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i'm at school.. i'll have a philosophy and an english test later today. so i thought i could kinda practice xD cause of course, i am already practicing english by just writing this.. and i'll tell you something about ethics ^^ if you're not interested in philosophy you can skip this lol. oh and i'm sorry if i'm mixing it with dutch words, i don't know philosophic terms in english.

ethics is about the question 'what makes someone a good human?'. the first thing you should know about is hedonism by epicurus. it's about having as much fun as possible and avoiding pain. this doesnt mean you should have like a very wild life.. epicurus goal is ataraxia, a calm life without worries.

now the first important theory, utilitarism, by bentham, is based on this. the main rule is the hedonistic calculus. it means, with everything you do, you have to think if it causes the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. and if it does it's the right thing to do. now this is kinda too easy xD there are a lot of problems with this. for example.. there's a boy, he hardly has friends, and he visits his aunt at the hospital. then at the same time there arrive like 3 famous people at the hospital who need a heart, a kidney, and a lung. according to utilitarism the right thing to do would be to kidnap the boy and use his organs for the famous people.

there are 2 ways to fix those problems. one is, you have to make a difference between 'high happiness' and 'low happiness'. well the first one is things like culture, reading a good book, visiting a museum. the second is like.. sports for example. the other way is to make a rule of it. you have to think, what would happen if everyone would do this in this situation? in the example before, no one would ever visit a hospital again, they'd always have a risk they'd be used for someone more important.

the next big theory is the 'plichtethiek', by kant. this one is very rational. he thinks there is a main rule, that should count in every situation, for everyone. he calls this the categoric imperatif. this is:
1. it should be reasonable to want that what you do will be a rule that counts in every situation.
2. you should always treat a human like a goal (intrinsic) and not as a tool (instrumental).
the problem with this is you do the same in every situation, but every situation is different and should be treated differently.

-ok i just had my english test xD but i haven''t had philosophy yet, so i'll finish this. english was pretty easy. it was a grammar test, but a lot of people thought they asked a lot of vocabulary we couldn't know.. ok i can understand they don't know 'clogs', but 'probably'? wtf? my brother knows that. he's 10.-

ok, last theory. it's the 'deugdethiek', by aristoteles. it's pretty old but it has gained a lot of attention again lately. the other theories are both about the question 'what should i do?' while this one is about 'how should i live?'. aristoteles' goal in life is eudaimonia, a perfect life where you use your talents and capabilities as much as possible. so this is different for everyone, everyone's talents are different. he has a teleologic vision: everything in nature has a goal, and has talents it should fully use. he thinks you should find like an average way of living, you should find the center. for example take courage, you can be a coward or have too much courage, and you have to find the middle.
the downside of this one is that it is too vague, there aren't really clear rules of what is right and wrong.

well.. that's it :D i didn't use my book once. but i might have made mistakes cause of that though. ^^' i'm sorry if i bored you.
END OF BORING THEORY.

now something is bothering me, and it has to do with everything i just wrote. yesterday when i was delivering newspapers i looked through the window and saw a little boy, like just 3, climbing the stairs. and a few seconds later when i was at the next house i heard a child scream, so the boy probably fell off the stairs :/ so now i feel like, maybe i couldve saved him, i could've knocked the door or whatever. and maybe i should've gone back, cause maybe his parents couldn't help him for some reason. so i can't stop thinking about the different theories and what would be the right thing to do according to each one of them xD what do you think?

i wonder who actually read this xD