It is only in moments when we long to understand
and justify our ideals, or when some unusually baffling problem arises,
that we need to calculate and weigh relative advantage and
disadvantage. And that is what, in such situations, most people do.
Are some pleasures worthier than others?
Undiscriminating critics have often condemned the eudsemonistic
criterion on the ground that any sort of pleasure is rated equally
high on its scale so long as it is pleasure. "Pushpin as good as poetry!"
seems to some the height of sarcasm. Socrates says in the Philebus,
"Do we not say that the intemperate has pleasure, and that the temperate
has pleasure in his very temperance, and that the fool is pleased when
he is full of foolish fancies and hopes, and that the wise man has
pleasure in his wisdom? And may not he be justly deemed a fool who
says that these pairs of pleasures are respectively alike?"
Why, however, do we rate the pleasures of temperance and wisdom above
those of intemperance and folly? Simply because of their respective
EFFECTS. INTRINSICALLY they may be equally desirable, or the latter
may even be keener pleasures? that depends upon the individual
circumstances; but there is no question about their relative EXTRINSIC
value. There is always "the devil to pay" for intemperance and folly;
while temperance and wisdom lead to health, love, honor, achievement,
and many another good. As to push- pin-or let us say baseball-VERSUS
poetry, it is only prejudice that makes us say we rate the latter
higher.
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