Re: Forsaking the bestial pleasures!!

--- Lucy Pearson <l_r_pearson@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Yr response was very interesting indeed, although I still feel I've read
> something which gave the specific analogy of piggy pleasures; something
> along the line of 'it's better to be an unhappy philosopher than a happy
> pig'-.

Hmm. Well, I've done a little checking, and this pig thing is all over
the place. The first mention seems to originate with the Greeks. I love
how this works -- almost nobody was the first person to say anything.

First, the pigs: in Homer's *Odyssey*, Circe turns a number of Odysseus'
sailors into pigs. They are happily rooting around in her backyard until
Odysseus rescues them by appealing to the lusty nature of old Circe. They
have wild hot piggy sex and he makes her fall in love with him. When she
entreats him for love in return, he asks, "How can I love someone who
would do such a thing to my men?" thus securing the freedom of his men
through her desire to please him. (Oh, the feminist readings one could do
on this text, but I'll leave that one alone.)

The idea of swine and pleasure was therefore forever linked in the minds
of the Greeks, and so when Epicurus came up with his Greatest Happiness
Principle, that is, that which is good is that which brings pleasure,
without pain in any way. Awfully hedonistic, no? This idea was later
resurrected and expanded by Jeremy Bentham, who called it the principle of
utility, defined in his *An Introduction to Morals and Legislation* as
"every action should be judged right or wrong according to how far it
tends to promote or damage the happiness of the community."

Thomas Carlyle wanted none of this. He called it "pig philosophy" and
said that morals should not be based upon the swinish pleasures of the
idiot multitudes. Don't forget -- he's writing this in a world that has
just witnessed what the multitudes were willing to do in France. In fact,
Carlyle wrote a book on the French Revolution. He's also very aware of a
similar danger in England, what with all the problems inherent in the
Industrial Revolution, the sort of things that made Dickens write *Hard
Times*. These are the days when the greatest pleasures of the masses are
awfully dangerous. Better to look to a higher moral ground than the
earthly one, no? Here lies the greatest of pleasure.

It's interesting to me how well the English used the ideas of Christianity
and the delayed gratification of heaven to subdue the masses. If you
endure here, you will be a better man. Better not to want, buddy boy.
Better to want the hereafter. Now, get back to work in that chimney, you
hear? God will reward you later. (William Blake's *Songs of Innocence*
and *Songs of Experience* point out this little problem far better than
I.)

In his *Characteristics*, Carlyle examines the life of the mind and says
that a life wholly of the mind is no good, either. One must work.
However, a life wholly of the earth is only a partial life. There must be
some aspect of faith in a divinity for a man to be at his greatest. To
wit:

  But if man has, in all ages, had enough to encounter, there has,
  in most civilised ages, been an inward force vouchsafed him, whereby
  the pressure of things outward might be withstood. Obstruction abounded;

  but Faith also was not wanting. It is by Faith that man removes
  mountains: while he had Faith, his limbs might be wearied with toiling,
  his back galled with bearing; but the heart within him was peaceable and

  resolved. In the thickest gloom there burnt a lamp to guide him.

Typical Christian apologetic, I suppose. However, Carlyle's pal John
Stuart Mill rushed in to defend Bentham, stating in his *Utiliarianism*:

  The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility,
  or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right
  in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend
  to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure,
  and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of
  pleasure. To give a clear view of the moral standard set up by the
  theory, much more requires to be said; in particular, what things it
  includes in the ideas of pain and pleasure; and to what extent this is
  left an open question. But these supplementary explanations do not
  affect the theory of life on which this theory of morality is grounded-
  namely, that pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things
  desirable as ends; and that all desirable things (which are as numerous
  in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either for the
  pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of
  pleasure and the prevention of pain.

It seems to me that this is an argument we'll not soon leave behind, with
all sorts of folks still arguing the saintly path to the piggy one.

The whole Victorian argument seemed to work itself out in economic terms.
Writ large, I'm not so sure about this Pig philosophy. I mean, if a large
number of people are going to get pleasure from a tax cut, it would seem
like a good thing according to Epicurus and Bentham and Mill.
Unfortunately, to side with Carlyle, I don't know if that's going to go to
the greater good of the poor of a nation. The needs of the many should
not be followed if they're going to squash the needs of the few.

Morality played out in economics. I suppose it's what they, and we, are
always worried about most.

Of course, I'm still guessing that this is what you're thinking of. If
this isn't it, then really I don't know where else a person could find the
pigs.

> Oddly enough, I am just about to start reading "Walden". My boyfriend
> got very interested in him after setting some of his poems to music and
> the last time he visited me (we're conducting our relationship in two
> different countries) he left Walden behind him. I look forward finding
> out more.

I think I read *Walden* three or four times, each separated by about four
or five years, before I (almost/possibly/nearly) understood what he was
trying to say. And the last time, just this past year, was the first time
I began to agree with it. Mostly.

I'm not sure I'm ready to leave New York behind for a barefoot existence
in Massachussetts. So, I suppose I'll just happily philosophize about it
instead.

Best,
Cecilia.

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Received on Sat Jun 7 18:18:32 2003