Author: Francis Herbert Bradley

Publisher: Theclassics.Us

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 22

ISBN-13: 9781230439600

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1877 edition. Excerpt: ...470, 47a), is the Rule of Benevolence.. 'Here we are supposed to judge that there is something intrinsically desirable--some result which it would be reasonable for each individual to seek for himself if he considered himself alone. Let us call this the individual's Good or Welfare: then what Clarke urges is, that the Good of any one individual cannot be more intrinsically desirable, because it is his, than the equal Good of any other individual.' (360.) 'I cannot regard the fulfilment of my desires, or my own happiness, as intrinsically more desirable (or more to be regarded vby me as a rational end) than the equal happiness of any one else.' (364.) Mr. Sidgwick proceeds: 'But now, of these two propositions, the first is a necessary postulate of all ethical systems, being an expression of what is involved in the mere conception of objective rightness and wrongness of conduct, while the second is the fundamental principle of that particular system which (in Book I.) we called Utilitarianism.' The first of these propositions, I remark, is not an expression of what is involved but of what is explicitly stated in 'objective rightness;' and here again in the second the phrases 'desirable' and rational end' postulate abstraction from 'the individuality of the individual.' In respect of the rules we have no right to distinguish one individual from another, and this second proposition comes to no more than 'X cannot regard his own happiness as more desirable than the equal happiness of X, ' which seems to me either tautological or nonsensical1. As Mr. Sidgwick says, 'This seems to be as much a selfevident truth as the principle of Equity' (360). I agree with him in this point. My objection is that it is self-evident in the sense of having the..