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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
The concepts of pleasure and good, both separately and in their relation to one another, have for centuries been a favourite and fruitful subject of philosophical discussion. The contrasting concepts of pain and evil, however, though by no means entirely neglected, have been, and still are, less popular among philosophers. The reason for this disparity is not altogether clear. The title of a recent autobiography, “Philosophers lead sheltered lives,” might support the explanation that philosophers are (no doubt very properly) reluctant to write on matters of which they have little or no first-hand knowledge. Pleasure and good, it may be said, form part of their own personal experience: but their academic seclusion has little place for either pain or evil. A more serious reason is the assumption, often made but rarely defended, that, since pain and pleasure, evil and good, are in some sense pairs of “opposites,” a full discussion of all four concepts is unnecessary. The nature of pain, it is thought, can easily be inferred from the nature of pleasure, and that of evil from that of good. But even if this were true, it ought not to be taken for granted; the belief (it is more often implicit than explicit) that these concepts are symmetrically disposed opposites ought to be held (if at all) only after an investigation into all of them. And in fact the belief is not true. It does not need profound insight or observation to see that we cannot (as some of the utilitarians once thought) construct a simple hedonic scale on which pleasure appears as a plus, and pain as a minus quantity. Contemporary hedonists have often paid more attention to the psychological complexities involved in this problem than did their classical predecessors. A. L. Hilliard, for example, distinguishes carefully between pain and unpleasantness. Pain he describes as a sensitivity, “correlated with the excitation of specific receptors in the nervous system”: unpleasantness is an affectivity (i.e. roughly, an emotion) to which physiological correlates, though they must be assumed to exist, have not yet been discovered.
1 The Forms of Value (New York: 1950), p. 19. The germ of this distinction exists in Hobbes; cp. his treatment of pain and grief as the two types of “displeasure” (Leviathan, Chap. 6, Blackwell edn., p. 34).Google Scholar
2 Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Chap. V, para. 1 (Blackwell edn., p. 155).
page 14 note 1 Ibid., Chap. X, para. 10, p. 218. Cp. also Chap. VIII, para. 13, p. 205: “Strictly speaking, nothing can be said to be good or bad, but either in itself; which is the case only with pain or pleasure: or on account of its effects; which is the case only with things that are the causes or preventatives of pain or pleasure.”
page 14 note 2 I use this term only as a convenient label for what is, strictly speaking, not one theory but a group of related theories. In this article I am not concerned with the historical attribution to their authors of the different varieties of hedonism.
page 14 note 3 An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (La Salle, Illinois: 1950), pp. 404–5.Google Scholar
page 15 note 1 For a fuller treatment see (for example) Perry, R. B., General Theory of Value (Cambridge, Mass.: 1950), pp. 276–93.Google Scholar
page 15 note 2 (a) and (b) together form the class of what are commonly and naturally described as bodily pains.
page 16 note 1 An ambiguity of the word “good” (in Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. XXIII, 1937, pp. 51–80).Google Scholar
page 16 note 2 In ordinary language (as opposed to the traditional language of philosophy) the synonymity is by no means exact. In the first place “evil” is a more powerful word than “bad” and suggests a much stronger condemnation or aversion. Secondly, “evil” by itself is often used as an equivalent for “morally bad.” This is in fact probably the commonest use of the word in everyday English; the corresponding absolute use of “bad” is less frequent.
page 16 note 3 Cp. Prichard, H. A., Moral Obligation (Oxford: 1949), p. 101: “By ‘an evil to us’ we mean something which excites pain, pain admitting of two forms, viz. dissatisfaction and something for which we have no word but ‘pain.’” In the following sentence Prichard adds that this definition should strictly read: “something which excites pain either directly or indirectly.”Google Scholar
page 17 note 1 “Pain is the only evil” might, I suppose, be taken to mean that pain (in a narrow sense) is the only source of dissatisfaction; i.e. that pain in senses (c) and (d) is ultimately reducible to pain in senses (a) and (b). But this is clearly false; and in any case is not what hedonists want to assert.
page 17 note 2 Kant discusses this whole question in a chapter of the Critique of Practical Reason entitled “The concept of an object of pure practical reason” (Trans. Abbott, pp. 148–163, trans. Beck, pp. 166–179).
page 18 note 1 Cp. what Kant says about “the paradox of method in a critical examination of practical reason.” “The paradox is that the concept of the good and evil is not defined prior to the moral law, to which, it would seem, the former would have to serve as foundation; rather the concept of the good and evil must be defined after and by means of the law” (Abbott, p. 154, Beck, p. 171).
page 18 note 2 Theoretically, I suppose, one might try to define evil in general in terms of moral evil in some such way as this: “X is evil” means “The creator, originator or author of X acted immorally in causing X.” The existence of evil which was not caused by human agency would then have to be explained in terms of the wickedness of a superhuman creator. It would follow, of course, that one who does not believe in the existence of a personal creator (whether morally good or morally bad) cannot attribute evil (in the sense of “evil” under discussion) to anything for which some man or men are not directly responsible.
page 18 note 3 In the rest of this article, the word “evil” (both as noun and as adjective) will be used only in sense II, unless explicitly qualified.
page 21 note 1 For example, grief is evil to the extent that it is (consists of) pain: war is evil to the extent that it causes pain.
page 22 note 1 Lectures on Anglican Difficulties, Lecture VIII.
page 22 note 2 Utilitarianism, Chap. II (Everyman's edn., p. 17).
page 24 note 1 A satisfactory analysis of these and allied expressions would require an article, if not a book, in itself. All I assert here is that they have some meaning and are not just empty words.
page 25 note 1 Cp. Laird, J., An Enquiry into Moral Notions (London: 1935), p. 215: “It is plain that very few things are made evil by being shunned, feared, hated, and sedulously avoided. On the contrary, totally unexpected evils are among the worst. When we subsequently take pains to avoid them, the reason is that we have already had experience of their evil.”Google Scholar
page 25 note 2 Cp. the optimistic pronouncement of R. Hildreth in the preface to his translation of Bentham's Traités de Législation, “Whatever may be thought of the Principle of Utility, when considered as the foundation of morals, no one nowadays [sc. 1864] will undertake to deny that it is the only safe rule of legislation” (Bentham's Theory of Legislation (London: 1891) p. iii).Google Scholar
page 26 note 1 Cp. this statement especially: “It is, I believe, the greatest mistake of utilitarianism (and other forms of hedonism) that it does not recognize that from the moral point of view suffering and happiness must not be treated as symmetrical; that is to say, the promotion of happiness is in any case much less urgent than the rendering of help to those who suffer, and the attempt to prevent suffering” (Popper, K. R., The Open Society and its Enemies (London: 1945, Vol. I, p. 205). For Popper, of course, this is an ethical principle, not an exclusively political one; but the main emphasis of his work lies in the field of politics.Google Scholar
