PHIL 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: John Stuart Mill, Consequentialism, Felicific Calculus
Document Summary
Hedonism: principle that pleasure esp physical is good and pain is bad. The basis of good and bad- does it hurt, does it feel bad, does it feel good. Pleasure is what is good, pain is what is bad and you should avoid it. This notion is pretty old from the 18th century. Ancient egypt had a tradition of hedonism: enjoy life now, there might be an afterlife but they"re might not be, we know that were alive now. Bible says the same thing: eat drink and be merry; let us eat and drink for tomorrow we shall die. Epicurists come about and say that absence of pain should be the focus. Rise of christianity: a lot of christian belief is that suffering and pain is okay right now because the afterlife would be better. Christianity squashed the hedonist point of view. Some christians do believe in the hedonist perspective.
