HEDONISM
188
HEDONISM
higher forms of enjoyment, mental pleasures, domes-
tic love, friendship, and moral contentment. His
followers, however, reduced the system to a plea for
self-indulgence (see Cyresaic School of Philoso-
phy).
To the Cyrenaic succeeded the School of Epi- curus, who emphasized the superiority of social and intellectual pleasures over those of the senses. He also conferred more dignity on the hedonistic doctrine by combining it with the atomic theory of matter; and this sjmthesis finds its finished expres- sion in the materialistic determinism of the Roman poet Lucretius. Epicurus taught that pain and self- restraint have a hedonistic value; for pain is some- times a necessary means to health and enjojTnent; while self-restraint and prudent asceticism are indis- pensable if we would secure for ourselves the maxi- mum of plea.sure (see Epicure.\nis.m). With the decay of old Roman ideals and the rise of imperiahsm the Epicurean philosophy flourished in Rome. It accelerated the destruction of pagan religious beliefs, and, at the same time, was among the forces that resisted Christianity.
The revival of hedonistic principles in our own times may be traced to a hne of English philos- ophers, Hobbes, Hartley, Bentham, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, the two Austins, and, more recently, Alexander Bain, who are popularly known as Utihtar- ians. Herbert Spencer adopted into his evolutionarj' theory of ethics the principle that the discriminating norm of right and wrong is pleasure and pain, though he substituted the progress of life for the hedonistic end.
Exposition. — Contemporary Hedonists are some- times classed into egoistic and altruistic. The classification, however, is not quite satisfactory when applied to writers; for many Hedonists combine the egoistic with the altruistic principle. The distinc- tion, however, may conveniently be accepted with regard to the principles that underlie the various forms of the doctrine. The statement that happi- ness is the end of conduct at once raises the question: whose happiness? To this egoism answers: the happiness of the agent; while altruistic Hedonism replies: the happiness of all concerned, or, to use a phrase that is classic in the literature of this school, "the greatest happiness of the greatest number". Perhaps the only thoroughgoing egoistic Hedonist is Thomas Hobbes, though in many places Bentham, too, proclaims himself the uncompromising apostle of selfishness (see Egoism), while elsewhere he, like J. S. Mill, expands into altruism. The intrinsic difliculties in the task of constructing any decent code of morals on the egoistic principle, together with the destructive criticism which any such attempts en- countered, led Iledoni.sts to substitute the happiness of all concerned for the happiness of the individual. The transit from the one to the other is attempted through a psychological analysis which would show- that, through the operation of the law of association of ideas, we come to love for their own sakes objects which in the first instance we loved from a selfish motive. This is true to a certain extent, but the cases in which it may occur fall far short of the range which the principle would have to cover in order to justify the theory. Besides, by adopting the happiness of others as the end. the Hedonist loses the only sem- blance of a proof which he had to offer in support of his first contention, that happine.ss is the end, viz. that every man does desire happiness and can desire noth- ing else; it is only too plain that not everybody de- sires the happiness of everybody else. Another modification w-as introduced to meet the criticism that, if pleasure is the standard of right and wrong, sensual indulgence is just as pood as the noblest form of self-sacrifice. The Hedonists, or at least some of them, replied that not merely the quantity of pleas-
ure but also the quality is to be taken into account.
There are higher and lower pleasures; and the higher
are more desirable than the lower; therefore conduct
which aims at the higher is the better. But if pleas-
ures are thus to be divided into higher and lower,
irrespective of quantity, the hedonistic standard is,
by the very fact, displaced, and some other ultimate
scale of moral valuation is appealed to or implied.
The subjective norm, pleasurable feeling, is made
to retire in favour of some unnamed objective
norm which dictates what the agent o\ight to pursue.
This is the suicide of Hedonism. Other advocates
of the system have, contrary to its initial principle,
introduced a primary altruistic impulse co-ordinate
with and controlling the egoistic as a spring of
action.
Criticism. — The fundamental errors of Hedonism and the chief unanswerable objections to the theory may be briefly summed up as follows: —
(1) It rests on a false psychological analysis; tendency, appetite, end, and good are fixed in nature antecedent to pleasurable feeling. Pleasure depends on the obtaining of some good which is prior to, and causative of, the pleasure resulting from its acquisition. The happiness or pleasure attending good conduct is a consequence, not a constituent, of the moral quality of the action.
(2) It falsely supposes that pleasure is the only motive of action. This view it supports by the fal- lacy that the pleasurable and the desirable are in- terchangeable terms.
(3) Even if it were granted that pleasure and pain constitute the standard of right and wTong, this standard would be utterly impracticable. Pleas- ures are not commensurable with one another, nor with pains; besides no human mind can calculate the quantity of pleasure and pain that will result from a given action. This task is impossible even when only the pleasure of the agent is to be taken into account. When the pleasure and pain of " all concerned" are to be measured the propo.sal becomes nothing short of an absurdity.
(4) Egoistic Hedonism reduces all benevolence, self-sacrifice, and love of the right to mere selfish- ness. It is impossible for altruistic Hedonism to evade the same consummation e.xcept at the cost of consistency.
(.i) No general code of morality could be estab- lished on the basis of pleasure. Pleasure is essen- tially subjective feeling, and only the individual is the competent judge of how much pleasure or pain a course of action affords him. What is more pleas- ural)lc for one may be less so for another. Hence, on hedonistic grounds, it is evident that there could be no permanently and universally valid dividing line between right and WTong.
(6) Hedonism has no ground for moral obligation, no sanction for duty. If I must pursue my own happiness, and if conduct which leads to happiness is good, the worst reproach that can be addressed to me, however base my conduct may be, is that I have made an imprudent choice.
Hedonists have appropriated the term hapjyiness as an equivalent to the totality of pleasurable or agreeable feeling. The same word is employed as the English rendering of the Latin healiludo and the Greek fuSaiMoWa, which stand for a concept quite different from the hedonistic one. The Aristotelean idea is more correctly rendered in English by the term xvell- being. It means the state of perfection in which man is constituted when he exercises his highest faculty, in its highest function, on its highest good. Becavise they fail to give due attention to this dis- tinction, some wTiters include eudsmonism among hedonistic systems. Hedonism sometimes claims the credit of much beneficent effort in social reform in England which has been promoted by professed
