Quotes

Question 1

Situation Ethics
Joseph Fletcher
Conversation with taxi driver

Answer 1

“There are times in a mans life when a man has to push his principles aside and do the right thing”

Question 2

Situation Ethics
Joseph Fletcher
Nash’s play

Answer 2

“Noah you’re so full of what’s right you can’t see what’s good”

Question 3

Situation Ethics
Joseph Fletcher
Relativism

Answer 3

“There must be an absolute or norm of some kind for there to be any true relativity”

Question 4

Situation Ethics
Joseph Fletcher
Personalism

Answer 4

“Situation Ethics puts people at the centre of concern not objects. The legalist is a what asker (what does the law say?) the situationist is a who asker ( who can be helped?)”

Question 5

Situation Ethics
Joseph Fletcher
Jesus and Paul

Answer 5

“They replaced law from the letter that kills and brought it back to the spirit that gives it life”

Question 6

Situation Ethics
Joseph Fletcher
Jesus and Paul

Answer 6

“Jesus and Paul replaced the precepts of the Torah with the living principle of agape - agape being goodwill at work in partnership with reason”

Question 7

Situation Ethics
Joseph Fletcher
Justice

Answer 7

“Justice is the many sidedness of love”

“Justice is Christian love using its head… Justice is love coping with situations where distribution is called for”

Question 8

Situation Ethics
Joseph Fletcher
The Church

Answer 8

“The church uses a whole apparatus of premeditated rules or regulations as directives rather than guidelines or maxims to illuminate the situation”

Question 9

Situation Ethics
Joseph Fletcher
Pragmatism

Answer 9

“Pragmatism is to be plainspoken, a practical or success posture”

Question 10

Natural Law
Thomas Aquinas
Wrong reasoning

Answer 10

“If at any point it refers from the law of nature it is no longer a law but a perversion of nature”

Question 11

Natural Law
Thomas Aquinas
Natural Law is known by all

Answer 11

“Natural Law is the same for all men… there is a single standard of truth and right for everyone… which is know by everyone”

Question 12

Natural Law
Thomas Aquinas
Faith

Answer 12

“Faith is an act of intellect which assents to the divine truth and command of the will, moved by God’s grace”

Question 13

Natural Law
Thomas Aquinas
Faith and Hope

Answer 13

“Faith has to do with things that are not seen and hope with things that are not at hand”

Question 14

Natural Law
Thomas Aquinas
Love

Answer 14

“Without love, all other virtues are nothing, meaningless and empty”

Question 15

Natural Law
Thomas Aquinas
Real and Apparent Goods
Right and Wrong Reasoning

Answer 15

“Sensible and bodily goods… are not in opposition to reason but are subject to it as instruments which reason employs in order to attain it’s proper end”

Question 16

Natural Law
Thomas Aquinas
Principles of reason

Answer 16

“Actions are about singular matters: and so it is necessary for the prudent man to know both the universal principles of reason and the singulars about which actions are concerned”

Question 17

Natural Law
Socrates
Desire

Answer 17

“We do not desire anything that we do not, at the point of desiring it judge to be bad”

Question 18

Utilitarianism
Jeremy Bentham
Pain and Pleasure as a basis for making decisions

Answer 18

“Nature has placed mankind under the governance of the two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do as well as what we shall do”

Question 19

Utilitarianism
Jeremy Bentham
Happiness

Answer 19

“Create all the happiness you are able to create remove all the misery you are able to remove. Everyday will allow you - will invite you to add something to the pleasure of others - or to diminish their pains”

Question 20

Utilitarianism
Jeremy Bentham
Quantity of pleasure

Answer 20

“The quantity of pleasure being equal, push-pin is as good as poetry”

Question 21

Cosmological Argument
Thomas Aquinas
First way
Motion is apparent

Answer 21

“It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion. Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another, for nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion”

Question 22

Cosmological Argument
Thomas Aquinas
First Way
Things cannot move themselves

Answer 22

“For what is actually hot cannot simultaneously be potentially hot, but it simultaneously potentially cold. It is therefore impossible that in the same respect and in the same way a thing should be both a mover and moved, I.e. that it should move itself”

Question 23

Cosmological Argument
Thomas Aquinas
Second Way
Nothing can cause itself

Answer 23

“In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself”

Question 24

Utilitarianism
John Stuart Mill
Individual is sovereign

Answer 24

“Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign”

Question 25

Utilitarianism
John Stuart Mill
Satisfaction

Answer 25

“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied”

Question 26

Utilitarianism
John Stuart Mill
Pleasure

Answer 26

“No pleasure is a bad thing in itself, but things which produce certain pleasures entail disturbances many times greater than the pleasures themselves”

Question 27

Utilitarianism
John Stuart Mill
Universalisability and harm principle

Answer 27

“The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others”

Question 28

Utilitarianism
John Stuart Mill
Moral obligation

Answer 28

“There is no case of moral obligation in which some secondary principle is not involved”

Question 29

Utilitarianism
Jeremy Bentham
Animal experimentation

Answer 29

“The question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they talk? But, can they suffer?”

Question 30

Cosmological argument
Thomas Aquinas
Third way
Impossible for things to begin to exist

Answer 30

“If everything is possible not to be, then at one time there could have been nothing in existence… it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist, and thus even now nothing would be in existence… which is absurd”

Question 31

Cosmological argument
Thomas Aquinas
Third way
God is necessary

Answer 31

“We cannot postulate the existence of some being having of itself it’s own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This all men speak of as God”

Question 32

Kalam cosmological argument
William Lane Craig
Personal Creator

Answer 32

“I think that it can be plausibly argued that the cause of the universe must be a personal creator. For how else could a temporal effect arise from an eternal cause? For example, a man sitting from eternity may will to stand up, hence a temporal effect may arise from an eternally existing agent. Indeed, the agent may will dirk and eternity to create a temporal effect, so that no change in the agent need tone conceived”

Question 33

Cosmological argument
Thomas Aquinas
Fifth way

Answer 33

“We see that things which lack knowledge, such as natural bodies, act for an end and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Now whatever lacks knowledge cannot move towards an end, unless it is directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence, as the arrow is directed by the archer. Therefore, some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God”

Question 34

Tennant’s anthropic and aesthetic argument

God reveals himself through beauty

Answer 34

“The aesthetic argument becomes more persuasive when it renounces all claims to proof and appeals to logical probability. And it becomes stronger when it takes as the most significant fact.. the saturation of Nature with beauty… God reveals himself in may ways; and some men enter his temple by the gate of beautiful”

Question 35

Challenges to the teleological argument
David Hume
Architect example

Answer 35

“If we see a house we can conclude that it has an architect or builder; because this is precisely that species of effect, which we have experienced to proceed that species of cause. But surely you will not affirm, that the universe bears such a resemblance to a house, that we can with the same certainty infer a similar cause. The dissimilitude is so striking, that the utmost you can here pretend is to guess a similar cause”