World Philosophy - PUC's Student need it.

1. Moral Philosophy
Chapter II

2. Introduction

3. Definition
• Moral philosophy is the attempt to think critically about right and
wrong, good or bad.

4. How?
• 1. Practical/applied Ethics: Thinking about whether a particular action
or type of action is right or wrong
• Is abortion right or wrong?
• Is euthanasia right or wrong?
• Is it right to treat other animal as food?
• 2. Normative Ethics: Thinking how are we to find the answers to these
types of questions?
• Normative ethics normally try to create the general theories about what is
right or wrong and prescribe people to do so.
• Utilitarianism: only thing that is good is happiness.
only thing that is right is whether it bring about most good (most
happiness).

5. • Deontological theories (sometime known as duty ethics): some actions are just wrong, no
matter how happy it might make people.
• Subjectivist Ethics
• Egoist Ethics
• Relativism
• Caring Ethics
• Rights Ethics
• Religious ethics
• 3 Virtue: Think of what is a good person is more fundamental than what
should I do. This question obviously will lead to what a good life for a
person is.
• Plato’s virtue theory: Soul’s components: Reasoning, Spirit, Desire
• Aristotle’s virtue theory: Golden Mean

6. Practical/Applied Ethics
• Abortion is right or wrong?
• Killing a cruel robber is right or wrong?
• Sacrifice your life for your nation is right or wrong?
• Not help the victims due to your own security is right or wrong?
• Treat other animals as food is right or wrong?
• Tell a lie to save someone’s life is right or wrong?
• Invade other country in order to help your country develop is right or
wrong?

7. Normative Ethics
• Utilitarianism
• Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
• Hedonistic Utilitarianism: Greatest Happiness Principle (pleasure)
• Total amount of happiness=sum total of everyone’s pleasure - sum total of everyone’s
pains.
• John Stuart Mill (1806-73)
• Deeper dimension including love of honor, beauty, order, or freedom
• Higher pleasure (thought, feeling, and imagination)VS lower Pleasure (physical pleasure)
• Quality (do you want to be a satisfied pig or a dissatisfied man?)
• Ideal Utilitarianism

8. • Preference Utilitarianism: not happiness as pleasure we should maximize but
the preference.
• You can not know how much a person have a pleasure.
• Easier to satisfy someone’s preference
• Negative Utilitarianism: maximizing the good (happiness) is not as important
as minimizing the bad.
• Act Utilitarianism:
• Do not know how to predict what consequence
• Not clear what action should be right or wrong
• Rule Utilitarianism
• Too much focus on law.

9. • Deontological views
• Duty
• God and Duty: God tell us to perform the duty which is the right or good thing
• Aquinas: Divine Revelation, Natural Law (seek for what God command us)
• Kant: duties are determined by reason
• As rational animals: we do not just do thing, we make choice.
• Morality is a set of law applied to everyone. It is Categorical Imperative (certain command)
that we will be irrational if we disobey.
• Two shop keepers: A gives correct change because of being fear that he will be arrested
B gives correct change because it is morally right to be honest.

10. Ethical Subjectivism
• Morality is about feelings, attitudes, and beliefs (no one is superior or
better than others)
• A Naïve version
• Held with sincerity and conviction (belief)
• Ex. Some people sincerely believe that all women should remain in the traditional
roles of wives and mothers
• Or believe women should have equal opportunities in all social roles.
• Emotivism version, or a more sophisticated ethical subjectivists
• Morality is not about belief because belief can be proved right or wrong.
• A case of Pol Pot, for instance, is his killing wrong? Is it your emotion/feeling or your
belief to say he is morally wrong? Which one is easier to prove to be right or wrong

12. • Subjectivists challenge that no one can be moral if he or she lacks the capacity
of feeling.
• Criticism and responses
1. Does emotion contains element of truth or not?
• It does have. Without feeling we will not be moral, and the feeling stimulates us to be
morally right. Everybody, or at least the majority of people, are fear of death and want to
live the happy lives so by understanding this principle we try to do good to each other.
2. Objectively justified or not?
• Sometime but in some cases we will not have.
• Ex1. Human rights is objectively justified.
• Ex2. Some people are happy to kill while others not.

13. Ethical Egoism
• Morality is about reasons but reducible to one 'own good or self-
interest.
• Ayn Rand (1905-1982), novelist-philosopher
• “Concern with his [or her] own interests is the essence of a moral existence.”
• She is against altruism, which, according to her, is immoral.
• Altruism is concern to promote the well-being of others for their sake rather than solely
for what one can gain from them.
• We should help others only when it benefits us, in particular through trades and
exchanges in which we gain things we want for ourselves.

15. • How does Rand support Egoism?
• Biology: life has to struggle to survive
• Self-respect: altruism permits no concept of a self-respecting, self-supporting
man. Altruism hold degrading attitudes toward themselves as being servant
to others. Furthermore, it causes dependency.
• Criticism
• We are social creatures. We need to have friendships, loves, and community
loyalties to enable us to survive and flourish.
• Altruism is not always deteriorating self-respect. Do we all need help? Does
help always make us dependent?

16. • Rights Ethics
• Focus on the nature of action (whether respect rights of the individual or not)
• Introduce a concept of human rights by specifying the moral significance and
authority of each human being.
• “We hold these truths to be self-evidence; that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are LIFE, LIBERTY, and the
pursuit of HAPPINESS”

17. Two Rights ethicists
• Locke (1632-1704) and Liberty Rights
• Rights could not be given or taken away
• The human rights in any treaties or legal documents are recognized but not
created by those documents;
• Three fundamental rights: Life, Liberty, and Property.
• Locke was especially interested in liberty Rights, the rights to be left alone by
the government and by citizen majorities.
• This liberty rights called the negative rights or Libertarian rights.

18. • Libertarians focus on the rights to property and to privacy;
• They oppose all government welfare programs such as aid to education, the
elderly, and the disabled.
• Melden (1910-1991) and Welfare Rights
• Welfare Rights or positive rights believed that liberty rights is too narrow
• Welfare system need to be institutionalized in order to help ensure that rights
of the individuals are respected; especially in the case of the disadvantaged,
the vulnerable, the poor, …

19. • At least, people need to have basic needs to live the dignified and respected
lives.
• Melden provided only one fundamental rights: the Right to pursue one’s
legitimate interests;
• Legitimate interests are those interests that do not violate other people’s
similar and equal rights. Liberty rights + welfare
• It is so bad to say someone have rights but their lives are so miserable, could
not even have food to eat, house to live, clothes to wear, medicines to
consume when they are sick;

20. • Virtue Theory
• What is the difference between “how Shall I be” and “What should I do”
• Morally good traits of character.
• Plato’s theory: Soul has three parts. 1. reason (wisdom), 2. spirit (courage), 3. desire
(self-control).
• Aguinas: Faith, hope and charity
• Aristotle: agreed with Plato but focus on training.
• Virtue of characters (feel desires and emotions well)
• Virtue of intellect
• Doctrine of the mean (golden mean)

21. Plato
• Divide mind (souls) into three parts: Reason, the Spiritual Element,
and the Appetites.
• Reason coordinates and directs the diverse activities of the individual
• Spiritual Element (sense of humor or pride) has the task of
supporting reason in controlling the Appetites
• Appetites maintain the body by satisfying physical cravings for food,
drink, exercise, and sex.

22. Why Plato divided mind?
• To explain the psychological conflict.
• Ex. Reason conflicts with Appetite
• Wrong-doing occurs when Reason and the Spirited Element are unable to
control the Appetites.
• Immoral action is a symptom of a disordered personality whose
proper functions are out of balance
• Right action is a sign of inner harmony, in which each part of the mind
performs its function well.

23. • Each mental part has its own distinctive virtue that enables it to
perform its function with excellence.
• Wisdom is the virtue to enable reason to effectively guide both the
appetites and the spirited element
• Courage, another virtue, makes it possible for Spiritual Element to
support reason in controlling troublesome Appetites
• Temperance or Moderation enables the Appetites to be satisfied to a
healthy degree and without overindulgence.
• Justice reflects how the three aforementioned are in balance.

24. • Plato emphasized more on wisdom and created the Doctrine of the
Unity of the virtue.
• Do good, receive bad, do bad receive money.
• Why he said the most happy life was that of the philosopher?

25. Aristotle
• Two kinds of Virtues
• Moral Virtue: The courage, temperance, justice, and generosity
• Intellectual Virtues: wisdom, intelligence, and prudence.
• Intellectual virtues represent excellences in reasoning skills that can
be taught through inquiry and study
• Moral Virtues are products of habits that begin in childhood and are
strengthened in adult life.

26. Golden mean
Vice of Too Much Virtue Vice of Too little
Foolhardiness (ហ៊ា នជ្រ ុល) Courage Cowardice
Overindulgence(បណ្តោ យ
ជ្រ ុល)
Temperance Inhibition (ខ្មា សណ្ ៀនជ្រ ុល)
Extravagance​(ខ្ជះខ្មជ យ) Generosity Miserliness​(កំតញ់)
Vaulting ambition (ណ្ោភ
ំតច)
Proper ambition Unambitiousness
Vanity​(គិតតតខ្ល ួនឯង) Proper Pride Sense of inferiority
Boastfulness Truthfulness False modesty
Irascibility​(ខ្ឹងងាយ) Patience Apathy​( ត់ខ្វល់ ី)
Obsequiousness (ចង់ តតជ្រ
ណ្គ)
Friendliness Rudeness
Shyness Modesty Shamelessness
Buffoonery​(ណ្្វើ វីឆ្ក ួតឲ្យណ្គ Witness​(គួរសម) Boorishness​( ត់គិត

27. Aquinas (1224-1274): Religious Virtues
• Aquinas agreed with Plato and Aristotle that one of purpose of
human beings is to live by reason which will help bring about
happiness or well being.
• However, he primarily used reason as the way to prove God exists and
to explain how God build natural law in your very nature.
• He developed his virtue ethics as a synthesis of the Greek’s four
cardinal virtues_ wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice and the
key Christian virtues_ faith, hope, and charity (love)

28. Similarities
Greek ‘s Cardinal Virtues Christian Virtues
Wisdom Faith, hope, love
Courage Endure the dangers of this world,
temptation of sin on the journey to
salvation.
Temperance Patience and humility, fasting and chastity

29. Differences
Aristotle Aquinas
Christian virtue of humility as more like
the vice of failing to have proper pride
Humility ( មិនមានណ្មារនភាព)
Greek Exuberance​(ការរ ីកលូ តោស់្ំធាត់
ននសារពាងគកាយ) in the physical
Chastity and fasting (តមណ្រឿងណ្ភរសមព័នធ
និងការតមអាហរ)
Only if that person has high degree of
virtue
Charity (loving mankind)
Betrayal to God
Pride beyond God is worst sin (7 sins:
Pride, envy, anger , sloth (ខ្ជិល),
avarice​(ណ្ោភ), gluttony​(ណ្ោា ភសី), and
lust​(ណ្ោា ភណ្រឿងណ្ភរ))

30. Hume (1711-1776)Benevolence and
Sympathy
• His view on human nature is not based on religious faith nor on praise
of reason.
• Hume looked at benevolence as the highest virtue
• He divided the human mind into two domains _ reason and
sentiment.
• He believed that reason can help us to identify facts and logical
relationship among ideas but not moral end of human life.
• Moral purpose of our human life is from sentiment (from our
emotional capacities and attitudes)

31. • Will you feel distress when you see others in distress?
• Will you be pleased when you see them happy?
• Why? Because sentiment has the sympathy.
• Even Sympathy is not virtue but it will help bring about benevolence,
the highest virtue according to Hume.
• In the text, why Hume said justice is artificial virtue?
• Why he believed in Natural virtue? Please provide examples

32. Questions
• We have gone through four Virtue ethicists, according to your life
experience what is the best theory, and why it is the best?