Ethics · John Dewey
HAPPINESS AND CONDUCT: THE GOOD AND DESIRE
We have reached a conclusion as to our first inquiry (p. 201), and have decided that the appropriate subject-matter of moral judgment is the disposition of the person as manifested in the tendencies which cause certain consequences, rather than others, to be considered and esteemed--foreseen and desired. Disposition, motive, intent are then judged good or bad according to the consequences they tend to produce. But what are the consequences by which we determine anything to be good or bad? We turn from the locus or residence of the distinctions of good and bad to the nature of the distinctions themselves. What do good and bad mean as terms of voluntary behavior? =Happiness and Misery as the Good and Bad.=--There is one answer to this question which is at once so simple and so comprehensive that it has always been professed by some representative ethical theory: the good is happiness, well-being, pleasure; the bad is misery, woe, pain.[134] The agreeableness or disagreeableness attending consequences differentiates them into good and bad; and it is because some deeds are found to lead to pleasure, while others lead to pain, that they are adjudged virtuous or vicious. In its modern form, this theory is known as utilitarianism. Bentham has given it a sweeping and clear formulation. "Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand, the standard of right and wrong, on the other chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne."
"Strictly speaking nothing can be said to be good or bad but either in itself, which is the case only with pain or pleasure; or on account of its effects, which is the case only with things that are the cause or preventive of pain or pleasure." Again: "By the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatever according to the tendency it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interests are in question."[135] Once more: "The greatest happiness of all those whose interest is in question is the right and proper, and the only right and proper and universally desirable end of human action." "Only on the basis of this principle do the words 'right and wrong' and 'ought' have an intelligent meaning as applied to actions; otherwise they have not." This last statement need not mean, however, that all judgments of right and wrong are as matter of fact derived from a consideration of the results of action in the way of pain and pleasure, but that upon this ground alone _should_ our judgments be formed, since upon this basis alone can they be justified.[136]
Moreover, from Bentham's own point of view, there is a difference between the good which _first_ presents itself, which _first_ stirs desire and solicits to action, and the good which being formed _after and upon the basis of consideration of consequences_, is the _right_ good. In calling the latter the _right_, we mean that it has authority over the end which first appears; and hence has supreme claim over action. So it is again evident that we are using happiness in two quite different senses; so that if we call the first end that presents itself happiness, the right end will be something else; or if we call the consequences which measure the worth of the act happiness, then the first end ought to be called something else. If happiness is the _natural_ end of all desire and endeavor, it is absurd to say that the same happiness ought to be the end. If all objects fall to the ground any way, we do not say they ought to fall. If all our acts are moved any way by pleasure and pain, this fact, just because it applies equally to all acts, throws no lights upon the rightness or wrongness of any one of them. Or, on the other hand, if that for which we _should_ act is a kind of happiness which involves full consideration of consequences, it is misleading to call that happiness from which we act "blindly" or without proper forethought.
If happiness is to be the same as the moral good, it must be after the right kind of happiness has been distinguished; namely, that which commends itself after adequate reflection. Our criticism of Bentham will be directed to showing that, so far as he conceives of happiness as simply a sum of pleasures alike in quality, but differing only in quantity, he cannot make this distinction. As an early critic (Hazlitt) of Bentham said: "Pleasure is that which is so in itself. Good is that which approves itself on reflection, or the _idea_ of which is a source of satisfaction. All pleasure is not, therefore (morally speaking), equally a good; for all pleasure does not equally bear reflecting upon." We shall further try to show that the reason for Bentham's conceiving happiness as simply a sum of pleasures is that he falls into the error already discussed, of separating consequences from the disposition and capacities or active tendencies of the agent. And that, when we correct this error, the proper meaning of happiness turns out to be the satisfaction, realization, or fulfillment of some _purpose and power of the agent_. Thus we can distinguish between the false and unsatisfactory happiness found in the expression of a more or less isolated and superficial tendency of the self, and the true or genuine good found in the adequate fulfillment of a fundamental and fully related capacity. We shall first take up the discussion under the heads just brought out: I. Happiness _as the Natural End or Object of Desire_; II. Happiness _as Standard of Judgment_.
Sec. 1. THE OBJECT OF DESIRE =Hedonistic Theory of Desire.=--That phase of utilitarianism which holds that the object of desire is pleasure, is termed hedonism, or sometimes psychological hedonism to distinguish it from ethical hedonism, the theory that pleasure is the standard for judging acts. The fundamental fallacy of psychological hedonism has been well stated by Green to be supposing that a desire can be aroused or created by the anticipation of its own satisfaction--i.e., in supposing that the idea of the pleasure of exercise arouses desire for it, when in fact the idea of exercise is pleasant only if there be already some desire for it (Green, _Prolegomena to Ethics_, p. 168). Given a desire already in existence, the idea of an object which is thought of as satisfying that desire will always arouse pleasure, or be thought of as pleasurable. But hedonism fails to consider the radical difference between an object's arousing pleasure, because it is regarded as satisfying desire, and the thought of a pleasure arousing a desire:--although the feeling of agreeableness may intensify the movement towards the object. A hungry man thinks of a beefsteak as that which would satisfy his appetite; his thought is at once clothed with an agreeable tone and the conscious force of the appetite is correspondingly intensified; the miser thinks of gold in a similar way; the benevolent of an act of charity, etc. But in each case the presence of the pleasurable element is dependent upon the thought of an object which is not pleasure--the beefsteak, the gold. The thought of the object _precedes_ the pleasure and excites it because it is felt to promise the satisfaction of a desire.
But as natural or psychological end, it means that in which a man happens at a given time to find delectation, depending upon his uppermost wishes and strongest habits. Hence the objection which almost every one, including the hedonists, feels to the statement that happiness is the conscious aim of conduct. It suggests that the objects at which we ordinarily aim are not sought for themselves, but for some ulterior gratification to ourselves. In reality these ends, so far as they correspond to our capacity and intention, _are_ our happiness. All men love happiness--yes, in the sense that, having desires, they are interested in the objects in which the desires may be realized, no matter whether they are worthy or degraded. No; if by this be meant that happiness is something other than and beyond the conditions in which the powers of the person are brought out, and made effective; no, or if it means that all love that which really will bring happiness.
But we are not at a loss to choose because certain future pains and pleasures present themselves in and of themselves as fixed amounts irrespective of our own wishes, habits, and plans of life. Similarly we may speak of satisfactions being added to one another and the total sum increased; or of dissatisfaction coming in as offsets and reducing the amount of satisfaction. But this does not mean that pains and pleasures which we expect to arrive in the future are added and subtracted--what intelligible meaning can such a phrase possess? It means that as we think first of this result and then of another, the present happiness found in the anticipation of one is increased by the anticipation of the other; or that the results are so incompatible that the present satisfaction, instead of swelling and expanding as from one thought to another, is chilled and lessened. Thus we might find the thought of revenge sweet (and thus give a high valuation to the units of pleasure to result from it), but be checked by the thought of the meanness of the act, or of how we would feel if some one else, whose good opinion we highly esteem, should hear of it.
"The good man wills the real object of intent, but what the bad man desires may be anything; just as physically those in good condition want things that are wholesome, while the diseased may take anything to be healthful; for the good man judges correctly" (_Ethics_, Book III., 4, 4). And again: "The good man is apt to go right about pleasure, and the bad man is apt to go wrong" (Book II., 3, 7), and, finally, "It is only to the good man that the good presents itself as good, for vice perverts us and causes us to err about the principle of action" (Book III., 12, 10). =Principle of Quality of Pleasure as Criterion.=--Mill, still calling himself a utilitarian, reaches substantially the same result by (a) making the _quality_ of pleasure, not its bulk or intensity, the standard; and (b) referring differences in quality to differences in the _characters_ which experience them. "It is," he says, "quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognize the fact that some _kinds_ of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and, when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness that does not include their gratification." The higher the capacity or faculty, the higher in quality the pleasure of its exercise and fulfillment, irrespective of bulk. But how do we know which faculty _is_ higher, and hence what satisfaction is more valuable? By reference to the experience of the man who has had the best opportunity to exercise all the powers in question.
Sec. 3. THE CONSTITUTION OF HAPPINESS Happiness consists in the agreement, whether anticipated or realized, of the objective conditions brought about by our endeavors with our desires and purposes. This conception of happiness is contrasted with the notion that it is a sum or collection of separate states of sensation or feeling. =1. One View Separates, while the Other Connects, Pleasure and Objective Conditions.=--In one case, the agreeable feeling is a kind of psychical entity, supposed to be capable of existence by itself and capable of abstraction from the objective end of action. The pleasant _thing_ is one thing; the pleasure, another; or, rather, the _pleasant thing_ must be analyzed into two independent elements, the pleasure as _feeling_ and the _thing_ with which it happens to be associated. It is the pleasure alone, _when dissociated_, which is the real end of conduct, an object being at best an external means of securing it. It is the pleasurable feeling which happens to be _associated_ with food, with music, with a landscape, that makes it good; health, art, are not good in themselves. The other view holds that pleasure has no such existence by itself; that it is only a name for the _pleasant object_; that by pleasure is meant the agreement or congruity which exists between some capacity of the agent and some objective fact in which this capacity is realized. It expresses the way some object meets, fits into, responds to, an activity of the agent. To say that food is agreeable, means that food satisfies an organic function. Music is pleasant because by it certain capacities or demands of the person with respect to rhythm of hearing are fulfilled; a landscape is beautiful because it carries to fulfillment the visual possibilities of the spectator.
Accordingly Bentham said, the pleasure of push-pin (a game) is as good as that of poetry. And as he said again, since pleasure is the motive of every act, there is no motive which _in itself_, and as far as it goes, is not good--it is bad only if it turns out in the end to produce more pain than pleasure. The pleasure of malignant gossip is so far as it is pleasure a mitigation of the badness of the act. Not so, if happiness is the experience into which pleasures enter so far as the tendencies of character that produce them are approved of. An act may bring a pleasure and yet that pleasure be no part of happiness, but rather a blot and blemish. Such would be the case, for example, with the pleasure which one might take in an act of charity because one had thereby put himself in a position superior to that of the recipient. A good man who caught himself feeling pleasure from this phase of the act would not regard this pleasure as a further element of good attained, but as detracting from his happiness. A pleasure may be accepted or reacted against. So far as not acquiesced in it is, from the standpoint of happiness, positively disagreeable. Surrender to a pleasure, taking it to be one's happiness, is one of the surest ways of revealing or discovering what sort of a man one is. On the other hand, the pain which a miserly man feels in his first acts of generosity may be welcomed by him as, under the circumstances, an element in his good, since it is a sign of and factor in the improvement of character.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.