The vocabulary of philosophy, mental, moral, and metaphysical : with quotations and references for the use of students / by William Fleming ; edited by Henry Calderwood.
- Date:
- 1876
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The vocabulary of philosophy, mental, moral, and metaphysical : with quotations and references for the use of students / by William Fleming ; edited by Henry Calderwood. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![UNIVOCAL— logons, and into nouns of the first and second intention, are not, strictly speaking, divisions of words, but divisions of the man- ner of employing them; the same word may be employed either univocally, equivocally, or analogously; either in the first in- tention or the second.”—Logic, bk. ii. ch. 5, sec. 1. UTILITY.—[Adaptation to serve an end generally desired by men.—Ed.] “ What is useful only has no value in itself; but derives all its merits from the end for which it isjuseful.”—Reid, Act. Poiv., essay v. ch. 5. “ Utility is an idea essentially relative, which supposes a higher term.”—Manuel de Philosoph., p. 344. The doctrine of utility in morals is, that actions are right because they are useful [or fitted to gain ends generally desired]. It has been held under various forms. Some who maintain that utility or beneficial tendency is what makes an action right, hold that a virtuous agent may be prompted by self-love (as Paley), or by benevolence (as Rutherforth), or partly by both (as Hume). And the beneficial tendency of actions has by some been viewed solely in reference to this life (as Hume and Bentham), while by others it has been ex- tended to a future state (as Paley), and the obligation to do such actions has been represented as arising from the rewards and punishments of that future state, as made known by the light of nature and by revelation (as Dwight). The fundamental objection to the doctrine of utility in all its modifications, is that taken by Dr. Reid (Act. Poio., essay v. ch. 5), viz., “ that agreeableness and utility are not moral conceptions, nor have they any connection with morality. What a man does, merely because it is agreeable, is not vir- tue. Therefore the Epicurean system was justly thought by Cicero, and the best moralists among the ancients, to subvert morality, and to substitute another principle in its room: and this system is liable to the same censure.” “ Honestum, igitur, id intelligimus, quod tale est, ut, detracta omni utilitate, sine ullis premiis fructibusve, per seipsum jure possit laudari.— De Finibus, ii. 14. “ The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, utility, or the greatest happiness principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2199531x_0528.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
