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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Natural but non-necessary desires need not be pursued. — Carmelics
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    Home/Virtue Ethics
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    Natural but non-necessary desires need not be pursued.

    ConsequentialismVirtue Ethics
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Natural but non-necessary desires (e.g., desire for expensive food) vary pleasure but are not required to remove or ward off pain.
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    • 2.Only desires whose frustration causes pain need to be satisfied to achieve the blessed life.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Aristotle argues in the Nicomachean Ethics that eudaimonia requires the active exercise of virtuous capacities, not mere freedom from pain.
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    • 2.Many natural non-necessary desires (e.g., for aesthetic beauty or friendship beyond utility) are partly constitutive of a flourishing human life.
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    • 3.A life that systematically suppresses non-necessary natural desires may thereby fail to actualize the distinctively human excellences that define the good life.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Mill's higher pleasures doctrine holds that the quality of satisfaction matters, not merely its pain-relieving function.
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    • 2.If non-necessary desires track genuinely higher-order goods, their pursuit is instrumentally and intrinsically rational regardless of pain-removal.
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    Topics

    Virtue EthicsConsequentialism

    Related

    A life that systematically suppresses non-necessary natural desires may thereby ...Aristotle argues in the Nicomachean Ethics that eudaimonia requires the active e...If non-necessary desires track genuinely higher-order goods, their pursuit is in...Many natural non-necessary desires (e.g., for aesthetic beauty or friendship bey...
    +3 moreShow less
    Mill's higher pleasures doctrine holds that the quality of satisfaction matters,...Natural but non-necessary desires (e.g., desire for expensive food) vary pleasur...Only desires whose frustration causes pain need to be satisfied to achieve the b...

    Similar

    Natural but non-necessary desires (e.g., desire for expensive food) va...84%Morality does not require us to seek goals that are unachievable.81%Understanding which desires are necessary, natural-but-not-necessary, ...81%Conforming to a non-desire based principle like the CI is a further, s...79%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: ethics-ancient
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    In the Letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus begins by making a distinction among desires. Some desires are empty or groundless and others are natural; the natural are further subdivided into the merely natural and the necessary. Finally, the necessary are those necessary for happiness, those necessary for the body’s freedom from distress, and those necessary for life itself (Letter to Menoeceus 127). A helpful scholiast (cf. Principal Doctrines XXIX) gives us some examples; necessary desires are ones t
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit