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Upton on Evil Pleasures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Geoffrey Scarre
Geoffrey Scarre
Affiliation:
University of Durham, [email protected]
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Abstract

In a recent contribution to Utilitas Hugh Upton has criticized my defence of utilitarianism against the charge that it is committed to regarding the pleasures taken by sadists in other people's pain as increasing the amount of good in the world and so at least partially offsetting the suffering of the victims. In the present paper I clarify and defend my view that sadists implicitly insult their own human qualities, thus rendering it impossible to respect themselves as human beings, when they enjoy the suffering of others with essentially similar qualities. Distinguishing between happiness and pleasure, I explain why it is not, as Upton thinks, a mere stipulation to deny that the sadist's self-demeaning pleasures are capable of augmenting his happiness.

Type
Discussion
Information
Utilitas , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , March 2001 , pp. 106 - 111
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2001

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References

1 Upton, Hugh, ‘Scarre on Evil Pleasures’, Utilitas, xii (2000), 97CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Subsequent page references to this article are given in parentheses in the text.

2 Scarre, Geoffrey, Utilitarianism, London, 1996Google Scholar; ‘Utilitarianism and Self-Respect’, Utilitas, iv (1992)Google Scholar.

3 Baldwin, James, The Fire Next Time, Harmondsworth, 1964, p. 73Google Scholar.

4 Are non-human animals sufficiently similar beings for this argument to show why utilitarians should condemn sadism directed against them? I would argue that they are, given that they share with us a capacity to suffer. If enjoyment of their pain can be a good, why not the enjoyment of ours? Moreover, since animals are usually helpless to resist the harms we do them, hurting them for sport is the act of that lowest of moral characters, the bully.

5 Or so most philosophers nowadays think. See, for instance, Parfit, Derek, Reasons and Persons, Oxford, 1984, p. 493Google Scholar, and, for a more recent discussion, Sobel, David, ‘Pleasure as a Mental State’, Utilitas, xi (1999)Google Scholar.

6 I sidestep the contentious question of whether Mill is properly classed as a hedonist of a more sophisticated sort. For discussion and further references, see my ‘Happiness for the Millian’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, vii (1999)Google Scholar.

7 Mill, John Stuart, A System of Logic, ed. Robson, J. M., 2 vols., Toronto, 1973Google Scholar, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, viii.952Google Scholar.

8 I am grateful to Roger Crisp and Richard Taylor for very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay.