How Much is Enough?: Money and the Good Life by Robert Skidelsky & Edward Skidelsky

Author:Robert Skidelsky & Edward Skidelsky [Skidelsky, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781590515082
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2012-06-18T14:00:00+00:00

We have tried to show that a happy life, as most of us really understand that phrase, is not just a string of agreeable mental states but one that embodies certain basic human goods. Eudaimonia lurks under the surface of the modern, psychological understanding of happiness; it is not just a case of “smuggling in by the back door a particular philosopher’s idea of a worthwhile life,” as Samuel Brittan and others have claimed.36 But to those unconvinced by this suggestion (of whom there will be many) we now present the second horn of our dilemma: if happiness is just a state of mind, how can it at the same time be the supreme good, the ultimate object of all our striving? To labor for years on a work of art or on bringing up a child simply so as to enjoy the resultant mental buzz is to betray a very peculiar attitude to life. Yet it is precisely this attitude that underlies the current cult of happiness.

The problem can be stated a bit more precisely. Happiness economists believe that states of mind are good in proportion as they are happy. The happier, the better; the sadder, the worse. The objects or occasions of happiness and sadness are of no moral significance. “No good feeling is bad in itself,” writes Layard; “it can only be bad because of its consequences.”37 Other happiness economists are less forthright, but they must believe something similar if their project is to make moral sense. If happiness is not intrinsically good, what on earth are we doing trying to maximize it?*

Yet the plain fact is that happiness, conceived psychologically, is not good in itself but insofar as it is due, or at least not undue. To be happy that x is the case when x does not warrant happiness, or does not obtain at all, is not necessarily a good thing. Imagine someone smiling rapturously at the news of a disaster in which hundreds have died. “Why are you so happy?” we might ask. “What is there to be happy about?” Or think of a student who, thanks to a double dose of Prozac, is serenely indifferent to his impending failure—in a fool’s paradise, as we say. We might well think it better for this student not to be happy, for he would then at least be in touch with the reality of his situation. (An Aristotelian would make the same point by saying that the student is not really happy at all, but that is not an option open to happiness economists.) Not all unwarranted happiness is bad; we do not want to snuff out the child’s gratuitous joy in living, or the dying man’s illusions. But clearly, the value of a happy state of mind hinges at least in part on the worthiness or otherwise of its object. And if this is granted, then the project of maximizing happiness itself, independent of its objects, assumes a sinister aspect.

Just as there is unwarranted happiness, so there is warranted sadness.

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