Pleasure, Utility, and Duty: Foundations of Ethical Thought

Epicureanism: Ethical Hedonism

Epicureanism states that the wise person seeks self-sufficiency. Happiness is achieved through pleasure—the satisfaction of natural desires—considered the primary natural asset, the beginning and end of a happy life. The goal is to achieve pleasure and avoid pain.

The wise person is cautious and moderately happy, not carried away by debauchery and excess. The wise person estimates activities that yield more pleasure and less pain, organizing their life by calculating which pleasures are more intense and lasting, with fewer painful consequences. The wise person intelligently distributes pleasures throughout their life. Morality, in this view, is the art of living happily.

Utilitarianism: The Principle of Utility

Utility refers to the property of any object to produce advantage, benefit, pleasure, or happiness. Good moral actions are those that lead to the happiness of others. It is a theory focused on collective happiness. Human action seeks pleasure, leveraging the social feelings inherent in every human.

The principle of morality and the criterion for rational decisions is achieving the maximum possible happiness for the greatest number of people. Pleasure can be calculated based on factors such as:

• Intensity
• Duration
• Proximity
• Certainty

Utilitarianism distinguishes between higher and lower pleasures. It is often argued that people prefer intellectual and moral pleasures (higher pleasures). Utilitarianism encourages human collaboration for a more prosperous and happy society.

Act Utilitarianism: Consequences Matter

Act Utilitarianism requires assessing the correctness of each specific action based on its consequences. One must always consider the outcomes of decisions.

Rule Utilitarianism: Following Moral Rules

Rule Utilitarianism necessitates considering whether an action conforms to moral rules deemed good based on their general tendency to produce utility. It posits that some actions are intrinsically morally good or bad based on the rules they follow. We should adhere to rules that, if generally followed, maximize overall happiness. The general rule or policy must adhere to the principle of utility for the benefit of all.

Deontological Ethics: Kant's Duty-Based Morality

Immanuel Kant is its primary proponent. For Kant, ethics is not concerned with specific moral outcomes (consequences) but with discovering the formal features of rationality that make moral principles universally valid. He argued that material ethics (focused on specific goods or outcomes) treat humans as subject to external influences and fail to explain how free beings can establish their own laws and purposes. In such systems, the will is determined by external goods it hasn't chosen, behaving passively.

A person only knows how to act upon discovering a 'good' and the means to achieve it, which relies on experience and cannot yield universal standards. Furthermore, such approaches are subjective and cannot claim intersubjectivity (universal agreement).

According to Kant, ethics must begin with the concept of duty, not with the concept of 'good'. Duty defines what is good, not the other way around. The specific moral good lies in fulfilling one's duty. This stems from a free and independent will capable of establishing its own laws. The moral will (or goodwill) is the only acceptable moral legislator. This capacity for self-legislation constitutes the dignity that defines a human as a person.

The moral law, dictated by reason to the will, takes the form of the Categorical Imperative. This contrasts with hypothetical imperatives, which command actions only as means to achieve a desired end (e.g., 'If you want X, then do Y'). A key test for a moral maxim (rule) is its universality: can it be willed as a universal law that everyone follows, without contradiction? The goodwill acts out of moral obligation, unconditionally, following the Categorical Imperative to undertake actions that have universal validity. Such an imperative expresses a duty that must be obeyed out of pure respect for the moral law itself.

Only rational beings like humans can set moral requirements for themselves, enabling them to overcome selfish inclinations and adopt a universal perspective, considering the standpoint of any other rational being.