Hedonism

Hedonism: Jeremy Bentham’s concept of utilitarianism is strongly influenced by hedonism – the notion that pleasure (and lack of pain) is the foundation of goodness and morality in human society. In his view, humans are primarily motivated by the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. This assumption led Bentham to argue for actions that lead to the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people, in other words the greatest amount of pleasure and the least amount of pain. Indeed, he contended that individuals should seek to maximize collective happiness by acting in ways that produce the most pleasure and the least pain for other members of society. Underpinning this argument is the assumption that individuals should act and make decisions in a moral way that promote the wellbeing of others, not just their own personal pleasure. He also developed a hedonic calculus to ascertain the level of pleasure or pain caused by different actions based on factors such as duration and intensity. In his 1861 essay Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill accepted that pleasure and the absence of pain are the fundamental objectives of human life and anything else is desirable only if it contributes to pleasure and avoids pain. He also accepted that pleasure is the only thing humans desire for its own sake. However, he criticized Bentham’s idea that all pleasures are equal, maintaining instead that pleasures can be categorized as higher (intellectual and moral) and lower (carnal and sensual). According to Mill, higher pleasures, such as literature and art, are inherently superior as they are based on the intellectual faculties of thought and reason. In his estimation, ‘A cultivated mind … finds sources of inexhaustible interest … in the objects of nature, the achievements of art, the imaginations of poetry [and] the incidents of history.’ Lower pleasures, he argued, such as forms of physical gratification, derive from baser human instincts. Mill therefore emphasized a qualitative approach to hedonism, whereas Bentham’s arguments considered pleasure in more quantitative terms.