TOWARDS A QUALIFIED HEDONISM

TOWARDS A QUALIFIED HEDONISM

Introduction

Hedonist philosophers state the central thesis of hedonism as pleasure alone is intrinsically good. Different philosophers had divergent opinion about hedonism. Brandt and Dahl say that hedonism is the view that all and only pleasant things are intrinsically good. Thus, according to hedonic culture pleasure alone is be sought and pain is to be avoided. Pleasure is good and pain is evil/ bad. This article is an attempt to evaluate the traditional understanding of hedonism and a move from traditional understanding to qualified hedonism proposed by John Stuart Mill.

Traditional Understanding of Hedonism

The fundamental insight behind hedonism by saying that it is the view that pleasure is The Good, it is ultimately pleasure that gives value to everything else that is valuable ; a life filled with pleasures is the best that one can have. The more pleasure one enjoys, the better ones life, other things being equal. Pain, on the other hand, is The Bad and the undesirable. It functions as the mirror image of pleasure, making lives worse as they contain more of it. In the classic understanding pleasure alone is good as an end, or the view that pleasure is the good, or the view that pleasure is the only thins desirable as en end. Dahl says that hedonism is the view that pleasure and only pleasure is good. Hedonists do not say that pleasant thing itself is intrinsically good; they hold the view that the pleasures experienced are intrinsically good.

Intrinsic Nature of Pleasure

A feeling is correctly said to be a pleasure if, the person who has that feeling likes it for its own sake, or enjoys it, or wants it to continue, or apprehends it as desirable in itself. In general, according to this understanding, any sort of feeling might be a pleasure- it does not matter how it ‘feels.’ A feeling is a pleasure if the one who feels it has an appropriate attitude towards it when he or she has it.
But according to some hedonists, if a feeling happens to be a pleasure, it is so because of an extrinsic feature, the one who experiences it has the appropriate attitude towards it. They want to say that pleasures are intrinsically good, good in virtue of their own natures. Yet they also want to say that the feelings that happen to be pleasures are not pleasures in virtue of their own natures. They are pleasures in virtue of the fact that someone happens to have a certain attitude towards them. Thus, the feelings those are supposed to be intrinsically good turnout not to be good in virtue of their own natures. Thus we cannot understand hedonism to be the view that liked feelings are intrinsically good, because this conflicts with elements of the classic conception of intrinsic value.
So when the hedonists say that pleasures are intrinsically good, they are talking about the basic hedonic states. It is reasonable to say that these things have their intrinsic values in virtue of their intrinsic natures. In this way, we can formulate a version of the central doctrine of hedonism that makes use of classic conception of intrinsic value. The hedonic thesis formulated by Brandt states that, “something is intrinsically desirable (undesirable) if and only if and to the degree that it is an experience with a subjective element that the person at the time wants to prolong (terminate or avoid) for itself. In brief, the intrinsically good consists of liked experiences containing a subjective or feeling element.”

Qualified Hedonism

When Mill wrote that it was better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, he was departing somewhat from Bentham’s position, in accommodating aspects of Stoicism within his own Epicureanism. In reply to the standing objection that utilitarianism is a pig philosophy, John Stuart Mill holds that Benthamite utilitarian’s “have fully proved their case” by pursuing quantitative hedonism which emphasizes the difference of quantity in pleasures . However, he still aims at taking a “higher ground, with entire consistency” to defend utilitarianism by introducing his later-called qualitative hedonism that is based on the difference of quality in pleasures of Utilitarianism. Mill was arguing in a straight forward manner regarding the enjoyment felt by intelligent beings as opposed to fools. Even though happiness, derived from the higher pleasures, might leave the individual subject to acute suffering, and the intelligent person might need more to make him or her happy.
John Stuart Mill tried to remove undue importance of quantity of pleasures in hedonism and gave prominence to quality of happiness, and thus brought forth a qualified hedonism. For him, actions were right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to promote the dissatisfaction. Here the utility or the greatest happiness principle is the norm, or the core. For him good of all men is accepted as the greatest good.
Mill’s rejection of Bentham’s utilitarianism was bound up with his estimation of deficiencies in Bentham’s life and thought. Mill says that pleasures arising from higher faculties are worth more than those of arising from lower. Pleasures come in several different forms. He agrees to a distinction among sensual, aesthetic, intellectual, and moral pleasures. A sensual pleasure would be that one which arises from drinking, eating, sexual indulgences etc. An aesthetic pleasure would be one arising from an experience of something beautiful, such as a painting or a piece of music. An intellectual pleasure is a pleasure that arises from learning something, and moral pleasure is that which arises from behaving nobly.
Mill says that pleasures of these different sorts are of different qualities. Some are higher than others. We can understand that in his view moral pleasures are of highest quality, and they are the highest of all pleasures. Intellectual are in second place, aesthetic in next, and sensual pleasures are the lowest. According to Mill, “Every basic qualified hedonic state is a basic intrinsic value state; every basic qualified doloric state is a intrinsic value state, nothing else is a basic intrinsic value state.”

Pleasures and Happiness

In the traditional understanding human happiness is not an open concept in the sense that it consists of pleasures completely unspecified. Happiness is the telos consisting of various elements which are requisites to happiness and among them are a sense of self-determination, sense of power, freedom, excitement and all those which are needed to maintain human dignity. For Mill happiness is intended as pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and privation of pleasures. This statement establishes a direct link between pleasure and happiness. He further says that pleasure and freedom from pain are the things desirable as ends, and all desirable things are desirable either for pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasures and the prevention of pain.

A Pure Hedonism

According to Mill it is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognize the fact that some kinds of pleasures are more desirable and more valuable than others. It would be absurd that, while in estimating all other things quality is considered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasure should be supposed to depend on quantity alone.
We can say that a theory is a form of pure hedonism if it says that all intrinsically good basics are attributions of pleasures of some sort; and we can say that a theory is a form of impure hedonism if it says that some but not all intrinsically good basics are attributions of pleasure of some sort. Mill’s theory is a form of pure hedonism because it implies that all of the intrinsically good basics are attributions of pleasure. It is also a form of universal hedonism, since it implies that all basic qualified hedonic states are intrinsically good.

Conclusion

Mill’s theory is an internally consistent theory. It is also a form of hedonism. According to Moore Mills’ qualified hedonism is inconsistent because, as a form of hedonism, it includes the view that pleasure alone is intrinsically good, yet, because the hedonism is qualified, it also includes the view that something other the pleasure is intrinsically good.
In Mill’s concept there is a kind of Utilitarian hero, who embraced sacrifice, but did not denounce happiness. The utilitarian hero could sacrifice his or her happiness to serve the happiness of theirs, and Mill considered such sacrifice to constitute the highest virtue. Mill takes Kantian duty for utilitarianism, and even Jesus of Nazareth‘s Golden rule to support his view. Mill took the sacrifice of Jesus for the happiness of mankind to represent the highest statement of utilitarian virtue.

Bibliography

Feldman, Fred. Utilitarianism, Hedonism, and Desert: Essays in Moral Philosophy. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1997.
Rosen, Frederick. Classical Utilitarianisms from Hume to Mill. Routledge: London, 2003