Moral Philosophy: Ethics, Deontology and Natural Law

shall obey none but yourself, then goes on to tell you that you obey yourself in obeying the will of the majority, even when it puts you in irons or leads you to death--because...

1. _A habit is a quality difficult to change, whereby an agent whose nature it was to work one way or another indeterminately, is disposed easily and readily at will to follow t...

1. It is an axiom of the schools, that whatever is received, is received according to the manner of the recipient. We have spoken of the law that governs the world, as that law...

1. Every human act is done for some end or purpose. The end is always regarded by the agent in the light of something good. If evil be done, it is done as leading to good, or as...

1. A passion is defined to be: _A movement of the irrational part of the soul, attended by a notable alteration of the body, on the apprehension of good or evil._ The soul is ma...

1. In a hilly country, two or three steps sometimes measure all the interval between the basins of two rivers, whose mouths are miles apart. In the crisis of an illness the mere...

1. Property was called by the Romans _res familiaris_, the stuff and substance of the family. Property may be held by the individual for himself alone: but any large accumulatio...

1. A _right_ is that in virtue of which a person calls anything his own. More elaborately, a right is a _moral power residing in a person, in virtue whereof he refers to himself...

1. The sanction of a law is the punishment for breaking it. The punishment for final, persistent breach of the natural law is failure to attain the perfect state and last end of...

1. A granite boulder lying on an upland moor stands indifferently the August sun and the January frost, flood and drought. It neither blooms in spring, nor fades in autumn. It i...

2. An act is more or less voluntary, as it is done with more or less knowledge, and proceeds more or less fully and purely from the will properly so called. Whatever diminishes...

1. Marriage is defined by the Canonists: _the union of male and female, involving their living together in undivided intercourse_. In the present order of Providence, the marria...

1. "Let none doubt," says St. Augustine, "that he lies, who utters what is false for the purpose of deceiving. Wherefore the utterance of what is false with a will to deceive is...

1. Though the name _utilitarian_ is an English growth of this century, the philosophy so called probably takes its origin from the days when man first began to speculate on mora...

1. _Worship_ is divided into _prayer_ and _praise_. To pray, and present our petitions to the Most High, is a privilege; a privilege, however, which we are bound to use at times...

1. Thomas Hobbes, than whom never was greater genius for riding an idea, right or wrong, to the full length that it will go, was born in 1588: and notwithstanding his twelve pip...

1. A law is defined to be: A precept just and abiding, given for promulgation to a perfect community. A law is primarily a rule of action. The first attribute of a law is that i...

1. It is the difference between sensible apprehension and intellectual knowledge, that the former seizes upon a particular object and it only, as _this sweet_: the latter takes...

Section I.--Of the Monstrosities called Leviathan and Social Contract. Section II.--Of the theory that Civil Power is an aggregate formed by subscription of the powers of indivi...

2. Those acts alone are properly called _human_, which a man is master of to do or not to do. A _human act_, then, is an act voluntary and free. A man is what his human acts mak...

Section I.--Of Habit. Section II.--Of Virtues in general. Section III.--Of the difference between Virtues, Intellectual and Moral. Section IV.--Of the Mean in Moral Virtue. Sect...

Section I.--Of the definition and division of Rights. Section II.--Of the so-called Rights of Animals. Section III.--Of the right to Honour and Reputation. Section IV.--Of Contr...

Section I.--Of Ends. Section II.--Definition of Happiness. Section III.--Happiness open to Man. Section IV.--Of the Object of Perfect Happiness. Section V.--Of the use of the pr...

Section I.--Of the Origin of Primary Moral Judgments. Section II.--Of the invariability of Primary Moral Judgments. Section III.--Of the immutability of the Natural Law. Section...