Word: utilitarianism
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Dahlberg's visions-which he outlined last week to the American Society of Planning Officials and hopes to repeat before a Senate Committee some weeks hence-have a utilitarian, ulterior purpose. He espouses a 24-hour work week because then people will spend more time at home. Then they will want a decent home. Result: millions of cheap new houses must be built...
...choice between the two conceptions of human ethics as opposite as the poles. It is a consequence of a belief in the sacrosanct nature of the individual and a rejection of the view which glorifies the collective aim. To argue that the rights of the individual are a purely utilitarian invention is to deprive the underlying American ideal of its cutting edge. You can build a free nation on a Christian view of human destiny. You can destroy it by substituting another...
...defeat the Germans and the Japanese we may nevertheless in the process lose many of the values in the traditional heritage for which we are fighting. . . . The danger comes from within our country. In the process of [postwar] reconstruction the outstanding criteria of values will be materialistic and utilitarian. If the Universities allow themselves to be overwhelmed by such a philosophy, if they and their alumni cannot meet the surge of unthinking public opinion, we shall enter a period and regime of intellectual mediocrity and spiritual stagnation which for the hopes of a civilized people would be hardly preferable...
There were old and great Islandian families, but none were vastly wealthy, and none knew want. They were free from venereal diseases, and very vigilant lest foreigners import them. They felt a reverence for the soil in which the esthetic and the utilitarian were inseparable. When Consul Lang tried to sell them on the time-saving uses of U.S. farm machinery, they were far less interested in time-saving than in the indecent strain which would be put on their horses...
...were through. If we lost the war, life wouldn't be worth much. Not for anyone. Eating and sleeping and Mozart and necking and studying would be of any use if someone were telling you exactly what you had to do. Maybe it was that you had to be utilitarian. In war you have to consider what would bring the greatest good to the greatest number of your people. "You damn fool," he said, and he gave the stick a push. "You silly ass," and the hull far below came into view just over the cowling...