Pre-Socratic Socratics Medieval Modern Philo Contemporary Philo

Kant
Socrates St. Thomas
Anaximides Descartes
Plato St. Anselm Wittgenstein
Thales Mill
Aristotle St. Augustine
Bentham
Nature Metaphysics God or Theo Man & Knowledge Language

St. Thomas Aquinas

1. Natural Law – “Do good and shun evil” | Basis: Reason

2. Divine Law – Everything has “purpose.” God is the giver of man’s purpose’

3. Eternal Law – God’s Law

4. Human Law – Civil Law – Civil Code, Court Decision, Constitution, Criminal Law

Gradation/Levels:

1. Food

2. Water

3. Sleep

4. Sex

5. Humility

Goods according to St. Thomas Aquinas

1. Material

2. Spiritual/Intellectual Goods
Contemporay Philosophy

- Legal Positivism

- Wittgenstein: Just because you make use of a concept of a thought in language doesn’t mean it has sense.
o Impurity in Language – Why is language full of impurities: so many thoughts brought to you by language that you
think is real.
o Once you purify your language, you purify your thoughts.
o Past philosophers made a huge mistake; ideas brought about does not have meaning at all or do you understand
what it means.
o In order for a thing to have meaning, it must pass the 3 Tests: Verification, Correspondence, & Falsification – gives
sense or meaning to our sentences.
o Treat other philosophers as literature.

- Semantics, Syntax, Pragmatics

o Semantics – Dictionary meaning of a word
o Syntax – Meaning in order you arrange the word – arrangement of words as to know their meaning
o Pragmatics – Meaning of the word based on the use of the word

- 7 Propositions in Tractatuous by Wittgenstein

o The world is everything, that is the case;
o What is the case or the fact that is the existence of state of affairs;
o A logical picture of fact is a thought;
o Thought is a proposition with a sense;
o A sense is sensical if it has truth function;
o Where one cannot speak, therefore one must be silent.

- Purists = Atheism

Tractatus
 1. Verified
2. Correspondence
3. Falsiability

Philosophical Investigation

• Pragmatics: Meaning resides in the use

1. According to Bentham, what are the causes of human action? What is the principle of utility?

According to Bentham, pleasure and pain govern not only how human beings act but also how human beings ought to act.

The principle of utility or the principle of utilitarianism : I ought do that act which will bring about the greatest happiness (pleasure)
for the greatest number of persons (the community).

2. Explain what Bentham means by the principle of asceticism. Is this principle related to the principle of sympathy and
antipathy? Why does Bentham think that these principles lead to inconsistent application and undue punishment?

The principle of asceticism is the inverse of the principle of utility: I ought do that act which will bring about the least happiness
(pleasure) for the greatest number of persons. The principle is not consistently used because it opposes the natural influences of
pleasure and pain.

The principle of sympathy and antipathy is the reliance on feelings for conscience for moral decisions. We judge an action as right or
wrong on the basis of how we feel about it or our intuition or conscience. Since our feelings are not objective, they tend to be
inconsistent and involve emotional application.
3. Can pleasure be quantified? Explain whether you think the use of the hedonistic calculus for the individual and for society is
feasible.

Bentham attempts to quantify pleasures in the hedonistic calculus. Some of the factors are quantifiable such as duration, certainty,
and extent, but most of the factors are not quantifiable. There may well be different kinds of pleasures and threshold of
pleasures. Propinquity can be established by indifference curves but this would be an attempt to quantify feelings.

4. What does Bentham mean when he explains that motives are neither bad nor good? Why doesn't Bentham think that evil motives
can be productive of over-all good? Explain his analysis of motives.

Bentham does not think motives or intentions are an exception to his result based theory. For Bentham, motives can only be
considered good or bad based on their results of being productive of happiness or unhappiness.. ("Beauty is as beauty does.")

When we look at motives which are said to be bad, the motives are so named as to include the effects as "packed in with" or as being
part of the motive. Thus, the motive is named by its effects. Consider Russell's conjugation: "I reconsider, you change your mind, and
he goes back on his word."

Motives considered apart from the effects are neither bad nor good in themselves.

Incommensurability – No person can judge within the meaning is True or False because situations are different at the time the words
are uttered.

- You cannot judge a language based on your own context

Language = Games

• Language are like games, it has different rules

 • If words have different meaning, does it mean you cannot talk about it? NO, family resemblance

Family Resemblances

- Similarities even if the belief is different

Private Language

- It is impossible; because its rules are parasitic to other language.

UTILITARIANISM

- Standard of measurement of making laws.

- Goal of the Law: Common Good

- Jeremy Bentham – “Greatest good for the greatest number of people” and John Stuart Mill – “Quality of pleasure it brings to
an individual”

- Good is not measured by quantity but the quality

- MOB RULE

Immanuel Kahnt

CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE

CONDITIONAL IMPERATIVE

• Aposteriori – The knowledge you obtain after your experience

• Apraiori – Before you experience, you already know based on sole reason

o Moral Laws

• Mixed – Philippine Law

A. THEORY OF LAW AND PUNISHMENT

• Sumum Bonus – For the greater good for the greatest number of people

▪ Determining factor: number

B. THEORIES IN CRIMINAL LAW

• Classical approach – Man is a rational being, he should be responsible for his acts

• Humanist/Positivist approach – Focus is the man himself; man is but a victim of his own environment

o What makes man commit crimes are not because of the factors present in his society.

• Eclectic/Mixed approach – Bentham: There are realities in life that produce pains like crimes and it should be prevented
through enacting laws.

o As long as the law suppresses the crime, it is good.

• Categorical Imperative – Kahnt: For their own sake’s regardless of the condition | Laws should not be based on a conditional
imperative | The law is there because killing itself is wrong.