Food and Drug Administration’s incorporation last year of the hedonic calculus into its policy. Hile hedonic calculation is essential for every individual in his own life, a misuse of hedonic calculations to apply over too wide a group of people-people who for whatever reasons have too divergent a view of what makes them happy-is a prescription for disaster… The “greatest good for the greatest number” analysis…is extremely fraught with danger, because you are depriving the individual of his own right to decide how he wants to value his time, and saying that “one size fits all” regardless of the individual’s preferences.Ĭartoon by Larry Wright, įrench Epicurean philosopher Michel Onfray-who has argued that the hedonic utilitarian covenant seeks to maximize the pleasures of the other in order to secure one’s own-may not agree with Cassius, but he may have been sympathetic to the U.S. Cassius Amicus, who writes for the, argues that it’s difficult, and often counterproductive, to attempt to legislate hedonic calculations for society at large: The hedonic calculus does not necessarily make public policy issues easier to navigate. No pleasure is a bad thing in itself, but the things which produce certain pleasures entail disturbances many times greater than the pleasures themselves. Perhaps one of the most important sources on hedonic calculus is the eighth of Epicurus’s “Principal Doctrines”:
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To those of us in the Epicurean tradition, the answer to most ethical questions lies in the hedonic calculus, by which issues boil down to figuring out how to maximize pleasure and how to minimize pain for the long term.
No policy can help them achieve happiness if this is their choice.
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People are free to be miserable, to wallow in abnegation and self-loathing, and to deny themselves every pleasure available to them. Declaration of Independence, Epicurean thinker Thomas Jefferson added the right to the pursuit of happiness, and Brazil in recent years added the right to happiness to its constitution.īut how can the right to happiness be implemented? Jefferson didn’t elaborate on this aspect, but we may infer from his choice of words-the right to the pursuit of happiness-that perhaps such a right cannot be secured by the state, or that it is inconsistent with freedom. The declaration cites trends that show Europeans are discontented and notes the recent adoption by the United Nations of March 20th as International Happiness Day. Recently, the Friends of Epicurean Philosophy (of Greece) submitted to the European Union an initiative known as the Declaration of Pallini that would guarantee the right to happiness for all European citizens.
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Some South American countries have incorporated into their constitutions the indigenous sumak kawsay code (the “good life”), which guarantees not only the right to happiness, but also gives concrete details about what such a life entails in terms of access to education, clean air and water, time for human relationships and for creativity, and other practicalities. While most Western countries measure societal wellness strictly in terms of national production-a measurement that might work for Wall Street investors but doesn’t tell us much about the real quality of life of the average citizen-Burma and other Buddhist countries have for many years utilized a national happiness index. Many nations recognize that wanting to add to our pleasure and take away from our pain is a sign of compassion and humanity on the part of government and on the part of a society.
The most obvious example is the battle for marriage equality, but other struggles-like legalization of marijuana and the struggle for the right to die with dignity-should make us think about the best ways in which humanism can coherently influence policy. Religious attacks on civil rights and liberties oftentimes constitute, in essence, attacks on the right of individuals to pursue happiness. “We must, therefore, pursue the things that make for happiness, seeing that when happiness is present, we have everything but when it is absent, we do everything to possess it.”
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