Some relevant comics

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1. Don’t want to kill the joke with pedantry, but it occurred to me that, taking Zach’s summaries at face value for a moment, you could argue that Bentham’s “maximise happiness” was supportive of, and in a sense a general approximation to Darwin’s point: I can’t speak for other species, but in H. sap. the sex drive is centred on the anticipation of considerable, if not always lasting, happiness; maximising the amount of sex in society would be (done right) one contribution to maximising the happiness in it (just sayin’).

   You could even stretch a point and argue that Socrates is at least in the right ball park, since “justice and right thinking” should tend to create an environment which favours the survival and reproduction of more individuals than would be the case in an unjust and arbitrary one.

   But I’m afraid poor old Aquinas is waaaay off beam, there. Not asking the right questions, not even wrong.

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