
Thomas Hurka on Pleasure
Philosophy Bites
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The Morally Good Person Is a Morally Bad Person
In real life it matters how pleasure is caused. I mean, if I get my pleasure from torturing animals, that's not a good thing. So to take Bentham's famous remark that quantity of pleasure being equal, pushpin is as good as poetry. Pushpin was an 18th century game like Tiddley Winx. And then the sadistic pleasure is on balance evil. Its badness insofar as it's vicious is greater than its goodnesssofar as it's pleasure.
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