Ethics Philosophy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Ethics Philosophy - Essay Example Second, Mill considers the possible grounds of justification for this mindset: the higher party's position, he says, could be attributed to pride, love of freedom, love of autonomy, or to the love of power or excitement. But, he returns, justification of holding onto one's position, refusing to trade places regardless of the degree of happiness of the pig/fool that surpasses his/hers, rests in human dignity. This, Mill reasons, is so imperative to intelligent, superior beings, that they would for no reason outside it compromise it. Further, Mills admonishes anyone contesting his approach as one who is confusing the definitions/conditions of happiness and contentment. He concedes that 1) a higher being has higher (and/or greater) needs-he/she needs more to make him/her happy; and 2) a lower being with a lesser range of (and thereby need for) the capacity for happiness will have a better chance of complete happiness, whereas one with greater needs is at risk for having a smaller percentage of his/her needs fulfilled. If a person has only one bucket to fill as opposed to twenty, for example, the person with only one bucket will have a better likelihood of walking away from the fountain of happiness and saying, "I have successfully filled all of my buckets." But after conceding, Mill returns to the higher party's ability to tolerate more, and therefore to bear greater burdens. Such is the opinion of the higher, intelligent being-with the capacity to tolerate, appreciate, and understand that to be a superior being who is momentarily unhappy is far better than to be an inferior being with constant happiness. And, he claims, if the other party does not agree, it is only because he/she is incapable of understanding Mill's position and is therefore basing his/her [inferior] contention on a lack of information. That is, the lower being cannot fully comprehend the options of both sides, does not have the capacity or range to choose, even, and does not, therefore, understand what it is to have the dilemma of choosing in the first place: if you are not smart enough to understand the difference in stations (the higher and the lower's stations in life), then you have not the ability to choose between the two-and do have, as Mills does, the grounds upon which to base your opinion. 2. For Nietzsche, anything which intrudes upon or impedes one's will to power is suspect. In this case, two select characteristics threaten this will to power-weakness and humility. Nietzsche grants the possibility that within a collective, it might be good and possible to not hurt others and protect oneself from being hurt, if everyone in the group "mutually" "refrains from injury, from violence, from exploitation." (Solomon, 392) But, Nietzsche notes, the moment the practice is made a principle, a law, the effort becomes one of a kind of anarchy, of "dissolution and decay"-what he calls a "Will to Denial." (392) This is for him in direct