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Why Epicureans and Utilitarians are wrong: on the axiology of pain and pleasure
Moral philosophers are beginning to incorporate insights from evolutionary biology
Hedonism, philosophically speaking, is “the ethical theory that pleasure (in the sense of the satisfaction of desires) is the highest good and proper aim of human life.” (Apple Dictionary) Two major clusters of hedonistic theories appeared in the history of western philosophy: the Cyrenaics and Epicureans of Hellenistic times, and the Utilitarians of the 19th to the 21st centuries.
Cyrenaicism was a short-lived school established by Aristippus of Cyrene (modern Libya, north Africa) who was born around 435 BCE and was, interestingly, a student of Socrates — himself certainly not an hedonist. The Cyrenaics believed that the good life consists in experiencing physical pleasures in the present, largely rejecting both intellectual pleasures (because they are less intense) and pleasures that were from the past (enjoyed merely by remembering them) or the future (not here yet, and may never come). Not surprisingly, they also believed that pain is the only evil.
The Epicureans were a bit more sophisticated. They shifted the emphasis to moral and intellectual pleasures, like those we experience when we are in the company of friends, while retaining a lesser value for simple physical pleasures, like eating cheese and bread. Epicurus, who was born in 341 BCE and hence belonged to a later generation, was particularly preoccupied with the evils of pain, which gets in the way of the best life, one where we experience tranquillity of mind (ataraxia). Epicureanism still counts as a hedonistic school, though, in part because Epicurus identified lack of pain as the highest possible pleasure.
Nineteen century Utilitarianism was influenced by Greco-Roman hedonism and took two forms, which still reverberate in modern times. Jeremy Bentham thought that we should apply a universal hedonic calculus with the goal of maximizing most people’s pleasure and minimizing most people’s pain. Here is how Bentham himself described his famous principle of utility:
“Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out…
