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The Consistency of Qualitative Hedonism and the Value of (at Least Some) Malicious Pleasures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2008

GUY FLETCHER
GUY FLETCHER*
Affiliation:
University of [email protected]
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Abstract

In this article, I examine two of the standard objections to forms of value hedonism. The first is the common claim, most famously made by Bradley and Moore, that Mill's qualitative hedonism is inconsistent. The second is the apparent problem for quantitative hedonism in dealing with malicious pleasures. I argue that qualitative hedonism is consistent, even if it is implausible on other grounds. I then go on to show how our intuitions about malicious pleasure might be misleading.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , December 2008 , pp. 462 - 471
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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References

1 For discussion of how to formulate hedonism (though specifically hedonism as a theory of well-being) see Feldman, F., Pleasure and the Good Life: Concerning the Nature, Varieties, and Plausibility of Hedonism (Oxford, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Korsgaard, C., ‘Two Distinctions in Goodness’, Philosophical Review 92 (1983), pp. 169–95Google Scholar. See also, Rabinowicz, W. and Rønnow-Rasmussen, T., ‘A Distinction in Value: Intrinsic and For Its Own Sake’, Recent Work On Intrinsic Value, ed. Rabinowicz, W. & Rønnow-Rasmussen, T. (Dordrect, 2005), pp. 115–30Google Scholar. Compare Kagan, S., ‘Rethinking Intrinsic Value’, Journal of Ethics 2 (1998), pp. 277–97Google Scholar.

3 Mill, J. S., Utilitarianism, ed. Sher, G., 2nd edn. (London, 1863; Indianapolis, 2001)Google Scholar.

4 Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 41, cf. pp. 8, 10.

5 Nozick, R., Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Oxford, 1974), p. 28Google Scholar.

6 Term taken from Parfit, D., Reasons and Persons (Oxford, 1987), p. 493Google Scholar.

7 Sidgwick, H., The Methods of Ethics, 7th edn. (London, 1907; Indianapolis, 1981), p. 136Google Scholar.

8 For discussion of whether Mill actually intended to defend qualitative hedonism see Riley, J., ‘Is Qualitative Hedonism Incoherent?’, Utilitas 11 (1999), pp. 347–59Google Scholar; Scarre, G., ‘Donner and Riley on Qualitative Hedonism’, Utilitas 9 (1997), pp. 351–60Google Scholar.

9 Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 8.

10 Moore, G. E., Principa Ethica (Cambridge, 1903; Cambridge, 1993), p. 130Google Scholar; italics in original.

11 For example, Crisp, R., Routledge Guidebook to Mill on Utilitarianism (London, 1997)Google Scholar; J. Riley, ‘Is Qualitative Hedonism Incoherent?’; Zimmerman, M. J., ‘Mill and the Consistency of Hedonism’, Philosophia 83 (1983), pp. 317–36Google Scholar.

12 Bradley, F. H., Ethical Studies (London, 1927), pp. 119–20Google Scholar; italics in original.

13 Moore, Principia, p. 132; italics in original.

14 Of course, in Moore's case, it is also likely that he was already presupposing aspects of his theory of intrinsic value, outlined in ‘The Conception of Intrinsic Value’ in his Philosophical Studies (London, 1922).

15 Feldman, Pleasure and the Good Life, p. 78. As noted above (n. 1) Feldman's point comes in a discussion of qualitative hedonism as an account of well-being.

16 See for example Crisp, Guidebook to Mill on Utilitarianism, pp. 33–4.

17 On this see Harman, G., Explaining Value (New York, 2000), p. 140CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Smart in Smart, J. J. C. and Williams, B., Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge, 1973), p. 26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 I regret that, owing to its recent appearance, I have not been able to incorporate Roger Crisp's interesting discussion of Mill's qualitative hedonism from his recent Reasons and the Good (Oxford, 2006).