Hedonism

The Pursuit of Pleasure

Hedonism is a broad philosophical view that traces its origins as far back as 2100 BCE, with the Epic of Gilgamesh. It is a family of beliefs and philosophies that has been expanded on by many others, such as with Utilitarianism and Epicureanism. The central belief in hedonism is that the most important factor when determining the morality of an action is the pleasure that it creates, or the pain that it negates. Hedonists argue that the only motivation for actions should be to maximize personal pleasure, or the absence of pain. Contrary to common misconceptions, hedonism does not solely prioritize immediate gratification but can consider pleasure across a lifetime. For instance, choosing to avoid harmful habits like drug use can reflect the hedonist's focus on maximizing long term happiness.

Furthermore, there are subfamilies within hedonism that contain their own philosophies. The most common and important subfamily is Preference Hedonism. This is a family of philosophies that makes one key distinction from what was discussed above – rather than defining pleasure as the absence of pain, it can be defined as whatever the believer wants it to be. For example, if someone believed that creating interpersonal connections gave them pleasure, then they may help a friend pack when moving, even though it is not intrinsically minimizing pain. Rather than aiming to create an absence of pain, they are cultivating a friendship which they define to be pleasurable.

Additionally, there is another type of hedonism – Psychological Hedonism. This differs from the philosophy as they aim to do two entirely different things. Firstly, Psychological Hedonism is a descriptive theory, or one that attempts to describe what humans do. This differs from the philosophy, which is normative, or attempts to answer the question of what humans should do. This is an important distinction to make, because belief in one does not equate to belief in the other, and are thus independent.

Examples of Hedonism In Our Lives

Hedonism’s core assertion is that the foundation of life is revolves around maximizing one’s own pleasure. A key claim then, is that the only intrinsic value that an action or object has is the pleasure it creates for the user. Now I will present an example of hedonism in practice so that we can see that it may be far more complex than we tend to give it credit for, given our usage of the word in society today. Social media is a common source of addictive behavior in people today. A philosophical hedonist could argue that this addiction to social media is not bad as we commonly believe, but in fact morally justified since it is maximizing our pleasure. If it gives us pleasure then it is inherently good and moral because that is the only test for morality under hedonism. On the flip side, though, a hedonist could also claim that this addiction corrodes mental health in the long term and creates pain that manifests in the future. This would yield the conclusion that it is not morally justified since it increases pain rather than minimizing it. This demonstrates how despite the word’s association today, a hedonist is not necessarily obsessed with only current pleasure, and can have far more nuanced approaches as to what they should do.

Critiques of Hedonism

Despite the many applications of hedonism, there are plenty of critiques for it. An example would be the experience machine, a thought experiment proposed by Robert Nozick in 1974. This exercise presents us with the following question: if we could plug into a machine that could simulate any amount of pleasurable experiences for us, indistinguishable from reality, then would we agree to be plugged into the machine for the rest of our lives? The answer to this question for most people is, no, in fact they would not want to be plugged into the machine. This rejection of the machine would then prove that pleasure or happiness cannot be the main pursuit of humans, because if it was, there would be no reason for people not to choose to be plugged in. This immediately disqualifies pleasure as the most important indicator of morality, much less the only one.

Another strong critique of hedonism comes from the fact that hedonism argues that the value of things and actions comes from the pleasure that they create, and the negative things get their value or lack thereof from the pain that they create. Considering this, many people believe that honesty is the best policy regardless of the outcome of being honest. This is an example of Kant’s Categorical Imperatives, or laws of nature that we cannot morally break. Telling the truth would be one of those categorical imperatives, and many people would argue that they prefer the honest truth, even if it causes them pain. To them, the value of the truth is disconnected from the pleasure or pain that it causes. This then immediately rejects hedonism’s core tenet – that pleasure is the only valuable metric.

Conclusion

Ultimately, hedonism is one of the oldest philosophical schools of thought that forms the basis of many other more prevalent frameworks. Despite the ease in which we can point out examples of hedonism in our lives, there are often just as many examples that refute it. As a result, it is often the target of criticism from other philosophical perspectives due to its simplistic nature and reductionist view of human motivation. Paired with its conflict with Virtue Ethics and Deontology, two of the big three moral frameworks, we see why it is a commonly overlooked framework today.