G. A. Johnston

“ When I go on holiday, for instance, it is not only right, but it may be a duty, to seek pleasure. In such a case it is right for me to seek pleasure, because enjoyment and relaxation will help to make me more fit to take up the duties of my vocation again after my holiday. The "pleasure-seeker," on the other hand, seeks pleasure for itself, and lives for it and for nothing else. It is because he lives for the sake of pleasure that he is wrong in seeking it. All pleasure is relative to the self, and derives its moral value from its relation to the self and its dominant purposes. ”

“ Pleasure and Life. In every life pleasure plays a part of great importance. Whether a man be a saint or a sinner, a roué or an ascetic, a "good fellow" or a hermit, he cannot get away from pleasure. He may wallow in the enjoyment of pleasures, or spurn them with a noble contempt, but in both cases pleasure is a factor to be reckoned with. All or nearly all our conduct is pervaded by pleasurable or painful feeling. All our experience is accompanied by what the psychologist terms an affective tone, or a hedonic tone, which may either be agreeable or disagreeable. ”

“ To think that we desire the object or activity simply for the sake of the pleasure that accompanies it is as absurd as to suppose that, in William James's words, "because no steamer can go to sea without incidentally consuming coal, therefore no steamer can go to sea for any other motive than that of coal-consumption." ”

“ But it is man's nature to be able to reflect and anticipate; man's life is not merely a series of disconnected moments, it is a relatively persistent and consistent whole. Therefore, Epicurus says, man should not desire simply the pleasures of the moment. He should aim at pleasures that endure, lasting satisfactions, permanent states of agreeable feeling. Hence the Epicureans maintain that calm satisfaction is preferable to violent excitement. The aim of life is to attain a pleasurable tranquillity, an equable contentment with whatever gifts fortune may deign to bestow. ”

“ From the dawn of ethical speculation there have been thinkers who have maintained that the great aim of life is the attainment of pleasure. These thinkers are called Hedonists. (The name is derived from the Greek word for pleasure.) One of the earliest Hedonists was Aristippus, who was born about 435 B.C. He held that the great aim of life is to enjoy the pleasures of the moment. Man should not "look before and after"; he should think only of the moment, and throw all his energies into the enjoyment of each pleasure as it comes. ”

“ And another grave objection to pleasure as the standard is that it is open to all the criticisms that we have already brought against the general theory according to which the consequences of an action determine its tightness or wrongness. The view we are considering at present says that an action is right if its total consequences are probably more pleasurable than those of any other possible action under the circumstances. ”

“ But what we desire is the object, in so far as it contributes to the realisation of our dominant aims and purposes.
(2) We may desire objects though we are aware that their attainment will be attended with disagreeable feelings. A man desires to be a martyr or to die in his country's cause, though he realises that the torture and death will be accompanied by a very unpleasant affective tone. To take a less extreme case, a man will "scorn delights and live laborious days," with all their boredom and weariness, in order to advance science or provide for his family. ”

“ Connoisseurs in pleasure will balance pleasures against one another, and "if one of the two is, by those who are competently acquainted with both, placed so far above the other that they prefer it, even though knowing it to be attended with a greater amount of discontent, and would not resign it for any amount of other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we are justified in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superiority in quality, so far outweighing it as to render it, in comparison, of small account." ”

“ We may affirm, then, that practically all our experience has an affective tone. It is either pleasant or unpleasant, either agreeable or disagreeable.
It is obviously important to consider what attitude we ought to adopt towards pleasure. Is pleasure good or evil? Ought we to seek pleasure or shun it? ”

“ Utilitarianism is thus a developed Hedonism. All Utilitarians may be called Hedonists, but all Hedonists are not Utilitarians. Utilitarianism is a kind of Hedonism. Utilitarianism differs in two respects from the Hedonism of the Epicureans.
(1) It is not selfish. It does not bid a man take into account only his own pleasures. It commands him to have regard to the general happiness of the community as a whole. The Epicurean did not explicitly consider the pleasure of others. Each man was concerned only with himself and took an interest only in his own pleasures ”

“ Further, Bentham assumes that we have the power of foretelling accurately the nature of the pleasures and pains attaching to the various possible courses of action. But it is a fact of common experience that this is often quite impossible. Our forecasts of future pleasures and pains are often very far wide of the mark. All we can do is to calculate probable pleasant and painful consequences. After all our elaborate calculation, our standard does not tell us that such and such an action is right: it merely enables us to say that it is probably right. ”

“ In examining this view, we must first make clear the meaning of pleasure. In ordinary speech we talk of pleasures as if they were definite things. We say that a certain man is "a lover of pleasures rather than a lover of God," and we speak of the pleasures of the chase or the pleasures of love or the pleasures of reading. ”

“ This crude theory was polished and elevated by Epicurus (341-270 B.C.) , who saw that an existence made up simply of pleasurable moments could not be the best life for man. Such a life might be adequate for animals. ”

“ The rightness of actions is relative to the self which does them, and is much affected by the circumstances under which they are performed. ↑ The criticism in this paragraph, which is really the fundamental one, applies equally to all varieties of Utilitarianism. ”