Key Philosophical Concepts: Kant, Bentham, Hegel, Schopenhauer

What If Everyone Did It? (Immanuel Kant)

• If you help because it hurts you, it is not a moral action.
• Morality depends on what you do and why you do it.
• You should never lie.
• We all have an absolute duty to tell the truth → Categorical imperative (order).
• We act on the basis of “maxims”. For something to be moral, it must be applicable to everyone (maxims applicable in all cases).
• Always ask yourself the question of what if everyone did it?

Such Practice (Jeremy Bentham)

• Panopticon (a machine to make rogues honest).
• Utilitarianism or the Principle of Greatest Happiness → It consists of the idea that what is correct is what produces the greatest happiness.
• Happiness is pleasure and absence of pain. We seek pleasurable experiences and avoid painful ones.
• Pleasure can be quantified, and different pleasures can be compared on the same scale and with the same units.
• Felicific Calculus → Method of calculating happiness. First, assess how much pleasure an activity gives you. Then subtract any units of pain it may cause. What you are left with is the value of that activity in terms of happiness “utility”. Animals are also part of his happiness equation.
• If you think you'll get more happiness if you lie, it's morally good.
• Robert Nozick → Devised a virtual reality machine that provides the illusion of living life, but without pain or suffering.

The Owl of Minerva (Georg W.F. Hegel)

• "Minerva's owl only flies in the dark" → In the course of humanity's life, wisdom and understanding will only be fully achieved later.
• Minerva → Roman goddess of wisdom (associated with the wise owl).
• When she grew up she established the republic which she called "glorious dawn".
• Reality is what it is, there is nothing beyond.
• Spirit → The single mind of all mankind (Idealistic).
• We can get closer to the truth if we follow his dialectical method: Expose an opinion (thesis), find the opposition (antithesis), and another idea is created (synthesis). It becomes a thesis and meets an antithesis. This happens until the Spirit becomes aware of itself.
• Christian. With the awareness of spiritual value comes freedom.

Glimpse of Reality (Arthur Schopenhauer)

• Life is suffering, and it would be better not to have been born.
• We want things, we get them, and we want more.
• Reality has two aspects: Will (force found in everything that exists) and Representation (the world as we experience it; we live there).
• The Will has no purposes or objectives.
• The experiences that come from art make life bearable.
• Hurting other people is a form of self-harm.
• Withdraw from the world and become an ascetic: Live a life of sexual chastity and poverty.