Freud the Utilitarian
I’ve been slowly reading Samuel Fleischacker’s compact A Short History of Distributive Justice. In his section on utilitarianism, I came across this sentence:
In its purest, Benthamite form, the form that most conduces to setting up a calculus that might settle all ethical questions, utilitarianism aims at pleasure and the avoidance of pain, where “pleasure” and “pain” refer strictly and simply to feelings.
It struck me that this is precisely the formula that Freud uses to set up his calculus of the mind. That is all.
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