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Discovery In Doubt

By: Brian Campana

 

Aristotle, the spokesperson for happiness.

 

Happiness is definitely something that should be sought out in this life. In that aspect, I agree with Aristotle. From all of the presents this life has in stock for us, the best ones are always linked to the notion that happiness is the most important object that we must all chase after. From love, success, or even within the spirits, all of them are fast lanes that will lead you to happiness—or so they say. You see, happiness is like a place each and everyone of us would want to reach, but not everyone takes the same roads to get there.

In a sense, happiness is definitely the best, most noble, and most pleasant thing in this world, but the way people approach it is where the variety comes in.

How can we approach the smiley face?

 

There are multiple ways to approach the prospect of happiness. This can be inferred to the personalities of people, beliefs, or even hobbies. Let’s go to a more general one which are the ancient Greek ethical approaches to the seeking of pleasure, happiness. Now, there a lot of these approaches. One of these is cynicism, wherein happiness is centered on one’s self. This notion is true and will definitely lead an individual to happiness, but this approach is rather wicked in a sense. For one to be centered on one’s self is to be impartial to others. Simply, cynicism is a very selfish approach. On one note, this approach may be a pleasant one, but not the most noble. It’s like booking a buffet in a restaurant to celebrate your batch’s graduation while being the only one to eat.

Cynicism can make you feel full, but not wholesome, happy. Instead, you feel empty, lonely.

Diogenes of Sinope, the cynic who held a lantern in peoples' faces in search of an honest man.

 

Another approach is hedonism, the notion that in this life, the only true pursuit is pleasure. This approach is a plausible lead to happiness, but yet again a pretty wicked approach.

Hedonists neglect the means of pleasure and focus on just getting it right away.

This notion is very similar to cynicism, but on a worse level wherein harmful and crime-like acts are considered just for the sake of pleasure.

Enjoy the moment, good or bad( Mr Keith Richards in Paris, April 1966. Photograph by Mr Jean-Marie Périer/Photo12 )

 

Another way of approaching happiness is stoicism, the prospect that being passive and free-flowing will lead to true happiness. This approach is an interesting one since it somehow puts a dull color on happiness wherein you allow nature to just happen—you become some sort of an impartial observer, and that seems to be the source of happiness for stoics. Well, peace and a quiet place are pretty pleasant things alright, but stoicism makes you miss experience.

 

It’s like watching a roller coaster live on television and saying that it’s fun.

 

Another approach is altruism—to find happiness in others, a true pursuit of happiness. This approach embodies selflessness in, if I should say, a pretty Samaritan-like approach. This approach will definitely lead to happiness, to the point of even spreading it. The problem, however, is that this approach tends to be neglectful of where true happiness lies—within one’s self.

Help, help help.

 

These different approaches may vary from one another, but in the end happiness is still their end game. In conclusion, happiness may be a constant thing for everyone, but the way we get that is where we have to choose.

One particular way of approaching happiness is utilitarianism.

 

Utilitarianism

Rule utilitarianism is one way to provide counterarguments against the criticism towards utilitarianists—act utilitarianists that state that doing an act that delivers the most good to the most number of people must be right regardless of how wicked it may be—but this type of utilitarianism—rule utilitarianism—although more virtuous, can not maximize the true essence of utilitarianism that leans more onto the concept of a “good consequence” in the long run.

You see, rule utilitarianism is a time-limited “good” consequence wherein the goodness of a consequence is not able to be fully realized, compared to its sibling that really maximizes how good a consequence is, although neglectful of the means.

To illustrate rule utilitarianism, the father of Alexander the Great is a figure perfect for an example. The father of Alexander was the King of Macedonia who was able to conquer Greece. At that time, the people of Greece were very advanced in terms of knowledge, and they took pride from it. They refused to surrender to the King of Macedonia, their conqueror. Now, regardless of whether they surrendered or not, the King could have just exterminated them off, and Greece would’ve still been his.

 

Instead of doing this, however, he decided to utilize the advanced and prideful Greeks to develop Greece and Macedonia as one.

 

Now, although his actions lead to a good consequence, it did not last for long since the supposed conqueror of Greece, Macedonia, was eventually absorbed into Greece because of how its culture was converted into a Grecian one. In this scenario, although the King performed a virtuous act by not killing or committing a massacre, the good consequence of doing so was not fully realized since his dominant kingdom of Macedonia eventually got sucked in by Greece.

Although rule utilitarianism is a pretty optimistic approach in terms of the utilitarian philosophy, do take note that it cannot maximize the true meaning of utilitarianism, wherein a good consequence stems from a morally right action, despite the general rule of that action whether it be a wicked one or a virtuous one.

Utilitarianists have a very complicated moral compass when it comes to maximum happiness, so let’s go back to something much “less” complicated.

 

Categorical Imperatives

Kant’s theory regarding morality is one of the more popular approaches of ethics towards the concept of right and wrong. Kant’s theory, one would call the Imperatives, portrays “good will” based on a moral law that apparently blinds us all through mere reasoning alone. Kant’s theory apposes that of its fellow popular theory-in-arms, the divine command and natural law theory, both of which are involved with the handiwork of the divine.

Kant abhors the notion that religion and morality go side by side; rather, they should be separated and be differentiated.

Kant insisted that through rationality and reasoning, people could already identify if an act is one of good will or not, without the need for a deity at all. Kant even proposed that moral laws can either exist or not, but morality will nevertheless come from a person’s thinking. Kant also added that not all actions involve morality; hence, Kant’s theory has two types: Hypothetical Imperatives and Categorical Imperatives.

Immanuel Kant, an influential Prussian German philosopher in the Age of Enlightenment.

 

Hypothetical Imperatives, according to Kant, are actions that do not manifest any form of morality at all; basically, if-then statements. Hypothetical Imperatives are basically actions that people do to achieve something out of their own prudence whilst not involving any sort of morality. For example, if you are thirsty, you drink water, or if you are hungry, you get something to eat. Kant says that these actions require no involvement with morality at all, hence he termed them Hypothetical Imperatives.

Categorical Imperatives, however, embodies actions that speak all about morality. This is where Kant’s theory mainly comes in. According to Kant, these are actions that call for the attention of the general law or maxim of the situation, which will then be evaluated; these imperatives will see if the actions that have been done are morally right based on his four formulations.

In layman’s terms, Hypothetical Imperatives are casual acts of people in their daily lives, while Categorical Imperatives involve morality.

As stated in the paragraph, Categorical Imperatives are moral actions dictated by Kant’s four formulations. He perceives morality as something objective, a math problem of some sort; that’s why he made four rules. For today, we’re just going to focus on the two most popular ones: the universalizability principle and the “end-in-itself” principle.

The universalizability principle introduces the concept of a maxim, or the general law behind every moral action. In a sense, the maxim dictates whether it is righteous or wrongful when an action is done.

Let us use a situation wherein a man is craving for shawarma and he is just so hungry for it, he starts to have hallucinations. It just so happens that there is a nearby shawarma stand, and the seller is currently distracted by a flying spaceship declaring war on the people of Earth. The man approaches the shawarma stand and is now in conflict on whether he should just take a roll of shawarma since the seller is not looking anyway.

In this situation, Kant would first ask the maxim of the hungry man’s action, which we can identify as stealing, Now, we insert Kant’s principle of universalizability wherein the moral law is absolute and must not have contradictions. In the man’s case, with “stealing” as the maxim of his action, the question is whether anyone else will contradict his action. In this case, will everyone agree or disagree to stealing?

Using reasoning, nobody would say it is agreeable to steal from anyone since that would call for an endless cycle of stealing from one another, meaning since stealing is not universalizable, it is morally wrong.

Who wouldn't do anything for shawarma?

 

Kant’s next formulation is the “end-in-itself” formulation where Kant puts humans, the rational beings, on a special spot where nobody should take advantage of them—of us. Basically, he states that humans should not be used by anyone as “mere means”. According to him, doing so is a violation to their stand as an “end-in-their-selves” and is a morally wrong act to do to any human for that matter.

Talk about philosophy in a nutshell: rule after rule after rule after rule with a chance of revolution.

Well, as long as we’re all happy.

 

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