Political Science · Western Political Thought
UGC NET December 2018 Political Science
Given below are two statements, one labelled as Assertion (A) and the other labelled as Reason (R). Read the statements and choose the correct answer from the codes given below.
Assertion (A): Carlyle called Bentham's utilitarian doctrine as 'Pig Philosophy'.
Reason (R): To him, happiness is much more than pleasure.
ABoth A and R are true and R is the correct explanation of A ✓ Correct
BBoth A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A
CA is true, but R is false
DA is false, but R is true
Correct answer: (A) Both A and R are true and R is the correct explanation of A — Both the assertion and the reason are true, and the reason correctly explains the assertion, since Carlyle dismissed Bentham's doctrine as 'Pig Philosophy' precisely because it reduced happiness to mere…
Explanation
★Both the assertion and the reason are true, and the reason correctly explains the assertion, since Carlyle dismissed Bentham's doctrine as 'Pig Philosophy' precisely because it reduced happiness to mere pleasure.
★Thomas Carlyle attacked Benthamite utilitarianism for equating the good with the pursuit of pleasure, a goal he thought fit for swine rather than humans.
★For Carlyle, happiness involves higher moral and spiritual aspirations that pleasure alone cannot capture.
★Bentham had treated all pleasures as equal in kind, differing only in quantity, as measured by the felicific calculus.
★This quantitative hedonism is what provoked the charge that the philosophy degraded human ends.
★John Stuart Mill answered the same objection by ranking higher intellectual pleasures above lower bodily ones.
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