George Moore theorized the "naturalistic fallacy", that is, the explanation linking the notion of good to things empirically good, agreable. He argued that Good is indefinable. Unlike Plato, did not admit the participation of the Good in good things. He wrote:
«The theories I propose to discuss may be conveniently divided into two groups.The naturalistic fallacy always implies that when we think "This is good" what we are thinking is that the thing in question bears a definite relation to some one other thing. But this one thing, by reference to which good is defined, may be either when I may call a natural object - something of which the existence is admittedly an object of experience - or else it may be an object which is only inferred to exist in a supersensible real world. These two types of ethical theory I propose to treat separately».( G.E.Moore, Principia Ethica, pag. 38-39, Cambridge University Press, 1971; the bold emphasis is put by me).
George Moore equivocates: good is not indefinable. Good is pleasure: physical pleasure, like eating chocolat or grapes, or moral pleasure, like feeling justice in a society or in a family or like seeing our friend recover health after an accident, or intelectual pleasure, like geting a sense of historical cycles or like understanding Plato's theory of archetypes.
Moore wrote yet:
«By Hedonism, then, I mean the doctrine that pleasure alone is good as an end - "good" in the sense which I had tried to point out as indefinable. The doctrine that pleasure, among other things, is good as an end, is not Hedonism; and I shall not dispute its truth. Nor again is the doctrine that other things, besides pleasure, are good as means, at all inconsistent with Hedonism: the Hedonist is not bound to maintain that "Pleasure alone is good", if under good he includes, as we generally do, what is good as means to an end, as well as the end itself.» ( Moore, ibid, page 62; the bold emphasis is put by me).
The position of Moore about hedonism is as absurd as saying that oxygen is only oxygen if there is pure no mixing with other gases. In fact, the search of pleasure as the aim of an acction is enough to define hedonism: the climber who cut his arm stuck in a rock at the Grand Canyon and was able to survive made a hedonist act despite of mutilating himself. Mutilation is pain, is contrary to hedonism, but in this case was an anti hedonistic practic subject to an order, the preservation of life, a hedonistic commitement. So, pleasure is mixed with the pain and whether imposes his quality in final stage of the action these one is hedonistic. Against Moore, I sustain that Hedonism is the doctrine that pleasure, alone or mixed with pain or other things, is the main goal of action, the supreme value.
© (Direitos de autor para Francisco Limpo de Faria Queiroz)
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