Page 108. Hear the Language. Part A. LISTEN

Unit 11

page 108

hear the language

part a: listen

1:

this idea of rights, comes originally from the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher in the 18th century.

2:

freedom of speech means two things, first that I have the right to say whatever I want and second that other people must respect my right to speak.

3:

to decide if an action is ethical using the rights approach, we must always ask how does this action affect the individual’s freedom to make choices.

4:

the utilitarian approach was made popular in the 19th century by British philosopher John Stuart Mill.

5:

in this approach, the most important thing is not individual rights.

6:

Now, most people don’t like paying taxes because they have less money to spend on other things.

7:

Now, let’s take a real-world example and look at how to make a decision using these two approaches; that is the rights approach in the utilitarian approach.

8:

when you look at the problem from the rights approach, we have to ask “how the smoking in public affect individual rights?”.

9:

this however, shows us one of the problems of using the rights approach; because when you have two groups, how do you decide whose rights are more important? smokers or non-smokers?

10:

following that approach, we have to ask “what creates the greatest amount of good?”.