Sunny Days in Heaven
Spiritual/Political/Philosophical Blog on the Nature of Truth and Falsehood and Heaven


Friday, June 14, 2002  

A Hedonist

I was going to attack Steven den Beste's little essay on his hedonism (scroll down), but Minute Particulars did it.

Yet, Marc, didn't attack it in the manner I intended to although he did mention: "But I’ve never understood the teleological claims of anyone who asserts that upon death the self ceases to be. By teleological claims I mean using terms like happiness, goal, must be accomplished, and so on. "

Den Beste uses such words as happiness and goal which are entirely meaningless in his conception of life and the universe. Happiness must simply equate with animal pleasure and goal must equate with the merely instinctual.

But Steven is rather in the position of the American pacifist who decries war and violence yet enjoys a right to life and freedom only because other people don't agree with him. He lives by the tolerance of others.

A hedonist (one whose primary aim is pleasure) only lives because most other people are not hedonists (for the most part), but are dedicated to more selfless and altruistic principles of life - particularly belief in immortality which helps to hold their baser instincts in check.

Den Beste tries to make his hedonism seem more noble: "Once I arrived at atheism, it became clear to me that the best overall goal for life was not length, but happiness. My goal in life is to try to make the people around me happy."

He wants to make others, not himself, more happy. How noble. But the pleasure, is all his, so to speak: what pleases me is to please others. Pure selfishness in essence. Just another way to get himself an endorphin rush. Not noble, but merely biological - good deeds as addictive drug. He's still just a meat machine doomed to die and all he has done fade to nothing for no actual good since all those I helped will die and all their deeds fade away to nothing much. A tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

posted by Mark Butterworth | 3:38 PM |

links
archives