For a time, I was living under the impression that in the Nine Inch Nails’ album Broken there is a song where Trent Reznor sings: “Happiness is slavery”. Right until the point when I went to look for an accurate transcript of the lyrics when I found out it is actually “Happiness in slavery”. This…
Month: November 2022
Jeremy Bentham’s “The Principles of Morals and Legislation” (chapters 1-4)
This article was originally written for an Ethics class. In this work, specifically in chapters 1 to 4, Jeremy Bentham formalizes the basic principle of utility concerning legislative power. In the first chapter, he defines principle utility as a principle that approves of actions increasing the subject’s happiness or decreasing the subject’s pain. The subject…
John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty” (Chapter 1,2)
This article was originally written for an Ethics class. The work of John Stuart Mill is interesting to me, as it seems to be one of the early works arguing forindividualism. He emphasizes the liberty of the individual, constrained only very lightly by society. In the introduction, he writes about historical development in this sense….
Plato’s “Republic” (II. Book)
This article was originally written for an Ethics class. For the first time, I have read a part of Plato’s Republic and must admit that it is not as bad as I expected. The theme of the second book is centered around a state, even though it starts with the question of whether justice is…
Max Weber’s “Politics as a Vocation”
This article was originally written for an Ethics class. The work Politics as a Vocation starts with an interesting definition of a state. State, according to Weber, is the only group of people that claims the monopoly on the legitimized use of physical force. Further, he writes about the three ways of claiming authority. The…