GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

46 ETHICS AND POLITICS: THE GREEKS
discipline and education before we can solve for ourselves
the problem of insight. 'Many of us, in the view both of
Aristotle and Plato, do in fact remain incapable to the
end of solving for ourselves the problem of insight. Hence
the importance for these philosophers of right education,
right laws and right religion which will form for us the
habit of right living, thus relieving us of the burden of
solving for ourselves a problem which is beyond the reach
of our own unaided intellects.
Preliminary Statement of Hedonism. Now the peculiarity
of Socrates's position is that it recognizes only one
of the two major problems of ethics, the one which I have
called the problem of insight. Socrates held that, such is
the compelling power of what he called good or "the
Good" over the human soul, that a man has only to
recognize what is good to pursue it. The moral problem,
then, is simply a problem of recognition.
The full implications of this view may be most clearly
seen, if we take a brief preliminary glance at a somewhat
similar position which has been maintained in regard to
pleasure. Let us suppose that, for the sake of argument,
we substitute for Socrates's word "good" the word
" pleasure." A view very commonly held is that, whatever
a man does, he does it solely in order to obtain pleasure
for himself. This view is known as Hedonism, from the
Greek word hidone which means pleasure. Why, for example,
are people unselfish? Because, the supporter of Hedonism
asserts, they derive more pleasure from pleasing others
than from directly pleasing themselves. Therefore, in
sacrificing themselves for the sake of other people they are
only, after all, doing what they like doing best; or, more
cynically, by means ofself-sacrifice they obtain the pleasures
of the complacent prig, the agreeable conviction of their
own righteousness, or the feeling of superiority which men
derive from their knowledge that other people are under
an obligation to them; or, alternatively, they are masochiits
and enjoy the xnasochist's pleasure of self-mortification.