Moral Philosophy: Ethics, Deontology and Natural LawRickaby, Joseph
Philosophy
Moral Philosophy: Ethics, Deontology and Natural Law
Rickaby, Joseph
Ethics
4. _Physical cravings, or appetites, have limited objects: the objects
of psychical desires may be unlimited._ A thirsty man thirsts not for
an ocean, but for drink _quantum sufficit_: give him that and the
appetite is gone. But the miser covets all the money that he can get:
the voluptuary ranges land and sea in search of a new pleasure: the
philosopher ever longs for a higher knowledge: the saint is
indefatigable in doing good. Whatever a man takes to be an end in
itself, not simply a means, that he desires without end or measure.
What he desires as a means, he desires under a limitation, so far
forth as it makes for the end, so much and no more. As Aristotle says
of the processes of art, "the end in view is the limit," [Greek: peras
to telos] (cf. c. ii., s. iii., n. 3, p. 15) Whatever is desired as an
end in itself, is taken to be a part of happiness, or to represent
happiness. Happiness and the object that gives happiness is the one
thing that man desires for itself, and desires without end or measure.
Unfortunately he is often mistaken in the choice of this object. He
often takes for an end what is properly only a means. They "whose god
is their belly," have made this mistake in regard of the gratification
of appetite. It is not appetite proper that has led to this
perversion, but psychical desire, or appetite inflamed by the
artificial stimulus of imagination. For one who would be temperate, it
is more important to control his imagination than to trouble about his
appetite. Appetite exhausts itself, sometimes within the bounds of
what is good for the subject, sometimes beyond them, but still within
some bounds; but there is no limit to the cravings bred of
imagination.
5. By this canon a man may try himself to discover whether or not a
favourite amusement is gaining too much upon him. An amusement is
properly a means to the end, that a man may come away from it better
fitted to do the serious work of his life. Pushed beyond a certain
point, the amusement ceases to minister to this end. The wise man
drops it at that point. But if one knows not where to stop: or if when
stopped in spite of himself, he is restless till he begin again, and
never willingly can forego any measure of the diversion that comes
within his reach, the means in that case has passed into an end: he is
enslaved to that amusement, inasmuch as he will do anything and
everything for the sake of it. Thus some men serve pleasure, and other
men money.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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