Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics · John Dewey
XXIII.
Private Pleasures and General Welfare. In criticism of these indirect methods of establishing the identity of 'egoism' and 'altruism,' it may be said: 1. That the supposed relation between the private and the general happiness is extrinsic, and hence always accidental and open to exception. It is not contended that there is any order which _morally_ demands that there be an identity of interests. It is simply argued that there are certain physical and psychological forces which operate, _as matter of fact_, to bring about such a result. Now we may admit, if we like, that such forces exist and that they are capable of accomplishing all that Bentham and Mill claim for them. But all that is established is, at most, a certain state of facts which is interesting as a state of facts, but which has no especial moral bearing. It is not pretended that there is in the very order of things any necessary and intrinsic connection between the happiness of one and of another. Such identity as exists, therefore, must be a mere external result of the action of certain forces. It is accidental. This being the case, how can it constitute the universal ideal of action? Why is it not open for an agent, under exceptional circumstances, to act for his own pleasure, to the exclusion of that of others? We may admit that, upon the whole (or that always, though this is wholly impossible to prove) in past experience, personal pleasure has been best attained by a certain regard for the pleasures of others; but the connection being wholly empirical (that is, of past instances and not of an intrinsic law), we may ask how it can be claimed that the same connection is _certain_ to hold in this new case? Nor is it probable that any one would claim that the connection between individual pleasure and general pleasure had been so universal and invariable in past experience.
_Intrinsic moral considerations_ (that is, those based on the very nature of human action) being put aside, a pretty strong case could be made out for the statement that individual happiness is best attained by ignoring the happiness of others. Probably the most that can be established on the other side is that a due prudence dictates that _some_ attention be paid to the pleasures of others, in calculating one's own pleasures. And this suggests: 2. That the end is still private pleasure, general pleasure being simply a means. Granting all that the hedonists urge, what their arguments prove is not that the general pleasure is the end of action, but that, private pleasure being the end, regard for the pleasures of others is one of the most efficient means of reaching it. If private pleasure is a selfish end, the end is not less selfish because the road to it happens to bring pleasure to others also. See Royce, Religious Aspect of Philosophy, pp. 61-74.
3. The use of education and law to bring about this identity, presupposes that we already have the _ideal_ of the identity as something desirable to realize--it takes for granted the very thing to be proved. Why should it occur to men to use the private influence of opinion and education, and the public influences of law and penalty to identify private welfare with public, unless they were already convinced that general welfare was the end of conduct, the one desirable thing? What the hedonist has to do is to show how, from the end of private happiness, we may get to the end of general happiness. What Bentham and Mill do show is, that if we take general happiness as the end, we may and do use education and law to bring about an identity of personal and general pleasures. This may go undoubted, but the question how we get the general happiness as the end, the good, remains unanswered.
Nor is this all. The conception of general happiness, taken by itself, has all the abstractness, vagueness and uncertainty of that of personal happiness, multiplied indefinitely by the greater number of persons introduced. To calculate the effects of actions upon the general happiness--when happiness is interpreted as a state of feeling--is an impossibility. And thus it is that when one is speaking of pleasures one is really thinking of welfare, or well-being, or satisfied and progressive human lives. Happiness is considered as it would be, if determined by certain active and well defined interests, and thus the hedonistic theory, while contradicting itself, gets apparently all the support of an opposed theory. Universalistic hedonism thus, more or less expressly, takes for granted a social order, or community of persons, of which the agent is simply one member like any other. This is the ideal which it proposes to realize. In this way--although at the cost of logical suicide--the ideal gets a content and a definiteness upon which it is possible to base judgments.
That this social organization of persons is the ideal which Mill is actually thinking of, rather than any succession of states of agreeable sensation, is evident by his treatment of the whole subject. Mill is quite clear that education and opinion may produce _any_ sort of feeling, as well as truly benevolent motives to actions. For example, in his critique of Whewell, he says, (Op. cit., p. 154): "All experience shows that the moral feelings are preëminently artificial, and the products of culture; that even when reasonable, they are no more spontaneous than the growth of corn and wine (which are quite as natural), and that the most senseless and pernicious feeling can as easily be raised to the utmost intensity by inculcation, as hemlock and thistles could be reared to luxuriant growth by sowing them instead of wheat." It is certainly implied here that legislation, education and public opinion must have as a presupposed standard the identity of general and private interests or else they may produce anything whatever. That is to say, Mill instead of arriving at his result of general happiness simply takes it for granted.
This fact and the further fact that he virtually defines happiness through certain objective interests and ends (thus reversing the true hedonistic position) is obvious from the following, (Mill, Op. cit., pp. 343-347): After again stating that the moral feelings are capable of cultivation in almost any direction, and stating that moral associations that are of artificial construction dissolve through the force of intellectual analysis (_cf._ his Autobiography, p. 136), and that the association of pleasure with the feeling of duty would similarly dissolve unless it had a _natural_ basis of sentiment, he goes on. "But there is this basis of powerful _natural_ sentiment. This firm foundation is that of the social feelings of mankind; the desire to be in unity with our fellow-creatures. _The social state is at once so natural, so necessary, and so habitual to man that except in some unusual circumstances, or by an effort of voluntary abstraction he never conceives of himself otherwise than as a member of a body._ Any condition, therefore, which is essential to a state of society becomes more and more an inseparable part of every person's conception of the state of things which he is born into, and which is the destiny of a human being." Mill then goes on to describe some of the ways in which the social unity manifests itself and influences the individual's conduct. Then the latter "comes, as though instinctively, to be conscious of himself as a being who _of course_ pays regard to others. The good of others becomes to him a thing naturally and necessarily to be attended to, like any of the physical conditions of our existence. _The deeply-rooted conception which every individual even now has of himself as a social being tends to make him feel it as one of his natural wants, that there should be harmony between his feelings and aims and those of his fellow-creatures._ This conviction is the ultimate sanction of the greatest happiness morality."
It is to be noticed that there is involved in this account three ideas, any one of which involves such a reconstruction of the pleasure theory as to be a surrender of hedonism. 1. There is, in one instance, a _natural_ (or intrinsic) connection between the end of conduct and the feelings, and not simply an external or artificial bond. This is in the case of the social feelings. In other words, in one case the ideal, that is, happiness, is intrinsically, or necessarily connected with a certain kind of conduct, that flowing from the social impulses. This, of course, reverses hedonism for it makes happiness dependent upon a certain kind of conduct, instead of determining the nature of conduct according as it happens to result in pleasure or pain. 2. Man conceives of himself, of his end or of his destiny as a member of a social body, and this conception determines the nature of his wants and aims. That is to say, it is not mere happiness that a man wants, but a certain _kind_ of happiness, that which would satisfy a man who conceived of himself as social, or having ends and interests in common with others.
3. Finally, it is not mere general "happiness" which is the end, at all. It is social unity; "harmony of feelings and aims," a beneficial condition for one's self in which the benefits of all are included. Instead of the essentially vague idea of states of pleasurable sensation we have the conception of a community of interests and ends, in securing which alone is true happiness to be found. This conception of the moral ideal we regard as essentially true, but it is not hedonism. It gives up wholly the notion that pleasure is the _desired_, and, since it sets up a standard by which it determines pleasure, it gives up equally the notion that pleasure as such is the _desirable_. In addition to the works already referred to, the following will give fuller ideas of hedonism and utilitarianism: For historical treatment see Sidgwick, History of Ethics; Jodl, Geschichte der Ethik, Vol. II., pp. 482-468; Bain, Moral Science, Historical Mention; Guyau, La Morale Anglaise Contemporaine; Wallace, Epicureanism; Pater, Marius, the Epicurean; Paley, Moral and Political Philosophy; Grote, Examination of the Utilitarian Philosophy (especially fair and valuable criticism); Lecky, History of European Morals, Vol. I, ch. I; Birks, Utilitarianism (hostile); Blackie, Four Phases of Morals: Essay on Utilitarianism (hostile); Gizycki, Students' Manual of Ethical Philosophy, (Coit's trans., favorable); Calderwood, Hand-Book of Moral Philosophy (opposed); Laurie, Ethica (_e. g._, p. 10). "The object of will is not pleasure, not yet happiness, but reason-given law--the law of harmony; but this necessarily ascertained through feeling, and, therefore, through happiness." Wilson and Fowler, Principles of Morals, Vol. I, pp. 98-112; Vol. II, pp. 262-273. Paulsen, System der Ethik, pp. 195-210.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.