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Welfare, Happiness, and Pleasure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Extract

Time and philosophical fashion have not been kind to hedonism. After flourishing for three centuries or so in its native empiricist habitat, it has latterly all but disappeared from the scene. Does it now merit even passing attention, for other than nostalgic purposes? Like endangered species, discredited ideas do sometimes manage to make a comeback. Is hedonism due for a revival of this sort? Perhaps it is overly optimistic to think that it could ever flourish again in its original form; the evolutionary changes which have rendered the philosophical environment hostile to the classical specimens of the theory are doubtless irreversible. None the less, it is still possible that certain features of the classical view can, and should, be recuperated—like bits of DNA which could contribute to the emergence of new and more robust species. So let us ask ourselves: what is living and what is dead in traditional hedonism?

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

1 I will pass over the issue of psychological hedonism, since it divides the utilitarian camp. Bentham and J. S. Mill both subscribed to it: for their best-known statements of the doctrine, see An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. Burns, J. H. and Hart, H. L. A., London, 1970Google Scholar (The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham), ch. 1; and ‘Utilitarianism’, in Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1969Google Scholar, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, x. ch. 4Google Scholar. Sidgwick, on the other hand, rejected it: see The Methods of Ethics, 7th edition, London, 1962, Book I, ch. 4.Google Scholar

2 ‘Utilitarianism’, CW, x. 210Google Scholar; cf. 214: ‘the ultimate end, with reference to and for the sake of which all other things are desirable … is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments’. Likewise Bentham: ‘Now, pleasure is in itself a. good: nay, even setting aside immunity from pain, the only good: pain is in itself an evil; and, indeed, without exception, the only evil; or else the words good and evil have no meaning. And this is alike true of every sort of pain, and of every sort of pleasure’ (IPML (CW), p. 100)Google Scholar. Bentham sometimes claimed his ethical hedonism to be true by definition; see The Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. Bowring, John, 11 vols., Edinburgh, 18381843, iii. 214Google Scholar; vi. 257n.

3 ‘Utilitarianism’, CW, x. 234Google Scholar. Note that the passage on p. 210 also begins with a claim about the value of happiness.

4 Ibid., 210.

5 Mill nearly always prefers to speak of happiness or utility, as he does throughout Utilitarianism. However, he sometimes switches to talk of well-being; see, for instance, ‘On Liberty’, in Essays on Politics and Society, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1977Google Scholar, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, xviii. ch. 3Google Scholar. Sidgwick defines egoism in terms of happiness, as opposed to good or well-being, because of its relative freedom from perfectionist overtones (see Methods, Book I, ch. 7); it is clear that he is seeking a purely welfarist notion. Bentham sometimes uses well-being and happiness interchangeably (see, for instance, Deontology, together with A Table of the Springs of Action and the Article on Utilitarianism, ed. Goldworth, Amnon, Oxford, 1983Google Scholar (The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham), pp. 124–5Google Scholar). Where he distinguishes them (ibid., pp. 130 and 135), he treats the former as pointing to an individual's net balance of pleasure over pain, while the latter suggests a run of pleasures of an unusually high degree. See also Chrestomathia, ed. Smith, M. J. and Burston, W. H., Oxford, 1983 (The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham), pp. 179–80n.Google Scholar

8 Deontology (CW), pp. 124–5Google Scholar. Cf. Bentham's definition of eudaimonics: ‘the art, which has for the object of its endeavours, to contribute in some way or other to the attainment of well-being, and the science in virtue of which, in so far as it is possessed by him, a man knows in what manner he is to conduct himself in order to exercise that art with effect’ (Chrestomathia (CW), pp. 179–80)Google Scholar. There is a striking resemblance between these passages and Mill's views on the relationship between art and science, and on the ultimate end of the ‘art of life’; see A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive, ed. Robson, John M., 2 vols., Toronto, 1974Google Scholar, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, viii. 949–52.Google Scholar

7 Thus his dismissive treatment of rival principles in IPML (CW), chs. 1 and 2.

8 Methods, Book III, ch. 14.

9 Ibid., p. 391.

10 Ibid., p. 398.

11 IPML (CW), 74Google Scholar; cf. Jeremy Bentham's Economic Writings, ed. Stark, W., 3 vols., London, 1952–54, iii. 308Google Scholar. The empiricist reduction of happiness to pleasure can be traced back at least as far as John Locke; see An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Nidditch, Peter, Oxford, 1975, Book II, ch. 21, sec. 42.Google Scholar

12 Deontology (CW), p. 125Google Scholar; cf. Chrestomathia (CW), pp. 179–80nGoogle Scholar. For a reduction of interest to pleasure and pain, see IPML (CW), p. 12Google Scholar; Economic Writings, i. 207.Google Scholar

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20 Ibid., 185n.

21 Methods, p. 94Google Scholar. Sidgwick draws the conclusion that all pleasures must therefore be commensurable in terms of their pleasantness, and all pains in terms of their painfulness (p. 123ff.).

22 Bentham gives occasional hints of such an account, as when he says that ‘Pains and pleasures may be called by one general word, interesting perceptions’ (IPML (CW), p. 42)Google Scholar, and when he distinguishes pleasures and pains from sensations which are ‘indifferent’ (Bowring, , Works, vi. 217).Google Scholar

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Let, then, pleasure be defined as feeling which the sentient individual at the time of feeling it implicitly or explicitly apprehends to be desirable;—desirable, that is, when considered merely as feeling, and not in respect of its objective conditions or consequences, or of any facts that come directly within the cognisance and judgment of others besides the sentient individual.

For the breadth of Sidgwick's notion of pleasure, see also pp. 93 and 402.

26 Though a version of it is defended in Edwards, Rem B., Pleasures and Pains: A Theory of Qualitative Hedonism, Ithaca, 1979.Google Scholar

26 Kerr, Frederick W. L., The Pain Book, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1981, pp. 44–5.Google Scholar

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30 Kerr, , p. 26Google Scholar; Melzack, and Wall, , pp. 6971Google Scholar. For an extended treatment of this issue, see Trigg.

31 Nelkin, Norton, ‘Pains and Pain Sensations’, Journal of Philosophy, lxxxiii (1986), 129–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 See Melzack, and Wall, , p. 56ff.Google Scholar, on the vocabulary available to us for the description of pain.

33 The distinction is nicely illustrated in a scene in Lean, David's film LawrenceGoogle Scholar of Arabia in which T. E. Lawrence shows off his ability to extinguish a match with his fingers. When one of his collegues attempts the same feat, he exclaims that it hurts and asks Lawrence what the trick is. ‘The trick’, replies Lawrence, , ‘is not minding that it hurts.’Google Scholar

34 In Ryle, 's well-known formulation, ‘a pain is a sensation of a special sort, which we ordinarily dislike having’Google Scholar (Ryle, Gilbert, The Concept of Mind, New York, 1949, p. 109)Google Scholar. Cf. Hare, B. M., ‘Pain and Evil’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume xxxviii (1964), 91106CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method, and Point, Oxford, 1981, p. 93Google Scholar; Brandt, Richard B., A Theory of the Good and the Right, Oxford, 1979, pp. 131–2.Google Scholar

35 See Baier, Kurt, The Moral Point of View: A Rational Basis of Ethics, Ithaca, 1958, pp. 268–75Google Scholar; also Edwards and Nelkin.

36 Cassell, Eric J., ‘The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine’, New England Journal of Medicine, cccvi (1982), 639–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Recognizing Suffering’, Hastings Center Report, xxi (1991), 2431CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for a similar distinction see Hare, , Moral Thinking, p. 93.Google Scholar

37 Cassell, , ‘The Nature of Suffering’, 642.Google Scholar

38 Ibid., 643–4.

39 Hare, , Moral Thinking, p. 93Google Scholar: ‘it would be self-contradictory to report suffering but claim that one did not mind it, and had no motive for ending or avoiding it, even ceteris paribus.’

40 See, for instance, Ryle, , Concept of Mind, pp. 107–9Google Scholar, and Dilemmas, Cambridge, 1954, ch. 4Google Scholar; Gosling, J. C. B., Pleasure and Desire: The Case for Hedonism Reviewed, Oxford, 1969CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chs. 3 and 10; Edwards; Nozick, Robert, The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations, New York, 1989, pp. 103–4.Google Scholar

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42 Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, New York, 1974, pp. 42–5Google Scholar; The Examined Life, pp. 104–8.Google Scholar

43 See Sen, Amartya, ‘Utilitarianism and Welfarism’, Journal of Philosophy, lxxvi (1979), 6389.Google Scholar

44 For an explanation of what these commitments amount to, see my account in The Moral Foundation of Rights, Oxford, 1987, sec. 6.1.Google Scholar

45 For an example of a deontological welfarism, see Finnis, John, Natural Law and Natural Rights, Oxford, 1980.Google Scholar

46 I have undertaken a somewhat fuller defence in ‘Two Theories of the Good’, Social Philosophy and Policy, ix (1992), 114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47 For the most developed version of the desire theory, see Griffin.