A defense of optimism

Not Leibnitz's extravagance but the far more limited claim that "the good in this state of existence preponderates over the bad."

Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, 1839, chapter 6.

Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation, was published in 1819.

Schopenhauer made an extravagant case that human life, at least, was for each and every one of us a losing game, on hedonist terms.

Historically, most hedonists, though not all - Google Hegesias, "the death persuader" - , have agreed with Epicurus and Henry Sidgwick against Schopenhauer that life is generally and for most of us, for a good while, at least, choiceworthy.

It has been speculated Hegesias was influenced by Buddhism.

About Schopenhauer there is no need for speculation.

(And a very amusing attack on aristocracy in the same chapter.)

Benthamism

Is being dead better than being in pain?

Better for whom?

Interest and Eros

With Love, Nature gets us to sacrifice self-interest for the sake of reproduction.

But without Love, what would fill up our otherwise merely interested lives?

Only Strife, then, would make up the human adventure.

Strife and the relentless prose of work.

And what joys could balance the woes of existence?

Cultural Revolution

How many millions of his countrymen did Mao doom in this power struggle?

This struggle not to be killed?

Before he became, in the end, according to his physician, Tiberius on Capri, as reported by Suetonius.

Who did vastly, inexpressibly less harm to Rome than Mao did to China.

Reading Mrs. Dalloway.

Virginia Woolf, 1925.

An Epicurean Thanksgiving weekend

Thursday, just the wife and I.

A 12 pound Turkey roasted with a bag of very lightly seasoned stuffing inside it, the stuffing prepared beforehand with a little water and a quarter pound of butter melted in.

Gravy out of a jar.

24 ozs of canned yams prepared with nearly a quarter pound of butter and 2/3 cup of brown sugar and cinnamon to taste, sprinkled with crushed pecans.

Tasty.

Leftovers packed for the fridge, white and dark meat, and also stuffing, in separate baking dishes, moistened with stock made fresh from the neck and giblets (not the liver), covered with aluminum foil.

Leftover yams packed in a sealed plastic container.

Friday, again just we two.

Leftovers nuked.

Saturday, the big meal with the kids and grandchildren.

Meat and stuffing heated in the oven in those baking dishes.

Another can of yams prepared as above, to go with the leftovers, all of it heated in a big orange frying pan.

Hawaiian rolls and butter.

Instant mashed potatoes prepared with light mayonnaise, and nuked frozen niblets.

Shiraz and Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc.

Giant Eagle pumpkin and apple pies.

Redi-Whip and crushed pecans applied.

The chardonnay was great with the meal.

The shiraz was splendid with the pies, and after.

Making good memories to enjoy when things are not so good, as Epicurus recommends.

Or any time.

Dogmatic and silly psychological hedonism

Nietzsche's stance in at least the early sections of the first part of HATH.

For example, aphorism 103, Harmlessness of malice.

What eyewash.

King Log or King Stork, and some other thoughts

That these are so widely regarded as the only alternatives says much about human dispositions toward others.

In case you wondered which might be more common, benevolence or malevolence.

Three things are not the same.

Choice, which results like a vector from the strengths of present desires.

Happiness, which appears to be a function of affective, emotional, and conative states.

Well-being, which seems to be a function of objective factors like health, safety, and physical condition.

Regarding the latter two there are obvious negative interactions.

For example, illness being a source of anxiety or preventing realization of desire makes for unhappiness.

And chronic stress, dread, or fear can ruin one's health.

On the other hand, it is not unknown for people to sacrifice personal well-being to desires whose satisfaction is needful for their happiness.

Typically this involves sacrifice for beloved others, human or not.

It also seems there are desires whose satisfaction can only be had for a net loss in long run happiness, well-being, or both, that all the same are strong enough to prevail.

Think of addictions.

Think of those who make great sacrifices, even of their lives, for love.

Or for hate.

There is not generally, if ever, among our present desires a desire to maximize our own happiness or well-being, per se.

Much less that of any specific others or humanity in general.

Common twaddle to the contrary notwithstanding.

What passes among humans for prudence, for example, is only marked and persistent concern for future recognized elements of well-being, mostly in order to ward off future impediments to happiness.

Hedonism

It is one thing to say that, in the main, people welcome their own pleasure and are averse to their own pain, but quite another to say they live only for pleasure, as psychological hedonism, in effect, maintains.

Far from pursuing only pleasure they seem, in fact, to do so rather rarely and often with reluctance.

Likewise they seem often to remain in pain, not because efforts to end or escape or diminish it would lead somehow to a worse future net of pleasure minus pain but only because they are busy or for some other reason choose not to bother.

We are as inconstant, amateurish, slipshod, and careless about pursuing our own happiness conceived hedonistically as any other way.

Which is not to deny that our concern for or benevolence toward others is, compared to the number and neediness of others, so slight as to be practically non-existent.

Exactly as it also appears when compared with our self-love.

But I digress.

As I said at the outset, people do not live for pleasure or even much pursue it.

But that is not to say they live for something else.

In the main, people do not live for anything at all - regardless of what many might say.

Pleasure

Schopenhauer was right to insist that pain is real, but he was wrong that pleasure is not.

On the other hand, Epicurus was right that getting pleasure as commonly undertaken generally entails a lot of trouble, not unusually more than it is worth.

Epicurus was thinking of sex when he said that, but one might also consider the use of adult beverages.

Clearly, much in either case depends on moderation and prudence.

Probably, Schopenhauer too was thinking of sex when he said that pleasure is only relief.

The German also held that, pleasure being unreal and pain only too much so, the avoidance or minimization of pain is the only reasonable rule of life.

A rule he never followed, demanding as it does, since he agreed a longer is a more painful life, a quick and painless suicide.

Sometimes, however, he claims only that pleasure occurs only with or as the relief of an always greater pain.

This is still wrong - there are, for instance, pleasant surprises that are not episodes of unexpected relief of pain - but it is not silly.

And sometimes the pleasure that comes with relief is considerably greater than the distress relieved.

Of course I, too, am thinking of sex.

Not very popular since the mid-20th Century, before that it was generally admitted that pain is an evil and at least innocent pleasure a good, and the hedonist view that only pleasure is good in itself and only pain thus evil was a serious competitor, along with the view that happiness is the excess of pleasure over pain.

Like egoism, hedonism has historically been offered, generally by the same people, in an ethical and a psychological version.

And again like egoism, a purely empirical hedonism, neither ethical nor quite the other, is available concerning the way things generally seem to go.

We note that humans commonly seem to give little or no weight to the interests or concerns of others as against their own, except in varying degrees for some few persons most close to them.

Likewise, they seem in practice to attribute little significance to anything but their own pleasure - or at any rate what pleases them - , their own pain, and their own happiness, taking account of those of some few others as they would those of their pets. 

Perhaps very beloved - even excessively beloved - pets, but still pets.

Perhaps not surprisingly, egoism and hedonism are often advanced by the same people.

Henry Sidgwick, contemporary of Nietzsche, professed both hedonism - more Bentham's than Mill's - and egoism.

(And also act utilitarianism, but never mind that.)

Against the pessimists he insisted that, the ordinary background tenor of life being somewhat pleasant, most of the time for most of us life is happier than not.

And the prospects for many of us, at least, and much of the time, do not make immediate suicide the prudent choice.

There is some question whether he took sufficiently into account such common phenomena as chronic though mild arthritis and the myriad episodic and impermanent pains of life.