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by Mortimer J.
Adler
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From the pen of Dr. Mortimer J. Adler
Index:
Dear Dr. Adler, The Declaration of Independence proclaims the pursuit of happiness as an inalienable human right. Being unhappy is supposed to be a sin, and we all try to be happy. But what is happiness? Is it the fulfillment of material wants, peace of soul, being well thought of, or something else? M. M. Dear M.M., The word "happiness" has a wide assortment of meanings in everyday speech. But the great thinkers use the term with some precision. In the great books of moral philosophy, happiness is the ultimate or supreme good -- the goal of all striving. It is in this sense of the word that the Declaration of Independence includes the pursuit of happiness among man's basic natural rights. The philosophical conception of happiness is radically different from the ordinary sense of the term. We hear people say, in a moment of satisfaction or joy, that they feel happy. Or they say that they are happy when they are having a good time. But, according to Aristotle and others, happiness is not something you can feel or experience at a particular moment. It is the quality of a whole life. The happy life is the good life. Unacquainted with the philosophical conception, most people would say that children can be happy. But Aristotle argues that that is quite impossible. They can be gay or joyous but not happy, because they have not lived a complete life. In fact, Aristotle, following the wisdom of Solon, goes so far as to say that it is necessary to wait until a man's life is finished before we can accurately judge whether or not it was, as a whole, a happy life. One way of understanding happiness as the summum bonum, or the complete good, is to recognize that the happy life, as Boethius says, is one that is enriched by the possession in aggregate of all good things. The surest sign that a man is happy is that he wants for nothing. All his basic desires are satisfied; all the strivings inherent in his human nature are fulfilled. Obviously this cannot be done in a day or a year, but only in the whole course of a life. At the end of his life, looking back at all the real goods which he gradually came to possess, happy is the individual who can say to himself, "I did a good job of living; I lived well." What are the various kinds of goods which all together contribute to happiness? They include external or bodily goods, such as wealth, health, and bodily pleasures; social goods, such as honor, love or friendship, civil peace, and justice; and intellectual goods, such as understanding, knowledge and wisdom. Each of these goods corresponds to a real human need. The possession of each contributes to the fulfillment or perfection of man's nature. Each, therefore, is desired not only for itself alone but as a means to happiness. Happiness, on the other hand, being the sum of all good things, is desired for itself alone, and is the only thing we so desire. "I want to be happy," goes the popular song, and it voices the universal desire of mankind; but if anyone were to say, "I want to be happy because…," he couldn't complete the sentence except by saying, "because I want to be happy. I have briefly summarized Aristotle's theory of happiness. There are, of course, other conceptions of happiness and the good life. Plato, for example, defines happiness as a harmony within the soul -- the spiritual well-being of the truly virtuous man. He pays no attention to material goods, or the goods of fortune, as Aristotle does. For him nothing external can make a virtuous man unhappy. At least one great thinker in our tradition denies that happiness should be our goal. Immanuel Kant regards the pursuit of happiness as selfish, setting personal satisfaction above the objective norm of duty and right. The moral law, says Kant, commands the performance of duty unconditionally, not just in order to attain happiness. Happiness should be the consequence, not the purpose, of moral action. We should strive not to be happy, but to deserve happiness.
Dear Dr. Adler, Is worldly success necessary for happiness? In our society we tend to estimate other people in terms of success, and we usually measure that by the amount of material wealth they have been able to accumulate. But I wonder if we aren't setting up a false idol. Is human happiness really measurable in terms of material success? E. D. Dear E. D., In my discussion of happiness in the preceding letter, I pointed out that it consists in a life made perfect by the possession of all good things -- all the things that human beings need in order to lead fully satisfactory lives. The material goods of wealth are included among these good things, as well as moral and intellectual goods. But, as every one knows, you can have too much of certain good things, and that is why wealth raises a particularly difficult moral problem. In its most general meaning, success consists in the attainment of any goal, purpose, or desire. If we achieve some measure of the happiness we strive for, we are successful. But, as you point out, many people today think of success almost exclusively in terms of accumulating worldly goods. When the notion of success is limited to this, success is not the same as happiness, for material goods cannot by them selves make a man happy. In fact, they may prevent him from being successful in the pursuit of happiness. The ancient as well as the modern world was well acquainted with the view that material wealth was the be-all and end-all for man. But philosophers such as Aristotle observe that this is a very narrow and distorted view of human life. He sets up a scale of goods in which wealth occupies the lowest rank, ministering to the needs of the body and subordinate to the goods of the mind and of character. Aristotle's evaluation of wealth roughly corresponds to the popular saying that money is not important unless you don't have any. You need certain material things in order to keep alive, and since you must keep alive in order to lead a good life, a certain amount of material goods is indispensable. But since living well goes way beyond merely keeping alive, material goods alone cannot make a life worth living. Aristotle makes an important distinction between two kinds of wealth-getting. The first kind is familiar to any housewife. It is the process of acquiring enough wealth to maintain a family in decent style, that is, with a reasonable supply of the means of subsistence and the comforts and conveniences of life. The other kind of wealth-getting seeks to accumulate money for money's sake. Some persons, Aristotle observes, think that their sole object in life is "to increase their money without limit... The origin of this disposition in men is that they are intent upon living only, and not upon living well." Such men, Aristotle maintains, may succeed in be coming as rich as Croesus, but like Croesus they may end their lives wondering why wise men like Solon do not look upon them as happy. Plato, like Aristotle, holds that the man who "shares with the miser the passion for wealth as wealth" will end up miserable. "To be good in a high degree and rich in a high degree at the same time," Plato thinks, is impossible. This is certainly the view of the Gospel verse which says that a rich man has as hard a time getting into the Kingdom of Heaven as a camel through a needle's eye. But such remarks must not be interpreted as meaning that material possessions are wrong in themselves. What is wrong is to make wealth the be-all and end-all of life -- to become possessed by one's possessions. The Bible inveighs not so much against wealth as against the covetousness and greed that it arouses in men. The prophets and the Psalms vividly depict the moral blindness which often accompanies the possession of great wealth. But it is St. Paul who makes the essential point quite clear. St. Paul does not say that money is the root of all evil. He says that it is the love of money which leads men to their moral destruction. Obsession with material success leads to spiritual failure.
Dear Dr. Adler, Duty is the highest virtue of the soldier. But there are also political, moral, and Religious duties, as we are constantly reminded. What do the philosophers have to say about the nature of duty and its role in human conduct? J. D. Dear J. D., There is perhaps no more fundamental issue in moral philosophy than that between the ethics of duty and the ethics of pleasure or happiness. According to the morality of duty, every act is to be judged for its obedience or disobedience to law, and the basic moral distinction is between right and wrong. But where pleasure or happiness is central, the basic distinction is between good and evil, and desire rather than law sets the standard of appraisal. Of course, any ethics of duty has to take some account of happiness, just as any ethics of happiness and pleasure has something to say about duty. But there are great differences in the role which is assigned to duty. At one extreme there is the position which totally excludes the concept of duty. This attitude more than any other characterizes the Epicureanism of Lucretius. In Aristotle's ethics of happiness, duty is not entirely excluded, but neither is it given any independent significance. It is merely an aspect of the virtue of justice, and amounts to no more than the just man's acknowledgment of the debt he owes to others: or his recognition that he is under some obligation to avoid injuring other men and to serve the common good. For Plato, too, the virtue of justice underlies duty or obligation. But for him justice, though only one of the virtues, is inseparable from the other three -- temperance, courage, and wisdom. It is almost indifferent, therefore, whether one attributes moral obligation to our sense of justice or to virtue in general. At the other extreme there is the position which identifies the sense of duty with the moral sense. In the Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, to act rightly is to do one's duty and to set aside all contrary desires. Kant's much more elaborate moral philosophy presents the same fundamental teaching. Nothing can be conceived as "good, without qualification," except a "good will." Happiness is not a good without qualification. It is "a rational being's consciousness of the pleasantness of life uninterruptedly accompanying his whole existence," and its basis is "the principle of self-love." An ethics based on happiness and one based on pleasure both commit the same mistake. Both "undermine morality and destroy its sublimity, since they put the motives to virtue and vice in the same class, and only teach us to make a better calculation." Both admit desire as a moral criterion of good and evil. Both measure the moral act by reference to the end it serves. For Kant, "an action done from duty derives its moral worth, not from the purpose which is to be attained by it, but from the maxim by which it is determined..." And so he goes on to say that "duty is the necessity of acting from respect for the law." From this he argues that duty, and consequently all moral action, must be done because it is right, because the law commands it, and for no other reason. "An action done from duty," Kant writes, "must wholly exclude the influence of inclination, and with it every object of the will, so that nothing remains which can determine the will except objectively the law, and subjectively pure respect for this practical law..." The law, which is the source of duty and of all moral action, is Kant's famous "categorical imperative." According to its decree, Kant declares, "I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law." By obeying the categorical imperative, we can do our duty and rest assured that our will is morally good. For Kant, therefore, duty is objective. It consists in following the commands of the categorical imperative, independently of subjective inclinations, desires, and needs. In doing our duty, we follow the voice of reason alone.
Dear Dr. Adler, We hear so much about the power of habit in human life. William James says it is "the flywheel of society," and Aristotle calls it "second nature." But what is this powerful influence called "habit"? And why is it so important in our lives? B. H. Dear B. H., Let me begin by explaining Aristotle's famous statement that habit is second nature. Habits are additions to the nature with which we are born. We are born with the power or ability to act in certain ways and also with certain innate patterns of action, which are called instinct or reflexes. Our innate tendencies to action can be developed and formed by what we actually do in the course of living. Such developments or formations are habits. For example, we have an innate capacity for a great many different kinds of action in which skill can be acquired by practice. We learn to talk grammatically; we learn to think logically; we learn to cook or drive a car; we learn to ice skate or play tennis. In each case the learning results in an acquired skill which is a habit. In each case the habit actually gives us an ability which was only potential in us at birth. That is why Aristotle calls habit second nature. Our original nature consists of capacities which can be developed or perfected by learning or experience. The development or perfection of those capacities supplements our original nature and thus constitutes a "second" -- an added or acquired -- nature. Our need to form habits arises from the fact that, unlike the lower animals, we are not born with instinctive patterns of behavior adequate for the conduct of life. What certain animals can do instinctively, we have to learn to do. Instincts are, in a sense, innate or natural habits, just as human habits are acquired or second nature. Our original nature -- our innate equipment -- is fixed for life, though it is subject to modifications of all sorts. The habits we form, which modify our original nature, also have a certain stability, though they, too, are subject to alteration. We can strengthen our habits, weaken them, or break them entirely and supplant them by others. Like our original nature, our second nature -- our repertoire of habits -- gives each of us the particular character he has at a given stage of life. If you know a man's habits, you can predict with some assurance what he is likely to do. So far we have been talking about the individual. Common habits of thought and action in a community, the "ways" of a people, are usually called customs. Custom keeps things on an even keel in a society. It enables the common life to go on harmoniously. It smoothes the way for interchange between individuals and holds them together. We never feel at home in a new place until we've become accustomed to its customs and made them our own. That is what William James means in calling habit "the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent." (A flywheel by its inertia keeps the engine going at a uniform speed and compensates for torque.) James applies this insight to social status as well as to personal habits. He says that our occupational mannerisms become so set by the time we are thirty that most of us become perfectly satisfied with our place in life and our function in the social machine. James also insists that our personal tastes, and our habits of speech, thought, and social behavior, are relatively fixed by the time we are twenty, so that we are kept in our social orbit by a law as strong as gravitation. However, it is important to remember that it is never impossible to shake off an old habit and form a new one. Once a habit has been acquired, it has almost compulsive power over us. But human habits are freely acquired by the choices we make, and can be got rid of and replaced by making other choices. No habit, no matter how strong, ever abolishes our freedom to change it. This is the lesson of Shaw's Pygmalion (or My Fair Lady), a delightful dramatization of the power to change habits. Liza Doolittle can and does learn to speak like a lady.
Dear Dr. Adler, The problem of the aged citizens of our society is of urgent concern. It has been commented on by social workers, political leaders, and other interested persons. Did societies in the past have this problem? What was the position of the aged in former times? Do the great writers of the past have anything illuminating to offer us on this vital matter? F. W. B. Dear F.W.B., The attitude toward the elderly has varied in different times and cultures. In general, the aged have been held in great respect and even veneration in primitive and ancient societies. Old age was regarded as the time of wisdom and spiritual power. Rule by the elders in both the political and the religious community was a common practice. The present problem of what to do about our senior citizens is unique. It arises from the technological and social changes of the past hundred years. Man's life span has been lengthened, but his services to the economy have been rendered unnecessary in the extra years he has gained. The aged have become supernumeraries in our society. We have substituted gerontology (the study of the aged and their problems) for gerontocracy (rule by the aged). The writers of the past have no advice to offer us on our special problem, for they never faced it, not even as a possibility. Montaigne, in the sixteenth century, notes that most men do not live beyond forty. The aged, as a numerous class, were no problem. However, we do find passages from the ancient poets which resemble our own sense of the plight of the aged. In one of Sophocles' plays, the chorus of elders calls old age dispraised, infirm, unsociable, unfriended. Another chorus, in a play by Aristophanes, laments: We who have lost our music, feeble nothings, dull, forlorn. Jonathan Swift, in Gullivers Travels, also paints a grim picture of old age. On the mythical island of Luggnagg, a few people in each generation live on to an everlasting old age. In addition to being opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, incapable of friendship and dead to all natural affection, they can remember only what they learned in their earlier years, and even that incorrectly. At the age of eighty, they are held legally dead, given a small pension, and regarded as incapable of employment or business transactions. Some philosophers of antiquity, such as Plato and Cicero, take a brighter view of old age. They see it as the period when intellectual activity and wisdom are at the highest and replace the waning physical powers and enjoyments. They also regard old age as the time when practical judgment is at it's best and men are most qualified to direct public affairs. The study of philosophy, according to Plato, should not begin until after fifty. Montaigne, on the other hand, maintains that we are fully formed by the time we are twenty, do our best work before we are thirty, and decay thereafter in everything, including our mind. He is skeptical of the traditional view that we increase in understanding and wisdom as we get older, and believes, rather, that we get duller. He proposes, however, various psychological stratagems for overcoming the stupefaction of old age, and holds out the hope that our sensual tastes and appreciation can be developed as we grow older. Many writers insist that the lapses in memory, acuteness, and interest which are supposed to afflict the aged can be avoided or overcome. Samuel Johnson contends vehemently that the loss of mental acuteness is the result of weak will and laziness, not of old age.
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The Adler Archive Index |
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