Redefining hedonism
I never have seen myself as a hedonist; however, I also have been finding it relatively easy to argue some of their points. I feel that I want to believe that all acts do not necessarily boil down to pleasure, but I am finding more and more that they do. In the case of the undesired Physics class, while the class itself may not have been pleasurable, it's purpose was. The purpose of receiving an education, of fulfilling a requirement for graduation, and of discovering whether or not medicine or science was the field for you are all pleasurable results. It is often questioned whether or not any act is truly selfless. The argument is that even if the act is hurtful to onesself there is always a deeper pleasure gained whether it be the pleasure of helping another or the pleasure of doing what you find to be a morally just act. The act of donating blood, the needle and the weak feeling afterwards is not pleasurable. However, after donating blood one feels good about themselves for helping to save someone's life. Perhaps I am not coinciding completely with hedonism in the utilitarian quest for the maximum amount of pleasure with the minimum amount of pain or work. However, I do find it possible to find some sort of pleasure in every act one intentionally goes about. Where i stray from hedonism is in that I feel that there are different weights that can be attributed to different types of pleasure. I find myself combining the amount of pleasure with the amount of meaning or fulfillment it brings about as Zac was discussing. I'm not sure I want to take the step to the objective list theory quite yet, but rather I find myself redefining hedonism to include the fulfillment one gets out of giving blood or climbing a mountain in order to put it on the same if not a higher level than sitting around and watching television.
posted by Christa at
8:49 PM
1 Comments:
I don’t think the objective list theorist has to concede that it is “possible to find some sort of pleasure in every act one intentionally goes about.” I assume that by “acts one intentionally goes about” it means that there is something of value that they seek in doing that thing. In other words, the claim can be reworded “almost anything one values as such because it contains some element of pleasure...if not initially, then it is ultimately valued because of some pleasure that may result” or, “it is hard to find something one desires for a given sense of value, that does not also contain a (not necessarily apparent) appeal to the value of pleasure.”
This may be so, but I don’t think it’s something that the standard Objective List Theorist would want to concede (and they don’t have to). It seems to me, that there are some things, according to the objective list theory, that by their nature ARE good for you, weather you subjectively enjoy them or not. So, because of this objective quality of value one might intentionally pursue an end, knowing that they will never achieve any sort of pleasure from it. (The value they receive from it might not even come to fruition in their life-time, and even if it did, they would not appreciate it as such, because they do not enjoy having that value.) But, because of the objective knowledge that this thing is valuable, it is still something someone might “intentionally go about” doing. It might even make them downright miserable, and they may never come to see why such a thing was valuable. But, objectively their life would be better off for their achieving it.
It might be objected here, that one would still have the “pleasure-like comfort” of knowing value will be added to their well being in mind when they “intentionally pursue” such a value. But I do not see why this comfort is necessary to intentionally pursue a value. It seems to me, one can intentionally do something out of spite, or any other number of things. It does not have to be any amount of comfort to me that a thing has value. I can seek out a value despite all knowledge that it will bring me no pleasure whatsoever. Just because I can, and I am spiteful enough of myself to do so. I do not have to conjure up a self-loathing to make this of course, there are other plausible motivators that do not lead to pleasure. But because that seems to me to be the most opposite of getting pleasure, it is the tool to use. I guess though, even spite has some element of sick pleasure in it. I dunno. But surely there must be some way to make that point.
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Tommy G!, at 7:48 PM
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