Exam 7: Plato Why Should We Be Good

According to Nietzsche, "Supposing that nothing else is 'given' as real but our world of desires and passions, that we cannot sink or rise to any other ________ but just that of our impulses; for thinking is only a relation of these impulses to one another."

In Socrates's metaphor for the human soul, what do the unjust do?

Explain what Mill means when he says, "the utilitarian standard, while it tolerates and approves those other acquired desires, up to the point beyond which they would be more injurious to the general happiness than promotive of it, enjoins and requires the cultivation of the love of virtue up to the greatest strength possible, as being above all things important to the general happiness."

According to Huxley, "To the struggle for bare existence, which never ends, though it may be alleviated and partially disguised for a fortunate few, succeeded the struggle to make existence intelligible and to bring the order of things into harmony with the moral sense of man."

According to Hursthouse, "But although all standard versions of virtue ethics insist on that conceptual link between virtue and eudaimonia, further links are matters of dispute and generate different versions. For Aristotle, virtue is __________ but not __________; what is also needed are external goods which are a matter of luck."

According to Hursthouse, "The best available science today (including evolutionary theory and psychology) supports rather than undermines the ancient Greek assumption that we are ______________, like elephants and wolves and unlike polar bears."

According to Marquis, "Of course, this value of a future-like-ours argument, if sound, shows only that abortion is prima facie wrong, not that it is wrong in any and all circumstances."

According to Hursthouse, "An ethical theory is _____________ if, roughly, whatever it claims justifies a particular action, or makes it right, had better not be the agent's motive for doing it."

Thomson says that her position "allows for and supports our sense that, for example, a sick and desperately frightened fourteen-year-old schoolgirl, pregnant due to rape, may of course choose abortion, and that any law which rules this out is an insane law."

According to Hume, "Truth is disputable; not taste: what exists in the nature of things is the standard of our judgment; what each man feels within himself is the standard of sentiment."

Explain what Hume means when he says, "Reason being cool and disengaged, is no motive to action, and directs only the impulse received from appetite or inclination, by showing us the means of attaining happiness or avoiding misery." Do you agree with Hume?

According to Marquis, "If 'human being,' on the other hand, is taken to be a ______ category, then the claim that a fetus is a human being cannot be taken to be a premise in the anti-abortion argument, for it is precisely what needs to be established."

According to Marquis, "Since a fetus possesses a ________, the possession of which in adult human beings is sufficient to make killing an adult human being wrong, abortion is wrong."

According to Marquis, "The moral generalizations of both sides are not quite correct. The generalizations hold for the most part, for the usual cases. This suggests that they are all ____________ generalizations, that the moral claims made by those on both sides of the dispute do not touch on the essence of the matter."

According to Marquis, "The view that what makes killing wrong is the loss to the victim of the value of the victim's _______ gains additional support when some of its implications are examined."

According to Huxley, "The idea of justice thus underwent a gradual sublimation from punishment and reward according to acts, to punishment and reward according to desert; or, in other words, according to ..."

According to Mill, "Happiness has made out its title as one of the ends of conduct, and consequently one of the criteria of morality."

According to Huxley, "Whatever differences of opinion may exist among experts there is a general consensus that the ape and tiger methods of the struggle for existence are not reconcilable with ..."

According to Rachels, "If one simply withholds treatment, it may take the patient longer to die, and so he may suffer more than he would if more direct action were taken and a lethal injection given. This fact provides strong reason for thinking that, once the initial decision not to prolong his agony has been made ________ euthanasia is actually preferable to _______ euthanasia, rather than the reverse."

In Socrates's metaphor for the human soul, the just are able to control and master all of their desires and wild, animal-like instincts.