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    Pleasure is not the good — Carmelics
    Home/Virtue Ethics
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    Pleasure is not the good

    ConsequentialismVirtue Ethics
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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Pleasure is a byproduct of activity, not an end in itself — as Aristotle argues in NE X.4, it completes activity like a bloom completes youth.
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    • 2.What completes an end cannot itself be the end, since ends are pursued for their own sake while completions are pursued for the sake of something else.
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    • 3.Therefore pleasure's constitutive dependence on prior activity disqualifies it as the ultimate good, circumventing the objection by showing the added wisdom supplies the real good.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Mill's own distinction between higher and lower pleasures concedes that pleasures differ in kind, not merely quantity, undermining hedonism's unity as a single good.
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    • 2.If pleasures must be ranked by criteria external to pleasure itself — such as the judgment of a competent judge — then those criteria, not pleasure, constitute the operative standard of the good.
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    • 3.The regress of needing a non-pleasure standard to evaluate pleasures entails that the genuine good is whatever grounds that standard, not pleasure as such.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.If we imagine a life filled with pleasure and then mentally add wisdom to it, the result is made more desirable
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    • 2.The good is something that cannot be improved upon by adding anything to it
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    Topics

    Virtue EthicsConsequentialism

    Connections

    1 topic

    Truth & Knowledge1 linked

    Related

    If pleasures must be ranked by criteria external to pleasure itself — such as th...If we imagine a life filled with pleasure and then mentally add wisdom to it, th...Mill's own distinction between higher and lower pleasures concedes that pleasure...Pleasure is a byproduct of activity, not an end in itself — as Aristotle argues ...
    +4 moreShow less
    The good is something that cannot be improved upon by adding anything to itThe regress of needing a non-pleasure standard to evaluate pleasures entails tha...Therefore pleasure's constitutive dependence on prior activity disqualifies it a...What completes an end cannot itself be the end, since ends are pursued for their...

    Similar

    Modesty is [sometimes] not good and [sometimes] good83%Order is good80%Nothing is good that cannot be desired.79%[Modesty is good in other circumstances]75%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: aristotle-ethics
    View source passageHide passage
    It is clear, at any rate, that in Book X Aristotle gives a fuller account of what pleasure is than he had in Book VII. We should take note of a further difference between these two discussions: In Book X, he makes the point that pleasure is a good but not the good. He cites and endorses an argument given by Plato in the Philebus: If we imagine a life filled with pleasure and then mentally add wisdom to it, the result is made more desirable. But the good is something that cannot be improved upon
    Extraction notes

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

    Details

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