"But what," asks our
adversary, "is there to hinder virtue and pleasure being combined
together, and a highest good being thus formed, so that honor and pleasure may
be the same thing?"
Because nothing except what is
honorable can form a part of honor, and the highest good would lose its purity
if it were to see within itself anything unlike its own better part.
Even the joy which arises from virtue,
although it is a good thing, yet is not a part of absolute good, any more than
cheerfulness or peace of mind, which are indeed good things, but which merely
follow the highest good, and do not contribute to its perfection, although they
are generated by the noblest causes. . . .
—Seneca
the Younger, On the happy life,
Chapter 15 (tr Stewart)
There
are few things more tempting, and few things we will dedicate ourselves to more
desperately and frantically, than trying to have it both ways. Being told that we
can’t have our cake and eat it too seems to make us uncomfortable and squirmy.
I have heard dozens of ridiculous semantic contortions that vainly try to
explain away the logical principle of non-contradiction, and thereby insist that
my cake can be both on my plate and in my belly at the same time.
I
suspect that sometimes we know quite well that we cannot have or be two
conflicting things, but we may desire the reality of one of them and merely the
appearance of the other. I know that this is what I have meant when I think I
can give equal value to both virtue and pleasure. Give me the gratification,
but make it look like I’m being noble in getting it.
I cannot
treat virtue and pleasure as being equally good, or as always being in agreement
with one another, or as one and the same thing. Virtue, by its very definition
as the excellence of our actions, is always unconditionally good, while
pleasure is only conditionally good, dependent upon the value of the action
from which it proceeds. I have never
gone wrong in my life by doing the right thing, but I have often gone wrong in
my life by craving the wrong thing. That which is superior cannot be measured
by what is inferior.
Living
well may indeed give me a feeling of approval, and I have often found that the
pleasure that can follows from a virtue is far more satisfying than the
pleasure that can follow from a vice. This seems quite fitting, because the
former is about our human fulfillment, while the latter is about our emptiness
through dependence.
Yet as
soon as I treat the pleasure as an end itself, and not merely as an associated
consequence, I have already cast aside that very act of moral fulfillment. I
cannot be doing the right thing for all the wrong reasons, or aim for what is
good in itself when all I really seek is what feels good to me.
There
are many other things in life that can be good, but as a consequence and not as
the cause. The relative always flows out from the absolute. I am not a good man
because I am cheerful, friendly, or mild-mannered, but I will certainly be
cheerful, friendly, and mild-mannered if I am a good man. I don’t become kind
if someone respects me, but I can be respected if I am kind. Being wealthy
won’t make me fair, but my fairness could make me wealthy.
In the
relationship of virtue and pleasure, one will have to lead, and the other will
have to follow. I often think of the passage from Matthew 6:24:
No
one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other,
or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God
and mammon.
Written in 1/2012
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