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- There are two fundamental questions to be asked about any path to happiness.
- How much and what type of instinctual satisfaction does it provide?
- We will not be truly happy without some positive instinctual satisfaction.
- Although we will avoid misery if we avoid pain.
- How dependent upon external world does it make us?
- The more dependent we are, the less likely we are to be happy unless we are particularly
lucky.
- Alternatives with regard to our relationship to outside world
- Seeking satisfaction of instincts.
- Freud here is presumably thinking of the most direct satisfaction of instincts for eros
and aggression.
- Eros would presumably include our bodily desires for sex, food, drugs.
- This will be considered fully below under heading of extent of instinctual satisfaction.
- The disadvantage of this path is clearly dependence on the world.
- In order to satisfy our sexual and aggressive desires we may need money and other
people.
- Perhaps the need for other people is not very important for someone who seeks bodily
satisfaction, since sex with prostitutes would presumably satisfy such a person.
- Moreover, a life lived in pursuit of the satisfaction of our bodily desires won’t
help us attain these resources.
- Voluntary isolation from world and human relationship.
- Advantages
- We are particular upset by the unnecessary evil that other human beings do to us.
- Disadvantages
- This path does nothing to reduce evils from nature and our own bodies.
- This path gives us little or no positive happiness. It does not satisfy our instincts
- Lose pleasures that come from human relationship.
- With help of others and science, attack nature and subject her to human will
- Advantages
- This path can reduce some sources of unhappiness: some illness and early death
- Disadvantages
- Science and technology only gives us "cheap thrills:"
- It does not satisfy our instincts
- It does not deal with some of the fundamental barriers to our happiness, such as
- What other human beings do to us
- What our bodies do to us: death and illness ultimately cannot be eliminated.
- What the external world does to us: nature cannot be totally controlled.
- It creates unhappiness:
- Through increasing our power to destroy things
- Through making changes in our political and social life that do not necessarily bring
happiness: e.g. travel and the splitting of families
- How much and what type of instinctual satisfaction do we seek.
- Seeking satisfaction of instincts
- Freud here is presumably thinking of the most direct satisfaction of instincts for eros
and aggression.
- Eros would presumably include our bodily desires for sex, food, drugs.
- Advantages:
- This is the truest aim of human nature, thus the satisfaction of this desire gives the
greatest pleasure.
- Disadvantages
- This is an extremely risky way of life, it leads us to act in ways that can cause us
great losses
- Erotic
- Diseases from overdosing on food, unsafe sex
- Pregnancy
- Aggression
- Getting into fights with others.
- Is it impossible to moderate our bodily desires?
- Do we need higher doses to get pleasure?
- Like heroin addiction, in order to get physical pleasure
- Or in order to get pleasure of violating norms.
- If this is why we pursue instinctual satisfaction, then our aims are presumably not just
for the satisfaction of bodily desires.
- This way of life is extremely dependent upon fate and fortune (see above).
- This way of life is boring after a time. This criticism is not offered by Freud although
it seems quite plausible to me.
- Why might the satisfaction of bodily desires become boring?
- If we understand positive happiness, as Freud does, as the satisfaction of a need or the
relief of pain, then we will have less potential for pleasure once that need is satisfied.
- If we understand positive happiness as possible even when our needs are satisfied, that
is, as giving us pure pleasure, then continued bodily pleasures depends upon our
experiences being new, different, stimulating and challenging.
- But there is some limit to how new, different, stimulating and challenging, bodily
pleasures can be when we indulge in them all the time.
- We have other aims in life, other ways in which, we like to seek novelty and be seek
stimulated, and challenged.
- The possibility of being bored suggests that the later theory of Freud is more plausible
than the earlier theory.
- Why, on the earlier theory, would we become bored with sex?
- Only for the first, not for the second reason.
- We might, however, become bored with sex on the later theory if other ways to satisfy
our erotic (and aggressive) desires have become important to us.
- We seek higher ends.
- A life lived in pursuit of bodily ends seems beneath us
- We take pride in other capacities that do not share with animals. Seems to diminish our
pride to
- Pride sometimes sought in satisfying bodily desires to a great extent
- But this is most likely in people who are limited in the other ways in which they seek
pride.
- Intoxication
- Advantages
- Causes pleasurable sensation
- We become incapable of receiving unpleasurable sensations
- Disadvantages
- Leads to long term injuries.
- Wastes energies that could be used to satisfy our desires in other ways.
- Kill Instincts (the Eastern path) / voluntary isolation from human relationships
- Advantages
- Reduces suffering
- Disadvantages
- Eliminates the possibility of positive happiness
- Control and tame our instincts
- Advantages
- Reduce suffering
- Reduce risks found in seeking satisfaction of wild instincts
- Disadvantages
- Reduces the possibility of positive happiness, since pleasure from the satisfaction of
tamed instincts is less than that from satisfying wild instincts
- Alternative ways to control and tame our instincts: substitute satisfactions don’t
merely control but find other means of satisfying instincts
- Sublimation: transforming direction of our instincts
- Instead of direct satisfaction of instincts, we seek satisfaction in good work, such as
that of artists and scientists
- Advantages
- Suffering reduced, since it is easier to satisfy desires of this sort
- Reduces risks found in satisfaction of wild instincts
- Disadvantages
- This path is not open to everyone, but only those capable of stimulating and challenging
work
- Reduces the possibility of positive pleasure, since these sublimated pleasures "do
not convulse our being."
- This presupposes Freud’s theory of positive happiness.
- Illusions: enjoyment of art, aesthetic attitude
- Advantages
- Can gain satisfactions entirely independently of the state of the world
- Disadvantages
- Pleasures of art are transient. The pressures of our instincts and the demands they make
on the world soon recur.
- Religion
- Sources of religion
- Our earliest experiences lead us to think and feel in particular ways, ways that shape
what we think and do later in life.
- The feeling of infantile helplessness, which leads us to look for comfort,
support, and protection from our parents and, in Freud’s time especially from
fathers. When we are adults, we still sometimes feel helpless in the face of fate and
chance. And then we look for protection again, although, in this case from God. But, Freud
claims, God is our invention. And we invent God precisely to give us the sense of security
our parents gave us when we were children and which is not available to us in the real
world anymore.
- The oceanic feeling is another such experience. It is a kind of revival of the
earliest experience of infants, of not being separated from the world around them. When
some of us have this experience again, we give it a religious interpretation. We think of
it as an intimation of God in the universe.
- Freud argues that this oceanic experience is not the main source of religious belief.
- Advantages
- Reconciles us to fate.
- Succeeds in sparing people an individual neurosis
- Disadvantages
- Makes it difficult for people to change their path to happiness as circumstances change
(and they themselves change)
- Prescribes one path for everyone, even though people have different desires
- Especially sexual desires.
- Depresses the value of this life, thus leading away from satisfying our desires in this
life.
- Is infantile and illusory satisfaction: doesn’t so much create satisfaction in this
world as create hope for satisfaction in the next world.
- Religions leads to belief in an inscrutable God whose actions in this world are
difficult to understand but who promises justice for suffering in the next world.
- All that is left believer for consolation and source of pleasure is unconditional
submission
- Thus does not satisfy the instincts.
- But, contra Freud, this is true only on the earlier theory of the instincts.
- On the later theory, religion could be a powerful way of satisfying erotic desires.
- Love
- Advantages
- Seek positive happiness:
- Love is tied to sexual love which satisfies our instincts to a very high degree.
- Lovers support one another in battle against other ills.
- Disadvantages
- Does not make us independent of fate at all:
- We are never so defenseless as when we love.
- We are never so helplessly unhappy as when we have lost our loved object or its love.
- Freud’s conclusions about happiness
- The programme of being happy cannot be fulfilled.
- Positive happiness is limited.
- We cannot give up our efforts to bring it nearer to fulfillment
- W must choose different paths.
- "Every man must find out for himself in what particular fashion he can be
saved" (p. 30)
- Our choice depends upon
- How much real satisfaction we can expect to get from the external world.
- How far we can make ourselves independent of it.
- How much strength we feel we have altering the world to suit our wishes.
- We should try to be flexible and adjust our path to happiness as we change and our
circumstances change.
- We should not "put all our eggs in one basket."
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