Roger Crisp - Pleasure
PLEASURE IS ALL THAT MATTERS
Roger Crisp
Roger Crisp asks whether hedonism is quite as bad as is often supposed.
Hedonism's decline
Since the beginning of philosophy, many people have thought that the only thing really worth seeking in life is pleasure, and that the only thing really worth avoiding is pain.
This is the view called 'hedonism' (from the Greek hedone, meaning 'pleasure'). The ancients were fascinated by the view.
Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics spent a lot of time coming up with arguments against hedonism, and it was accepted by important philosophical schools such as the Cyrenaics and
Epicureans. In more recent times, it was the standard view of the group of British philosophers who believed that we learn primarily from experience — the 'empiricists', from Thomas
Hobbes until John Stuart Mill. But in recent times, in philosophy at least, the view has pretty much disappeared from debate about what makes life worth living.
There are at least three reasons for this. First, people began to believe that hedonism was the 'philosophy of swine', as
Thomas Carlyle put it; that is, that hedonists can't draw any significant distinction between basic animal pleasures, such as that of purely physical sex, and sophisticated experiences such as that of enjoying a Mozart opera. J.S. Mill tried to defend hedonism against the accusation with a famous distinction between 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures, but, as we'll see below, most people weren't persuaded. Second, the dominant moral philosopher of the early twentieth century, G.E. Moore, attacked hedonism with great vigour in his influential book
Principia Ethica (1903). Finally, Robert Nozick dealt hedonism a near death-blow with his well-known example of the 'experience machine', an example which has now found its way into popular culture through films such as The Matrix.
These days, Moore's criticisms, though they are still read by undergraduates, aren't taken all that seriously by
Roger Crisp
Roger Crisp asks whether hedonism is quite as bad as is often supposed.
Hedonism's decline
Since the beginning of philosophy, many people have thought that the only thing really worth seeking in life is pleasure, and that the only thing really worth avoiding is pain.
This is the view called 'hedonism' (from the Greek hedone, meaning 'pleasure'). The ancients were fascinated by the view.
Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics spent a lot of time coming up with arguments against hedonism, and it was accepted by important philosophical schools such as the Cyrenaics and
Epicureans. In more recent times, it was the standard view of the group of British philosophers who believed that we learn primarily from experience — the 'empiricists', from Thomas
Hobbes until John Stuart Mill. But in recent times, in philosophy at least, the view has pretty much disappeared from debate about what makes life worth living.
There are at least three reasons for this. First, people began to believe that hedonism was the 'philosophy of swine', as
Thomas Carlyle put it; that is, that hedonists can't draw any significant distinction between basic animal pleasures, such as that of purely physical sex, and sophisticated experiences such as that of enjoying a Mozart opera. J.S. Mill tried to defend hedonism against the accusation with a famous distinction between 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures, but, as we'll see below, most people weren't persuaded. Second, the dominant moral philosopher of the early twentieth century, G.E. Moore, attacked hedonism with great vigour in his influential book
Principia Ethica (1903). Finally, Robert Nozick dealt hedonism a near death-blow with his well-known example of the 'experience machine', an example which has now found its way into popular culture through films such as The Matrix.
These days, Moore's criticisms, though they are still read by undergraduates, aren't taken all that seriously by