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On Desire
Let’s talk for a moment about life, the universe and everything. I don’t know any question about life, the universe, and everything to which the answer is definitely Forty-Two (see Douglas Adams), but I can tell you what some of the best questions are: Why aren’t we as happy as we want to be? How can we become happy?
So what about the answers? Well, these questions motivated millenia of philosophy, and a good bit of religion, too. A lot of interesting answers have been given, at least as far back as Buddha and as recently as C. S. Lewis. A lot of the big philosophers (Buddhists, Stoics, Epicureans, Platonists, Christians medievals, Descartes, Bacon, Lewis) have agreed on the problem: Our desires don’t fit the world. We desire more than this world has to offer. We desire what we can’t have — or what we can have but can’t keep — and we end up losing what we love, or fearing its loss.
There are two general strategies available to fix that problem: 1) We change what we want, so that we want what we can have; or 2) We change the world, so that we can have what we want.
It’s pretty obvious that both approaches are correct in their own spheres. (And there may be a third option to accompany the first two. See this comment and this comment, below.) The first strategy has been used successfully by everyone who has stopped being a baby who wants his food, wants it NOW, and is miserable because he doesn’t get exactly what he wants.
Medical science is a useful component of the second strategy, and I thank both God and Descartes (who advocated medical science as a component of the second strategy) that we now have the ability to prevent polio.
But what are the proper spheres of these two strategies? Which should be more emphasized? How should we modify the world or modify our desires properly? These are all issues that make big differences between all these thinkers and traditions. Give a thorough answer to all this, and you have a nice little philosophy of desire, or theology of desire, going.
Philosophy tells Boethius how to be happy.
Generalizing somewhat, the earlier philosophers take the first (i.e., change our desires to better match the world), and the early modern Western philosophers take the second approach (i.e., change the world to better match our desires).
There are actually two ways of carrying out the first strategy: either we can cut desire down to the size of whatever is attainable in this world, or we can redirect our desires to something beyond this world. Ancient Buddhists, Stoics, and Epicureans have employed the former of these. The latter is the approach of Sufi mystics, the Bhagavad Gita, the Platonists, the Christian medievals, and C. S. Lewis.
Now it’s time to recommend some books! On the subject of the Platonist, Stoic, and Epicurean philosophers of desire I recommend Martha Nussbaum’s The Therapy of Desire and Pierre Hadot’s What Is Ancient Philosophy?
And on St. Augustine’s philosophy/theology of desire compared and contrasted with Platonism, I recommend — if I may — my own book on Augustine’s Cassiciacum Dialogues. In it, I explain how Augustine mingles the Platonist with the Christian approaches. In one sentence: I explain how Augustine’s theology of desire is a Christian one which takes some insights from the Platonic philosophers. (A bit more detail on where this thesis fits in the context of Augustine scholarship will come up in the next post, and a post after that will summarize the major points of the Cassiciacum dialogues.)
And on the consequences of the modern scientific approach (if you let the worst kind of modern philosophers tell you how to think about right and wrong), I recommend The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis.
And to learn how science fiction film illustrates Lewis, I recommend the upcoming Science Fiction and the Abolition of Man: Finding C. S. Lewis in Sci-Fi Film and Television. The book was my idea, and I’m editing it. More on that another time.
Published in General
OK. Well that clears things up. You use the phrase “a vocation” to describe the total significance of life, whereas I used “a vocation” to describe a particular manifestation of that significance – for example, the vocation of celibacy contrasted with the vocation of marriage, the vocation of nursing contrasted with the vocation of music.
Being Protestant myself, I find nothing odd about including mundane occupations in the list of vocations. There is one universal call, “the vocation”, but “a vocation” is an apparent manifestation of that call in an individual’s life.
As Paul wrote about Christ’s body having many members, some of us are called to be “eyes”, others “hands”, others “feet”. By this logic, some of us are called to be “nose hairs”. And I could see how a nose-hair calling could innocently be confused with an eyelash calling.
Not speaking Greek, I have to rely on others for the translations, but so far as I know, they do. When Aschylus says “call no man happy until he is dead” he is not meaning happy the way we mean it, which is why some modern translators (ie, the ones I took Greek literature from) say “call no man good” or “call no man fortunate.” There’s the even more convoluted “call no man fortunate who has not ended his life in good well-being.” But the idiom has stuck in English so much that even official translations stick to it.
Not an expert, but I’ll jump in to mention some words that are at least typical:
Greek: arete: virtue/excellence.
Greek: eudaimonia: happiness.
Latin: beatus: happy/blessed.
Latin: virtus: virtue/manliness.
In ancient philosophy (on which see Hadot) virtue and happiness are typically considered identical, with the main puzzle being what to make of the virtuous person in extremely bad circumstances, e.g. the virtuous man being tortured by a tyrant.
It’s a logical possibility to be sure, just not (by itself) a useful way to get happiness.
There is an Option 3 that came up around comment 44; I don’t think much of it by itself, but in conjunction with some Options 1 and 2 I think it might be very helpful.
Thanks, Sabrdance!
Indeed.
Indeed. The most perpetual lesson from ancient and medieval philosophy–endlessly repeated–is that the mere acquisition of money, power, fame, and physical pleasures cannot make us happy.
Could you reflect more on the manliness / virtue combo, I just finished teaching Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and if you can provide some more detail it might help make sense of something I’ve been thinking about with the play. This post and Majestyk, and the play have been running through my head and I want my thoughts to be good and clear before I write.
Forgive me for being selfish with your knowledge.
So, did they ever get around to successfully splitting that baby?
My impression is that they didn’t – that no one ever has in a deeply satisfying way. Because it is so hard to know for sure what one has genuinely “brought upon himself” and to determine which strategies for “not bringing it upon oneself” truly work as advertised.
Even something as “basic” as physical pain faces this problem – and the attitude adjustments necessary to successfully modify pain perception are not necessarily what conventional bromides (either conservative or liberal) say they are.
I haven’t gone through all the comments, so forgive me if I’m treading old ground, but how can one even ask those questions without first defining “happiness”?
Honestly, no. I don’t think I know anything about that. I think I always had this idea that it just was a Roman cultural thing. Maybe someone else can answer that question.
A question best answered by someone who wrote a dissertation on it–so not me.
But they probably didn’t.
Yeah, Hamlet observes that there never was a philosopher who could cope with toothache, right?
The original Augustine sought divine help for his toothache (see Confessions, probably in Book IX), got it, was happier, and eventually explained (see City of God) that true happiness has to wait for the Messiah to get back and fix everything.
I think that’s new. One answer I can imagine some of those clever philosophers giving is “Duh. Happiness. You know what it is. Don’t ask silly questions.”
Another answer is “Happiness is a state of having all our desires satisfied.”
Mill said happiness is presence of pleasure and absence of pain.
Aristotle looks at the question carefully, and eventually says “happiness is an activity of soul in accordance with perfect virtue,” and goes on to describe virtue in great detail.
I hope at least one of those will work–preferably one of the latter three.
Interesting. It seems to me that #2 and #3 are arguably undesirable and #4 is arguably impossible, meaning that all three definitions arguably render the questions from the OP moot.
And that, among other reasons, is why I am a fatalist. But I’m a Calvinist fatalist, so I have to strive against my fate to demonstrate that I’m one of the elect, even if my life is Hell. And that my life isn’t Hell is further evidence that I’m in the elect. But if I just dropped my striving and declared that I was fated to be the elect, I may lose my assurance that I am of the elect, and then be no longer happy because of my comfort…
Truly, it is a dizzying theology. One of my Catholic friends jokes that while Jews and Catholics have long known of the applications of guilt, it took Calvin to finally weaponize it.
You’ve lost me. Why are #s 2 and 3 “arguably undesirable”?
And why is #4 impossible?
Ok, I think I know what you mean about “arguably undesirable.” You mean that a total absence of pain or of unsatisfied desires is not desirable.
Why we would want pain or dissatisfaction is a mystery to me, unless we’re talking about the sort of thing they occasionally say on Star Trek. In that case, see comment 44.
In any case, Mill’s definition probably doesn’t have to be absolute. I don’t think he meant it that way; so we could give his definition of happiness more precisely as something like “the state of having a high ratio of pleasures to pains.” Similarly, # 2 could be rephrased as “Having a high ratio of satisfied to unsatisfied desires.” That might be enough to accommodate your concerns, but since I don’t know what they are it’s only a speculation.
I’m almost certain it’s enough to accommodate the concerns of Star Trek characters, although comment # 44 suggests that they can be accommodated in another way, since they can be taken as pointing to strategies for reaching more happiness later.
I still don’t know why you think # 4 is impossible.
It very belatedly occurred to me that it was Spock, not Kirk, who most explicitly adopted this approach. In Amok Time, Spock gave his betrothed to his rival, and said something like, “After a time, you may find that ‘having’ is not so pleasing a thing as ‘wanting.’ It is not logical, but it is often true.”
You’ll probably never see this comment, but I just thought I’d leave it.
Awesome! I saw it! Thanks.
Ok, I’m a little fuzzy here. What was the episode with the planet that made everyone too happy but wasn’t really paradise? That was the one I was thinking of.
So Spock said it anyway, whether Kirk ever did or not. Cool.
One other thought. Tonight is the start of the NBA season for the two teams I root for – the Lakers and the Clippers. I recognize that there is a very real probability for me to be disappointed by the performance of both teams this season. The Lakers probably won’t make the playoffs, and the Clippers probably won’t win the championship.
It would be easy enough for me to discard my desire that my teams succeed. After all, it’s just a silly game. I could quit paying attention. I’m sure I could. But I won’t. My enthusiasm for these teams, and my desire to see them win, adds value to my life, even if my desire goes unfulfilled. I like rooting for my team. I deliberately choose to care deeply about something that, objectively, has no particular value to me. Because caring deeply, just feels good. It adds zest to life. And if I stopped caring, I would avoid the possibility of dissatisfaction, but I would also give up the possibility of great satisfaction if either of my teams has a successful season.
Yes, it’s in the same vein as “the journey is the destination”. Wanting, striving, becoming, evolving, etc are satisfying in a way that arrived, having, and being are not. I’ve been feeling something similar as I’ve come to realize that I’m already married, already fathered children and I am not building anymore as much as I’m maintaining and fortifying. It’s a subtle shift, but one that has caused more than just a little anguish.
I think you have in mind This Side Of Paradise.
I think I recall a Jack Lemmon movie where he gave up a very successful business, so he could start over as a bicycle messenger.
Some more justification for an Option 3 strategy to accompany some Option 1 and Option 2 strategies!
It occurred to me last night that perhaps we’ve been thinking about that Option 3 in the wrong way.
Maybe we humans simply have a desire for an upward struggle, for a worthwhile striving, or for an adventure, or to be accomplishing something–a desire expressed by Tynneson’s Ulysses: “how dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnished, not to shine in use–as though to breathe were life!”
And maybe it is a rather strong desire that is satisfied by the striving even while the more obvious desire–the desire for that for which we are striving–is not satisfied.
And so it must be, for we can’t strive without desiring to attain that for which we are striving, and so that desire conflicts with the desire to strive. Accordingly, choosing to satisfy that desire for struggle rather than to satisfy some other desires is just another choice of which of our competing desires to satisfy in the short term.
This consideration would not mean there is no Option 3. But it would mean that it is a bit less important: Even when we exercise Option 3 for one desire, we are exercising Option 2 for another, bigger one. (It’s Option 2, not 1: We’re modifying that small component of the world that is ourselves so that we can satisfy the desire to strive.)
Of course, sometimes the desire is to strive in something new and we are stuck with something old and are thus not able to strive for something new without sinning.
That’s quite a problem. Fortunately, J Climacus has already shared the solution with us.
Yes!
I’m quite happy letting Tennyson carry the water on the point I was making. He and I are in accord here.
“Come, my friends,
Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.”
Neither Tennyson nor his Ulysses, it seems, were much interested in reaching some Nirvana where no unfulfilled desires remained to them.
Do they ever quote this poem in Star Trek? It seems like they should.
Some Nirvana? Yeah, I too can do without it. But heaven is different, as I and others have discussed before in reference to Star Trek. Heaven will be an adventure.
Not Star Trek, that I recall, but Robert Heinlein named one of his last novels To Sail Beyond The Sunset. Kirk once made a brief reference to Milton, but he wasn’t much of a poetry buff.
At least they have plenty of Shakespeare references.
(I think M recites that Tynneson poem in the last Bond movie.)