APPLIED ETHICS

DR ERWIN
Class 2, Reading Set 2

Aristotle:
1. For Aristotle, how many kinds of virtue are there? How do you encourage
someone to acquire a certain disposition or character like courage or temperance
(temperance=appropriately responsive to physical pleasures); how precise and
exacting can we hope to be in determining fixed rules for our behavior? What
‘destroys’ moral qualities?

2. What part do pleasure and pain play with moral qualities? For Aristotle, what is
moral goodness? For Aristotle, is it possible to do virtuous actions ‘by accident;’
what three ingredients are needed for an action to be truly done morally? For
acquiring the virtues, of what value is knowledge or theory? How does someone
actually become just or become temperate (rightly disposed to physical
pleasure)?

3. For Aristotle, are the virtues feelings, capacities or dispositions? Please give
examples of what he means by each one of these three. Please finish the
following quotation: “Virtue in a human being will be the disposition which…”
What is the arithmetical mean? What is meant by the mean in relation to
ourselves? Who is Milo? According to Aristotle, are virtuous actions easy things
to do?

Kant:
4. For Kant, our inclinations/desires for things are what make things valuable.
Thus, if there were no inclinations/desires at all then all objects… [complete the
blank]. For Kant, what does every rational being want to do with his
desires/inclinations? Certain beings (like rocks, animals, the moon and stars)
exist by nature and not through human will. When we desire, want and need
these things they have a _______________ worth. Why are rational beings
designated ‘persons’? If, for Kant, an ‘end’ is something that has the power to
direct its own actions through its own power what is an ‘objective end’? What is
the practical imperative?

5. For Kant, human beings can be made to be obedient to a law because they desire
to avoid punishments or they desire to get rewards; on the other hand, for Kant,
can human beings, through their own will, give themselves their own laws?

6. For Kant, what is morality? What is the difference between price and dignity?
What is market price? What is affective price
7. What is the difference between the following three pairs: skill and diligence; wit
and humor; keeping one’s promise and being benevolent as a result of keeping to
principles? What is at the basis of the dignity of human nature?

Mill
8. What is the greatest happiness principle? According to Mill, in what way is this
theory often attacked? How do the people who support this theory (the Epicureans –
also called Utilitarians) respond when attacked? Between what kinds of pleasures do
Epicureans distinguish?

9. How does Mill make the distinction between the quality, or kinds, of pleasures?
Do Utilitarians believe that the amount of pleasure experienced by the single
individual is of the utmost importance? What relation does Utilitiarianism have to the
Golden Rule? What part do education and opinion play for the utilitarian? Please
define Expediency. Why is Utility not Expediency? Does Mill believe that ethics is a
perfect art that cannot be further improved?