3.4.3 |
HAPPINESS AS (A) VALUE OR
UNHAPPINESS AS (A) DISVALUE |
The question whether happiness is 'the highest good or
subservient to other goods' is a very old one.
We ourselves will not pose such a question, because it does not clearly
distinguish between
monistic,
ultimate,
perfective,
instrumental, and perhaps
corrective, values.
Only when happiness is said to be the
highest good, may we assume that this means that it is claimed
that happiness is an ultimate value. But for an
extremist, for
instance, for whom universal positivity, or some form of
positivity more general than happiness, would be the highest good,
happiness itself would merely be a perfective value, that is, a
nonultimate perfective one. Another question which has occupied
theorists is whether happiness, if accepted as a value, would be
a dominant (or even the sole) end or not. It would be a monistic
end, if it were the sole one (as in utilitarianism); and a
dominant end, if it were a 'single, specific end which has more
importance than all other ends'; it would be a nondominant end
if it fell into 'an overall life-plan or network of ends'. (The
latter kind of end has also deceptively been called "an
inclusive end".)
It has been pointed out that the controversy between those who see
happiness as a dominant end and those who do not see it that way is a
recurrent issue in philosophy — and in ideology, it might be
added.
On the neutralistic model it is not happiness which is the dominant end
but situational well-being.
That is to say, as far as the situational and
happiness-catenary aspects
are concerned. If the
happiness-catenal is a person,
this situational well-being comprises
'er overall life-plan,
because it depends also on this life-plan how
a person experiences changes in 'er conditions.
Happiness is acceptable for us as an instrumental value, and
as one amongst other values. For utilitarians, however, it is an
ultimate value, and the sole one (assuming, that is, that they
are truly monistic eudaimonists). Nonetheless, it is a value in
both neutralism and utilitarianism, and therefore it is worth
our while to examine whether certain objections which have been
raised to utilitarianism could be raised to our type of
eudaimonism as well. We shall, then, not consider objections
with respect to autonomy, justice, truth-telling, promise-keeping
and others of this kind.
They can in our
denominational doctrine either
be met with the other values or principles we espouse (inclusive of other
subnorms of neutrality) or need not be taken seriously anyhow, when they
but too readily draw on 'moral intuitions' which are not ours.
An interesting objection to traditional, positive utilitarianism in
the present context is, however, that people (and sentient beings in
general) would have to produce as many happy beings as possible, even if
there were only a marginal difference between their happiness and a life of
nanhappiness. For any additional
sentient being, however little happy it were, would increase the sum
total of happiness in the world, provided that the population increase
did not make the existing sentient beings unhappy, or more unhappy
than the new utility bearers would be happy.
To bypass the objections against positive utilitarianism,
some theorists have proposed negative utilitarianism as the
solution to all moral problems. Whereas happiness is the sole,
ultimate value in positive utilitarianism, unhappiness is the
sole, ultimate disvalue in negative utilitarianism. Negative
utilitarianism is not extremistic, and seems to be more in
accord with neutralism because unhappiness is, neutralistically
speaking, also a perfective disvalue. Yet, the following objection
to negative utilitarianism is even more serious than the
one to positive utilitarianism: Why not painlessly kill every
sentient being in order to minimize unhappiness?. Evidently,
the negative utilitarian would not have to kill nanhappy and
happy catenals, but painlessly killing all unhappy catenals
would minimize the total amount of unhappiness in the world. (It
must be assumed, then, that the means to do this are there, and
that no-one should be 'so irrational' as to be afraid of a
painless death.)
Why do these objections not apply to happiness-catenary neutralism,
altho we, too,
consider unhappiness a disvalue, and altho we, too, may accept happiness
as a value?
The reason is simple: the ultimate, perfective value is neutrality and the
ultimate, corrective value is neutralization and not
maximization, minimization,
catenalization or
decatenalization.
One does not neutralize the situation of any catenal by creating another,
happy catenal, nor does one in this way neutralize the average
situation of all existing catenals. And one does not neutralize
the situation or happiness-catenary state of an unhappy catenal
by making it into a thing that is not catenal anymore with
respect to the situation and happiness catenas. The situation of
a catenal is only neutralized by making it neutral, or less
unneutral. (That traditional gangsters confuse neutralization
and decatenalization is just no reason for traditional theorists
to follow suit. Or, are both groups themselves perhaps
exponents of the same culture?)
Even the average value of situational catenality (which is a
hypothetical construct) will not get closer to 0 by adding a
catenal in a completely neutral situation, nor will the average
value of happiness-catenality by adding a nanhappy catenal. The
average value of situational catenality will indeed get closer
to 0 by killing a catenal in an unneutral situation, but this
will also happen by neutralizing the catenal's situation, and
even by adding a catenal in an opposite situation which is
equally unneutral. But it does not just follow from the norm of
well-being that a neutral, average situation would be superior
to an unneutral one. In that case it would suffice to have only
unneutral situations in the world as long as the negative
situations were balanced by the positive ones.
A neutral average is therefore at most the result of a
neutralistic subnorm, not the goal or essence of it.
This is not to say that looking at the average or total value cannot be
useful when one and the same action has a neutralizing effect with respect
to the one catenal and an unneutralizing effect with respect to the other.
But it is precisely the fact that the effects on the individual
catenals can be different which makes the average or total value
a useful instrument. Yet, this still does not make it an
ultimate value in itself.
The essence of every neutralistic subnorm is that each individual
value should be 0, if this corresponds to a form of
ananormative neutrality. To attain this
end, and granting that this is possible, we must neutralize the situation
of a catenal, not kill it, nor add another catenal in an opposite kind of
situation. Likewise, the average value of happiness-catenality
would have to be brought closer to 0 by neutralizing happiness-catenals,
not by decatenalizing them, nor by adding happiness-catenals with an
opposite happiness-catenary value. This is
certainly good news for unhappy happiness-catenals who want to
be released from their pains or other feelings of unhappiness
without being killed. It looks like bad news for happy
happiness-catenals who would have to abstain from all pleasures,
unless such abstention were detrimental to their health or to their
situation in general. If so, they could do nothing else than to
balance happiness-catenary neutralization (fewer pleasures, less
happiness) against situational neutralization (as little deterioration
of their situation as possible). Should this sound odd,
unreasonable or ridiculous, this will in itself be a reason to
suppose that nanhappiness is not ananormatively superior to
happiness, and that happiness is an 'effect' and sign of
situational improvement. In this case happiness is an indication
of neutralization and something to be happy about. But even then,
happiness must not be pursued as an ultimate end in itself.
Until now we have only compared our position with the
positions of positive and negative utilitarianism. But, as a
matter of fact, any doctrine that recognizes happiness as a
perfective value (even if only one among several others)
suffers, at least to a certain degree, from the defects of
positive utilitarianism; and any doctrine that recognizes
average or total unhappiness as a perfective disvalue suffers
from the defects of negative utilitarianism. However, besides
the neutralistic and utilitarian positions there are two other
main positions. The first one is the position of normative
doctrines that do not say anything about happiness-catenary and
situational catenality. According to such doctrines it would not
matter at all whether human and other sentient beings are happy,
nanhappy or unhappy, nor would it matter whether their situations
are good or not (while somehow defining good in nonnormative,
situational terms). This is the position of those who do not
take any position.
Finally, there is the position of ideologies and philosophical theories
that do not explicitly promote happiness as a
performatory value or
unhappiness as a performatory disvalue, but that promise happiness to
those who are virtuous and that threaten those who are vicious in terms
of the doctrinal prescriptions with unhappiness.
(Supernaturally, believers who do not receive their reward or punishment
before death may on such a construction also receive it after death,
'preferably' either in the form of eternal bliss or of eternal damnation.)
The monomaniac inventors and leaders of such promisory-comminatory
doctrines only confess implicitly that personal happiness will always
remain the sole, ultimate value, and personal unhappiness the
sole, ultimate disvalue, if not of the doctrine they propagate itself,
then at least among their followers.
