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Introduction

Mill and Kant

  • Comparison of Mill and Kant's main principles
  • Modern day examples/significance
  • Debate

The Enlightenment

Man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.

Motto: DARE TO THINK!

Reason

Public reason:Freedom to think for ourselves and act upon that.

Freedom:

Kant's Enlightenment requires freedom.

"if it is only allowed freedom, enlightenment is almost inevitable”

Private reason: Restricting one's opinion and action based on duty.

How to be enlightened?

Restriction

Kant: Slowly and lead by an enlightened few

Kant's idea's on restriction: political oppression

Mills: through asserting yourself against the majority

Mills Idea: "Society enslaves the soul itself

Contemporary Examples: Egypt

"perhaps a revolution can overthrow autocratic despotism and profiteering or power grabbing oppression but it can never truly reform a manner of thinking; instead new prejudices, just like the old ones they replace, will serve as a leash for the great unthinking mass"

Perpetual Peace

John Stuart Mill

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse". J.S.Mill

Immanuel Kant

  • The civil constitution of every state shall be republican
  • The law of nations shall be founded on a federation of free states
  • The law of world citizenship shall be limited to conditions of universal hospitality

Kant: Women

Mill: Women

Mill lived in an era where women were subordinate to men by law and custom.

Kant excludes women and children, unjustifiably claiming that their exclusion is natural.

His case for women's equality reflects his Utilitarian roots.

When Kant discusses voting for representatives, he adheres to many prevailing prejudices of the time.

Against prejudice towards women.

When Kant discusses voting for representatives, he adheres to many prevailing prejudices of the time.

However, Mill was not able to entirely free himself from the prejudices of his era.

Unlike Mill, Kant holds that men have a ‘natural superiority’

Mill: Utilitarianism

Today..?

Greatest Happiness Principle

Conclusion and debate

HIGHER pleasures vs. LOWER pleasures

Religion

Happiness and contentment

Feminist achievements - still more to be done?

The willingness to sacrifice one's happiness for that of others is the highest virtue.

Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Bibliography

A person must not value his own happiness over the happiness of others

Kant and Religion

Harcourt, B. (1999). The Collapse of the Harm Principle. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. 90 (1),

Liberty

- Religion as a "pervasive restriction on freedom"

- Difference between "public" and "private" reason

- Elementary conflict of interests: Acting from wants or from duty?

- Avoiding "immaturity":“For that the (spiritual) guardians of a people should themselves be immature is an absurdity that would insure the perpetuation of absurdities.”

Mill and Religion

Mill:

Are people a minority because of their own cowardice and laziness or because of the tyranny of majority?

Is it easier to achieve Kant’s perpetual peace today than it was before?

When we say a pleasure is higher, what do we really mean? – that it is more educational? Appreciated by those this good taste/the intelligent?

Is happiness a rational aim for human life?

If they were alive today how do you think Mill and Kant would see their principles fit in to modern day society?

  • Tyranny of the majority
  • "feeling in each person’s mind that everybody should be required to act as he, and those with whom he sympathizes, would like him to act”
  • "Harm Principle" - negative freedom
  • "free development of individuality

Why is this all important today?

Kant

- Religion is not consistent with Mill's views on society! i.e. a topic NOT governed by likes and dislikes

- Christianity example and the "tyranny of the majority"

- Freedom of conscience and its limitations

Modern significance of liberty

- Compulsory religious education in Saudi Arabia - example of Mill's ideas in on freedom of conscience limitations?

- Corruption in the Orthodox Church today - example of Kant's "immaturity" in society?

  • Suggests minorities are formed through laziness/cowardice
  • Opposed direct democracy
  • "necessarily a despotism, because it establishes an executive power in which 'all' decide for or even against one who does not agree... a contradiction of the general will with itself and with freedom."
  • Supported the idea of a mixed government- representative
  • Still supports idea of the state- needed to protect liberties/freedom
  • Harm principle: Where is the limit of this idea?
  • No clear line between what causes harm/doesn't
  • Does drug-use harm others? (emotional stress)
  • Does pornography?
  • "Claims of harm have become so pervasive that the harm principle has become meaningless" (Harcourt, 1999)
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