Many of the most significant and acrimonious disputes in modern society arise from conflicting cultural visions.
These conflicts appear to be much more stark, if not vicious, in the past half century, and the reason may lie in a subtle but significant distinction in the understanding of rights.
It is at least arguable that, during the first century and a half of this country’s existence, the ultimate end and purpose of rights was happiness.
This may be inferred from the Declaration of Independence, in which Jefferson asserted that one of the unalienable rights of people was “the pursuit of happiness.”
The right was to “pursue” and the object was “happiness.” This assertion echoed the views of John Locke, who wrote that “a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness” was the foundation of liberty.
The idea of happiness in the late 18th century was somewhat ambiguous. Philosophical consideration of the term dates back at least to ancient Greeks, and most likely to the to the time that humans developed the ability to have ideas.
The notion of happiness in written thought originally referenced good fortune, or luck. The English word happiness comes from the Old Norse word “happ,” meaning “chance, good luck.” English words reflecting the same origin include “perhaps,” meaning “there is a chance,” and “haphazard,” meaning characterized by randomness and chance.
The relationship between rights and happiness in Western thought evolved with the Judeo-Christian notion that the ultimate goal of life and fulfilling the purpose of life depended on volitional acts. Happiness, in particular the notion of eternal happiness, assumed human agency to make choices. The idea of happiness as a contented or prosperous life contingent only on luck grew to accommodate the notion that human happiness was related to ethical and moral behavior.
The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 declared that “the happiness of a people … depend on piety, religion and morality.” Article 3 of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 also reflected this view of happiness: “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”
Other ethical systems certainly had similar views of happiness, but there is no doubt that the founders were influenced by the Judeo-Christian values of Western civilization.
At the time of the nation’s founding, happiness was understood to mean physical and spiritual well-being, and people were endowed by their Creator with rights that were essential to these ends. The essential point was that happiness was associated with the good. Religious notions of eternal punishment, the conceptual opposite of happiness, were inextricably linked with sin and iniquitous behavior.
The conceptions of happiness and rights that existed at the nation’s founding reflected contemporary beliefs about the nature of mankind and the reqirements of a meaningful life. These naturally assumed that ultimate goal of rights was happiness. This assumption changed in the last century, coinciding with the waning of religious influence and the spread of postmodern ideas.
Now there is a significant political and philosophical movement that asserts that the ultimate goal and purpose of rights is pleasure.
Pleasure is not itself objectionable. Pleasure is associated with almost all of the activites necessary to continue individual life as well as the continued existence of humanity. Hedonism is one of the oldest and most straitforward ethical doctrines. But not all pleasures are equal, either in their distribution, or in their consequences. That happiness and pleasure are distinct can be observed in the common experiences in which a person can be unhappy but still experience pleasure, or be happy and experience pain.
Pleasure and happiness are not exclusive. Happiness typically, and legitimately, involves experiencing pleasure. However, the are distinctions between the two that are significant when undifferentiated pleasure is used as the basis of rights that are enforced by government authority.
The distinction between happiness and pleasure as the ultimate goal of rights is significant, because happiness is still associated with what is ultimately good for an individual or community, but pleasure need not be.
The pursuit of pleasure can lead to desirable outcomes, e.g., procreation, economic and technological progress, and artistic masterpieces. It can also lead to destructive and socially corrosive outcomes. Drug addicts pursue pleasure through means that regularly lead to misery, social burdens and death. Pleasure that is associated with certain eccentric sexual activities leads to promiscuity, infidelity, disease, and degradation.
Common observation reveals that the pursuit of pleasure can have outcomes associated with misery, degradation and death. Pleasure is an unreliable guide in the pursuit of a meaningful life, and a tenuous basis for the assertion of rights. Recognizing rights to those pleasures that are objectivelly harmful and exploitive undermines the foundations of a society.
Because the pursuit of pleasure is neutral from the perspective of individual and societal well-being, using it as the basis of rights invites scenarios where one person’s pursuit of individual pleasure may infringe on the rights and well-being of others, and of the broader community. This creates circumstances in which claims of right, such as to unrestricted drug use, euthanasia, clandestine conversations with minors that undermine parental authority, and bodily modification for sexual eccentricities, are asserted even though they may lead to exploitation, degradation of the inherent value of life, societal decay, and the misery and subjugation of others.
Expanding the purpose of rights to include transient pleasures that require unwilling accommodation by, or exploitation of, others inevitably leads to a self-negating concept of rights, and to our present cultural conflicts. Rights of free speech and association are subordinated to demands that virtually any behavior that involves pleasurable indulgences be not only accommodated but also endorsed as a matter of right.
The differences in treating happiness as the purpose of rights, and treating pleasure as such can be illustrated by the fact that there is a word for extreme indulgence in bodily pleasures: debauchery. It would be rather unremarkable to hear that a person has a right to as much happiness as possible, but rather odd and even depraved to demand that the government enforce a right to debauchery.
The adoption of pleasure as a guiding principle shows up in other areas of public discourse. Once pleasure is established as a goal of rights, any denial of pleasure may be treated as a form of oppression. This reinforces the clumsy postmodern philosophy that subverts much of Western civilization.
The idea that happiness, i.e., general well being resulting from moral and virtuous living, was the ultimate goal and purpose of rights has slowly been abandoned over the last several generations. This is not the result of persuasive appeals to reason, or evolving notions of decency or fairness. The reason is that a significant portion of American citizens has taken the foundations of our civilization and culture for granted.
It is because we have assumed that prosperity and societal well-being are our birthrights, and that we can trade the virtues and disciplines that they require for transient pleasures. This is not a philosophical abstraction, but a fundamental cultural characteristic that affects the type of country that we will leave to future generations.
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