posted on December 2, 2009 at 11:51 am by Khali
“…[the Utopians] chief subject of dispute is the nature of human happiness - on what factor or factors does it depend? Here they seem rather too much inclined to take a hedonistic view, for according to them human happiness consists largely or wholly in pleasure. Surprisingly enough, they defend this self-indulgent doctrine by arguments drawn from religion - a thing normally associated with a more serious view of life, if not with gloomy asceticism. You see, in all their discussions of happiness they invoke certain religious principles to supplement the operations of reason, which they think otherwise ill-equipped to identify true happiness.
The first principle is that every soul is immortal, and was created by a kind God, Who meant it to be happy. The second is that we shall be rewarded or punished in the next world for our good or bad behaviour in this one. Although these are religious principles, the Utopians find rational grounds for accepting them. For suppose you don’t accept them? In that case, they say, any fool can tell you what you ought to do. You should go all out for your own pleasure, irrespective of right and wrong. You’d merely have to make sure that minor pleasures didn’t interfere with major ones and avoid the type of pleasure that has painful after-affects. For what’s the sense of struggling to be virtuous, denying yourself the pleasant things in life, and deliberately making yourself uncomfortable if there’s nothing you hope to gain by it? And what can you hope to gain by it, if you receive no compensation after death for a thoroughly unpleasant, that is, thoroughly miserable life?
…according to the normal view, happiness is the summum bonum towards which we’re naturally impelled by virtue - which in their definition means following one’s natural impulses, as God meant us to do. But this includes obeying the instinct to be reasonable in our likes and dislikes. And reason also teaches us, first to love and reverence Almighty God, to Whom we owe our existence and our potentiality for happiness, and secondly to get through life as comfortably and cheerfully as we can, and to help all other members of our species to do so too.
The fact is, even the sternest ascetic tends to be slightly inconsistent in his condemnation of pleasure. He may sentence you to a life of hard labour, inadequate sleep, and general discomfort, but he’ll also tell you to do your best to ease the pains and privations of others. He’ll regard all such attempts to improve the human situation as laudable acts of humanity - for obviously nothing could be more humane, or more natural for a human being, than to relieve other people’s sufferings, put and end to their miseries, and restore their joie de vivre, that is, their capacity for pleasure. So why shouldn’t it be equally natural to do the same thing for oneself?
Either it’s a bad thing to enjoy life, in other words, to experience pleasure - in which case you shouldn’t help anyone to do it, but should try to save the whole human race from such a frightful fate - or else, if its good for other people, and you’re not only allowed, but positively obliged to make it possible for them, why shouldn’t charity begin at home? After all, you’ve a duty to yourself as well as to your neighbour, and, if Nature says you must be kind to others, she can’t turn around the next moment and say you must be cruel to yourself. The Utopians therefore regard the enjoyment of life - that is, pleasure - as the natural object of all human efforts, the natural, as they define it, is synonymous with virtuous. However, Nature also wants us to help one another to enjoy life, for the very good reason that no human being has a monopoly of her affections. She’s equally anxious for the welfare of every member of the species. So of course she tells us to make quite sure that we don’t pursue our own interests at the expense of other people’s…”
from Utopia (book II) - Thomas More
