Just one little bite ...
I was reading an article called “The Difference between Needs and Wants” which to me seemed useful, but not quite on target.
The author cites Aristotle as equating “needs” with “real goods,” i.e., “the things that every human requires for the pursuit of happiness,” and equating “wants” with “apparent goods,” which sometimes are actually bad for people. He goes on to describe how focusing on needs rather than wants will lead to a fuller, happier life.
What’s good and what’s bad?
Don’t get me wrong: I think the article gives basically good advice. But I think he over-simplifies the whole nature of human desire and the objects of our desires. And that can give the wrong idea that “wants” are somehow not “real goods” for us.
One of the fundamentals of Aristotle’s view of nature is that everything that exists is good because existence itself is good. So, if anything exists at all, then it is at least in that minimal way good.
More than that, the idea of “bad” or “evil” is not equal to the idea of “good.” What I mean is that goodness is a real, positive thing that exists. “Badness” or “evil” is not something that is real in itself; it is the absence or the distortion of some real thing – some good thing.
A good example is blindness. Blindness is not a thing in itself; it is only the distortion or destruction of sight. Sight is real, and good. Blindness is nothing except the absence of sight.
Virtue and human desire
Now, desire (and its partner, aversion) is the means by which we sense good and the lack of good. Your eyes see a square of a dark-brown color, and your nose smells a unique combination of sweet and bitter, and your fingers feel a hard smooth texture. In your mind, you combine all these senses into an understanding of the thing itself: a chocolate bar.
But it is desire which judges that chocolate bar to be good or bad. Or rather, it is desire that identifies what is good in the chocolate bar, and what is lacking.
So, you may find yourself with conflicting desires: you know it tastes good, but you also know it will give you a sugar high and subsequent crash, or that it is fattening. In other words, you desire both the flavor of chocolate and the benefits of health.
Thankfully, desire is not the end of the story: our ability to reason enables us to sort out the various good things that we desire, and to make a decision. The trick is to let ourselves be informed by, but not driven by, our desires.
Needs and wants, real and apparent goods
So, everything that we desire is a “real” good, insofar as it exists and has some kind of goodness that we recognize. And everything we desire is an “apparent” good, because it is a good that appears to us. There are goods that we don’t easily recognize (e.g., the value of doing your taxes,) and there are goods whose limitations we overlook (e.g., having another drink with that cute somebody); but desire is always seeking something good.
Prudence means that we let reason sort through all those good things we desire, and search them to figure out if we’re overlooking some limitation or even falsehood about the good we desire. Prudence also applies labels like “need” to goods that we literally cannot live without. Prudence weighs the goods we’d have to give up (time, money, a good night’s sleep) against the good thing we want.
Then, through the virtue of prudence, we can make decisions that we can honestly say are good.
You know, I have to tell you, I really enjoy this blog and the insight from everyone who participates. I find it to be refreshing and very informative. I wish there were more blogs like it. Anyway, I felt it was about time I posted, I
Just happened to be reading A.A Long, From Epicurus to Epictetus, which may offer an additional $0.02 on this topic.
Rather than predicating happiness on the ability to navigate between a dichotomy of real and apparent goods, we might with Epicurus consider an ethical theory that assumes we have reached a level of society sufficient to satisfy the external conditions of happiness: i.e., Epicurus, Aristotle, and probably a good many of the readers of this blog are reliably fed, clothed, sheltered, etc. Now, let’s grant with A.A. Long that Epicurus takes it as self-evident that pleasure and the avoidance of pain (desire and aversion) “are the natural motivations and objectives of all human (and animal) action” (Long, 187). Epicurean ethics is accordingly not about trying to orient people toward the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain: that is axiomatic, a given. Rather, it is a program that attempts to address how, despite having readily available in our external environment the basics of (animal?) happiness (food to satisfy hunger, clothes to keep warm, etc.), we can still be so very unhappy. From A.A. Long:
“Therefore, if [we] and other people continue to be unhappy, the impediment must be internal. On Epicurus’ diagnosis, the internal impediments can be reduced to two factors: irrational fears and vain and unlimited desires….The two internal impediments to happiness can be overcome by one thing – virtue, and in particular, the virtue of prudence, phronēsis. Prudence is the essential internal instrument of our acquiring the pleasures that are readily available and of enduring the pains that we cannot avoid. The happy life, as Epicurus conceives of it, needs to be a highly intelligent life – one in which we see the utility for our happiness of applying rational judgement to every source of pleasure or pain that we encounter…[this] is a mental disposition, a totally rational outlook on life, a cast of mind which has insight into the causes of every choice and avoidance, and which banishes the opinions that beset souls…with the greatest confusion” (Long, 187-188).
This perhaps contrasts with the view of Epicurus as an unbridled sensualist/hedonist. So why does Epicurus so often seem to have such a negative ethical rap? Again, from A.A. Long:
“Moral philosophers frequently contrasted with Epicurus (for instance, Plato and Aristotle) would completely endorse his claim that a truly pleasurable life must be a virtuous life, and that a virtuous life cannot fail to be endowed with pleasure. This is not to say, however, that Epicurus regards prudence and the other ethical virtues as intrinsically good and desirable, as Platonists, Peripatetics, and Stoics do” (Long, 188). Here’s the kicker: the value of virtue for Epicurus is strictly instrumental, with virtue made both subordinate and subservient to pleasure, and it is this that “has drawn heavy fire against Epicurus from antiquity to the present day” (Id.).
Robert, how about some more on “bad” or “evil” as the absence of good rather than a positive existent?
@1098 – Perhaps the difference between Epicurus and Aristotle is that, for Epicurus pleasure is itself the end or the definition of good, whereas for Aristotle pleasure is an accompaniment to the good which is something beyond pleasure. Of course, in my reading of Aristotle, he seems to limit “pleasure” to sensual pleasure. I don’t know Epicurus well enough to know how broadly he construes “pleasure”.
In any case, I’m certain that you know more than I do about these dudes, and can set me straight.
Also, I am indeed planning to post on “evil” as the absence/distortion of good when I get a chance. Or, rather, when I overcome the various evils that stand in my way.