Acknowledgements: Co-authored with my father, Lawrence Anderson Burley :)
The greatest happiness principle is a utilitarian position proposed by Jeremy Bentham and later refined by John Stuart Mill. It is a teleological ethical theory in which the moral worth of an action is proportional to the degree to which it maximises utility- where in this case final utility is the overall happiness of society. Bentham defined happiness as maximal pleasure with minimal pain. Consequently actions leading to pain that are insufficiently offset by pleasure are immoral.
In Bentham’s original theory, there is no qualitative difference in pleasure. Thus listening to Mozart and playing a game of hopscotch are actions only differentiated by the quantity of pleasure derived from them. Bentham even formulated an algorithm known as the felicific calculus to calculate the happiness produced by an action based on such variables as intensity; duration; certainty; propinquity; fecundity; purity; and extent. Bentham believed that this felicific calculus could be used to direct political and legislative policy as well as provide a means to evaluate the moral worth or actions – an ideal he summarised as “the greatest good for the greatest number”.
Mill’s contribution to the happiness principle was to differentiate quality of pleasure, allowing pleasures that invoke the higher intellectual faculties to be valued above baser pleasures - such as what might be derived from a game of hopscotch. Mill believed that when given the choice individuals would always choose a “higher” pleasure over a baser one so long as they had experienced both pleasures. This belief he expressed thusly: “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinions, it is because they only know their side of the question”
Whether plausible or no, this amendment did help to counter the criticism that the pursuit of mass pleasure would produce a crude hedonistic society, one which catered towards base pleasures that are more universally shared and easier to satisfy. Huxley explored this concept in “Brave new world” (1932) in which a supposedly model society derived mass happiness from uninformed lack of concern and sensory excess in sex and a drug called “soma”.
Many objections, both pragmatic and moral, have been raised against the happiness principle. In terms of pragmatics, if happiness is not a viable objective then one might question how much it would be able to motivate moral action, and whether such an ethical system would be compatible with the nature of moral judgement. Let us examine some of these objections.
The happiness principle has been criticised as tautological: People desire pleasure, and pleasure is what people desire. However it is well established that there is a neurological response to pleasure (namely in the nucleus accumbens and the septum pellucidium), which provides a justification for its pursuit at least on the biological level. Nevertheless the reduction of morality to a form of concerted mass hedonism and the implication that the purpose of life is the singular pursuit of pleasure can be viewed as cheap and demeaning. Additionally it is not self-evident that the purpose of morality is to bring about a particular state of the world.
Mill uses the justification that the pursuit of pleasure is inherent in the human psyche however it does not necessarily follow that morality is an agent of this desire. Ayn Rand wrote: “To declare, as the ethical hedonists do, that ‘the proper value is whatever gives you pleasure’ is to declare that ‘the proper value is whatever you happen to value’ – which is an act of intellectual and philosophical abdication, an act which merely proclaims the futility of ethics and invites all men to play it deuces wild.”
Is happiness even a sustainable goal? Happiness is often considered fleeting – one might argue that it is illusionary and thus does not posses much intrinsic value. Freud (1929) contended that moments of happiness are simply the release of primal urges resulting in a transient orgasmic experience. He went on to suggest that in modern society the civilised man is condemned to be chronically unhappy.
Less pessimistically yet equally problematic is what in psychological literature has been termed the hedonic treadmill (Brickman & Campbell, 1971). This concept, based on adaptation, likens the pursuit of happiness to a person on a treadmill, who has to continuously work to stay in the same place. In this way happiness is subject to what one might call reference drift, such that we get used to what makes us happy and that becomes the new reference for normality. Then new conditions are required to stimulate pleasure. Is the pursuit of such an ephemeral quality practical? Would public policy and consideration of each moral action have to adapt to match?
Another obstacle is that it is not clear that happiness can be meaningfully aggregated. John Rawls argued that happiness is intrinsic to an individual consciousness and that the two cannot be separated. Thus it is impossible to consider the sum happiness of a group of people as if they were a single consciousness. Admittedly the principle of happiness does not require the actual summing up of total happiness, only the pursuit of its maximisation, but the point is well made that happiness is a very individual phenomenon.
Moreover, even in the consideration of individual happiness, the happiness principle requires the comparison of pleasures that may be fundamentally incommensurable. Mill attempts to introduce qualitative differences between types of pleasure, akin to a gradation of pleasure that extends from base pleasures such as eating ice cream to more intellectual pleasures such as reading “War and peace”. It is not clear what property determines where a specific pleasure sits on this ladder of quality. One might consider that the very requirement for this differentiation undermines pleasure as a foundational measurement.
All these pragmatic objections lead to doubt as to whether happiness, especially when defined as maximum pleasure with minimal pain, can be the foundation for a working ethical system. Even if it were viable, does such a construct really encompass the nature of moral judgement? It seems more like an attempt to conveniently decide, rather than to discover, the nature of morality.
A common utilitarian position is that morality was rooted in behaviour that produced utility, and that the purpose of that behaviour was subsequently forgotten such that only the instinct of morality remained. In the” Genealogy of morality” Nietzsche pointed out that if such behaviour was beneficial it would not have stopped being beneficial and so there would be no reason for its purpose to be forgotten. He goes on to attempt to discredit the entire concept of morality as a legitimate arbiter of good and evil.
Morality is a complex phenomena. Three main schools of philosophical thought have risen with regards to it. These are known as consequentialism (only the consequences matter), deontology (the inherent morality of the action is all that matters) and virtue ethics (the virtuousness of the person acting is what matters). The happiness principle sees morality as an expression of desire (including, according to Mill, the desire to not see others suffer – thus sympathy and the importance overall minimal pain), not as an innate thing. This is only one of the possible positions and because the happiness principle is purely consequentialist it tolerates an “ends justify the means” approach which has been widely criticised as amoral.
Critics of utilitarianism point out that there is not usually sufficient time to calculate the consequences on utility prior to action and that in any case, especially where utility is defined as overall happiness, the consequences may be so far reaching as to be overly complex and unpredictable. Kant used a similar argument to rationalize his deontological view of morality. One of his most well known examples is that of the murderer and the friend: A murderer seeks to kill your friend. Your friend hides in your house. Choosing to be direct, the murderer knocks on your door and asks you if your friend is in your house. Do you tell the truth or do you lie? You expect that telling the truth would result in the murder of your friend. The consequentialist would argue that therefore one should lie to serve the greater good. Kant argued that both the friend and the murderer are free agents. Your friend may slip out of the house while you are answering the door – if you lie and the murderer subsequently encounters him then you are responsible for his death. Kant’s point was that consequences are unknowable and that therefore they cannot be used as a basis for ethical theory. It is better, he suggests, to consider only the morality of the action alone. One might counter this by pointing out that many decisions in life are made mostly “blind” and that for this reason we often follow a set of preformed rules to guide us in day to day life.
Mill responded to the criticism that the happiness principle does not take into account intent by arguing that this is a failing of all morality, which judges actions only and not the agent of them. In addition to being untrue (the virtue ethics of Aristotle for example) this is a dubious defence. Mill originally set out to dispel misconceptions about the utilitarian doctrine and seems here instead to undermine all ethical theories, his own included.
Another strong criticism of the happiness principle is that it takes a very impersonal view, in which morality and the pursuit of pleasure is decentralised. However morality is a very personal phenomenon. One might argue that it should be orientated around the individual and be much more interpersonal. Moreover, although Mill affirmed that the pursuit of greater happiness will not much affect an average person’s day to day life, one might warn that in social contexts opportunity may often arise to sacrifice personal happiness for that of others. It is not clear how happy an individual may be if morality requires of him constant self-sacrifice, and the aggregate effect of this dissatisfaction may be significant to the overall happiness that Mill and Bentham advocate is the ultimate goal of morality.
One might draw a parallel to economic theory: Adam Smith, in his book “The wealth of nations”, suggested that capitalism works because individuals strive for personal material gain but are kept in check by the equal striving of all other individuals. Communism, in whose economic system the pursuit of material gain is decentralised, is theoretically sound but, as history has demonstrated, is incompatible with the desires and aspirations of individuals. Likewise the decentralised pursuit of greater happiness may not be compatible with human nature and may create sufficient dissatisfaction to sabotage itself.
In conclusion happiness, as defined by maximal pleasure with minimal pain, does not appear to present a practicable objective around which to build an ethical theory. Furthermore even were it to be practicable such an ethical theory would not encompass the totality of the nature moral judgements. There is more to our moral conscience than a conscious or subconscious desire for pleasure, whether directed personally or altruistically. Ultimately the only knowledge of morality exists as the awareness of an instinct within the human psyche. The happiness principle is promoted as a standard for human morality but it is like a glove that does not fit quite right. Arguably it is naturalistic fallacy, one that jumps from morality to mass happiness to mass pleasure. Morality is profound, mysterious both in nature and in source, and goes beyond the simple pursuit of pleasure.
References;
Brickman & Campbell, “Hedonic relativism and the good society” (1971)
Freud, “Civilisation and its Discontents” (2001, Strachey)
Huxley, “Brave new world” 1932
John Rawls, “a theory of justice” (1974)
Kant, “On the Genealogy of Morality” (1996, Oxford World’s Classics)
Mill, “Utilitarianism” (1906)
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