Phil discussion 10

CHAPTER OBJECTIVES

John Stuart Mill and Utilitarianism

12.1 THE PHILOSOPHER!REFORMER • Appreciate that Mill was an empiricist philosopher dedicated to seeing that his

liberal and utilitarian ideals be used for the betterment of society. He became one of the greatest social reformers of his day, advocating individual liberty, freedom of expression, social tolerance, aid to the poor, the abolition of slav- ery, humane treatment of prisoners, and women’s rights.

• Know that after su"ering a mental breakdown at age twenty, Mill recovered, having gained a new perspective on his life and on his previous way of think- ing. He remained a utilitarian, but he left behind many of the less desirable features of Jeremy Bentham’s theory.

• Appreciate that Mill earned a prestigious place in the pantheon of respected philosophers for his work in epistemology, deductive and inductive logic, po- litical thought, and ethics. Among other works, he wrote System of Logic (1843), On Liberty (1860), and Utilitarianism (1861).

12.2 MILL’S UTILITARIANISM • Understand that utilitarians judge the morality of conduct by a single stan-

dard, the principle of utility: right actions are those that result in greater overall well-being (or utility) for the people involved than any other possible actions.

• Explain the two main forms of utilitarianism and be able to apply them to sample cases.

• Know that the classic version of utilitarianism, devised by Bentham and given more plausibility by Mill, is hedonistic in that the utility to be maximized is pleasure, broadly termed happiness, the only intrinsic good.

• Explain how Mill and Bentham di"er in their conceptions of happiness, and understand why Mill says, “It is better to be a human being dissatis#ed than a pig satis#ed; better to be Socrates dissatis#ed than a fool satis#ed.”

• Understand classic utilitarianism’s emphasis on impartiality, the maximiza- tion of total net happiness, and the method for determining the quality of happiness.

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12.3 CRITIQUES OF THE THEORY • Understand the concept of our considered moral judgments and how critics

use it to suggest that utilitarianism is a $awed theory. • Know how utilitarians have replied to such criticism.

As we’ve seen (Chapter 11), in deontological moral theories, the rightness or wrongness of an action is based on its nature, not on the consequences that follow from it. But consequentialist theories say the e!ects of an action are all that matter; our only duty is to ensure that the e!ects are a maximization of the good. "e good is whatever has intrinsic value—whatever is valuable for its own sake—which can include such things as pleasure, happiness, virtue, knowledge, autonomy, and the satisfaction of desires. In consequentialist ethics, then, the ends (the results) justify the means (the actions). Utilitarianism is the foremost theory of this kind, built on the notion that the only thing of intrinsic value is well- being, governed by the proposition that the rightness or wrongness of an action is to be judged by its impact on the people involved. John Stuart Mill (1806– 1873) is the theory’s greatest champion, the sharpest thinker to explain it, and the most compelling example (after Bentham) of a utilitarian applying the ideal creed to reality.

12.1 THE PHILOSOPHER!REFORMER

Mill was an unusual blend—an empiricist philosopher dedicated to the practical endeavor of seeing that his liberal and utilitarian ideas were used for the betterment of society. He was born in London and given a rigorous education by his father, James Mill, a philosopher in his own right. James was a strong proponent of the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham (English philosopher and intellectual father of the theory), and he was determined to raise John Stuart according to utilitarian principles. John Stuart turned out to be an extremely precocious and bright stu- dent, beginning the study of Greek at age three and Plato and Latin at eight. In his teens, he dutifully absorbed his father’s philosophical and political views, worked for the East India Company, and went abroad to learn French and study chemistry and mathematics.

At age twenty, his life took an unexpected turn. He su!ered a mental break- down and fell into a dark depression, a condition that he later said was due to his strict upbringing and exacting education. After a few months, he recovered, having gained a new perspective on his life and on his previous way of thinking. He

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remained a utilitarian, but he left behind many of the less desir- able features of Bentham’s theory. He developed a deep friendship with the feminist Harriet Taylor, whom he married years later after her husband died. She had a profound e!ect on his view of the world and was a major influence on the ideas he expressed in !e Subjection of Women (1869).

Mill went on to earn a prestigious place in the pantheon of respected philosophers for his work in epistemology, deductive and inductive logic, political thought, and ethics. Among other works, he wrote System of Logic (1843), On Liberty (1860), and Utilitarian- ism (1861).

He became one of the greatest social reformers of his day, advocating individual liberty, freedom of expression, social tol- erance, aid to the poor, the abolition of slavery, humane treat- ment of prisoners, and women’s rights. Such views were radical notions at the time, clashing violently with social forces that had little patience for talk of personal freedom, rights, and concern for the oppressed.

12.2 MILL’S UTILITARIANISM

Utilitarians judge the morality of conduct by a single standard, the principle of utility: right actions are those that result in greater overall well-being (or utility) for the people involved than any other possible actions. We are duty bound to maximize the utility of everyone a!ected, regardless of the contrary urg- ings of moral rules or unbending moral principles. In some moral theories (Kant’s, for example), moral rules are absolute, allowing no exceptions even in exceptional cases. But in utilitarianism, there are no absolute prohibitions or mandates (except for the principle of utility itself ). "ere is only the goal of maximizing well-being. "us utilitarianism is not bothered by unusual circumstances, nor is it hobbled by conflicting moral principles or rules that demand a uniform response to extraordi- nary situations.

In applying the utilitarian moral standard, some moral philosophers concen- trate on specific acts and some on rules covering kinds of acts. "e former approach is called act-utilitarianism, the idea that the rightness of actions depends solely on the overall well-being produced by individual actions. An act is right if in a par- ticular situation it produces a greater balance of well-being over su!ering than any alternative acts; determining rightness is a matter of weighing the e!ects of each possible act. "e latter approach, known as rule-utilitarianism, avoids judging rightness by specific acts and focuses instead on rules governing categories of acts. It says a right action is one that conforms to a rule that, if followed consistently, would create for everyone involved the most beneficial balance of well-being over su!ering. We are to adhere to the rules because, in the long run, they maximize well-being

“"ere are in nature neither rewards nor punishments, there are consequences.”

—Robert Ingersoll

act-utilitarianism "e idea that the rightness of actions depends solely on the overall well-being produced by individual actions.

rule-utilitarianism "e doctrine that a right action is one that con- forms to a rule that, if followed consistently, would create for everyone involved the most benefi- cial balance of well-being over su!ering.

Figure 12.1 John Stuart Mill (1806–1873).

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for everyone considered—even though a given act may produce bad e!ects in a particular situation.

Consider how these two forms of utilitarianism could apply to the moral issue of euthanasia, or mercy killing, the taking of someone’s life for his or her own sake. Suppose a woman is terminally ill and su!ering horrible, inescapable pain, and she asks to be put out of her misery. An act-utilitarian might conclude that euthanasia would be the right course of action because it would result in the least amount of su!ering for everyone concerned. Allowing the current situation to continue would cause enormous pain and anguish—the woman’s own physical agony, the misery of her distraught family, and the distress and frustration of the physician and nurses who can do little more than stand by as she withers away. Administering a lethal injection to her, however, would immediately end her pain and prevent future suf- fering. Her family would grieve for her but would at least find some relief—and perhaps peace—in knowing that her torture was over. "e medical sta! would prob- ably also be relieved for the same reason. "ere would, of course, also be possible negative consequences to take into account. In administering the lethal injection, her physician would be risking both professional censure and criminal prosecution. If his actions were to become public, people might begin to mistrust physicians who treat severely impaired children, undermining the whole medical profession. Perhaps the physician’s action would lead to a general devaluing of the lives of disabled or elderly people everywhere. "ese dire consequences, however, would probably not be very likely if the physician acted discreetly. On balance, the act-utilitarian might say, greater net well-being (positive amounts of well-being minus negative influences on well-being) would result from the mercy killing, which would therefore be the morally right course.

On the other hand, a rule-utilitarian might insist that more net well-being would be produced by consistently following a rule that disallowed euthanasia. "e argu- ment would be that permitting mercy killings would have terrible consequences overall—increases in involuntary euthanasia (mercy killing without the patient’s consent), erosion of respect for the medical profession, and a weakening of society’s abhorrence of homicide.

Notice that in either kind of utilitarianism, getting direct answers to a di#cult moral problem is straightforward. "e facts of the case may be di#cult to ascertain, but the procedure for discerning the morally right course of action is theoretically simple: determine which action best maximizes well-being. Such simplicity makes utilitarianism an appealing theory, especially when compared to others that require the use of abstract principles or elusive moral concepts.

"e classic version of utilitarianism was devised by Bentham (1748–1832) and given more detail and plausibility by Mill. Classic utilitarianism is hedonistic in that the utility to be maximized is pleasure, broadly termed happiness, the only intrinsic good. A right action produces more net happiness (amounts of happiness minus unhappiness) than any alternative action, everyone considered.

Bentham and Mill had di!erent ideas about what happiness entailed, as do many philosophers today. Bentham thinks that happiness is one-dimensional: it is

1. How might a deonto- logical theorist judge a case of euthanasia? Do you think this approach is better than the utilitar- ian’s? Why or why not?

“I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in at- tempting to satisfy them.”

—John Stuart Mill

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pleasure, pure and simple, something that varies only in the amount that an agent can experience. On this scheme, it seems that the moral ideal would be to experi- ence maximum amounts of pleasure, as does the glutton or the debauchee. But Mill thinks that pleasures can vary in quality as well as quantity. For him, there are lower and higher pleasures—the lower and inferior ones indulged in by the glutton and his ilk and the higher and more satisfying ones found in such experiences as the search for knowledge and the appreciation of art and music. Mill famously sums up this contrast by saying, “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”1

2. Which view of the nature of happiness seems more plausible to you—Bentham’s or Mill’s? Why?

Jeremy Bentham Few in the English-speaking world have had as much influence on law, ethics, and social policy as Jeremy Bentham (1748– 1832). Born in London and educated at Oxford, he became a philosopher preoccupied early in his life with the injustice and harm that he thought was being perpetrated by the law and mores of the times. He spent most of his career developing his ideas about ethics and society and trying to apply them to the world around him. His answer to the problems he saw was a moral theory he called utilitarianism, spelled out in his Introduction to the Prin- ciples of Morals and Legislation (1789).

For Bentham, the result of applying misguided ideas and half-baked theories to society was a vast amount of human su!ering. He complained that in traditional law and morality, harmless actions were condemned and harmful actions were promoted. Freedom of speech and freedom of action were constrained or eliminated altogether in the name of traditional, religious, or subjective morals. Worst of all, as Bentham saw it, policies and laws were laid down without any consideration of human happiness.

His utilitarianism, on the other hand, made human happiness the crux and measure of a good society. His famous utilitarian formula sums it up: the goal of actions should be the greatest happiness for the greatest number. With this theoretical underpinning, Bentham campaigned for equal rights for women, the reform of prisons, the elimination of imprisonment for debtors, more democratic government, the relaxation of laws against certain kinds of sexual behavior, and the abolition of what he called moral fictions such as “natural rights.”

Bentham died in 1832, but he is still hanging around University College in London, which he helped found. Actually it’s his embalmed body that is still on display there—fully clothed, sporting a wax model of his head, looking as if he were ready to make an important point. "is strange state of a!airs was mandated in his will. Apparently Bentham had an odd sense of humor.

PORTR AIT

Figure 12.2 Not just any mummy: the embalmed corpse of Jeremy Bentham at University College, London.

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Like all forms of utilitarianism, the classic formulation demands a strong sense of impartiality. When promoting happiness, we must not only take into account the happiness of everyone a!ected, but also give everyone’s needs or interests equal weight. Mill explains:

"is moral even-handedness is an attractive feature of utilitarianism. As we have seen, impartiality is a fundamental characteristic of morality itself. Despite our dif- ferences in social status, race, gender, religion, and wealth, we are all equal before the moral law. Early utilitarians such as Bentham and Mill took moral equality seriously, crusading for social changes that were based on strict adherence to the impartiality principle.

In classic utilitarianism, the emphasis is on maximizing the total quantity of net happiness, not ensuring that it is rationed in any particular amounts among the people involved. "is means that an action resulting in one thousand units of hap- piness for ten people is better than an action yielding only nine hundred units of happiness for those same ten people—regardless of how the units of happiness are distributed among them. Classic utilitarians do want to allocate the total amount of happiness among as many people as possible (thus their motto, “the greatest happi- ness for the greatest number”). But maximizing total happiness is the fundamental concern whether everyone gets an equal portion or one person gets the lion’s share.

"is is how Mill defends his brand of utilitarianism:

“Happiness is a pig’s philosophy.”

—Friedrich Nietzsche

John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism

[The] happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right conduct, is not the agent’s own happiness, but that of all concerned. As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevo- lent spectator.2

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Prin- ciple, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure. To give a clear view of the moral standard set up by the theory, much more requires to be said; in particular, what things it includes in the ideas of pain and pleasure; and to what extent this is left an open question. But these supplementary explanations do not a"ect the theory of life on which this theory of morality is grounded—namely, that pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in them- selves, or as a means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.

Now, such a theory of life excites in many minds, and among them in some of the most estimable in feeling and purpose, inveterate dislike. To suppose that life has (as they express it)

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no higher end than pleasure—no better and nobler object of desire and pursuit—they desig- nate as utterly mean and groveling; as a doctrine worthy only of swine, to whom the followers of Epicurus were), at a very early period, contemptuously likened; and modern holders of the doctrine are occasionally made the subject of equally polite comparisons by its German, French, and English assailants.

When thus attacked, the Epicureans have always answered, that it is not they, but their accusers, who represent human nature in a degrading light; since the accusation supposes human beings to be capable of no pleasures except those of which swine are capable. If this supposition were true, the charge could not be gainsaid, but would then be no longer an imputation; for if the sources of pleasure were precisely the same to human beings and to swine, the rule of life which is good enough for the one would be good enough for the

DETAILS

John Stuart Mill, “What Utilitarianism Is,” Utilitarianism (1861).

Utilitarianism and the Golden Rule Probably much to the dismay of his religious critics, John Stuart Mill defended his radical doctrine of utilitarianism by arguing that it was entirely consistent with a fundamental Christian teaching:

In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as one would be done by, and to love one’s neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality. As the means of making the nearest approach to this ideal, utility would enjoin, first, that laws and social arrangements should place the happiness, or (as speaking practically it may be called) the interest, of every individual, as nearly as possible in harmony with the interest of the whole; and secondly, that education and opinion, which have so vast a power over human character, should so use that power as to establish in the mind of every individual an indissoluble association between his own happiness and the good of the whole; especially between his own happiness and the practice of such modes of conduct, negative and positive, as regard for the universal happiness prescribes: so that not only he may be unable to conceive the possibility of happiness to himself, consistently with conduct opposed to the general good, but also that a direct impulse to promote the general good may be in every individual one of the habitual motives of action, and the senti- ments connected therewith may fill a large and prominent place in every human being’s sentient existence.

Do you think utilitarianism is really equivalent to the Golden Rule? If so, why? If not, what are the chief di"erences between the two?

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other. The comparison of the Epicurean life to that of beasts is felt as degrading, precisely because a beast’s pleasures do not satisfy a human being’s conception of happiness. Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their grati#cation. I do not, indeed, consider the Epicureans to have been by any means faultless in drawing out their scheme of consequences from the utilitarian principle. To do this in any su%cient manner, many Stoic, as well as Christian elements require to be in- cluded. But there is no known Epicurean theory of life which does not assign to the plea- sures of the intellect, of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments, a much higher value as pleasures than to those of mere sensation. It must be admitted, however, that utilitarian writers in general have placed the superiority of mental over bodily plea- sures chie$y in the greater permanency, safety, uncostliness, etc., of the former—that is, in their circumstantial advantages rather than in their intrinsic nature. And on all these points utilitarians have fully proved their case; but they might have taken the other, and, as it may be called, higher ground, with entire consistency. It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognise the fact, that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. It would be absurd that while, in estimating all other things, quality is considered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasures should be supposed to depend on quantity alone.

If I am asked, what I mean by di"erence of quality in pleasures, or what makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as a pleasure, except its being greater in amount, there is but one possible answer. Of two pleasures, if there be one which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feel- ing of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure. 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 great amount of discontent, and would not resign it for any quantity of the other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we are justi#ed in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superiority in quality, so far outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account.

Now it is an unquestionable fact that those who are equally acquainted with, and equally capable of appreciating and enjoying, both, do give a most marked preference to the manner of existence which employs their higher faculties. Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals, for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast’s pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be sel#sh and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satis#ed with his lot than they are with theirs. They would not resign what they possess more than he for the most complete satisfaction of all the desires which they have in common with him. If they ever fancy they would, it is only in cases of unhappiness so ex- treme, that to escape from it they would exchange their lot for almost any other, however undesirable in their own eyes. A being of higher faculties requires more to make him happy, is capable probably of more acute su"ering, and certainly accessible to it at more points, than one of an inferior type; but in spite of these liabilities, he can never really wish to sink into what he feels to be a lower grade of existence. We may give what explanation we please of this unwillingness; we may attribute it to pride, a name which is given indiscrimi- nately to some of the most and to some of the least estimable feelings of which mankind are capable; we may refer it to the love of liberty and personal independence, an appeal to which was with the Stoics one of the most e"ective means for the inculcation of it; to the love of power, or to the love of excitement, both of which do really enter into and

3. Is the utilitarian view of morality based on the promotion of happiness demeaning? Is there more to life than the pursuit of&happiness (as Mill de#nes it)?

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contribute to it: but its most appropriate appellation is a sense of dignity, which all human beings possess in one form or another, and in some, though by no means in exact, propor- tion to their higher faculties, and which is so essential a part of the happiness of those in whom it is strong, that nothing which con$icts with it could be, otherwise than momen- tarily, an object of desire to them. Whoever supposes that this preference takes place at a sacri#ce of happiness—that the superior being, in anything like equal circumstances, is not happier than the inferior—confounds the two very di"erent ideas, of happiness, and con- tent. It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low, has the great- est chance of having them fully satis#ed; and a highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its imperfections, if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify. It is better to be a human being dissatis#ed than a pig satis#ed; better to be Socrates dissatis#ed than a fool satis#ed. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a di"erent opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the ques- tion. The other party to the comparison knows both sides. . . .

From this verdict of the only competent judges, I apprehend there can be no appeal. On a question which is the best worth having of two pleasures, or which of two modes of existence is the most grateful to the feelings, apart from its moral attributes and from its consequences, the judgment of those who are quali#ed by knowledge of both, or, if they di"er, that of the majority among them, must be admitted as #nal. And there needs to be the less hesitation to accept this judgment respecting the quality of pleasures, since there is no other tribunal to be referred to even on the question of quantity. What means are there of determining which is the acutest of two pains, or the intensest of two pleasurable sensations, except the general su"rage of those who are familiar with both? Neither pains nor pleasures are homogeneous, and pain is always heterogeneous with pleasure. What is there to decide whether a particular pleasure is worth purchasing at the cost of a particular pain, except the feelings and judgment of the experienced? When, therefore, those feel- ings and judgment declare the pleasures derived from the higher faculties to be prefera- ble in kind, apart from the question of intensity, to those of which the animal nature, disjoined from the higher faculties, is susceptible, they are entitled on this subject to the same regard.

I have dwelt on this point, as being a necessary part of a perfectly just conception of Utility or Happiness, considered as the directive rule of human conduct. But it is by no means an indispensable condition to the acceptance of the utilitarian standard; for that standard is not the agent’s own greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of happiness altogether; and if it may possibly be doubted whether a noble character is always the hap- pier for its nobleness, there can be no doubt that it makes other people happier, and that the world in general is immensely a gainer by it. Utilitarianism, therefore, could only attain its end by the general cultivation of nobleness of character, even if each individual were only bene#ted by the nobleness of others, and his own, so far as happiness is concerned, were a sheer deduction from the bene#t. But the bare enunciation of such an absurdity as this last, renders refutation super$uous.

According to the Greatest Happiness Principle, as above explained, the ultimate end, with reference to and for the sake of which all other things are desirable (whether we are considering our own good or that of other people), is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments, both in point of quantity and quality; the test of quality, and the rule for measuring it against quantity, being the preference felt by

John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism

“"e despotism of custom is everywhere the stand- ing hindrance to human advancement.”

—John Stuart Mill

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those who in their opportunities of experience, to which must be added their habits of self- consciousness and self-observation, are best furnished with the means of comparison. This, being, according to the utilitarian opinion, the end of human action, is necessarily also the standard of morality; which may accordingly be de#ned, the rules and precepts for human conduct, by the observance of which an existence such as has been described might be, to the greatest extent possible, secured to all mankind; and not to them only, but, so far as the nature of things admits, to the whole sentient creation. . . .

The objectors to utilitarianism cannot always be charged with representing it in a dis- creditable light. On the contrary, those among them who entertain anything like a just idea of its disinterested character, sometimes #nd fault with its standard as being too high for humanity. They say it is exacting too much to require that people shall always act from the inducement of promoting the general interests of society. But this is to mistake the very meaning of a standard of morals, and confound the rule of action with the motive of it. It is the business of ethics to tell us what are our duties, or by what test we may know them; but no system of ethics requires that the sole motive of all we do shall be a feeling of duty; on the contrary, ninety-nine hundredths of all our actions are done from other motives, and rightly so done, if the rule of duty does not condemn them. It is the more unjust to utilitari- anism that this particular misapprehension should be made a ground of objection to it, inasmuch as utilitarian moralists have gone beyond almost all others in a%rming that the motive has nothing to do with the morality of the action, though much with the worth of the agent. . . .

It has already been remarked, that questions of ultimate ends do not admit of proof, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. To be incapable of proof by reasoning is common to all #rst principles; to the #rst premises of our knowledge, as well as to those of our conduct. But the former, being matters of fact, may be the subject of a direct appeal to the faculties which judge of fact—namely, our senses, and our internal consciousness. Can an appeal be made to the same faculties on questions of practical ends? Or by what other faculty is cog- nisance taken of them?

Questions about ends are, in other words, questions about what things are desirable. The utilitarian doctrine is, that happiness is desirable, and the only thing desirable, as an end; all other things being only desirable as means to that end. What ought to be required of this doctrine—what conditions is it requisite that the doctrine should ful#ll—to make good its claim to be believed? The only proof capable of being given that an object is visi- ble, is that people actually see it.

The only proof that a sound is audible, is that people hear it: and so of the other sources of our experience. In like manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it. If the end which the utilitarian doctrine proposes to itself were not, in theory and in practice, acknowledged to be an end, nothing could ever convince any person that it was so. No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attain- able, desires his own happiness. This, however, being a fact, we have not only all the proof which the case admits of, but all which it is possible to require, that happiness is a good: that each person’s happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness, there- fore, a good to the aggregate of all persons. Happiness, has made out its title as one of the ends of conduct, and consequently one of the criteria of morality.

But it has not; by this alone, proved itself to be the sole criterion. To do that, it would seem, by the same rule, necessary to show, not only that people desire happiness, but that they never desire anything else. . . .

“He who lives only to benefit himself confers on the world a benefit when he dies.”

—Tertullian

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We have now, then, an answer to the question, of what sort of proof the principle of utility is susceptible. If the opinion which I have now stated is psychologically true— if human nature is so constituted as to desire nothing which is not either a part of hap- piness or a means of happiness, we can have no other proof, and we require no other, that these are the only things desirable. If so, happiness is the sole end of human action, and the promotion of it the test by which to judge of all human conduct; from whence it necessarily follows that it must be the criterion of morality, since a part is included in the whole.

And now to decide whether this is really so; whether mankind does desire nothing for itself but that which is a pleasure to them, or of which the absence is a pain; we have

John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism

THEN AND NOW

Utilitarianism and the Death Penalty Utilitarianism is alive and well in contemporary debates about personal morality, institutional policy, and government programs. It plays an especially big role in arguments over capital punishment—o#cially sanctioned punishment by death for very grievous (capital) crimes. On one side of this dispute are the abolitionists, those who want to do away with capital pun- ishment and who believe the death penalty is never justified. On the other side are the reten- tionists, those who want to retain the death pen- alty as part of a system of legal punishment and who believe that sometimes capital punishment is warranted. Both camps in the debate argue their cases on utilitarian grounds (as well as on the basis of deontological principles).

Many retentionists take the utilitarian path by arguing that the death penalty has positive e!ects on society—specifically that it either prevents criminals from harming others again or deters would-be o!enders from capi- tal crimes. Executing hardened murderers, say retentionists, is the best way to prevent them from killing other inmates or escaping and kill-

ing innocent people. Abolitionists respond that life in prison without parole (and with ap- propriate security measures) is as e!ective as execution in preventing inmates from repeating their crimes. To make their arguments stick, both sides in this dispute have to support their nonmoral claims with empirical evidence, but definitive evidence for the e!ectiveness of the

Figure 12.3 In debates on capital punishment, which matters most: rights or utility?

Mill’s Utilitarianism 297

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evidently arrived at a question of fact and experience, dependent, like all similar ques- tions, upon evidence. It can only be determined by practised self-consciousness and self- observation, assisted by observation of others. I believe that these sources of evidence, impartially consulted, will declare that desiring a thing and #nding it pleasant, aversion to it and thinking of it as painful, are phenomena entirely inseparable, or rather two parts of the same phenomenon; in strictness of language, two di"erent modes of naming the same psychological fact: that to think of an object as desirable (unless for the sake of its consequences), and to think of it as pleasant, are one and the same thing; and that to desire anything, except in proportion as the idea of it is pleasant, is a physical and meta- physical possibility.3

4. Does the fact that people desire happiness prove that it should be desired, that achieving it should be the ultimate goal of the moral life?

two prevention strategies is hard to come by. Each side can challenge the other to produce evidence to back their assertions.

Retentionists often maintain that the most powerful deterrent against murders is the threat of the ultimate punishment, death. Several sociological studies seem to support this claim, but they have been the subject of a good deal of critical scrutiny and debate, a fact that abolitionists are quick to point out. Some retentionists argue that common sense tells us that the death penalty is a better deterrent than life in prison. It seems obvious, they say, that the more severe the punishment, the more it deters potential o!enders. Abolitionists reply that there are reasons to think the commonsense view is mistaken.

(Some retentionists take the deontological path through retributivism, the doctrine that people should be punished simply because they deserve it and that the punishment should be proportional to the crime. Kant argued for this view. Many abolitionists reject the re- tributivist theory of punishment and thus reject the retentionist argument that it supports. But some of them accept it, arguing that although o!enders should get the punishment they deserve, no one deserves the death penalty.)

Like retentionists, abolitionists also try to make their case on utilitarian grounds. "ey may contend that life in prison for murderers results in greater overall happiness or goodness for society than sentencing them to death. For one thing, if human life has great value, then preserving it by forgoing the death penalty must maximize the good. Abolitionists also insist that the death penalty brings with it some drawbacks that life sentences avoid. "ey may assert that the monetary costs involved in capital punishment exceed the costs of life sentences with- out parole, that the chances of unintentionally executing the innocent are great, or that the execution of o!enders may actually provoke murders or have an overall dehumanizing e!ect on society. Retentionists may dispute these claims by questioning the evidence for them, or they may take a retributivist line by arguing that the consequences are beside the point.

Do you accept or reject the use of the death penalty? What are your grounds for doing so? Are your grounds utilitarian, deontological, or both?

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12.3 CRITIQUES OF THE THEORY

So there is much to like about utilitarianism. Its simplicity, its straightforward ap- plication to moral problems, and its insistence on moral impartiality have helped to make it one of the most influential moral theories in modern history.

Still it has drawn many criticisms, the most serious one being that the theory flies in the face of our considered moral judgments, especially regarding issues of duty, rights, and justice. Our considered moral judgments, what some call our moral common sense, are our moral opinions that we arrive at after careful deliberation that is as free of bias, self-interest, and other distorting influences as possible. Moral philosophers grant them considerable respect and try to take them into account in their moral theorizing. "ese judgments are fallible, and they are often revised under pressure from trustworthy principles or theories. But we are entitled to trust them unless we have good reason to doubt them. "erefore, any moral theory that is seriously inconsistent with our most basic considered judgments must generally be regarded as flawed, perhaps fatally so, and in need of revision. Our considered judgments, for example, tell us that slavery, murder, rape, and genocide are wrong. A moral theory that implies otherwise fails this criterion and is a candidate for revision or rejection. "at equals should be treated equally, that there must be good reasons to deliberately cause harm to others, that justice is an essential part of the moral life—these and other considered judgments are among the many that good moral theories must account for. Some critics have accused utilitarianism of running afoul of this important criterion.

Suppose you promise a friend that you will help her prepare for a big exam. You know the subject inside and out, but she constantly struggles with it. At the last minute, you decide that you would rather stay home and watch a movie. You calculate that the satisfaction you get from watching the movie outweighs what- ever dissatisfaction your friend feels because you broke your promise. By utilitarian lights, you should stay home and watch the movie, for your only obligation is to maximize utility. But this view of the matter seems mistaken. When we make a promise, we impose a duty on ourselves, and such duties seem to carry weight in our moral deliberations that is independent of considerations of utility. Sometimes when a large measure of well-being hangs in the balance, breaking a promise or forsaking some other duty may seem justified. But our considered judgments suggest that such duties as promise keeping cannot be easily or automatically overridden by calcula- tions of utility.

Now consider the case of a man arrested for murder who is in fact innocent of the crime. Angry citizens demand that he be lynched immediately, and they threaten riots and reprisal killings against the man’s family. "e local police chief knows that by lynching the man, the overall happiness of the people would be increased far more than if the man got a fair trial—the mob would be satisfied, lives would be saved, and property would be spared destruction. So the chief lets the town string the man up. Did the chief do what is right? "e utilitarian seems obliged to say yes. But our considered judgment would likely be that the chief did wrong by violating

“"e pursuit of happi- ness is a most ridiculous phrase; if you pursue hap- piness you’ll never find it.”

—C. P. Snow

5. Is breaking the promise really wrong in this case? What would you have done? Why?

6. How do you think Mill would respond to this criticism?

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the man’s rights and perpetrating an injustice. According to utilitarianism’s critics, this shows that the theory is inadequate. "e requirements of justice and individual rights must be taken into account; utility is not the only thing that matters.

Some utilitarians have replied to such criticisms by saying that scenarios like the one just presented are unrealistic and misleading. In the real world, they say, actions that seem to conflict with our moral intuitions almost always produce consequences so dire that the actions cannot be justified even on utilitarian grounds. Once all the possible consequences are taken into account, it becomes clear that the proposed actions do not maximize happiness and that commonsense morality and utilitarian- ism coincide.

Critics reply that many times the judgments of commonsense morality and utili- tarianism do in fact coincide when all the facts are known—but not always. "ey insist that even the utilitarian must admit that there could be cases in which actions that maximize utility do clash with our considered moral judgments, and this pos- sibility raises doubts about the utilitarian standard.

Figure 12.4 If lynching an innocent man will prevent other killings, is the lynching justi#ed? The utilitar- ian answer might be yes.

“All action is for the sake of some end; and rules of action, it seems natural to suppose, must take their whole character and color from the end to which they are subservient.”

—John Stuart Mill

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Mill’s View of Personal Freedom

John Stuart Mill makes one of the more memorable cases for individual liberty and thus inspires many contemporary arguments against government attempts to curtail freedom of speech and action:

DETAILS

Figure 12.5 If pornography gives o"ense, should it be banned? What would Mill say?

WRITING AND REASONING CHAPTER 12

1. How does Mill respond to the charge that utilitarianism is a pig phi- losophy? What is meant by “better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied”? Do you agree with this ordering of values?

2. What is Mill’s “proof ” of the truth of utilitarianism? Is it a good argu- ment? Explain.

3. Suppose that by killing one innocent person you can greatly increase the health and well-being of a thousand. Would it be morally permis- sible to kill that person? How might a utilitarian decide this question?

4. Do you believe that the quantity of happiness is more important than its quality? What are your reasons for choosing one over the other?

5. Are you a utilitarian? Why or why not?

Review Notes 301

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REVIEW NOTES

12.1 THE PHILOSOPHER!REFORMER • Mill was an empiricist philosopher dedicated to seeing that his liberal and utilitar-

ian ideals be used for the betterment of society. He became one of the greatest social reformers of his day, advocating individual liberty, freedom of expression, social tolerance, aid to the poor, the abolition of slavery, humane treatment of prisoners, and women’s rights.

• After su!ering a mental breakdown at age twenty, Mill recovered, having gained a new perspective on his life and on his previous way of thinking. He remained a utilitarian, but he left behind many of the less desirable features of Bentham’s theory. He married the feminist Harriet Taylor, who was a major influence on the ideas he expressed in !e Subjection of Women (1869).

[T]he only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a su#cient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise or even right. "ese are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or rea- soning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him, must be calculated to produce evil to someone else. "e only part of the conduct of any one for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. . . . "e only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their e!orts to obtain it.

Legal moralism is the view that a community’s basic moral standards should be enshrined in law and enforced by the state. Considering Mill’s position on individual liberty, would he be for or against this doctrine? What would be his grounds?

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1859, 1978).

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• Mill earned a prestigious place in the pantheon of respected philosophers for his work in epistemology, deductive and inductive logic, political thought, and ethics. Among other works, he wrote System of Logic (1843), On Liberty (1860), and Utili- tarianism (1861).

12.2 MILL’S UTILITARIANISM • Utilitarians judge the morality of conduct by a single standard, the principle of

utility: right actions are those that result in greater overall well-being (or utility) for the people involved than any other possible actions.

• "ere are two main forms of utilitarianism: (1) act-utilitarianism is the view that the rightness of actions depends solely on the overall well-being produced by indi- vidual actions and (2) rule-utilitarianism is the doctrine that a right action is one that conforms to a rule that, if followed consistently, would create for everyone involved the most beneficial balance of well-being over su!ering.

• "e classic version of utilitarianism, devised by Jeremy Bentham and given more plausibility by Mill, is hedonistic in that the utility to be maximized is pleasure, broadly termed happiness, the only intrinsic good.

• Bentham thinks happiness is one-dimensional: it is pleasure, pure and simple, something that varies only in the amount that an agent can experience. But Mill contends that pleasures can vary in quality as well as quantity. Mill famously re- marks, “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”

• Classic utilitarianism features a strong sense of impartiality, and its emphasis is on maximizing the total quantity of net happiness, not ensuring that it is rationed in any particular amounts among the people involved.

12.3 CRITIQUES OF THE THEORY • Utilitarianism has drawn many criticisms, the most serious one being that the

theory conflicts with our considered moral judgments, especially regarding issues of duty, rights, and justice. Our considered moral judgments are our moral opinions that we arrive at after careful deliberation that is as free of bias, self-interest, and other distorting influences as possible. Any moral theory that is seriously inconsis- tent with our most basic considered judgments must generally be regarded as flawed, perhaps fatally so, and in need of revision. Critics have constructed sce- narios that seem to show that utilitarianism conflicts with our strongest moral intuitions.

• Some utilitarians have replied to such criticisms by saying that the scenarios are unrealistic and misleading. Critics reply that many times the judgments of com- monsense morality and utilitarianism do in fact coincide when all the facts are known—but not always.

KEY TERMS act-utilitarianism rule-utilitarianism

For Further Reading 303

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Notes 1. John Stuart Mill, “What Utilitarianism Is,” Utilitarianism (1861). 2. Mill, “What Utilitarianism Is.” 3. Mill, “What Utilitarianism Is.”

For Further Reading Jeremy Bentham, “Of the Principle of Utility,” An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879), 1–7.

William K. Frankena, Ethics, 2nd edition (Englewood Cli!s, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973). A highly regarded, concise introduction to ethics.

Kai Nielsen, “A Defense of Utilitarianism,” Ethics 82 (1972): 113–124.

Louis P. Pojman, Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong, 4th edition (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2002). An introduction to ethics that lays out a case for objective morality.

James Rachels, !e Elements of Moral Philosophy, 4th edition (New York: McGraw- Hill, 2003). A concise guide to ethics and ethical theories.

Russ Shafer-Landau, Whatever Happened to Good and Evil? (New York: Oxford Uni- versity Press, 2004). A readable, carefully crafted defense of objective ethics.

Peter Singer, ed., A Companion to Ethics (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1993). A topical anthology covering many issues, including moral theory, theory applications, and challenges to commonsense ethics.

J. J. C. Smart, “Extreme and Restricted Utilitarianism,” in Essays Metaphysical and Moral (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987).

Lewis Vaughn, Contemporary Moral Arguments: Readings in Ethical Issues (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). A moral-issues anthology organized by topics and by influential, classic arguments.

Bernard Williams, “A Critique of Utilitarianism,” in Utilitarianism: For and Against, eds. J. J. C. Smart and Bernard Williams (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1973).

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CHAPTER OBJECTIVES

CHAPTER 13

Hegel and Marx

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!e nineteenth century was a time of social and political upheaval as well as remarkable philosophical debate and innovation. !e former had several sources. First, the scientific awakening of the previous century led to trailblazing discoveries in biology, chemistry, and other fields, and a widespread expectation of human progress came with them. Second, the Industrial Revolution transformed social and economic systems that previ- ously had seemed unshakeable. It filled up the cities, changed the relationship between people and their labors, and produced equal measures of prosperity and woe. !ird, political turmoil swept the Continent as wars and revolutions spread, and great empires rose and declined. In Europe the greatest emissaries of philosophical change were G. W. F. Hegel, Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche. !ey criticized the theories of revered philosophers while disagreeing with each other on important issues. But they all left their mark, influenced the future of ideas, and—in the case of Hegel and Marx—helped shape a large share of the world’s social and political landscape.

13.1 HEGEL

Hegel belongs to a tradition in philosophy characterized less by sustained rational ar- gument than by the construction of grand systems of thought, vast worldviews that attempt to grasp the whole of reality in every significant aspect. !e core of Hegel’s system is a kind of absolute idealism, the doctrine that the universe is an objective reality consisting of ideas in the universal mind, what Hegel calls Spirit or Absolute. !is Spirit (which has also been called God) is not merely the sum of all human minds and their ideas; it is certainly that, but everything else as well. Spirit is all, but it is also at the same time distinct from humanity, with its own self-awareness and its own plans to be worked out through the actions and thinking of human beings. Spirit is a spiritual organism encompassing the whole universe, evolving and developing according to its own internal principles toward its destiny. Hegel’s view, then, is a form of panentheism, the view that God is in every part of the universe (as in pantheism) but is also more than the universe, just as cells in an organism constitute the organism yet are not identical with it (the organism is more than a collection of its cells). Hegel declares:

absolute idealism !e doctrine that the universe is an objective reality consisting of ideas in the universal mind.

panentheism !e view that God is in every part of the universe but is also more than the universe.

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!is reference to history is significant, for Hegel sees the history of the world as the continual development of Spirit toward greater self-consciousness and rationality, greater cognizance of itself as a free, self-determining being. !e ultimate goal and

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final stage of this cosmic development is total self-consciousness and self- knowledge. !is final moment is the culmination of history; it is the goal toward which the world inevitably progresses. As individuals and nations become increasingly aware of themselves and their freedom, Spirit—the whole of existence—also achieves greater self-consciousness and progresses further along the path to the final objective.

Hegel holds that both Spirit and humanity move toward ultimate self- consciousness through stages of history, through epochs that unfold by logical and historical ne- cessity. And he thinks he knows the repeating pattern of development that history embodies. He calls it dialectic, and it always goes like this: First there is a historical starting point (the thesis), which eventually produces a state of a"airs directly opposed to it (the antithesis), and the conflict yields a new situation (the synthesis). !en the pattern repeats, beginning with the synthesis as the new thesis. !us Hegel believes that the repeating cycle is rational and inevitable and that history is going in a positive direction—that is, there is continual progress toward a better future.

13.2 MARX

Karl Marx (1818–1883) was in his early teens when Hegel died. But by the time Marx attended the university, Hegel was all the rage in German intellectual circles.

Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) was born in Stutt- gart in what is now Germany, the eldest son of a low-level gov- ernment o#cer and a housewife, who died when Hegel was eleven. He attended the University at Tübingen and, after grad- uation in 1793, held tutoring positions in Bern and Frankfurt. He later moved to Jena, where he lectured in philosophy and coedited the journal !e Critical Journal of Philosophy. In 1816 he secured a chair in philosophy at the University of Heidelberg, and he remained there until his death from cholera in 1831.

In his career he produced a prodigious amount of work, in- cluding many seminal but ponderous volumes on metaphysics, philosophy of history, philosophy of religion, ethics, and aesthetics. His most important and influential books are !e Phenomenology of Mind (or !e Phenomenology of Spirit), !e Science of Logic, and !e Philosophy of Right. !rough his lectures and writings, he became the most important thinker of nineteenth-century Germany and the biggest philosophical influence on Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels.

PORTR AIT

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“We do not need to be shoemakers to know if our shoes fit, and just as little have we any need to be professionals to acquire knowledge of matters of universal interest.”

—G. W. F. Hegel

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“!e history of the world is none other than the progress of the conscious- ness of freedom.”

—G. W. F. Hegel

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Marx soon became a young, radical Hegelian, reading and discussing Hegel at every opportunity. He admired Hegel and incorporated some of Hegel’s ideas into his own philosophical writings. Marx accepted Hegel’s view that history unfolds in stages according to a rational pat- tern and that this pattern takes the form of Hegel’s dialectic (thesis, antithesis, and synthesis). And he agreed with Hegel’s optimistic view that history is a story of human progress; there are winners and losers in history, but the overall trend points to a positive end. But Marx parted ways with Hegel on his idealism. Hegel thought the forces that guide history are essentially spiritual; history advances as Spirit strives toward self-consciousness and freedom. But for Marx history is the result of the material conditions of society (principally economic and social conditions). From this odd blend of Hegelian views and Marx’s brand of materialism came socialism.

Socialism is the political and economic doctrine that the means of production (property, factories, businesses) should be owned or con- trolled by the people, either communally or through the state. Social- ism can accommodate liberal democratic forms of government and can even retain some elements of market capitalism. Communism usually implies socialism within a totalitarian system.

!e guiding principle of the socialist view is equality: the wealth of society should be shared by all. !e ideal distribution of goods usually follows the classic formula laid down by Marx, the father of modern socialism: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” People should do work that fits their

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communism A term broadly synonymous with socialism but associated with nominally Marxist countries such as the Soviet Union in the twen- tieth century.

socialism !e political and economic view that the means of production (property, factories, busi- nesses) should be owned and controlled by the state for the general welfare.

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abilities, and they should reap rewards that match their needs. Generally, liberal societies let the means of production accrue to fewer people through the workings of a free market—that is, through capitalism. In such a system, wealth goes to anyone who can acquire it in the marketplace, but in a socialist system wealth is controlled by the state, which allocates it for the good of the people generally.

capitalism A socioeco- nomic system in which wealth goes to anyone who can acquire it in a free marketplace.

DETAILS

Einstein on Socialism Albert Einstein (1879–1955), the world-famous scientist and discoverer of the theory of rela- tivity, had strong philosophical and social interests, which he often expressed in his writings. !is is what he had to say about the relative merits of capitalism and socialism:

[In capitalism] production is carried on for profit, not for use. !ere is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employ- ment; an “army of unemployed” almost always exists. !e worker is constantly in fear of losing his job. Since unemployed and poorly paid workers do not provide a profitable market, the production of consumers’ goods is restricted, and great hard- ship is the consequence. Technological progress frequently results in more unem- ployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. !e profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crip- pling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before. !is crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system su"ers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educa- tional system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the com- munity, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. !e education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.

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Albert Einstein, “Why Socialism,” Monthly Review, May 1949.

.BSY� 309

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Few philosophers have had as much influence on the world as Marx has—who, ironically, did not consider himself a philosopher and did not believe that ideas alone could have much of an impact on history. He thinks that what drives philosophy, history, society, law, government, and morality is economics. It is the dominant system of economics in every age, he says, that determines how society is structured and how history will go. A society’s system of economics is defined by its means of production—by its economic and technological ways of meeting people’s physical and social needs. !e means of production, Marx says, shape social relationships, class structure, technological tools, and political and philosophical ideas. !ose who own and control the means of production make up the dominant class, possess most of the wealth, wield most of the political power, and exploit the lower class. !eir ideas—political, philosophical, or social—are the ruling ideas. !e rest of the people own no property and occupy the lowest rungs of society, selling their labor to the ruling class, the property owners. !e two camps, then, are forever at odds.

Marx maintains that this pattern of opposition—this class struggle—repeats itself throughout history via Hegel’s dialectic process. He thinks the dialectic strug- gle in modern times is between those who own the means of production (the bour- geoisie, or capitalists) and those who do not (the proletariat). !e bourgeoisie are few but own all the factories and other means of production (thesis); the proletariat are many but own nothing, serving only as workers in the capitalist system (antithesis). To increase their profits, the bourgeoisie hire more and more workers but pay them less and less, replacing workers with machines whenever possible. !e workers’ wages decline, more become unemployed, and their exploi- tation by the capitalists continues. As their situation worsens, Marx observes, they have an increased sense of alienation: they are no longer valued as persons, for they have become mere cogs in the capitalist machinery; and they can no longer take pride in their work, for it has been downgraded into mindless assembly-line motions. But ulti- mately the success of the bourgeoisie proves to be their undoing. !ey produce, as Marx says, their own gravediggers. !ey unwittingly create a large, poor, angry proletarian class that has had enough of capitalism and the woes that come with it. A proletarian revolution sweeps the old order away and eventually ushers in a classless society (synthesis) in which the means of production belong to everyone, and wealth is shared equally among equals.

A frequent criticism of socialism is that a distribution of goods ac- cording to needs and abilities would require coercion by the state. For socialism to work, people must be forced to do the jobs that match their skills, not the jobs they prefer. And they must be compelled to accept the benefits (monetary or otherwise) that match their needs, not the benefits they most desire.

Critics also accuse socialist systems of providing no incentive for people to excel at their jobs. Under socialism, people are rewarded according to their needs, not by how well or how hard they work. So what inducement is there to be more ambitious or e#cient?

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“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”

—Karl Marx

“From each according to his abilities, to each ac- cording to his needs.”

—Karl Marx

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Marx conveyed his views over many years and in several writings, the best- known being the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), which he coauthored with his colleague Friedrich Engels:

.BSY��The Communist Manifesto

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“Religion is the impo- tence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.”

—Karl Marx

.BSY� 311

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“Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.”

—Karl Marx

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“If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist.”

—Karl Marx

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THEN AND NOW

Is the United States a Socialist Country? To many Americans, socialism is a dirty word. President Obama had been accused of trying to turn the United States into a socialist country like those in Europe. To score points with the electorate, politicians label their opponents socialists. Some political theorists say that a little socialism won’t hurt and might help, and a few de- clare that the debate is silly because the United States is already a socialist country. Is it?

It depends on your definition of socialism. Some people (including a few television commentators) say that a government is socialist if it runs social programs that otherwise could be left to the marketplace— programs like public education, prisons, aid to the poor, and Medi- care. By this standard, the United States is indeed social- ist. But the traditional definition is more like the one given at the beginning of this section: socialism is the doctrine that the means of production (property, factories, businesses) should be owned or controlled by the people, either communally or through the state. !e programs just mentioned are generally not considered means of production. Neither are such things as police and fire protection, national defense, and income redistri- bution. Welfare programs are examples not of socialism but of welfare liberalism. So even though the United States may have some socialist elements (such as partial ownership and control of the banking industry), it’s not predominantly socialist—and calling it that would be an exaggeration.

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.BSY��The Communist Manifesto

.BSY� 313

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“!e state is nothing but an instrument of oppression of one class by another—no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy.”

—Friedrich Engels

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.BSY��The Communist Manifesto

“All history has been a history of class struggles between dominated classes at various stages of social development.”

—Friedrich Engels

.BSY� 315

vau28703_ch13_304-317.indd 315 05/09/17 06:04 PM

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803,*/(�.&/�0'�"--�$06/53*&4�6/*5&�2

Writing and Reasoning $)"15&3���

1. Critique the doctrine of absolute idealism. Do you think it plausible? Why or why not?

2. A classical liberal might say to a Marxist that liberty and rights are the most important values in a society, and Marxist societies have few if any liberties. !e Marxist might reply that liberties and rights don’t mean much if people are too poor and oppressed to enjoy them. Which view seems more reasonable to you? Which society would you be willing to live in—classical liberal or Marxist? Why?

3. Suppose the state compelled you to work in a factory for the rest of your life, and it arranged for your salary to be based solely on what the state thinks you need. Would these actions be a violation of your autonomy? If they would improve the general welfare, would they be morally justified?

4. Suppose all resources in the United States were distributed according to Marx’s dictum: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. What would such a society look like? Would it be better than the system that exists now? Why or why not?

5. Does alienation as described by Marx exist today in modern capitalist societies? Explain.

316 CHAPTER 13 )FHFM�BOE�.BSY

vau28703_ch13_304-317.indd 316 05/09/17 06:04 PM

3&7*&8�/05&4

13.1 HEGEL t� )FHFM�CFDBNF�UIF�NPTU�JNQPSUBOU�UIJOLFS�PG�OJOFUFFOUI�DFOUVSZ�(FSNBOZ�BOE�

the biggest philosophical influence on Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels.

t� ɨF�DPSF�PG�)FHFM�T�TZTUFN�JT�IJT�BCTPMVUF�JEFBMJTN �UIF�EPDUSJOF�UIBU�UIF�VOJWFSTF� is an objective reality consisting of ideas in the universal mind, what Hegel calls Spirit or Absolute.

t� )FHFM�TFFT�UIF�IJTUPSZ�PG�UIF�XPSME�BT�UIF�DPOUJOVBM�EFWFMPQNFOU�PG�4QJSJU�UPXBSE� greater self-consciousness and rationality, greater cognizance of itself as a free, self- determining being.

13.2 MARX t� 4PDJBMJTN� JT� UIF� QPMJUJDBM� BOE� FDPOPNJD� EPDUSJOF� UIBU� UIF� NFBOT� PG� QSPEVDUJPO�

(property, factories, businesses) should be owned or controlled by the people, either communally or through the state.

t� ɨF�HVJEJOH�QSJODJQMF�PG�UIF�TPDJBMJTU�WJFX�JT�FRVBMJUZ��UIF�XFBMUI�PG�TPDJFUZ�TIPVME� be shared by all. !e ideal distribution of goods usually follows Marx’s formula: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

t� .BSY�UIJOLT�UIBU�XIBU�ESJWFT�QIJMPTPQIZ �IJTUPSZ �TPDJFUZ �MBX �HPWFSONFOU �BOE� morality is economics. It is the dominant system of economics in every age that determines how society is structured and how history will go.

t� .BSY�TBZT�UIBU�DMBTT�TUSVHHMF�SFQFBUT�JUTFMG�UISPVHIPVU�IJTUPSZ�WJB�)FHFM�T�EJBMFDUJD� process. He thinks the dialectic struggle in modern times is between those who own the means of production (the bourgeoisie, or capitalists) and those who do not (the proletariat).

t� .BSY� IPMET� UIBU� UIF� CPVSHFPJTJF� QSPEVDF� UIFJS� PXO� HSBWFEJHHFST�� ɨFZ� VOXJU- tingly create a large, poor, angry proletarian class that has had enough of capital- ism and the woes that come with it. A proletarian revolution sweeps the old order away and eventually ushers in a classless society.

,&:�5&3.4 absolute idealism capitalism

DPNNVOJTN QBOFOUIFJTN TPDJBMJTN

/PUFT 1. G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, I. 33, trans. Elizabeth S.

Haldane and Frances H. Simpson (San Bernadino, CA: Ulan Press, 2012). 2. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, trans. Samuel

Moore, 1888.

'PS�'VSUIFS�3FBEJOH� 317

vau28703_ch13_304-317.indd 317 05/09/17 06:04 PM

'PS�'VSUIFS�3FBEJOH Steven M. Cahn, ed., Political Philosophy: !e Essentials (New York: Oxford Univer- sity Press, 2011).

Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Volume VI1: Modern Philosophy from the Post-Kantian Idealists to Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche (New York: Doubleday, 1994).

C. Stephen Evans, Kierkegaard: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

Michael Allen Fox, !e Accessible Hegel (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2005).

Patrick Gardiner, Kierkegaard: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).

Ted Honderich, ed., !e Oxford Companion to Philosophy, 2nd edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

Walter Kaufmann, trans., !e Portable Nietzsche (New York: Penguin Books, 1977).

Anthony Kenny, !e Rise of Modern Philosophy: A New History of Western Philosophy, vol. 3 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

Anthony Kenny, !e Rise of Modern Philosophy: A New History of Western Philosophy, vol. 4 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1945).

Richard Schacht, Making Sense of Nietzsche: Reflections Timely and Untimely (Chi- cago: University of Illinois Press, 1995).

John Simmons, Political Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

Peter Singer, Hegel: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983).

Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins, What Nietzsche Really Said (New York: Schocken, 2001).

Michael Tanner, Nietzsche: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

Jonathan Wol", An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

vau28703_ch14_318-348.indd 318 05/09/17 06:04 PM

14.1 THE EXISTENTIAL TONE t�%FöOF�existentialism. t�,OPX�UIF�öWF�UIFNFT�UIBU�FYJTUFOUJBMJTUT�FYQMPSF�JO�UIFJS�XPSL�

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CHAPTER OBJECTIVES

Existentialism

CHAPTER 14

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14.1 THE EXISTENTIAL TONE

Philosophers regard Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) as the father of modern existen- tialism, and they judge Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) to be the last great existential- ist thinker. In this span of over a hundred years, existentialism spread throughout Europe, reaching the height of its appeal among intellectuals and the general public after World War II. It became not just a viewpoint, but also a movement whose at- titudes and style spilled over into art, literature, psychology, and other fields. Today the existentialist spirit is still alive, with both philosophers and nonphilosophers identifying their outlooks on life as existentialist.

In one sense, however, existentialism is not new. Like Socrates, it has little or no interest in metaphysical theories, scientific facts, or abstract truths. It focuses instead, as he did, on answering the ultimate question—how should a person live? !at is, how can an individual live a meaningful life? Kierkegaard says the answers can be found only in the realm of the personal and subjective—only in the “existing individual.” From this reference to unique human existence comes the term existentialism.

Existentialism is an inexact label for di"erent philosophies that share themes about the uniqueness of each human being, about the central importance of choice, and about the individual’s response to an indi"erent, absurd universe. !e philoso- phers who embrace these ideas may di"er among themselves on other important issues, on their approach to philosophical questions, or even on whether the term existentialist applies to them. But in their own way, they explore many of these basic concerns and try to show how they relate to flesh-and-blood individuals. From the

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“Life can only be under- stood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

—Søren Kierkegaard

existentialism A term applied to di"erent philosophies that share themes about the unique- ness of each human being, the central importance of choice, and the individual’s response to an indi"erent, absurd universe.

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Christian Kierkegaard we can trace the existentialist thread to the atheistic phi- losophers Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir; to the theologians Karl Barth and Paul Tillich; and to the literary figures Fyodor Dostoevsky and Albert Camus.

!e main existentialist themes are:

� t� Individualism and subjectivity. Existentialism is centered on the individual, not on abstract principles or universal generalizations. It is the solitary, unique person who must come to terms with the world, who must choose how to live and how to die, who must take responsibility for the actions that define his or her existence. Rules and generalities and one-size-fits-all morality are of little help.

� t� Freedom and responsibility. !e heart of existentialism is its emphasis on the freedom of the individual—freedom from deterministic forces and free- dom to make choices that shape who he or she is. But with freedom comes the momentous responsibility to choose and to accept what follows. However we choose, we have no one to blame or thank but ourselves.

� t� Existence and essence. !e traditional view is that we have a human nature, an essence given to us by God or nature, and this essence defines us, explains us. In other words, our essence is present when we begin to exist, and it is not up to us. But existentialists demur. !ey insist that—in Sartre’s famous phrase—“existence precedes essence.” We first exist, and then we make our own essence. We can decide what and who we are by the choices we make in life. For better or worse, we create ourselves. We are born with a blank slate, and we are responsible for filling it in.

� t� Anguish and absurdity. !e existential predicament—the conditions just described—engenders existential emotions when the implications of the pre- dicament are recognized. We feel anguish (angst) or a sense of absurdity when we realize that we are totally free to create ourselves, that we and we alone are responsible for the direction of our lives, or that life is meaningless unless we give it meaning through our choices.

� t� Authenticity. To be authentic is to realize that you are an individual whose essence is up to you and that you are responsible for choosing the kind of individual you want to be. To be authentic is to choose your own path. To be inauthentic—to act in “bad faith,” as Sartre says—is to run from this respon- sibility, to accept whatever the world has already decided you should be. In in- authenticity, you believe you are stuck with the traits that nature or God gave you, that you simply cannot change. Or you lie to yourself, pretending that all your choices are free when in fact they are weighted down with determining factors from the past.

14.2 KIERKEGAARD

!e Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813–1855) is the acknowledged father of modern existentialism and the champion of a radical

“You are the music while the music lasts.”

—T. S. Eliot

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form of fideism, the notion that religious belief is grounded in faith, not reason. He was an intellectual rebel who challenged the attitudes and values of his times and tried to jolt his con- temporaries into soul-searching and truth-seeking. He relent- lessly criticized the church for what he considered its insipid version of Christianity, and he rejected the system-building philosophy of Hegel that was in vogue at the time. Much of his writing is controversial, but few who have studied him would doubt the depth and breadth of his thinking. Unlike some philosophers, he is a fine writer; and like Socrates, he is pre- occupied with the vital questions: How should I live? What should I believe? What is important?

He was born in Copenhagen into a family of pious Luther- ans, the youngest of seven children, five of whom died before he reached twenty-one. His father, Michael, a successful busi- nessman, was extremely devout and mysteriously weighed down by enormous gloom and guilt, both of which he trans- mitted to his children through his harsh and unyielding form of Christianity. Søren was haunted by this dark inheritance his whole life.

In 1830 he entered the University of Copenhagen, where he worked toward a degree in theology. He eventually developed a distaste for his chosen field of study, however, and lapsed into the life of a cultivated and dissolute man about town. He believed, as young adults sometimes do, that his existence was empty, devoid of a worldview or grand commitment that would give mean- ing to his life. But after his father died in 1838, his attitude changed. He devoted himself again to his studies and finally in 1840 earned his theology degree. Shortly afterward, he became engaged to Regine Olsen, the daughter of a local o#cial, but quickly regretted the decision. For reasons that are not entirely clear, he called o" the engagement. For the rest of his life, he dedicated himself to his writing, pro- ducing an amazing number of books and essays on an impressive range of subjects.

He penned many of his works under a variety of pseudonyms, sometimes making a point by letting the fictitious authors present di"erent sides of an issue and even disagree with one another. Most of his more important works appeared in the 1840s: Either/Or (1843), Fear and Trembling (1843), Philosophical Fragments (1844), !e Concept of Anxiety (1844), Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846), and !e Sickness unto Death (1849).

In October 1855, at age forty-two, he crumpled to the street, was struck with paralysis, and never recovered. He died in a hospital on November 11, 1855. Despite his scathing attacks on establishment Christianity, he was given a funeral service in Copenhagen Cathedral.

A central concern of Kierkegaard’s work is the nature and status of the indi- vidual, an “existing human being.” Armed with his distinctive view of what genuine individuality amounts to, he launches one assault after another on the pretensions of

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fideism !e notion that religious belief is grounded in faith, not reason.

“Faith is the highest pas- sion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.”

—Søren Kierkegaard

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society, on the ideal of objectivity (mainly in science and philosophy), on organized religion, and on the concepts of objective and subjective truth in religion.

Kierkegaard charges that society is crushing individuals, diluting their personal identity, and replacing them with people who have “forgotten what it means to exist,” to live as authentic, passionate human beings. Here is philosopher Patrick Gardiner’s description of what Kierkegaard has in mind:

“Philosophy teaches that the way is to become ob- jective, while Christianity teaches that the way is to become subjective, i.e., to become a subject of truth.”

—Søren Kierkegaard

And here is Kierkegaard’s own denunciation of society’s plague of conformity and groupthink:

1BUSJDL�(BSEJOFS��Kierkegaard: A Very Short Introduction

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4�SFO�,JFSLFHBBSE��Either/Or

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“!at which does not kill me makes me stronger.”

—Nietzsche

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Objective knowledge has its place, says Kierkegaard, but it cannot give someone the truth—the real and immediate truth of personal experience, where the indi- vidual uncovers the meaning of his or her life. Objective facts are just that—cold, abstract, impersonal, impartial truths that are relevant only within the realm of theoretical speculation and empirical generalities. Only subjective truth—the reali- ties of concrete, lived experience—can show the individual what really matters in life and how that life can be lived. Kierkegaard asks:

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In the crowd—the opposite of the individual—there is a danger of losing the person, Kierkegaard says:

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Kierkegaard thinks of himself as an authentic Christian, one whose own individuality and subjectivity has embraced (or tried to embrace) all the implications of his austere brand of Christianity. For him, being a genuine Christian means resisting the anemic values of conventional society and expressing personal faith through one’s life, not through mere belief in a set of abstract principles or through the perfunctory performance of prescribed behavior. A real Christian is a radical, a person who lives life in opposition to socially acceptable conduct, as Christ did. For a real Christian, Christianity is intensely personal, an extreme commitment with no guarantees, an inner transforming expe- rience that needs no justifying reasons, no phony assurances or blessings or endorsements from the church.

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But to Kierkegaard, the organized Christianity of his day (what he contemptu- ously calls “Christendom”) fails utterly to live up to biblical standards—as he says, “the Christianity of the New Testament no longer exists.” Christendom does not oppose conventional society; instead it tries to identify itself with conventional so- ciety. It avoids giving o"ense or disquieting the casual Christian. It is worldly and hypocritical. It has watered down genuine Christianity by ignoring its implications for the individual Christian in everyday life.

Kierkegaard insists that attempts to make religion conform to reason—to prove it objectively, to o"er evidence or arguments in its favor—are doomed to fail. First, from an objective standpoint, the belief in, say, the incarnation of Christ is absurd. No scientific or philosophical investigations could ever prove it. Second, even with the best of reasons supporting a religious belief, its truth is still only a matter of thin probabilities, dry uncertainties or approximations. And humans cannot base their lives on probabilities. Kierkegaard gives us a paradox: Christian belief is absurd, but only such an absurd belief can be believed. Believing the absurd requires an ex- treme, passionate “leap of faith,” and only an absurd belief—a belief contrary to all objective evidence—can provoke such passionate belief. What this intense kind of belief can yield, and what objectivity can never give, is a deeply fulfilling subjective certainty, a personally meaningful truth. Great absurdities (such as Christianity’s central story) require great, passionate faith.

Kierkegaard maintains that what is believed has to do with objective truth, and how it is believed has to do with subjective truth. Subjective truth is an objectively uncertain belief “held fast in an appropriation process of the most passionate inward- ness.” And subjective truth is “the highest truth available for an existing person.”5 In fact, Kierkegaard says, if the how of faith is present (in the “most passionate in- wardness”), then the what of objectivity will also be present. !at is, subjective truth becomes objective truth:

“Man is something to be surpassed.”

—Nietzsche

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14.3 NIETZSCHE

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900) lived in the nineteenth century, but his ideas echoed loudest throughout the twentieth, and they resound still, over a hundred years after his passing. Today he is both reviled and embraced, and he has outraged many—including exponents of Christianity, contemporary culture,

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traditional morality, democratic socialism, and Western philosophy. Among those who have claimed to be in- spired by his words are Marxists, postmodernists, athe- ists, anarchists, feminists, reactionaries, vegetarians, and Nazis. Some have claimed him as one of their own even though he has given them no explicit reason to (as in the case of the Nazis). !e divergent perspectives on his work are due in part to his writing style, which is mostly brilliant but by turns opaque, poetic, aphoristic, vague, and ironic. But most debate is over the substance of his views, of which the most famous (or notorious) are his doctrine of the will to power, his notion of the mighty human being known as the Übermensch (Overman or Superman), and his claim that “God is dead.”

Nietzsche was born in Prussian Saxony to pious Lu- therans. His father, a Lutheran pastor, died insane in 1849, so the boy was raised in a household of women: his mother and grandmother, his sister, and two aunts. He studied classical philology at the Universities of Bonn and Leipzig, demonstrating such brilliance that at age twenty-four he was given a professorship at Basel University, even though he had not met the doctoral requirements. He was heav- ily influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer’s famous book !e World as Will and Idea and by Richard Wagner’s musical dramas, especially Tristan und Isolde. !is dual influence showed in Nietzsche’s first book, !e Birth of Tragedy, published in 1872, whose theme was the rise and fall of Greek tragedy, killed by the rationalism of Socrates.

From 1873 to 1876 Nietzsche produced Untimely Meditations (actually four essays under the single title). In 1879 he resigned his post at the university because of his failing health and spent the following decade writing and wandering about Italy and Switzerland, lonely and in great physical pain. Out of this period came, among others, !e Wanderer and His Shadow (1880), Daybreak (1881), !e Gay Science or Joyful Wisdom (1882), Beyond Good and Evil (1887), and !e Genealogy of Morals (1887). !us Spake Zarathustra, his well-known masterpiece, appeared in the years 1883 to 1885.

In 1889, on a street in Turin, Nietzsche collapsed after seeing a horse being whipped. He spent the remaining ten years of his life insane, dying in August 1900. By the time of his death, he was world renowned, and his writings were the subject of extensive scholarship and controversy.

A central concept of Nietzsche’s is the will to power, the fundamental nature of existence as a drive to control and dominate. !e will to power is not the real world behind appearances (as in Descartes), nor ideas in the universal mind (as in Hegel), nor the will to live, nor the conscious will of God or humans. It is life, striving to

will to power !e funda- mental nature of existence as a drive to control and dominate.

4.�%PFT�/JFU[TDIF�UIJOL� UIF�iXJMM�UP�QPXFSw�JT�B� DPOTDJPVT�CFJOH �)PX� EPFT�JU�öU�JO�IJT�WJFX�PG� SFBMJUZ �

“Morality is herd instinct in the individual.”

—Nietzsche

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Nietzsche: Myths and Rumors In What Nietzsche Really Said, Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins debunk many of the fables and misreadings surrounding one of the most mythologized and misunderstood thinkers of the modern period. Here’s a sampling: 1. Nietzsche was crazy. Not quite. “Nietzsche may have been ‘crazy,’ in the vernacular

sense, in the last years of his life, but this does not mean that he was mentally ill before 1889.”

2. Nietzsche was a Nazi. False. “[W]e can say with confidence, that Nietzsche was no Nazi and that he shared virtually none of the Nazis’ vicious ideas about the ‘!ousand Year Reich’ and the superiority of the German race.”

3. Nietzsche hated Jews. False. “Nietzsche was no anti-Semite. . . . Nietzsche is sharply critical not only of Judaism but of the entire sweep of Western history that followed. For Jews themselves, Nietzsche shows no malice but a strange fascination.”

4. Nietzsche was a drunk, and he took drugs. “Nietzsche spent most of his adult life sick and in pain. . . . Accordingly, he kept something of a pharmacy on hand, including some powerful painkillers and sedatives to allow him a few pain-free hours of sleep. . . . But Nietzsche, unlike some of his French contemporaries (notably Baudelaire), had no use for recreational drugs, and he generally avoided alcohol.”

4VQQPTF�TPNFPOF�BSHVFT�MJLF�UIJT��i/JFU[TDIF�T�WJFX�PG�(PE�JT�CVOL��BGUFS�BMM �IF�XBT� DSB[Z�w�*T�UIJT�B�WBMJE�BSHVNFOU �8IZ�PS�XIZ�OPU

Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins, What Nietzsche Really Said (New York: Schocken Books, 2000).

DETAILS

overcome, to rule, to break out. All human struggles and striving are manifestations of the will to power. As Nietzsche’s Zarathustra says:

'SJFESJDI�/JFU[TDIF��Thus Spake Zarathustra

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/JFU[TDIF� 327

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"OE�MJGF�JUTFMG�DPOöEFE�UIJT�TFDSFU�UP�NF��i#FIPME w�JU�TBJE �i*�BN�that which must always overcome itself.�*OEFFE �ZPV�DBMM�JU�B�XJMM�UP�QSPDSFBUF�PS�B�ESJWF�UP�BO�FOE �UP�TPNFUIJOH� IJHIFS �GBSUIFS �NPSF�NBOJGPME��CVU�BMM�UIJT�JT�POF �BOE�POF�TFDSFU�

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To Nietzsche, the will to power is evident in humankind’s search for knowledge, especially in science, philosophy, and religion. “Knowledge,” he says, “is an instru- ment of power.” !e will to know arises from the will to power—from the desire to master and control a particular domain of reality. Reality is in flux, a kaleidoscope of sense data and concepts, and on this chaos we try to impose order, theory, and pat- tern so we can turn reality to our advantage. We do not seek truth for truth’s sake. !ere is only the will to power that impels us to try to make sense of the muddle.

A belief, says Nietzsche, may be necessary for the survival of humankind, but it has nothing to do with the truth:

“God is dead! God re- mains dead! And we have killed him.”

—Nietzsche

'SJFESJDI�/JFU[TDIF��Beyond Good and Evil

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Even philosophers, he says, do not pursue the truth; they strive to satisfy their own inner needs by creating a world in their own image. !ey use reasons after the fact to defend their cognitive creations. !eir real, hidden agenda is the satisfaction of their irresistible urge to “truth.” Philosophy, Nietzsche says, is this “tyrannical drive itself, the most spiritual will to power, to the ‘creation of the world.’”9

We can also see the pulse of the will to power in morality, says Nietzsche. For him, there are two sorts of morality: master morality and slave morality. Master mo- rality is the morality of the powerful, the superior, the proud, the aristocrats, the rich, the conquerors. !ey are the proud, independent, select few. In master moral- ity, the masters define themselves as the good. So good means powerful, aristocratic,

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328 CHAPTER 14 &YJTUFOUJBMJTN

vau28703_ch14_318-348.indd 328 05/09/17 06:04 PM

Schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) ranks among the great Con- tinental philosophers who built elaborate systems of thought and developed ideas that influence generations of readers and writers. He was a major influence on Nietzsche, providing him with a new perspective on the world and introducing him to the fundamental notion of will. He was born in Danzig to wealthy, cosmopolitan parents—a successful merchant father with Enlightenment views and varied cultural interests, and an author mother who was, for a time, more famous than her son. Unlike most other thinkers of his day, he was from a young age exposed to a variety of cultures and ideas. He was educated in France, Britain, and Germany; was fluent in several modern and classical languages; and studied not only philosophy but also science, Hinduism, and Buddhism.

On several counts, Schopenhauer was a maverick and an eccentric. Contrary to the great rationalist philosophers preceding him, he thinks the will more fundamental than reason. Against their belief in the possibility of achieving some ultimate good in this life or the next, he posits a universe of su"ering and illusion, a troubled reality from which the only true escape is extinction. He is renowned for his pessimism, which seems all the darker when contrasted with the more a#rmative thinkers in the Western tradition. Putting no stock in the West’s strong Christian ethic, he instead looks to the East to nontheistic Buddhism and to asceticism (although in practice he was hardly ascetic).

Some famous philosophers (David Hume and Baruch Spinoza, for example) are ad- mired for their social virtues and goodness of character. Not so Schopenhauer. On one hand, he was obviously a brilliant intellectual and gifted writer, but he was also a conceited, dour man given to selfishness, pettiness, and quarrels. Once he was irritated by an elderly woman’s chatting outside his apartment door, so he hurled her down the stairs. She sustained permanent injuries, for which a court ordered Schopenhauer to pay her an allowance for the rest of her life. When she died years later, he wrote on her death certificate in Latin, “!e old woman is dead, the burden departs.”

PORTR AIT

Figure 14.4 "SUIVS�4DIP- QFOIBVFS� ����o���� �

noble—the characteristics of the superior people of the “first rank.” For the masters, bad refers to those who are none of these things: the lowly, the vile, the common, the pathetic, the slaves. !e bad people are unworthy, and the good masters can use them or abuse them as they see fit.

Slave morality, on the other hand, is concerned not with good and bad but with good and evil. For the slave, the masters are dangerous monsters; they are evil. !e

/JFU[TDIF� 329

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Zarathustra says that someday man will be surpassed by the Overman—the future of mortal human life. In the meantime, look to this world, this earthly, mate- rial existence, for answers, and do not be deceived by those who would have you put your faith in the supernatural or otherworldly. !e Overman himself will remain faithful to the Earth, this world. He will be his own master and the giver of his own rules, his own creator of his own higher morality.

Nietzsche maintains that slaves are weak and fearful—and slave morality helps keep them that way—largely because of religion. To believe in God, he says, is to accept the morality of the herd (and to assume the role of a sheep), to live not for this world but for a hereafter, to see humans as sinful and inadequate, and to view this life with pessimism and hopelessness. !us for Nietzsche, the death of God would be good news—and he believes this great event has already occurred! He proclaims that “God is dead” in the sense that belief in the Christian God is now weaker and less common than ever before. Science, technology, secularism, and worldly pursuits now reign, and these have put a stake in God’s heart. But humankind has not yet

“!ere is something infantile in the presump- tion that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point . . . !e truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.”

—Richard Dawkins

slaves define themselves as the good; the good are the weak, meek, powerless, and downtrodden. Good qualities are those that advance the interests of the good ones, the slaves—qualities such as love, kindness, and sympathy. From such slave values the modern world has derived the ideals of equality, human dignity, equal rights, socialism, and democracy.

But despite their revered status, Nietzsche says, these are still slave values, which amount to herd morality, the morality of weakness, inferior existence, and degradation. And in slave morality, he thinks he clearly sees Judeo- Christian roots. Didn’t Jesus reserve his blessings for the poor, humble, meek, and weak? Christian morality is slave morality. And this morality of weakness and oth- erworldliness, says Nietzsche, looks at this life and sees only pessimism and hopelessness.

Nietzsche holds out the hope that herd morality can be transcended by a rising champion of a much greater morality, a higher form of human life: the Overman (or Superman). !e Overman is the superior man of the future. Zarathustra, the prophet of the Overman, declares:

'SJFESJDI�/JFU[TDIF��Thus Spake Zarathustra

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330 CHAPTER 14 &YJTUFOUJBMJTN

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fully grasped this epic event; the news, however, is slowly sinking in. Nietzsche says, “!e greatest recent event—that ‘God is dead,’ that the belief in the Christian God has ceased to be believable—is even now beginning to cast its first shadows over Europe.” He expresses this idea (shocking in his day and less so in ours) in a well- known parable:

'SJFESJDI�/JFU[TDIF��The Gay Science

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14.4 HEIDEGGER

According to some observers, Martin Heidegger (1889– 1976) was the greatest philosopher of the twentieth cen- tury; according to others, he was the most overrated and despicable. !e former opinion derives partly from the perceived profundity of his ideas, his obvious genius, and his undeniable influence on modern philosophy, espe- cially on existentialism. !e latter opinion is likely a reac- tion to his murky, exasperating prose and his sympathy for the Nazi cause in Germany.

He was born in the Black Forest region of Germany and set out in his youth to become a priest. He attended high school in Freiburg, where his reading of some books by German philosophers got him thinking about philosophy as a subject of serious study. Not long after entering Freiburg University he gave up once and for all the idea of becoming a priest, and from then on phi- losophy was his main interest. He graduated in 1913, married in 1917, and became a lecturer at Freiburg in 1918. Later he was appointed professor of philosophy at Marburg University, lecturing on a wide range of sub- jects, from Aristotle and Plato to Kant and Leibniz. It wasn’t until 1927 while at Marburg that he published his masterpiece, Being and Time (Sein und Zeit).

Eventually Heidegger was given the philosophy chair at Freiburg, and in 1933 he became the university’s rector. At the same time, he joined the Nazi party and, while rector, cooperated with the Nazi government. In 1934 he resigned his position at Freiburg but not his party mem- bership. He spent most of the rest of his life lecturing and writing.

!roughout his philosophical career, Heidegger was consumed with what he calls the most pressing and most important question a person could ask: the question of being, or existence. Heidegger asks, What is it for some- thing to be? What is it for a stone or pen or human to exist? He doesn’t mean by being what philosophers of the past have usually meant. !e question of being is not about a particular being, an existing thing (such as a dog or a desk), or even about everything. It’s not synonymous with the properties or essence or substance of something. And it’s not about the Being, the God or logos or supreme entity that creates or sustains the world. Being concerns

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332 CHAPTER 14 &YJTUFOUJBMJTN

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what we might call “pure existence”—not how an object exists or what it is that exists but existence itself. Heidegger explains it like this:

.BSUJO�)FJEFHHFS��The Basic Problems of Phenomenology

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Heidegger recognized that investigating being directly would be di#cult, so he decided that to fathom being, he would need to examine one particular type of being—the self-conscious kind called human, the “entity for which being is an issue.” His name for this kind is Dasein, German for “existence” or “being there.” !e idea is that by understanding the being of Dasein, we may be able to grasp the meaning of being itself.

But how can we study Dasein? Science, Heidegger believes, is no help here. He thinks another approach is far more useful—a method for plumbing the depths of Dasein that he learned from his teacher, the famous German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859–1938). !e technique is called phenomenology. It’s a way of pains- takingly describing the data of consciousness without the distortions of preconceived ideas.

Heidegger says that through his phenomenological study, he was able to learn a great deal about Dasein, and therefore about being. For one thing, Dasein is necessar- ily in the world (Heidegger’s word for this aspect of being is, not surprisingly, being- in-the-world ). Dasein is not something that exists independently of the universe. For Plato and Descartes there are two realms of existence, but for Heidegger there is only one reality or being. Dasein’s being-in-the-world is expressed through its involvement in, or concern for, the world by actions—doing things, producing things, accom- plishing things, exploring things, and the like.

Like Sartre and others, Heidegger denies that we come into the world with an assigned essence. We are instead what we make of ourselves. Dasein is the happen- ing of its life in its journey from birth to death. Dasein is a becoming, not a soul or substance.

According to Heidegger, Dasein’s being is characterized by three “existentials,” or fundamental aspects. First there is thrownness: Dasein is thrown into the world without its consent. We had no say in the where and when of our birth and no

phenomenology A way of painstakingly describing the data of consciousness without the distortions of precon- ceived ideas.

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“If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life—and only then will I be free to become myself.”

—Martin Heidegger

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choice about our parents, our nationality, our race, our gender, our economic situ- ation, or anything else. Yet we unavoidably care about the world into which we are thrown. Second, there is the element of projection, the notion that Dasein is forced to define itself by actions that shape its present and future. Each action undertaken now changes future possibilities and thus our lives, and actions help form who we are now. !ird, we have the concept of fallenness, the erosion of Dasein’s individuality by falling away from its true self and into the world. !is falling happens when we dim our understanding of the world through idle, ambiguous, and vacuous thinking. !e distinction here, Heidegger says, is between the authentic and inauthentic self. As the Heidegger scholar !omas Flynn notes,

“!inking begins only when we have come to know that reason, glori- fied for centuries, is the sti"-necked adversary of thought.”

—Martin Heidegger

Figure 14.7 'SFJCVSH�6OJWFSTJUZ �XIFSF�)FJEFHHFS�XBT�SFDUPS�

5IPNBT�3��'MZOO��Existentialism: A Very Short Introduction

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334 CHAPTER 14 &YJTUFOUJBMJTN

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14.5 SARTRE

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980), the famed existentialist philosopher and novelist, was the chief proponent of exis- tentialism after World War II. He was a student of Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger and was steeped in psychology and phenomenology. But in many ways he surpassed all these men. His greatest work—Being and Nothingness— examined the central theme of his philosophy: freedom of the individual. Humans, he says, are profoundly free to create their own lives and thus are entirely responsible for defining the meaning and moral relevance of their existence.

From reflections on his own lived experience, Sartre arrives at what he takes to be some basic truths about human beings and their existential predicament. Unlike almost every philosopher before him, he not only believes that we are free but also insists that we are radically free. We may be influenced by the factors of nature and nur- ture (heredity and environment), but ultimately we are not determined by them. We are totally free—free to define ourselves by our own lights and capable of resisting the physical, psychological, and social forces that will thor- oughly shape us if we let them. We are determined only if we allow ourselves to be determined.

Most people assume, Sartre says, that “essence pre- cedes existence”—that before we come into existence, our

fundamental characteristics (our essence) as humans are already set. !ey think that our psychological makeup, choices, desires, and ideas are, in a sense, locked in before we can say our first words. Our destiny is mapped out beforehand through the workings of a creator God or a universal human nature or some unalterable social structure. But according to Sartre, this kind of “essence precedes existence” thinking is tragically mistaken. It prevents us from seeing a future of open possibilities, saps our creativity, limits our freedom, and weakens our sense of our moral responsibil- ity. !e truth, says Sartre, is the opposite of the received view: “existence precedes essence”—we first come into being and then we define ourselves. He declares, “Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.”

And what is this radical freedom that we all possess? It is both a blessing and a curse. As Sartre says, “We are condemned to be free.” !e blessing is that as free persons, we have the power to set our own goals, live our own lives, and create our- selves as we go. !e curse is that as free beings, we can look to no one but ourselves to decide how we should live. We carry this burden alone. We must bear the awesome moral responsibility of deciding how we should live, how we should treat others, and what values we should prescribe for the rest of the world through our actions. We can celebrate our capacity to create our essence and live by our own rules, but because

Figure 14.8 +FBO�1BVM�4BSUSF� ����o���� �

“Everything has been figured out, except how to live.”

—Jean-Paul Sartre

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4BSUSF� 335

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we are utterly alone in bearing this monumental burden, we are also condemned to experience great anguish, despair, and a sense of abandonment.

Here is how Sartre explained this existentialist freedom in a famous lecture:

Sartre Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) was born in Paris and educated in both France and Germany (in Germany he studied under Hus- serl and Heidegger). His first novel, Nausea, appeared in 1938, and his other books and essays were published throughout the 1940s and 1950s. His most important philosophical work, Being and Nothingness, was published in 1956. In World War II he served in the French army and in 1940 was captured by the Germans and imprisoned. When he was set free a year later, he continued his writing. !roughout his career, his lifelong partner Simone de Beauvoir, a well-known feminist philosopher, helped shape and stimulate his work.

Sartre was political. He led and energized leftist thought, and he even tried to form his own political party. He was a Marx- ist, but his relationship with the Communist Party was complicated and contentious. He joined the party in the early 1950s but withdrew from it in 1956.

In 1964 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, which he refused to accept. At his funeral, fifty thousand people came to honor him.

PORTR AIT

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“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”

—Jean-Paul Sartre

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“I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men.”

—Jean-Paul Sartre

“As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.”

—Jean-Paul Sartre

338 CHAPTER 14 &YJTUFOUJBMJTN

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The Stir Caused by Sartre In his lifetime, Jean-Paul Sartre achieved rock-star status. Today it may be hard to imagine a philosopher causing as much excite- ment throughout society as Sartre did in post–World War II France. Here’s a de- scription of the commotion Sartre caused when he gave a public lecture.

[On October 29, 1945 shortly after the end of the war], at the Club Maintenant, Jean- Paul Sartre delivered a lecture, “Existential- ism Is a Humanism.” Here was the new Paris. !is occasion . . . was packed. Men and women fainted, fought for chairs, smashing thirty of them, shouted and barracked. It coincided with the launching of Sartre’s new review, Les Temps Modernes, in which he argued that literary culture, plus the haute couture of the fashion shops, were the only things France now had left—a symbol of Europe really—and he produced Existentialism to give people a bit of dignity and to preserve their individuality in the midst of degradation and absurdity. !e re- sponse was overwhelming. As his consort, Simone de Beauvoir, put it, “We were astounded by the furor we caused.” Existentialism was remarkably un-Gallic; hence perhaps, its attractiveness. Sartre was half-Alsacian (Albert Schweitzer was his cousin) and he was brought up in the house of his grandfather, Karl Schweitzer. His culture was as German as French. He was essentially a product of the Berlin school and especially Heidegger, from whom most of his ideas de- rived. . . . !us Existentialism was a French cultural import, which Paris then reexported to Germany, its country of origin, in a sophisticated and vastly more attractive guise.

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Paul Johnson, Modern Times (New York: Harper & Row, 1983), 575.

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14.6 CAMUS

As we’ve seen, existentialism does not o"er rules or principles to guide moral action. Instead it provides a broad analysis of the individual’s pre- dicament in an uncaring universe and explains how to find meaning in such a forlorn world. !us, a central existentialist theme is that our existence is absurd: there is an unbearable con- flict between our need for meaning and purpose in life and the meaningless, indi"erent universe. Our situation is impossible, and there is no higher power or governing principle to help us make sense of it. !ere is just us and the cold, silent cosmos, which cares nothing about our needs and desires. Moreover, our condition is terminal; our death is guaranteed. So we must live an absurd existence, and at the last we get no answers, just an ending. !e responsibility of self-definition rests heavily upon us. To many, the weight is ter- rifying. But those who accept their responsibility and freedom, who recognize that they alone are the ultimate designers of their lives, who are brave enough to make the best of an absurd existence—they are living authentically. !ose who allow society, religion, history, mass culture, or their own fear to define them are living inauthentically.

No one has dealt with the issue of absurdity more forcefully and vividly than the French novelist and essayist Albert Camus (1913–1960). For his e"orts, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1957. In his writings, he drew from his experiences as a young Frenchman coming of age in war-ravaged North Africa; as a journalist, editor, and playwright in Algiers; and as a member of the French resistance against Nazi Germany. Absurdity is the dominant theme in his novels (notably !e Stranger and !e Plague) and in his essays (especially “!e Myth of Sisyphus”).

In “!e Myth of Sisyphus,” Camus dramatizes the absurdity of human existence by likening it to that of the mythical Sisyphus, who is forced by the gods to repeat a pointless task for all eternity: push a boulder to the top of a mountain only to have it tumble down to the bottom. Yet Sisyphus finds meaning in this seemingly meaningless burden by courageously embracing it and refusing to be overwhelmed by despair. !e implication for humans is that we too can live meaningfully and bravely by accepting our freedom and shaping our own lives through free choices. To Camus, Sisyphus is a hero because he accepts his fate and valiantly pushes on anyway. Likewise, humans too can be heroic by carrying on with life even though it has no inherent meaning and will soon be over.

absurdity In existential- ism, a sense of meaning- lessness and irrationality in the world arising from the conflict between our need for meaning in life and the meaningless, indi"erent universe.

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“!e struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

—Albert Camus

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“!e only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

—Albert Camus

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*�MFBWF�4JTZQIVT�BU�UIF�GPPU�PG�UIF�NPVOUBJO��0OF�BMXBZT�öOET�POF�T�CVSEFO�BHBJO�� #VU�4JTZQIVT�UFBDIFT�UIF�IJHIFS�öEFMJUZ�UIBU�OFHBUFT�UIF�HPET�BOE�SBJTFT�SPDLT��)F�UPP� DPODMVEFT�UIBU�BMM�JT�XFMM��5IJT�VOJWFSTF�IFODFGPSUI�XJUIPVU�B�NBTUFS�TFFNT�UP�IJN�OFJUIFS� TUFSJMF�OPS�GVUJMF��&BDI�BUPN�PG�UIBU�TUPOF �FBDI�NJOFSBM�øBLF�PG�UIBU�OJHIU�öMMFE�NPVOUBJO � JO�JUTFMG�GPSNT�B�XPSME��5IF�TUSVHHMF�JUTFMG�UPXBSE�UIF�IFJHIUT�JT�FOPVHI�UP�öMM�B�NBO�T�IFBSU�� 0OF�NVTU�JNBHJOF�4JTZQIVT�IBQQZ�15

14.�%PFT�$BNVT�� QFSTQFDUJWF�MFBWF�PQFO� UIF�QPTTJCJMJUZ�PG�NPSBM� SFMBUJWJTN �*G�XF�IBWF�BC- TPMVUF�GSFFEPN�PG�DIPJDF � EPFT�UIBU�NFBO�XF�DBO� NBLF�BOZ�NPSBM�DIPJDF�BU� BMM �%PFT�$BNVT�TFU�BOZ� MJNJUT�PO�NPSBM�EFDJTJPOT �

“Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. !e absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.”

—Albert Camus

“!e absurd is the essen- tial concept and the first truth.”

—Albert Camus

“Man is something to be surpassed.”

—Nietzsche

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THEN AND NOW

Existentialism in Literature and Film

Existentialism lives. Among short stories and novels, you’ll find existentialist themes in Camus’ !e Stranger (1942), !e Plague (1947), and !e Fall (1956); Sartre’s Nausea (1938) and No Exit (1943); Franz Kaf ka’s !e Trial (1925); Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “Notes from the Underground” (1864); Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1953); and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969).

In movies: David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999); Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuck- oo’s Nest (1975); Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957) and A Clockwork Orange (1971); Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979); and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982).

And here are a reviewer’s synopses of three movies that appear on his list of the “Top 10 Existential Movies of All Time”:

t�American Beauty (1999) takes a very literal look at modern life and the human strug- gle to find contentment and meaning. !e film follows the mid-life crisis of Lester

Figure 14.12 #JMM�.VSSBZ�JO�UIF�NPWJF�Groundhog Day.

$BNVT� 343

vau28703_ch14_318-348.indd 343 05/09/17 06:04 PM

Burnham, a suburban husband and father who is emerging from the sleepy malaise that has come to define his life. It’s through the lens of Burnham’s existential crisis that we see the true inanity of the modern lifestyle along with the emptiness and banality of the lives of those around him. !e film reveals the ludicrousness of conformist society while at the same time suggesting that we can still discover and enjoy the small plea- sures in life.

t�!e Truman Show (1998) chronicles the life of a man, Truman Burbank, whose exis- tence is not what it appears to be—at least not to him. Truman lives happily in an island community but eventually discovers that he is the star of an all-day TV soap opera, and that his wife, friends and neighbors are all acting their parts. !ere are many layers to peel back: the film serves as a commentary on the all-controlling media, the pervasive- ness of television in today’s society and how everybody wants to appear on it. !ere’s a postmodernist angle as well, with the entire construct of society being portrayed as a facade that can be stripped down and revealed as an illusion. . . .

t�Groundhog Day (1993) . . . has come to be recognized as a highly innovative treatise on the human condition, the meaning of life, personal responsibility, and the seemingly endless repetition that characterizes our lives. By having the main character, Phil, re-live the same wintry and overcast Groundhog day over and over again, the film explores a host of life issues. As Phil struggles to come to grips with his predicament he goes through a number of phases: disbelief, shock, hedonism, scheming, nihilism, depression (including numerous suicide attempts) and social detachment. Ultimately, he learns that his happiness is only attainable through acceptance of his situation and constructive be- havior that furthers his own life and those around him. Once Phil gets his personal act together he is able to snap the cycle—a theme that is very closely aligned with Buddhism and its notions of samsara and the endless cycle of re-birth.

8IZ�EP�ZPV�UIJOL�FYJTUFOUJBMJTU�JTTVFT�BQQFBS�TP�PGUFO�JO�MJUFSBUVSF�BOE�öMN �8IBU� FYJTUFOUJBMJTU�UIFNFT�SVO�UISPVHI�NBOZ�PG�UIF�NPWJFT�BOE�MJUFSBUVSF�MJTUFE�BCPWF

From Sentient Developments, “!e Top 10 Existential Movies of All Time,” June 7, 2009, sentientdevelopments.com/2009/06/top-10-existential-movies-of-all-time.html.

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3&7*&8�/05&4

14.1 THE EXISTENTIAL TONE t� ɨF�UFSN�existentialism is applied to di"erent philosophies that share themes about

the uniqueness of each human being, the central importance of choice, and the individual’s response to an indi"erent, absurd universe.

t� &YJTUFOUJBMJTU�UIFNFT�JODMVEF�JOEJWJEVBMJTN�BOE�TVCKFDUJWJUZ �GSFFEPN�BOE�SFTQPO- sibility, existence and essence, anguish and absurdity, and authenticity.

14.2 KIERKEGAARD t� ,JFSLFHBBSE�JT�UIF�BDLOPXMFEHFE�GBUIFS�PG�NPEFSO�FYJTUFOUJBMJTN�BOE�UIF�DIBN-

pion of a radical form of fideism. t� ,JFSLFHBBSE�DIBSHFT�UIBU�TPDJFUZ�JT�DSVTIJOH�JOEJWJEVBMT �EJMVUJOH�UIFJS�QFSTPOBM�

identity, and replacing them with people who have “forgotten what it means to exist,” to live as authentic, passionate human beings.

t� ,JFSLFHBBSE�BTTFSUT�UIBU�BUUFNQUT�UP�NBLF�SFMJHJPO�DPOGPSN�UP�SFBTPO�BSF�EPPNFE� to fail. From an objective standpoint, the belief in Christian doctrine is absurd. Even with the best of reasons supporting a religious belief, its truth is still only a matter of thin probabilities, dry uncertainties. And humans cannot base their lives on probabilities.

t� ,JFSLFHBBSE�TBZT�UIBU�UIF�QBSBEPY�PG�$ISJTUJBO�CFMJFG�JT�UIBU�TVDI�CFMJFG�JT�BCTVSE � but only an absurd belief can be believed. Believing the absurd requires an ex- treme, passionate “leap of faith,” and only an absurd belief can provoke such pas- sionate belief.

WRITING AND REASONING $)"15&3���

1. Is Sartre right about free will being the main factor that determines who you are—or do such things as genetics and society have the great- est impact on how you turn out?

2. What is your reaction to Sartre’s perspective on freedom? Do you find his view liberating and inspiring, or do you think it is disheartening and forlorn?

3. Is life absurd, as Camus insists? Does Camus give good reasons for this claim? What leads him to this pessimistic conclusion?

4. What is Kierkegaard’s theory about truth and subjectivity? In his view, how does subjective truth become objective truth? Do you accept his view? Why or why not?

5. Is God dead, as Nietzsche says? Give reasons for or against the idea.

3FWJFX�/PUFT� 345

vau28703_ch14_318-348.indd 345 05/09/17 06:04 PM

t� ,JFSLFHBBSE�DMBJNT�UIBU�TVCKFDUJWF�USVUI�JT�BO�PCKFDUJWFMZ�VODFSUBJO�CFMJFG�iIFME� fast in an appropriation process of the most passionate inwardness.” And subjective truth is “the highest truth available for an existing person.” Subjective truth can become objective truth.

14.3 NIETZSCHE t� "�DFOUSBM�DPODFQU�PG�/JFU[TDIF�T�JT�UIF�XJMM�UP�QPXFS �UIF�GVOEBNFOUBM�OBUVSF�PG�

existence as a drive to control and dominate. It is life in toto striving to overcome, to rule, to break out. All human struggles and striving are manifestations of the will to power.

t� 5P�/JFU[TDIF �UIF�XJMM�UP�QPXFS�JT�FWJEFOU�JO�IVNBOLJOE�T�TFBSDI�GPS�LOPXMFEHF � especially in science, philosophy, and religion. !e will to know arises from the will to power—from the desire to master and control a particular domain of reality.

t� /JFU[TDIF�TBZT�UIBU�UIFSF�BSF�UXP�TPSUT�PG�NPSBMJUZ��NBTUFS�NPSBMJUZ�BOE�TMBWF�NP- rality. Master morality is the morality of the powerful, the superior, the proud, the aristocrats, the rich, the conquerors.

t� 4MBWF� NPSBMJUZ� JT� IFSE� NPSBMJUZ�� 'PS� UIF� TMBWF � UIF� NBTUFST� BSF� EBOHFSPVT� NPO- sters; they are evil. !e slaves define themselves as the good; the good are the weak, meek, powerless, and downtrodden. Good qualities are those that advance the interests of the good ones, the slaves—qualities such as love, kindness, and sympathy.

t� /JFU[TDIF�IPMET�PVU�UIF�IPQF�UIBU�IFSE�NPSBMJUZ�DBO�CF�USBOTDFOEFE�CZ�B�SJTJOH� champion of a much greater morality, a higher form of human life: the Overman. !e Overman is the superior man of the future.

t� 5P�CFMJFWF�JO�(PE �/JFU[TDIF�TBZT �JT�UP�BDDFQU�UIF�NPSBMJUZ�PG�UIF�IFSE �UP�MJWF�OPU� for this world but for a hereafter, to see humans as sinful and inadequate, and to view this life with pessimism and hopelessness. For Nietzsche, the death of God would be good news—and he believes this great event has already occurred.

14.4 HEIDEGGER t� .BSUJO�)FJEFHHFS�JT�SFHBSEFE�CZ�TPNF�BT�UIF�HSFBUFTU�QIJMPTPQIFS�PG�UIF�UXFOUJFUI�

century, and by others as overrated and despicable. !ese contrasting opinions derive mostly from the perceived profundity of his ideas, his undeniable influence on modern philosophy, his murky, exasperating prose, and his sympathy for the Nazi cause in Germany.

t� )FJEFHHFS�XBT�DPOTVNFE�XJUI�XIBU�IF�DBMMT�UIF�NPTU�QSFTTJOH�BOE�NPTU�JNQPS- tant question a person could ask: the question of being, or existence. Heidegger asks, What is it for something to be? What is it for a stone or pen or human to exist? For Heidegger, being concerns what we might call “pure existence”—not how an object exists or what it is that exists but existence itself.

t� 5P�FYQMPSF�UIF�OBUVSF�PG�%BTFJO� UIF�TFMG�DPOTDJPVT�IVNBO�CFJOH �)FJEFHHFS�VTFT� the technique called phenomenology—a way of painstakingly describing the data of consciousness without the distortions of preconceived ideas.

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t� )FJEFHHFS�DMBJNT�UIBU�Dasein has three important aspects: thrownness, projection, and fallenness (marked by authenticity or inauthenticity).

14.5 SARTRE t� 'SPN�SFnFDUJPOT�PO�IJT�PXO�MJWFE�FYQFSJFODF �4BSUSF�BSSJWFT�BU�XIBU�IF�UBLFT�UP�CF�

some basic truths about human beings and their existential predicament, the most important truth being that humans are radically free.

t� 4BSUSF�BSHVFT�UIBU�UIF�iFTTFODF�QSFDFEFT�FYJTUFODFw�LJOE�PG�UIJOLJOH�JT�USBHJDBMMZ� mistaken. !e truth is the opposite of the received view: “existence precedes essence”—we first come into being and then we define ourselves. He declares, “Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.”

t� 4BSUSF�TBZT �i8F�BSF�DPOEFNOFE�UP�CF�GSFF w�BOE�PVS�GSFFEPN�JT�CPUI�B�CMFTTJOH� and a curse. !e blessing is that as free persons, we have the power to set our own goals, live our own lives, and create ourselves as we go. !e curse is that as free beings, we can look to no one but ourselves to decide how we should live. We can celebrate our capacity to create our essence and live by our own rules, but because we are utterly alone in bearing this monumental burden, we are also condemned to experience great anguish, despair, and a sense of abandonment.

14.6 CAMUS t� "�DFOUSBM�FYJTUFOUJBMJTU�UIFNF�JT�UIBU�PVS�FYJTUFODF�JT�absurd: there is an unbearable

conflict between our need for meaning and purpose in life and the meaningless, indi"erent universe. Our situation is impossible, and there is no higher power or governing principle to help us make sense of it.

t� ɨPTF� XIP� BDDFQU� UIFJS� SFTQPOTJCJMJUZ� BOE� GSFFEPN � XIP� SFDPHOJ[F� UIBU� UIFZ� alone are the ultimate designers of their lives, who are brave enough to make the best of an absurd existence—they are living authentically. !ose who allow society, religion, history, mass culture, or their own fear to define them are living inauthentically.

t� *O�iɨF�.ZUI�PG�4JTZQIVT w�$BNVT�ESBNBUJ[FT�UIF�BCTVSEJUZ�PG�IVNBO�FYJTUFODF� by likening it to the story of Sisyphus, who is forced by the gods to repeat a point- less task for all eternity: push a boulder to the top of a mountain only to have it tumble down to the bottom. Yet Sisyphus finds meaning in this seemingly mean- ingless burden by courageously embracing it and refusing to be overwhelmed by despair.

,&:�5&3.4 absurdity existentialism

fideism phenomenology will to power

'PS�'VSUIFS�3FBEJOH� 347

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/PUFT 1. Patrick Gardiner, Kierkegaard: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford Uni-

versity Press, 1998, 2002), 39. 2. Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, vol. 1: Diapsalmata, trans. D. F. Swenson, L. M.

Swenson, and W. K. Lowrie, in A Kierkegaard Anthology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946), 33.

3. Søren Kierkegaard, !e Point of View, trans. W. Lowrie (London, 1939), 114. 4. Søren Kierkegaard, Journal, trans. Louis P. Pojman, in !e Classics of Philosophy,

ed. Louis P. Pojman and Lewis Vaughn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 942.

5. Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. Louis P. Pojman, in !e Classics of Philosophy, eds. Pojman and Vaughn, 950.

6. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. Pojman, 950. 7. Friedrich Nietzsche, !us Spake Zarathustra, trans. Walter Kaufmann, in !e

Portable Nietzsche (New York: Penguin Books, 1954, 1982), 226–227. 8. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York:

Vantage Books, 1989), 11–12. 9. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Kaufmann, 16. 10. Nietzsche, !us Spake Zarathustra, trans. Kaufmann, 125. 11. Friedrich Nietzsche, !e Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann in !e Portable

Nietzsche. 12. Martin Heidegger, !e Basic Problems of Phenomenology (Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 1975), 13–14. 13. !omas R. Flynn, Existentialism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2006), 74–75. 14. Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism, trans. Bernard Frechtman (New York: Philo-

sophical Library, 1947), 15–28, 34–35. 15. Albert Camus, !e Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans. J. O’Brien (New

York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983), 119–123.

'PS�'VSUIFS�3FBEJOH Albert Camus, Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (New York: Random House, 1959).

Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Vol. IX: Modern Philosophy from the French Revolution to Sartre, Camus, and Levi-Straus (New York: Doubleday, 1994).

Simon Critchley, Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

!omas R. Flynn, Existentialism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford Univer- sity Press, 2006).

Michael Inwood, Heidegger: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

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Richard Kearny, ed., Continental Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (New York: Blackwell, 1994).

Anthony Kenny, !e Rise of Modern Philosophy: A New History of Western Philosophy, vol. 4 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

Brian Leiter and Michael Rosen, eds., !e Oxford Companion to Continental Philoso- phy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

Robert C. Solomon, Existentialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

Mary Warnock, Existentialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970).