Hedonism

Hedonism

Introduction

The first view, called "ethical hedonism," affirms that only pleasure is intrinsically desirable and that only displeasure (or pain) is intrinsically undesirable. More fully stated, it is the thesis that only pleasant states of mind are desirable in themselves; that only unpleasant states of mind are undesirable in themselves; and that one state of affairs is more desirable in itself than another state of affairs if and only if it contains more (in some sense) pleasant states of mind than the other (the quantity of value in a state of affairs being measured by the quantity of pleasure in it).

Discussion

Many philosophers, however, have thought that happiness is different from pleasure, and there has been disagreement and confusion about what "happy" and "pleasant" mean. The hedonist thesis was a part of traditional utilitarianism, as represented, for instance, by Bentham and Mill, with their "greatest happiness principle." These writers combined the generic principle of utilitarianism namely, that an act is morally right if performing it would produce, or could reasonably be expected by the agent to produce, at least as much intrinsic goodness in the world as any other act the agent could perform at the time with the thesis of hedonism about what is intrinsically good. Traditional utilitarianism is thus a species of utilitarianism that is defined as asserting just the "generic thesis"; other kinds of utilitarianism (for example, that of G. E. Moore) reject hedonism. Unlike utilitarianism, ethical hedonism is not at all a proposal about which acts are morally right; it is only an affirmation about which states of affairs are intrinsically good or desirable.

What is meant by saying that a state of affairs is intrinsically desirable, as opposed to simply desirable, is that it is desirable, good, worthwhile, worthy of choice, when taken by itself, viewed abstractly, and in particular considered without reference to consequences. Many things (for example, a visit to the dentist) are worthwhile in view of their consequences, which nobody would say are intrinsically desirable. The hedonist does not deny that other things are desirable; he denies only that they are intrinsically worthwhile. He agrees that something can be desirable instrumentally as a means to an end even when it is not intrinsically desirable. (A thing can, of course, be both intrinsically and instrumentally desirable: pleasant experiences can be good in themselves and also instrumentally good, if, for example, they are relaxing and enable one to work better on the following day.) He does add, however, that something is instrumentally desirable only to the extent that it is a means to later pleasure, since a thing can be instrumentally desirable only if it is a means to attaining the intrinsically desirable.

The meaning of the hedonist's thesis, of course, depends on what is meant by "pleasure." It is true that the associations of the word pleasure are such that if an English-speaking person says he favors a "life of pleasure," he is naturally taken to be advocating a life dedicated to the sensory enjoyments wine, women, ...