{"id":29,"date":"2005-01-18T21:50:17","date_gmt":"2005-01-18T21:50:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/phlogma.com\/?p=29"},"modified":"2006-02-25T14:37:36","modified_gmt":"2006-02-25T22:37:36","slug":"moral-evolutionary-tendencies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/moral-theory\/moral-evolutionary-tendencies-29","title":{"rendered":"Moral evolutionary tendencies"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Virtue, according to the utilitarian doctrine, is not naturally and originally part of the end, but it is capable of becoming so; and in those who love it disinterestedly it has become so, and is desired and cherished, not as a means to happiness, but as a part of their happiness. [<a href=\"biblog\/?p=54\"><em>Utilitarianism<\/em><\/a>, Chapter 4]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The implication is that pleasure\/happiness is more primal, more contingently precedent than any such refinement as a disinterested taste for virtue. Underlying this is the thought of our evolutionary connection to beings <em>only<\/em> capable of less abstract desires:  We came <em>from<\/em> them. They can <em>only<\/em> do that. Therefore, we started out <em>only<\/em> being able to do that. Most of us, most of the time still barely rise above that. And if we occasionally do, we do so only by an extension, a stretching of what pleasure or happiness means. But as <em>living<\/em> beings we can <em>only<\/em> ultimately desire the pursuit of happiness as an <em>end<\/em>. Mill wants to deny a qualitative change in the nature of what human beings can wish for. The transcendentalists, by contrast, <em>do<\/em> detect a qualitative change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Virtue, according to the utilitarian doctrine, is not naturally and originally part of the end, but it is capable of becoming so; and in those who love it disinterestedly it has become so, and is desired and cherished, not as a means to happiness, but as a part of their happiness. [Utilitarianism, Chapter 4] The &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/moral-theory\/moral-evolutionary-tendencies-29\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Moral evolutionary tendencies&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,3,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-j-s-mill","category-moral-theory","category-utilitarianism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}