Calculate the utilitarian value of a given course of action and come up with the morally right decision.
- Aristotle would have considered this making a moral virtue into an intellectual one: One’s knowledge gives someone the capability of making the morally correct decision, as opposed to one’s character. In that sense, Mill is closer to Plato/Socrates, except that Mill thought that the source of moral knowledge was in experience, while Plato/Socrates thought that the source of such knowledge was from within one’s soul. Which one of these approaches do you think is more correct than the other (you should at least compare Aristotle and Mill, although you can also include Socrates/Plato, if you’d like), and why?
- In your paper, be sure to give a concrete example of a circumstance involving moral decision-making and suggest how Aristotle would have seen the task and how Mill would have seen it. 3. Finally, do you think that you yourself are utilitarian in your approach to ethics? Or are you more Aristotelian? What do you think of Mill’s comparison of utilitarianism with Christi ethical life?
Sample Solution
