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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception 203 certain kinds. To claim, as Aristotle does (1097b23), that the goodness of human beings consists in performing their proper human function implies that we morally ought to do that which most fully expresses our humanity. We in the West assume that this must give a prominent - if not dominant - role to the pursuit of pleasure. Consider an opposing, but equally plausible set of beliefs about what it is rational to do; call it the Advaita Vedantic view.22 On the Advaita Vedantic view, the highest good is objective knowledge. However, to achieve this requires, not the full expression of human capacities as an end in itself, but rather their eventual transcendence. Abstract thought is criticized for reducing the richness of objective reality to manageable but solipsistic human categories, and true self-determination is seen as incompatible with the indulgence and gratification of our biological human desires. The pursuit of pleasure draws human beings even further into a world of illusion, ignorance and self-seeking because it limits our comprehension of reality to that which is consonant with our pursuit of sensory self-gratification. Hence it reinforces the illusion of individual ego-consciousness. Genuinely objective and nonillusory knowledge, according to the Advaita Vedantic view, can be achieved through ascetic practices, meditation, and detachment from the pleasures of the senses, i.e. through the renunciation of those sensory and psychological supports that sustain the illusion of the individual self. Hence not only does the Advaita Vedantic view deny that sensory pleasure is an intrinsic good that it is permissible to seek. It maintains that, on the contrary, sensory pleasure is a positive impediment to good that one ought strenuously to avoid. By contrast to the Hellenic view, which suggests that sensory pleasure is good because it expresses a human capacity, the Advaita Vedantic view maintains that pleasure is bad for precisely the same reason. On the Advaita Vedantic view, the pursuit of pleasure hinders that surrender and transcendence of individual selfhood that is a necessary condition of achieving objective knowledge. Thus the conviction that pleasure is an intrinsic good depends upon moral beliefs about the value of expressing human capacities and satisfying human needs. Ultimately, it depends upon moral beliefs about the value of the individual self that these capacities and needs uniquely define, and so violates clause (1) - the Millian condition - of the definition of intrinsic value. So it seems that we must look elsewhere for some good that satisfies the above definition of intrinsic value, such that it can be rationally desired without our The brief sketch in this paragraph of course does not do justice to the depth and complexity of Vedanta philosophy as actually elaborated in such texts as The Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, Yoga Sutras, or Shankaracharya's commentary on the Brama Sutras. See the Bibliography for suggestions. Any reasonable translation of the Bhagavad Gita would be a good place to start; that by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood (New York: Mentor, 1972) is one of the most accessible. 22 © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
