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VIRTUOUS LIVING - Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University

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(ii)(iii)example, and sensational pleasure on the lower one. The former are to beencouraged and the lower controlled. We recall that the process of determiningthe quantity of the pleasure rests in the rational judgment of the autonomousutilitarian moral agent. This is Kant’s idea of “legislating for oneself”. Thismeans that the conception of pleasure or otherwise is based on the preferenceof the autonomous individual. Anscombe calls this “absurd as if in these days,when majority votes command great respect, one were to call each reflectivedecision a man-made vote resulting in a majority, which as a matter ofproportion is overwhelming, for it is always 1-0” (Anscombe 1958:2).The consequentialist, often-named “act-utilitarian” embraces those actionsconsidered to be right if they reasonably produce “at least as much utility asany alternative feasible act” (Scarre 1998:440). Recent “act-utilitarian” hastended to move away from appraising actions based on their “individualpropensity to increase utility”. Instead, they prefer actions that conform toutility that enhances rules, motives, or virtues. Hence the concept of “ruleutilitarian”,which embraces actions considered to be right insofar as their“general observance could reasonably be expected to promote utility at least aseffectively as any alternative feasible rule” (cf Scarre 1998:440). Rader sumsit up in this way: “Acts are to be tested by rules and rules by consequences”(Rader 1964:171).The aggregative approach as the third feature is described as “a method ofreducing moral judgment to mathematical calculation” (Scarre 1998:441). It isa way of standardising utility and its distribution. Aggregation helps indetermining the rightness or wrongness of how much and for what reason oneperson or groups of people in social positions should be remunerated.Although utilitarians such as Harsanyi advocated for “average per capitautility as a more plausible maximand”, it has never been the income per personin reality. There has always been a morally wrong impression of publicutilisation of the total national revenue.However, a way of calibrating individual utility has to be established. Someutilitarians, such as Brandt in his book A Theory of the Good and the Right(1979) have gone ahead to develop a calculus, though difficulties still exist.For example, to what extent is it possible to calibrate utility in a subjective132

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