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Philosophy Question! PLEASE HELP ME!?

Discuss why Kant has difficulty determining what will make a person happy but never what a person’s duty is. Why does Mill have not much difficulty with either one? Finally, explain Mill recommendations for a happy life and what the major causes an unsatisfied or unhappy life are?

Would appreciate it if someone can answer this thoroughly!

3 Answers

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  • Anonymous
    15 hours ago

    Nope, sorry. Your teacher wants to read your answers, not ours. Perhaps someone in the HOMEWORK HELP  forum will take more pity, lazybones. 

  • 1 day ago

    J153e just taught me so much.  I think it should help you.   Please award him the BA.   

  • j153e
    Lv 7
    1 day ago

    It may be that your instructor prefers utility over Kant's more nuanced and yet clearer understanding of happiness; imho, Kant's understanding is more profound than either Mill's (or Aristotle's).

    Mill:  If it feels good, do it; the maximum feel-good for the maximum citizenry = optimal utility.

    (Aristotle:  eudaimonia or best happiness for mankind is contemplation.)

    In contrast to both (and also re your instructor's positing), Kant has no "difficulty" in defining happiness; rather, he defines it well in his "The Metaphysical Principles of Virtue":  "...[happiness is]...continuous well-being, enjoyment of life, complete satisfaction with one's condition."  To be truly happy, Kant must know himself clearly.  This is more profound than "it feels good" or "think a lot."

    Imho, a critique of Kant's bifurcate happiness/morality may be made, in the manner of Hegel's critique of Kant's bifurcation of Noumenon and phenomena:  namely, Kant does not go far enough in his psychological clarification to understand similar happiness processes are operant in humankind; Maslow does this unification:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_o...

    If Kant had proceeded in this manner, his Categorical Imperative would be applicable to both morality and happiness.

    As Kant did not proceed thusly, his mode splays out as a circle of universal rational morality, with each individual's clear perception of their particular happiness constituting a point (or, smaller circle) somewhere within the universal rationality of the CI.  To iterate, if Kant had unified universal moral rationality with universal (maslowian) being-cognition, then there would splay two overlapping circles, one of CI, and one of CI as "know thyself as being-cognition" (with subsets of fields of being-cognition within the general, universal schema of being-cognition). 

    As for Mill, he blesses pleasure, and eschews pain, re happiness; yet, he posits that humans will choose the higher pleasure-choices over the lower; this is contradicted in various histories.  (Aristotle posited that higher happiness was in part generated by an exercise of virtue; Mill seems to downplay this need for such exercise, or merely take it as a given.) 

     

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