In 2013, I published a book about empathy and ethics in which I argued that being able to imagine what it is like to be someone else is a necessary condition for ethical life. More specifically, my argument was that the experience of difference, the experience of life as seen through the eyes of someone else, is ethically significant because it forces us to think more critically about our identities, and our values, and to see them as no less contingent than the identities and values which inform the lives of others. My claim was that this experience of difference1, made possible by our capacity for empathy, would result in a commitment to recognise others as equals, and in a commitment to remember that our view of the world is always partial, and that it is always culturally mediated. These commitments, I argued, are significant because they provide us with something to which we can declare an allegiance, with something which allows us to sustain ourselves as ethical subjects:
Without the experience of a demand to which I am prepared to bind myself, to commit myself, the whole business of morality would either not get started or would be a mere manipulation of empty formulae. At the basis of ethics, there has to be some experience of an approved demand, an existential affirmation that shapes my ethical subjectivity, and which is the source of my motivation to act.2
Why is this claim about empathy and ethical life relevant to well-being, the subject of this book? To answer this question, it is important to refer back to another claim I made in my earlier book. This was about how the experience of difference, and the acquisition of ethical subjectivity, comes at a price, namely, the interruption of our identities, and the relativising of the values which had sustained us in our lives. If this traumatic experience is accepted as the inevitable result of an empathic experience, it would seem that ethical life and human well-being exist in a relation of tension, or antagonism. A further implication is that empathy, widely seen as a good thing, as something which is integral to leading a good human life, is something which is best avoided if we value our well-being.3 This concern was reflected in one of the criticisms of the book which argued that, while its philosophical claims were plausible, it was less convincing as an account about how empathy would or could lead to the emergence of a more ethical society. In other words, and here I paraphrase what I saw as implicit in the critique, while we can imagine how an experience of difference might lead us to reflect differently on how we understand our duties and obligations to others, it is more difficult to see how these individual âmoments of epiphanyâ would, or could, lead to political change.
In the period subsequent to the publication of the book, I began to reflect more critically on the nature of the relationship between empathy, ethical life, and political change. This led me to accept that, whatever the capacity of empathy to constitute a new ethical disposition, or sensibility, for us as individuals, it is not a sufficient condition for change at a societal level. The question which emerged from this period of reflection was whether there was something else which could lead us to, and sustain us in, ethical life? Those who subscribe to a Whig or Hegelian view of history, or those for whom religious life is important, might claim that the immense amount of pain, misery, suffering, and injustice in the world will inevitably lead to a moral awakening, and to the emergence of a better and more just world. Alternatively, a more secular analysis might hold to the view that, as we now live in a deeply interconnected and globalised world, it is in the interest of those of us in the more developed parts of it to attend more assiduously, and sensitively, to the needs of those who live beyond our privileged shores. Yet, as I will discuss below, these appeals to moral progress, and rationality, are not enough to reassure us that a more ethical world is possible, let alone inevitable. However, all is not lost. The claim I will defend in this book is that a more ethical world can emerge, and be sustained, not as a result of our being unsettled by an empathic experience of difference,4 but as a result of an experience of what I will call âethical well-beingâ, an experience which comes to us when we are able to think of ourselves as subjects who are living well, as subjects who are living in a way which is attuned to that part of us which longs for meaning and justice. If this is accepted, it allows us to imagine ethical life and well-being existing together in a different way, not in a relation of antagonism, but in a relation of harmony. It also allows well-being, and our inexorable quest for it, to emerge as an integral and indispensable element in the political struggle on which we must embark, for justice, and for the realisation of a more ethical world.
The argument of the book can be summarised as follows:
- the desire for well-being is hardwired into human nature.
- well-being can only be experienced, in a deep and sustainable form, when we are able to think of ourselves as ethical subjects who are living well in the world.
- there is, therefore, always hope for a better and more ethical future.
Before setting out the structure of the book in more detail, let me say more about these three claims.
Claim 1: the desire for well-being is hardwired into human nature
Although it requires a significant amount of unpacking, it seems to me that this claim is true beyond all reasonable doubt. For those whose thinking about well-being is informed by the teaching of Aristotle, there will be concern that, expressed in this way, the claim is too vague or, more specifically, that it fails to acknowledge the distinction between âwell-being as flourishingâ and âwell-being as happinessâ. The Aristotelian distinction is important for the argument I want to make, and I will say more about it later. However, it should not distract us from understanding, and accepting, that our desire for well-being is our most fundamental and defining human trait. A different challenge to the claim might be that we are drawn to resist well-being because, when we do so, we become less vulnerable, more able to cope with our fear of death, and more able to imagine it as a welcome release from the misery and torment of existence. Finally, we might reflect on one of the defining leitmotivs of Romanticism, namely, that unhappiness is to be valued because it is a more authentic, humane, and creative disposition:
[within Romanticism] there was a vogue for âspleenâ, seen as the essential source of inspiration, and for an aesthetic of tragedy and suffering, aspects of life that were recognised as praiseworthy and creative. The pursuit of happiness, seen as a bourgeois desire to achieve comfort, and peace, and quiet, was despised and maligned.5
If these considerations are taken seriously, we might be inclined to think, with Freud, that a profound ambivalence informs our attitude to well-being. However, as I see it, all that these reflections reveal is that our search for it takes different forms, and that we are highly resourceful in finding ways to defend it when it is felt to be under threat.
Claim 2: ethical life is a necessary condition for a sustainable experience of well-being
To consider this claim in more detail, we can turn to an examination of Aristotleâs concept of eudaimonia. One of the thorniest questions relating to well-being concerns its epistemological and ontological status. The familiar Aristotelian view is that well-being, or eudaimonia, can only be experienced by those who are virtuous, and by those who are active in the pursuit of ends âappropriate to our natureâ. Therefore, to flourish in the world, we have to live in a way in which we are attuned to ourselves as social, political, and rational beings. This perfectionist account is rejected by most contemporary philosophers on the grounds that well-being is not an objective âstate of beingâ whose existence can be declared, or denied, ex cathedra. Their alternative interpretation holds more to the view that, if a person feels themselves to have well-being, if, in other words, they feel that their life is going well, then that is all we need to know, and that is all we can say about the matter. This more subjectivist, or prudential,6 approach to understanding well-being is appealing, at least initially, because it seems less âtop-downâ, and less elitist, than the Aristotelian interpretation. However, despite its democratic appeal, it is clear that we cannot accept it. This is because, while we might have little difficulty in dismissing the metaphysical premise of the Aristotelian argument that human life has an immutable purpose or telos, and that well-being is only attainable when we live in harmony with it, our cultural embeddedness in the societies which have shaped us leads us, inexorably, to the view that there are certain experiences which we cannot afford to âmiss out onâ if we are to feel that we are âliving wellâ, and if we are to experience well-being. We can consider the significance of this notion of âmissing outâ, and its relevance to the argument I want to make, in the context of the work of the philosopher Daniel Haybron:
I would suggest that the naturalistic perspective, while a source of the Aristotelian viewâs allures, is not the perspective that gives perfectionism its primary appeal. Aristotleâs metaphysics may have helped to motivate his perfectionism, but many contemporary Aristotelians donât buy the metaphysics. Nor is it clear how thinking about human beings as organisms, in the context of plant and animal flourishing generally, compels us to accept perfectionism. There is indeed something appealing about the idea that goodness in a lion consists in perfecting its nature qua lion. But is it so obvious that lion well-being consists in being a good lion, or in the exercise of liony excellence?7
For Haybron, rather than thinking about well-being in the context of perfectionism, we should understand it in the context of externalism. This is the idea that organisms flourish insofar as they enjoy the goods âcharacteristic of their kindâ. Drawing on the aforementioned lion analogy, Haybron suggested that:
the problem, intuitively, is not lack of perfection â not being a good lion or exercising the virtues proper to lions â but âmissing outâ, failing to enjoy one or more of the elements of a full life for a lion.8
The idea that it is the âfacts of our natureâ which inform and structure our experience of well-being is discernible elsewhere. Consider, for example, this reflection on the philosophy of John Stuart Mill:
In introducing considerations of quality as well as quantity, Mill is in part reverting to the position of Plato and Aristotle. Like them, he believes that to find out what constitutes full and genuine happiness, we have to look at what is specific to the nature of human beings and distinguishes them from other animal species. Unlike Aristotle, however, he does not attempt the transition from the view of human nature to the view of human happiness by means of the essentialist argument that, because certain activities are essentially human, they constitute the natural and proper purpose of human life and provide the content of human happiness. For Mill, the connection between human nature and human happiness is not this essentialist one, but a psychological one. The point, then, is not that, because human beings have distinctive capacities, they therefore ought to (or are intended by nature to) find their happiness in the exercise of them; it is that, because they have these distinctive capacities, they are not fully satisfied by a happiness which does not involve the exercise of them.9
Why refer here to Aristotelian and quasi-Aristotelian accounts of well-being? One reason is that they allow us to imagine how a better and more ethical world might emerge. At least, this is the case if we accept that, as social beings, we are drawn to realise well-being in a pro-social way, in a way which attunes us to that particular aspect of our nature. More specifically, however, and this is crucial, they are important because they allow us to understand that ethical life is a necessary condition for a sustainable experience of well-being. This is because ethical life, or the demand to live well, has become such a highly significant culturally integral externality,10 or âcharacteristic of our kindâ, which we cannot afford to miss out on if we are to experience a sustainable form of well-being. Phrasing the question in the context of the encultured nature of human life is important because it allows us to dispense with the more philosophically problematic aspects of the Aristotelian argument, while at the same time insisting, on purely empirical or psychological grounds, that ethical life is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for well-being. One problem with this claim, however, and it is an important one, is that while we can and do experience well-being by being sociable, altruistic, kind, caring, and compassionate, we can derive a no less authentic experience of it by being attuned to what we might call the more âNietzscheanâ aspect of our culture, namely, the aspect of it which beckons us to experience well-being by casting off the shackles of Judeo-Christian morality, and embarking on a personal quest for greatness.11 However, the Nietzschean, as well as all of the other âethically unattunedâ ways in wh...
