PHIL7771 · Philosophy

Ethics and the Pleasure Principle in Modern Philosophy

Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences

To the exception of Epicurus, ancient and medieval thinkers generally agreed that pleasure is not the highest good; but that the highest good, which must be sought for itself, does in addition provide the highest pleasure, happiness. However, at the beginning of the modern period (16th -17th centuries), Neo-Epicureans and Augustinians paradoxically came to agree on the fact that human beings, prompted by self-love, act only in view of what is pleasurable to them. This view became widespread, and gave rise to heated controversies. Are we incapable of disinterested feelings and actions, of pure love? Virtues might well be the expression of disguised self-interest. This issue affects not only ethics and religious thought, but political philosophy as well. Vices were usually viewed as detrimental to the common good and virtue as a disinterested service to the commonwealth. However, the proponents of the pleasure principle maintained that extreme selfishness is compatible with well-organized societies. As a result of this line of thinking, Mandevilles Fable of the Bees, at the beginning of the 18th century, contended that private vices are beneficial to public prosperity. As a response to that cynical description of humans motivations, Hutcheson highlighted a different type of pleasure, which, he thought, proved that we are capable of non-greedy feelings: aesthetic pleasure. The enjoyment of beauty became, in the 18 th century, the object of a new discipline, aesthetics, which culminated in Kants analysis of this disinterested pleasure. At the same time, aesthetic pleasure provided a paradigm for exploring the complex realm of sentiments in which pleasure is reconcilable with altruism, as in Humes ethics. This class will not be only a course on ethics properly speaking, but also an inquiry on the nature of pleasure in itself and its role in psychological life broadly construed (with questions such as: Is there a notion of pleasure encompassing all the pleasures, physical and intellectual? Can we establish qualitative and/or quantitative distinctions between pleasures? Is there a universal standard of pleasure, or is pleasure indefinitely variable according to the individuals? Does happiness consists in continuous pleasures, in a sum of pleasures, in a maximum of pleasure, in a variety of pleasures?, etc.).