hobbes]
17250 If you separate the two places of one thing, you will also separate the thing [Hobbes]
17249 If you separated two things in the same place, you would also separate the places [Hobbes]
16582 We can imagine a point swelling and contracting - but not how this could be done [Hobbes]
17251 The feature which picks out or names a thing is usually called its 'essence' [Hobbes]
16600 Prime matter is body considered with mere size and extension, and potential [Hobbes]
17252 Acting on a body is either creating or destroying a property in it [Hobbes]
17253 Change is nothing but movement [Hobbes]
16734 The complete power of an event is just the aggregate of the qualities that produced it [Hobbes]
17254 An effect needs a sufficient and necessary cause [Hobbes]
17255 Two bodies differ when (at some time) you can say something of one you can't say of the other [Hobbes]
16790 A body is always the same, whether the parts are together or dispersed [Hobbes]
17257 It is the same river if it has the same source, no matter what flows in it [Hobbes]
12853 Some individuate the ship by unity of matter, and others by unity of form [Hobbes]
17256 If a new ship were made of the discarded planks, would two ships be numerically the same? [Hobbes]
16794 As an infant, Socrates was not the same body, but he was the same human being [Hobbes]
17258 If we just say one, one, one, one, we don't know where we have got to [Hobbes]
2948 Sensation is merely internal motion of the sentient being [Hobbes]
17259 'Force' is the quantity of movement imposed on something [Hobbes]
17260 Imagination is just weakened sensation [Hobbes]
17261 Apart from pleasure and pain, the only emotions are appetite and aversion [Hobbes]
19373 A 'conatus' is an initial motion, experienced by us as desire or aversion [Hobbes, by Arthur,R]
16789 Only supernatural means could annihilate anything once it had being [Hobbes]
7396 Hobbes created English-language philosophy [Hobbes, by Tuck]
7410 Self-preservation is basic, and people judge differently about that, implying ethical relativism [Hobbes, by Tuck]
7409 Hobbes shifted from talk of 'the good' to talk of 'rights' [Hobbes, by Tuck]
7408 It is an error that reason should control the passions, which give right guidance on their own [Hobbes, by Tuck]
7411 The attributes of God just show our inability to conceive his nature [Hobbes]
16688 Evidence is conception, which is imagination, which proceeds from the senses [Hobbes]
16638 The qualities of the world are mere appearances; reality is the motions which cause them [Hobbes]
7405 Experience can't prove universal truths [Hobbes]
7407 Good and evil are what please us; goodness and badness the powers causing them [Hobbes]
6212 Lust involves pleasure, and also the sense of power in pleasing others [Hobbes]
6211 Laughter is a sudden glory in realising the infirmity of others, or our own formerly [Hobbes]
6208 Conceptions and apparitions are just motion in some internal substance of the head [Hobbes]
6209 There is no absolute good, for even the goodness of God is goodness to us [Hobbes]
6210 Life has no end (not even happiness), because we have desires, which presuppose a further end [Hobbes]
6213 A man cannot will to will, or will to will to will, so the idea of a voluntary will is absurd [Hobbes]
8014 Resolve a complex into simple elements, then reconstruct the complex by using them [Hobbes, by MacIntyre]
5337 For Hobbes the Golden Rule concerns not doing things, whereas Jesus encourages active love [Hobbes, by Flanagan]
20484 We should obey the laws of nature, provided other people are also obeying them [Hobbes, by Wolff,J]
7573 The legal positivism of Hobbes said law is just formal or procedural [Hobbes, by Jolley]
19764 Hobbes attributed to savages the passions which arise in a law-bound society [Hobbes, by Rousseau]
20566 Hobbes says the people voluntarily give up their sovereignty, in a contract with a ruler [Hobbes, by Oksala]
20485 Hobbes says people are roughly equal; Locke says there is no right to impose inequality [Hobbes, by Wolff,J]
2356 Appearance and reality can be separated by mirrors and echoes [Hobbes]
2357 Dreams must be false because they seem absurd, but dreams don't see waking as absurd [Hobbes]
2358 Freedom is absence of opposition to action; the idea of 'free will' is absurd [Hobbes]
2363 Reason is usually general, but deliberation is of particulars [Hobbes]
2360 'Good' is just what we desire, and 'Evil' what we hate [Hobbes]
2362 The will is just the last appetite before action [Hobbes]
2361 If fear of unknown powers is legal it is religion, if it is illegal it is superstition [Hobbes]
2359 Desire and love are the same, but in the desire the object is absent, and in love it is present [Hobbes]
2364 Causation is only observation of similar events following each other, with nothing visible in between [Hobbes]
2365 Religion is built on ignorance and misinterpretation of what is unknown or frightening [Hobbes]
2367 In time of war the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short [Hobbes]
2366 There is not enough difference between people for one to claim more benefit than another [Hobbes]
2368 Men's natural desires are no sin, and neither are their actions, until law makes it so [Hobbes]
2374 In the violent state of nature, the merest suspicion is enough to justify breaking a contract [Hobbes]
2371 A contract is a mutual transfer of rights [Hobbes]
2372 The person who performs first in a contract is said to 'merit' the return, and is owed it [Hobbes]
2375 Suspicion will not destroy a contract, if there is a common power to enforce it [Hobbes]
2369 If we seek peace and defend ourselves, we must compromise on our rights [Hobbes]
2370 All voluntary acts aim at some good for the doer [Hobbes]
2373 The first performer in a contract is handing himself over to an enemy [Hobbes]
2383 Virtues are a means to peaceful, sociable and comfortable living [Hobbes]
2376 Injustice is the failure to keep a contract, and justice is the constant will to give what is owed [Hobbes]
2378 Belief in an afterlife is based on poorly founded gossip [Hobbes]
2380 Punishment should only be for reform or deterrence [Hobbes]
2377 No one who admitted to not keeping contracts could ever be accepted as a citizen [Hobbes]
2382 Someone who keeps all his contracts when others are breaking them is making himself a prey to others [Hobbes]
2379 If there is a good reason for breaking a contract, the same reason should have stopped the making of it [Hobbes]
23987 The 'simple passions' are appetite, desire, love, aversion, hate, joy, and grief [Hobbes, by Goldie]
6214 Liberty and necessity are consistent, as when water freely flows, by necessity [Hobbes]
7559 Every part of the universe is body, and non-body is not part of it [Hobbes]
8015 Hobbes wants a contract to found morality, but shared values are needed to make a contract [MacIntyre on Hobbes]
8016 Fear of sanctions is the only motive for acceptance of authority that Hobbes can think of [MacIntyre on Hobbes]
6215 'Contingent' means that the cause is unperceived, not that there is no cause [Hobbes]
16620 A chair is wood, and its shape is the form; it isn't 'compounded' of the matter and form [Hobbes]
16622 Essence is just an artificial word from logic, giving a way of thinking about substances [Hobbes]
2385 If a man suddenly develops an intention of doing something, the cause is out of his control, not in his will [Hobbes]
2384 Those actions that follow immediately the last appetite are voluntary [Hobbes]