James MacKaye
James MacKaye | |
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Born | James Medbury MacKaye April 8, 1872 New York, New York |
Died | January 22, 1935 Boston, Massachusetts | (aged 62)
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Occupation(s) | Engineer, philosopher |
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James Medbury MacKaye (April 8, 1872 – January 22, 1935) was an American engineer and philosopher.
Biography
MacKaye was born in
The Economy of Happiness
In this highly original but now largely forgotten work, MacKaye attempted to rescue the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham from the changes that this doctrine had subsequently undergone as a result of John Stuart Mill's moderating influence. MacKaye conceived human beings—and sentient beings generally—as mechanisms of transforming resources into happiness, which he argued was the only intrinsic good. The goal of a society was therefore viewed by MacKaye as the problem of finding that arrangement which would produce the highest output of happiness attainable given the inputs available. As he wrote,
That which society should seek to attain, the maximum surplus of happiness, may be referred to by different names according to the relation in which we think of it, e.g. the utilitarian end, the end or object of utility, of society or of justice, and so forth. It is in the nature of a perfectly definite magnitude. Quantities of pain or pleasure may be regarded as magnitudes having the same definiteness as tons of pig iron, barrels of sugar, bushels of wheat, yards of cotton, or pounds of wool; and as political economy seeks to ascertain the conditions under which these commodities may be produced with the greatest efficiency--so the economy of happiness seeks to ascertain the conditions under which happiness, regarded as a commodity, may be produced with the greatest efficiency--how the maximum output of happiness may be achieved with the means available. In order to ascertain what these conditions are, we need to proceed as any manufacturer trained to his business would proceed, were he endeavoring to ascertain how he could most economically produce beer, or molasses, or oil, or tacks. He would satisfy himself by the inductive or common sense method what laws and resources of nature and of human nature were available under conditions as he found them, and the means thus available he would, to the best of his ability, adapt to his ends. Our problem is a similar one, and we shall adopt similar means to solve it.[4]
MacKaye concluded that the form of social organization most conducive to that goal was a particular type of socialism which he dubbed "pantocracy".
The Dynamic Universe
In 1930 MacKaye startled the world after announcing an alternative to
MacKaye entered the academic profession only in 1931, when he became a lecturer at
Bibliography
- The Economy of Happiness, Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1906.
- The Happiness of Nations: A Beginning in Political Engineering, New York: B.W. Huebsch, 1915.
- The Mechanics of Socialism, Boston: Fabian Club, 1915.
- Americanized Socialism; A Yankee View of Capitalism, New York: Boni and Liveright, 1918.
- The Science of Usefulness, New York: Boni and Liveright, 1920.
- The Logic of Conduct, New York: Boni and Liveright, 1924.
- Thoreau: Philosopher of Freedom, New York: Vanguard Press, 1930
- The Dynamic Universe, New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1931
- The Logic of Language, Hanover, N.H.: Dartmouth College Publications, 1939.
References
- ^ Walter Lippmann, "All the MacKayes", The Internationalist, vol. 3, no. 2 (January, 1911), p. 29.
- ^ Larry Anderson, Benton MacKaye: Conservationist, Planner, and Creator of the Appalachian Trail, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, p. 16.
- ^ The Papers of The Mackaye Family in the Dartmouth College Library.
- ^ The Economy of Happiness, pp. 183-184.
- ^ 'The Theory of Relativity: For What Is It a Disguise?', Vol. 27, No. 5 (February 27, 1930), pp. 126-134.
- ^ a b "Prof. J. M. M'Kaye Scientist, Dies, 62," The New York Times, January 23, 1935, books art-books sect., p. 17.
- ^ W. K. Wright, Memorial Notice, The Philosophical Review, Vol. 45, No. 2 (March, 1936), p. 176.
- ^ Anderson, Benton MacKaye, p. 259.
External links
- Media related to James MacKaye at Wikimedia Commons
- James MacKaye. WorldCat Identities.