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Ideas for 'Parmenides', 'Meinong on Complexes and Assumptions' and 'Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82'

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23. Ethics / E. Utilitarianism / 1. Utilitarianism
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     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[030])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.