My purpose in what follows is not so much to defend the basic principle of utilitarianism as to indicate the form of it which seems most promising as a basic moral and political position. I shall take the principle of utility as offering a criterion for two different sorts of evaluation: first, the merits of acts of government, social policies, and social institutions, and secondly, the ultimate moral evaluation of the actions of individuals. I do not take it as implying (...) that the individual should live his life on the basis of constant evaluations of this sort. For there are different levels of decision making each with its appropriate criteria. For example, we each inevitably make many of our decisions from the point of view of our own personal self-fulfilment and this cannot regularly take a directly utilitarian form, nor should the utilitarian want it to do so. His claim is at most that we should sometimes review our life from the point of view of a kind of impersonal moral truth of a universalistic utilitarian character. (shrink)

The relationship between Bentham's ‘enunciative principle’ and his ‘censorial principle’ is famously problematic. The problem's solution is that each person has an overwhelming interest in living in a community in which they, like others, are liable to punishment for behaviour condemned by the censorial principle either by the institutions of the state or by the tribunal of public opinion. The senses in which Bentham did and did not think everyone selfish are examined, and a less problematic form of psychological hedonism (...) than Bentham's is proposed. (shrink)

As the editor noted in the last number Freddie Ayer, or Professor Sir Alfred Ayer, played a considerable part in launching the vast enterprise of the Bentham edition. It is fitting, therefore, that something be said in Utilitas about his achievement as a philosopher and the extent to which he falls within the same broad empiricist and utilitarian tradition to which Bentham and J. S. Mill belonged.

In the postscript to The Varieties of Religious Experience William James distinguishes two types of belief in the supernatural, conceived as an essential component in religion, crass or piecemeal supernaturalism, on the one hand, and refined supernaturalism on the other.

T.L.S. Sprigge; VIII*—Intrinsic Connectedness, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 88, Issue 1, 1 June 1988, Pages 129–146, https://doi.org/10.1093/.

This chapter contains sections titled: Definition of Idealism Main Idealist Thinkers Absolute Idealism Vindicated (1) Phenomenalism (2) The Physical World as Imaginative Construction (3) The Purely Structural View of the Physical World (4) Panpsychism.

T. L. S. Sprigge; I *—The Presidential Address: The Unreality of Time, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 92, Issue 1, 1 June 1992, Pages 1–20, htt.

The question whether an entity has rights is identified with that as to whether an intrinsic value resides in it which imposes obligations to foster it on those who can appreciate this value. There should be no difficulty in granting that animals have rights in this sense, but what of other natural objects and artifacts? It seems that various inanimate things, such as fine buildings and forests, often possess such intrinsic value, yet since they can only be fully actual in (...) an observing consciousness the most basic such right is that of being observed from time to time. That, at least, is true of them as phenomenal objects. There must, however, be a thing in itself behind the phenomenal object and sometimes this may possess an intrinsic value which gives rise to rights, not a matter of the need to be actualized in an observing consciousness, though it is extremely difficult to reach reliable conclusions here. (shrink)

As ethical attitudinists say, ethical statements cannot be strictly true or false, since they express wishes or attitudes, not beliefs. However, the wishes expressed by basic moral judgments about human rights are such that it is a necessary truth that those who know what human beings are have them, and those who do not acknowledge these rights show their lack of a living sense of human reality. The same goes for basic judgments about the rights of animals, and it is (...) blindness about the ontology of animal reality which lies behind the cruelty to animals inherent in vivisection and factory farming. One current source of this blindness may be the physicalist metaphysics which is typical of our day, and which should be sharply distinguished from metaphysical naturalism. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the position presented by Kierkegaard in his two related works: Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript, which were published under the pseudonym, Johannes Climacus. It is shown that in Fragments, Climacus merely tried out the idea of God incarnating himself to achieve mutual love with men in spite of their fallen state, but did not specify Christianity as proclaiming the realization of this idea. In Concluding Unscientific Postscript, the focus is more explicitly on Christianity. Kierkegaard’s most thorough (...) discussion of ethics, Works of Love, is also examined, which emphasizes the need for Christians to grow out of worldly self-love and embrace a life of suffering. (shrink)

This chapter presents the author’s own point of view. It is a form of absolute idealism quite close to that of F. H. Bradley but also influenced by Spinoza, Josiah Royce, and process philosophy. ‘Pantheistic’ may be a more appropriate term than ‘absolute’ idealism to dissociate it from any absurd reduction of Nature to the human experience of it. The nature of metaphysical truth, experience, panpsychism, ethics, problem of evil, and absolute idealism and religion are analyzed. It is claimed that (...) absolute idealism has a certain religious character of its own. (shrink)

Whitehead and Hartshorne are considered the founding fathers of process philosophy as a fully worked out metaphysic. Both believe that the basic stuff of the world is experience, which comes into being in what William James called ‘drops of experience’ or ‘momentary experiential wholes’. Both believe that each such momentary whole prehends earlier such wholes, and makes itself into a unitary reality with these prehended past wholes as its raw material. They also believe that creativity is a basic feature of (...) reality. Their views on process theology, proofs of God’s existence, and ethics are discussed. (shrink)

This chapter begins with an account of the life of Spinoza. It then discusses his great work, the Ethics, and the proof of its fundamental claim that there is just one substance, and that everything else which in any manner exists is a mode of it. There follows an account of Spinoza’s form of determinism and its ethical and religious significance and of his distinction between rational and irrational action. Finally there is a discussion of Spinoza’s views on institutionalized religion, (...) and on Jesus. The chapter ends by asking whether Spinozism offers a ‘personal religion’. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Language, Truth and Logic Later positions Notes Bibliography.

This chapter begins with a description of the life and early works of Bernard Bosanquet which show some remarkable insights into the future of Christianity. It then turns to his later work, particularly his Gifford Lectures. Its strange mixture of materialism and idealism is considered and explained. Accounts and evaluations are provided of his views on panpsychism, on the State, on the problem of evil, on teleology, and on how all things operate according to the kind of whole to which (...) they belong. His ethical outlook is charged with a lack of compassion and this is exhibited in his connection with the Charity Organization Society. (shrink)

Religion has been described in this book as ‘a truth to live by’. This last chapter considers with reference to each of the philosophers discussed at any length in this book whether his metaphysics could provide anyone who accepted it with such a ‘truth’. Each of them qualifies as religiously significant from this point of view. The truth of the system matters for anyone inclined to adopt it but what matters for others is its ethical effect upon him or her.

This introductory chapter starts the discussion by some general remarks on what makes a belief system a religious one and the criteria for calling something ‘God’. There is a brief discussion of Descartes and of Pascal and the relation between the expressions ‘the Absolute’ and ‘God’ is briefly considered.

Many thinkers have said that a God whose existence is argued for metaphysically would have no religious significance even if he existed. This book examines the God or Absolute which emerges in various metaphysical systems and asks whether he, she, or it could figure in any genuinely religious outlook. The systems studied are those of Spinoza, Hegel, T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley (very briefly), Bernard Bosanquet, Josiah Royce, A. N. Whitehead, Charles Hartshorne. There is also a chapter on Kierkegaard (...) as the most important critic of metaphysical religion (especially Hegelian Christianity). The book ends with a statement of a form of absolute or pantheistic idealism espoused by the author and an indication of what religious significance it may have. (shrink)

Bentham and Mill and probably most utilitarians have a good deal in common with Hobbes and Spinoza as moral thinkers. For they share a commitment to deriving ethics from the actual and normal motivitations of human beings as creatures of the natural world rather than, like Kant and many religious moralists, from some transcendent realm to the requirements of which natural man has a duty to submit without expecting any help therefrom in the satisfaction of his natural inclinations. In the (...) present context I shall call all such thinkers ethical naturalists, though I do not mean this expression in any very precise technical sense, only to indicate a commitment to somehow deriving morality from natural fact. (shrink)

This paper falls into two main parts. In the first I shall review some of the things Bradley said about Christianity as he conceived it. In the second I shall use this review to spell out more formally the logical relations between some main doctrines of Christianity and Bradley’s mature philosophy.

A theory of punishment should tell us not only when punishment is permissible but also when it is a duty. It is not clear whether McCloskey's retributivism is supposed to do this. His arguments against utilitarianism consist largely in examples of punishments unacceptable to the common moral consciousness but supposedly approved of by the consistent utilitarian. We remain unpersuaded to abandon our utilitarianism. The examples are often fanciful in character, a point which (pace McCloskey) does rob them of much of (...) their force. If there was no tension between utilitarian precepts and those which come naturally to plain men, utilitarianism could have no claim to provide a critique of moralities. The utilitarian's attitude to such tensions is somewhat complicated, but what is certain is that there is more room in his system for the sentiments to which McCloskey appeals against him than McCloskey realizes. We agree with McCloskey, however, on the absurdity of substituting rule?utilitarianism for act?utilitarianism as an answer to his attacks. The distinction itself may represent a conceptual confusion. In our view, indeed, unmodified act?utilitarianism provides the best moral basis for thought about punishment. (shrink)

In the postscript to The Varieties of Religious Experience William James distinguishes two types of belief in the supernatural, conceived as an essential component in religion, crass or piecemeal supernaturalism, on the one hand, and refined supernaturalism on the other.

Everyone interested in Bradley will be delighted at this excellently edited edition of his correspondence. My remit as a reviewer is to comment on the first of the two volumes of correspondence, which covers the years June 1872 to December 1904. My only complaint is that it would have been convenient to have a list of the letters, each with dates and correspondent, in the prefatory material.