Senior Philosophy EXAM 3 Study Guide - Essay Example

Hence, Epicurus concluded that we should not live in fear of death (Epicurus, 510). 2. According to Dawkins, animal fighting is restrained and gentlemanly in the following way. Animals do not necessarily fight to eliminate their rivals because, by doing that, they would mostly likely be endangering their lives even more. Dawkins argues that in a complex system of rivals, it might be advantageous to your other rivals if you eliminate one of them; your other rivals might stand to gain more from the elimination than you.

For this reason, Dawkins argues that animal fighting is, in most instances, based on the advantages that would accrue from the fighting and as a result, animal fighting in most cases are restrained and gentlemanly. 3. Rand claims that Altruism permits no concept of self-respecting, self-supporting man, and no concept of justice. To support her claim, Rand contend that Altruism as an ethical theory is based on the false idea that, anything that is good for an individual( for selfish interest) is morally bad, while what is good for other people, not an individual, is morally right.

For this reason, Rand argued that Altruism has no room for people first fulfil their own interests before catering for the interests of other people. For this reason, Rand claims that Altruism is against the virtues of self-respect, self-supporting, and the virtue of justice. 4. In his account of happiness in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle makes it clear that happiness is not merely a feeling or a sensation. For Aristotle, happiness is the highest and final good for all activities of man. As such, any man’s activity is aimed at attaining happiness for man.

Happiness, therefore, is the final end of all human being’s endeavour and human beings seek happiness for its own sake. All the other good that human beings seek, for instance pleasure and honour, may be sought partially for their own sake, but ultimately they will be sought for the sake of happiness. For that reason, happiness cannot be sensation or feeling because feelings and sensations cannot be the final end, pleasurable feelings are sought for the sake of happiness, which is the highest good.

Hence, happiness is not simply a feeling or a sensation. 5. According to Immanuel Kant, it is morally wrong for one to take a loan and promise to repay it, while one knows that they will not be able to repay it. To support his claim, Kant used his moral maxim, i.e. the categorical imperative to judge whether or not such an action is morally justifiable. The categorical imperative states that, in moral dilemma, you should always act in a manner that you would wish your manner of acting to be made a universal law, applicable to all similar cases.

Kant, therefore, argued that since one would not wish breaking promises to be made into a universal law, it is, therefore, morally wrong for one to fail to repay a loan that they had promised to repay. 6. According to Mill, one can tell whether one pleasure is of greater quality than another by the use of the following criteria. If people are asked to choose between two pleasures, pleasures of which they all have prior experience, the pleasure that majority of people will choose, not due to moral obligations or for any other reason, but for the sake of the pleasure itself, then that pleasure that is proffered by the majority of people is of higher quality than the other pleasure that was preferred by only a