 Bertrand Russell Quotes 366 |
It is obvious that there can be a greater total of satisfaction of desire where desires are compossible than where they are incompatible. Therefore, according to our definition of the good, compossible desires are preferable as means. It follows that love is preferable to hate, co-operation to competition, peace to war, and so on. (Of course there are exceptions; I am only stating what is likely to be true in most cases. ) This leads to an ethic by which desires may be distinguished as right or wrong, or, speaking loosely, as good and bad. Right desires will be those that are capable of being compossible with as many other desires as possible; wrong desires will be those that can only be satisfied by thwarting other desires. But this is a large theme, and I will leave its development for a later chapter.
Source: Bertrand Russell: Human Society in Ethics and Politics, (1954), chapter 4
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