The Idea of Justice by Amartya Sen

Author:Amartya Sen
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780141969480
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2010-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

THE REACH AND LIMITS OF HAPPINESS

It is hard to deny that happiness is extremely important and we have very good reason to try to advance people’s happiness, including our own. Richard Layard, in his forcefully argued and enjoyably spirited (I should say, happiness-creating) advocacy for the perspective of happiness, may have underestimated a little our ability to discuss awkward questions, but it is easy to see what he means when he claims: ‘If we are asked why happiness matters, we can give no further, external reason. It just obviously does matter.’5 Certainly, happiness is a momentous achievement, the importance of which is apparent enough.

Where problems arise is in the claim that: ‘Happiness is that ultimate goal because, unlike all other goals, it is self-evidently good.’ Layard points to the fact that ‘the American Declaration of Independence says, it is a ‘‘self-evident’’ objective’.6 (In fact, what the American Declaration of Independence did say was that it was ‘self-evident’ that everyone is ‘endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights’, and it is in the elaboration of those diverse rights that the right to happiness figured – among several other objectives – not entirely ‘unlike all other goals’). It is the claim that nothing else ultimately matters – liberty, equality, fraternity or whatever – that may not resonate so easily with the way people have thought and continue to think about what looks self-evidently good. This is so whether we examine what moved people in the French Revolution more than two centuries ago, or what people champion today, whether in political practice, or in philosophical analysis (the latter includes, for example, Robert Nozick’s overarching emphasis on the self-evident nature of the importance of liberty, and Ronald Dworkin’s singular focus on equality as the sovereign virtue).7 Something more would be needed in the form of reasoning to give happiness the unique position that Layard wants to offer to it, rather than pointing just to its being ‘self-evidently good’.

Despite Layard’s strongly stated belief that in defending the criterion of happiness, ‘we can give no further, external reason’, he actually does go on to give such a reason – indeed, one with some plausibility. In disputing the claim of capabilities, Layard presents the critical argument: ‘But unless we can justify our goals by how people feel, there is a real danger of paternalism’ (p. 113). The avoidance of paternalism is surely an external reason, different from the allegedly undiscussable self-evident goodness of happiness. Layard invokes the charge of paternalism – that of playing ‘God and deciding what is good for others’ – against any social observer who notes that the hopelessly deprived often adapt to their deprivation to make life more bearable, without making that deprivation go away.

Layard’s operative assumption lies in the tail of his remark, asking us to refrain from doing what we think is ‘good for others, even if they will never feel it to be so’ (Happiness, pp. 120–21). Is this fair to those whose views Layard wants to refute? What

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.