Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
A maxim is a moral rule or principle, which can be considered dependent on one's philosophy. A maxim is often pedagogical and motivates specific actions. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy defines it as: Generally any simple and memorable rule or guide for living; for example, 'neither a borrower nor a lender be'.
[18] For example, if maxims equivalent to 'I will break a promise when doing so secures my advantage' were universalized, no one would trust any promises, so the idea of a promise would become meaningless; the maxim would be self-contradictory because, when universalized, promises cease to be meaningful. The maxim is not moral because it is ...
The maxim is a shortened form of the fuller 18th-century formulation: qui facit per alium, est perinde ac si facit per se ipsum: "whoever acts through another acts as if he were doing it himself." Indirectly, the principle is in action or present in the duty that has been represented by the agent so the duty performed will be seen as the ...
The maxim was cited only infrequently during the early 18th century; English literature, and especially English poetry, was the most fruitful of references. [84] Alexander Pope explored several traditional interpretations in his Essay on Man (1734), [ 85 ] with the poem's most well-known lines containing an exhortation to know the limits of one ...
Counter-examples to the golden rule typically are more forceful against the first than the second. In his book on the golden rule, Jeffrey Wattles makes the similar observation that such objections typically arise while applying the golden rule in certain general ways (namely, ignoring differences in taste or situation, failing to compensate ...
Universalizing a maxim (statement) leads to it being valid, or to one of two contradictions—a contradiction in conception (where the maxim, when universalized, is no longer a viable means to the end) or a contradiction in will (where the will of a person contradicts what the universalisation of the maxim implies).
The categorical imperative (German: kategorischer Imperativ) is the central philosophical concept in the deontological moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant.Introduced in Kant's 1785 Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, it is a way of evaluating motivations for action.
Leech's generosity maxim states: "Minimize the expression of beliefs that express or imply benefit to self; maximize the expression of beliefs that express or imply cost to self." Unlike the tact maxim, the maxim of generosity focuses on the speaker, and says that others should be put first instead of the self. For example: