Intrinsic Value, Hedonism, or Eudemonia?

   

Today I am very proud and honoured to present not one, but two Featured Articles by H. Acstonus.  The first is a brilliant examination of Classical Theories on how to live the best life:

   

   What is the good? This is probably the single most important question in moral philosophy. Without knowing what the good is, how can we know how to be moral, or even whether we should be moral at all? Without a clear understanding of the good, how could we even know what being moral is? Throughout the history of philosophy many different answers to this question have been proposed. Among the ancient Greeks, this is no exception.

    One conception of the good is hedonism. Epicurus was one of the greatest champions of hedonism in the ancient world. In this regard, he was similar to later thinkers such as John Stuart Mill. While Mill’s utilitarian conception of the good is the greatest happiness for the greatest number, Epicurus’ view was that the good consisted in the greatest happiness for oneself. Thus, while the question of who is to benefit from one’s actions is answered quite differently by the Utilitarians and Epicurus, the question of what the good actually consists of remains the same: happiness. “So we must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness,” Epicurus wrote, “since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed toward attaining it.”   

    Plato rejects hedonism, claiming that the good is something above and beyond pleasure. In hedonism’s place Plato offers what I interpret as an intrinsic theory of value. The good exists in a supposed “higher” reality as one of Plato’s Forms. In The Republic, Socrates states: “The power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already…the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the sight of being, and of the brightest and best of being, or in other words, of the good.” Therefore, the good according to Plato is not derivative but a primary, independent of any standard apart from itself.

    Plato also attacks the hedonistic view. According to Plato, those things which bring delight and gratification, such as delicious food or rhetoric, are not really good but only seem so because of their pleasantness. Things like medicine, physical fitness, and justice, while sometimes unpleasant, are genuinely good nonetheless due to their benefits. If one does something for the sake of something else, his present activity is clearly not the goal, but that for the sake of which he does it. Medicine is taken for health, sea voyages for wealth, walking to arrive at a destination.

    Unlike Epicurus, pleasure is obviously not the standard of the good for Plato. But the two do have some things in common. Epicurus agrees with Plato in that he holds certain ends as more appropriate than others. Just as Plato argued in favor of doing certain things for the sake of other things, Epicurus argued for prudence and moderation in order to maximize pleasure over the entire course of one’s life. The hedonism of Epicurus is thus not the mindless indulgence in pleasures of the immediate moment: “We do not choose every pleasure whatsoever, but will often pass over many pleasures when a greater annoyance ensues from them. And often we consider pains superior to pleasures when submission to the pains for a long time brings us as a consequence a greater pleasure.”

     Epicurus, it seems, advocates something very similar to Plato by differentiating between higher and lower pleasures. We “pass over many pleasures” and “consider pains superior to pleasures” in order to achieve greater pleasure in the long run. Thus for both Plato and Epicurus, one forsakes what is pleasant or does what is unpleasant, in the present, in order to achieve a more important goal in the future. To this extent the two thinkers end up agreeing, but they still disagree on what is the ultimate good. Is the good simply pleasure? Is the good something intrinsic with its own ontological status?

    From the preceding discussion I must conclude that neither hedonism nor intrinsic value is a satisfactory account of the good. The question “what is the good” still lingers. The problem with hedonism is that happiness as a standard of the good makes no sense. If we cannot achieve happiness any way we want, but must take certain actions and not others to attain it, does it not follow that something apart from happiness is more primary? Wouldn’t happiness then be an effect and not a cause? If this is the case, then the good must be something apart from happiness, even if it may in fact be linked to happiness. Intrinsic value, on the other hand, seems like a dead end. Intrinsic value does not answer the question of what the good is. It does not identify it or explain any of its properties. In the absence of any definition, all we get is a laundry list of things thought of as good, but no coherent method of knowing why they are supposedly good. What standard do we have to know what is, and isn’t, the intrinsic good? In the end, the advocate of intrinsic value says that the good “just is” good, and that he “just knows” it. But this is not a real explanation.

    What is the good? I think it is rooted in the Aristotelian idea of eudemonia-living and flourishing in accord with one’s nature. In a word, life-one’s own life- is the good. Not life as in merely having a pulse, but life as in really living-flourishing and actualizing the best potential within oneself. The life appropriate for a human being, as necessitated by one’s nature as a certain kind of organism which must survive by a certain kind of means, is the primary from which happiness flows as a consequence. Life as meant in this sense, rather than pleasure, is the standard of the good. Those aspects of reality in relation to us which further our lives, in accordance with our natures, are the good, and those aspects of reality in relation to us which harm our lives are the evil.

    On this view, virtue consists of a set of principles rooted in the requirements of life as a flourishing human being. We achieve a successful life in virtue of doing the things such a life requires. If we choose to live, we must produce goods. To produce goods, we must think (figure out how). To think, we must be honest with ourselves. And to live in peace with others, we must act justly. Thus virtues such as rationality, justice, productivity, and honesty (understood as acceptance of reality) are among the necessary qualities of character we must have if we want to achieve the life proper to a human being. And the constant practice of virtue, over the course of an entire lifetime, makes us better and better moral agents more and more capable of flourishing. "We are,” said Aristotle, “what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit."

    Flourishing and living well is then the ultimate standard of the good, with happiness being a consequence rather than a primary. Further, this standard is not intrinsic, for everything which is construed as good by this view is so in a derivative sense. Therefore this theory is neither hedonistic nor intrinsic. It is a virtue-theory based on the premise that the good is to live and flourish.

Source Materials

Epicurus. Letter to Menoeceus. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology Internet Classics     Archive) (http://classics.mit.edu/Epicurus/menoec.html)

Marc Cohen, Patricia Curd and C.D.C. Reeve, eds. Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000.

McKeon, Richard. The Basic Works of Aristotle. New York: Modern Library, 2001.

Plato. The Republic, Book VI. (Washington State University Website)    (http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/GREECE/ALLEGORY.HTM)

----H. Acstonus

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