Understanding Happiness further
Happiness has been highly overrated by moral philosophers, most of whom have taken it to be the greatest good or final end. One notable exception is Nietzsche who wrote: “Man does not strive for happiness; only the Englishman does that.” John Stuart Mill seemed to profess something similar in Utilitarianism when he claimed: “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.” Mill of course was an Englishman and a utilitarian, which suggests (1) that Nietzsche was wrong, or (2) that Mill didn’t know what he was talking about—certainly not happiness conceived as the summum bonum. For if happiness were the greatest good, and if happiness were rightly identified with pleasure, as Mill claimed, then it apparently could not be better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.
If pleasure, for example, were the sole intrinsic good, and happiness were identified with pleasure, as Mill claimed it should be, then it would follow that happiness is the sole intrinsic good.
Is pleasure the sole intrinsic good?
Consider the following, from Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pages 42-43:
Suppose there were an experience machine that could give you any experience you desired. Superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain. . . . If you are worried about missing out on desirable experiences, we can suppose that business enterprises have researched thoroughly the lives of many others. You can pick and choose from their large library or smorgasbord of such experiences. . . . Of course, while in the tank you won’t know that you’re there; you’ll think it’s all actually happening. Others can also plug in to have the experiences they want, so there’s no need to stay unplugged to serve them. Would you plug in?
Most people, when asked this question, decline. Why? Answers vary, from “If that’s happiness, you can have it” to “It wouldn’t even be your life.” “You wouldn’t know you weren’t doing what you thought you were doing; you might as well be a slug.”
Such responses seem to imply one of two conclusions: (1) happiness is not the sole intrinsic good, or (2) happiness should not be identified with pleasure, but requires in addition true (or at least reasonable) belief about the realization of one’s values, which is itself a value.
One position that goes part way toward reconciling this conflict is to claim that objective happiness (which includes true belief) includes subjective happiness, a view that Aristotle apparently held.
An unpopular though plausible position is that happiness even as objectively conceived and including a subjective component of pleasure or satisfaction is not the sole intrinsic good. Other things matter as much if not more: integrity, for example, or loyalty, or love.
The view of Plato that all and only those who are just are eudaimon was motivated by this thought: One can be a just person (refusing to betray one’s comrades, even on the rack) and be in continuous, excruciating pain. He concluded that one could be eudaimon even on the rack. In other words, given that eudaimonia is identified with justice, and justice is consistent with continuous, excruciating pain, it must follow that eudaimonia is consistent with continuous, excruciating pain. This is hard to swallow, or, as Aristotle claimed in the Nicomachean Ethics, it is “to maintain a thesis at all costs.” One reason against it is that we would not (and could not, without irony) speak of the person abdicating the rack as sacrificing her happiness. If it is legitimate to substitute happiness for eudaimonia (which has in addition been translated as “human flourishing,” “human well-being,” and “well-grounded happiness”), a more plausible conclusion may be drawn from the justice-on-the-rack example: Justice (or integrity or loyalty or truth or love) is sometimes more important than happiness.
A possible objection to this view is that if justice, integrity, loyalty, truth, and love are great goods, then happiness must include them, since happiness is a comprehensive and self-sufficient good—that is, a good that includes all other important goods. This seems to be the view of both Aristotle and Mill, who conceived of happiness as the final end: intrinsically but not instrumentally good; sought for its own sake, the thing for which everything else is sought, and not itself sought for the sake of anything else. In this view, happiness is a good constituted by other goods.
ome find this view implausible. It may be true that if one values truth, integrity, and love very highly, then one cannot be subjectively happy without achieving these goods, but if objective happiness requires the realization of these goods, then it looks like there is less and less content to the claim that happiness is the sole intrinsic good, rather than some abstract complex we might more plausibly call the good life.
But now either happiness includes the subjective component of contentment or it does not. If it does, then happiness cannot compete with other valued goods. Though life would be a lot easier if such conflicts did not exist, this seems to be false. On the other hand, if happiness does not include contentment, then it’s unclear why it should be called happiness at all, since it is consistent with continuous, excruciating pain.
Further, we speak not only of someone sacrificing her happiness for a greater good, but also of a person not deserving the happiness he has. If happiness were an objective, comprehensive good, then one could not be happy and not deserve it, since desert would be contained within it. So the claim that happiness is the sole intrinsic good seems to be (1) without sufficient content, or (2) false.
A common-sense view is that happiness is whatever you don’t have right now that you want most. This view makes happiness logically impossible to achieve, and so irrational to aim at. But it has the virtue of explaining why happiness is so hard to come by, and why, when we get what we most want, we often no longer want it or immediately demote it in favor of other goods we still do not have. Desire, fulfilled, moves on.
If pleasure, for example, were the sole intrinsic good, and happiness were identified with pleasure, as Mill claimed it should be, then it would follow that happiness is the sole intrinsic good.
Is pleasure the sole intrinsic good?
Consider the following, from Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pages 42-43:
Suppose there were an experience machine that could give you any experience you desired. Superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain. . . . If you are worried about missing out on desirable experiences, we can suppose that business enterprises have researched thoroughly the lives of many others. You can pick and choose from their large library or smorgasbord of such experiences. . . . Of course, while in the tank you won’t know that you’re there; you’ll think it’s all actually happening. Others can also plug in to have the experiences they want, so there’s no need to stay unplugged to serve them. Would you plug in?
Most people, when asked this question, decline. Why? Answers vary, from “If that’s happiness, you can have it” to “It wouldn’t even be your life.” “You wouldn’t know you weren’t doing what you thought you were doing; you might as well be a slug.”
Such responses seem to imply one of two conclusions: (1) happiness is not the sole intrinsic good, or (2) happiness should not be identified with pleasure, but requires in addition true (or at least reasonable) belief about the realization of one’s values, which is itself a value.
One position that goes part way toward reconciling this conflict is to claim that objective happiness (which includes true belief) includes subjective happiness, a view that Aristotle apparently held.
An unpopular though plausible position is that happiness even as objectively conceived and including a subjective component of pleasure or satisfaction is not the sole intrinsic good. Other things matter as much if not more: integrity, for example, or loyalty, or love.
The view of Plato that all and only those who are just are eudaimon was motivated by this thought: One can be a just person (refusing to betray one’s comrades, even on the rack) and be in continuous, excruciating pain. He concluded that one could be eudaimon even on the rack. In other words, given that eudaimonia is identified with justice, and justice is consistent with continuous, excruciating pain, it must follow that eudaimonia is consistent with continuous, excruciating pain. This is hard to swallow, or, as Aristotle claimed in the Nicomachean Ethics, it is “to maintain a thesis at all costs.” One reason against it is that we would not (and could not, without irony) speak of the person abdicating the rack as sacrificing her happiness. If it is legitimate to substitute happiness for eudaimonia (which has in addition been translated as “human flourishing,” “human well-being,” and “well-grounded happiness”), a more plausible conclusion may be drawn from the justice-on-the-rack example: Justice (or integrity or loyalty or truth or love) is sometimes more important than happiness.
A possible objection to this view is that if justice, integrity, loyalty, truth, and love are great goods, then happiness must include them, since happiness is a comprehensive and self-sufficient good—that is, a good that includes all other important goods. This seems to be the view of both Aristotle and Mill, who conceived of happiness as the final end: intrinsically but not instrumentally good; sought for its own sake, the thing for which everything else is sought, and not itself sought for the sake of anything else. In this view, happiness is a good constituted by other goods.
ome find this view implausible. It may be true that if one values truth, integrity, and love very highly, then one cannot be subjectively happy without achieving these goods, but if objective happiness requires the realization of these goods, then it looks like there is less and less content to the claim that happiness is the sole intrinsic good, rather than some abstract complex we might more plausibly call the good life.
But now either happiness includes the subjective component of contentment or it does not. If it does, then happiness cannot compete with other valued goods. Though life would be a lot easier if such conflicts did not exist, this seems to be false. On the other hand, if happiness does not include contentment, then it’s unclear why it should be called happiness at all, since it is consistent with continuous, excruciating pain.
Further, we speak not only of someone sacrificing her happiness for a greater good, but also of a person not deserving the happiness he has. If happiness were an objective, comprehensive good, then one could not be happy and not deserve it, since desert would be contained within it. So the claim that happiness is the sole intrinsic good seems to be (1) without sufficient content, or (2) false.
A common-sense view is that happiness is whatever you don’t have right now that you want most. This view makes happiness logically impossible to achieve, and so irrational to aim at. But it has the virtue of explaining why happiness is so hard to come by, and why, when we get what we most want, we often no longer want it or immediately demote it in favor of other goods we still do not have. Desire, fulfilled, moves on.
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