Book Review: A Hedonist Manifesto by Michel Onfray

Ethics, Art and Knowledge are all subjects that can be seen to have a transcendental element. Each is capable of acquiring a religious tone, especially when they unconsciously replace the un-touchable figure of God with abstract notions of un-corrupted beauty, goodness or truth. Even in nominally secular pursuits there is often a desire for contact with something beyond the mundane and terrestrial: a desire for art that portrays an ideal form, ethics that could transcend human subjectivity or even knowledge that we can be certain to represent reality as it is.

This transcendental impulse is what Onfray takes to be the stumbling block of philosophy. From Plato's cave to Kant's Noumena and Phenomena, philosophers have been obsessed with attempts to reach beyond the material world. Onfray's alternative is to refocus on the here and now. To reject any transcendental claim that pulls us away from the material conditions of life. Drawing on Pre-Christian philosophers such as Epicurus and Diogenes the Cynic, Onfray pulls together thinkers who rebel against the transcendental impulse identified early on in his historiography of philosophy: though he later also incorporates the existential humanism of Nietzsche and hints at some of the themes in Camus in order to more fully situate his approach. The result is a philosophy that is concerned with, and exalts, the human experience and rejects any attempt to supersede our subjectivity.

The book is philosophically iconoclastic in a very exciting way. Onfray doesn't just sneer at the empty verbal gesticulations of arm-chair theorists, he works productively to identify new directions for philosophy. What's more he identifies precedents in philosophy's own history that could act as starting points for more hedonistic and concrete theorising. Onfray's case is extremely compelling, perhaps one of the reasons philosophy is often seen as an impotent practise, next to more scientific endeavours, is due its lack of material relevance Onfray identifies in this book. To quote Dawkins 'Science works'. The criteria for successful scientific research involves an improvement of our ability to control and impact the world: something which is often independent of any abstract truthiness.

Ultimately, 'A Hedonist Manifesto' is not just an appeal to refocus philosophy on human affairs but it is also a polemic in defence of hedonistic human relations. Onfray does not advocate for any particular form of utilitarianism but rather for an ethic of honour and kindness; an ethic which considers acts with the the thoughts, feelings and freedoms of other humans at its heart to be the highest good. An ethic which asserts, perhaps un-controversially, that the highest good is whatever pleases us best. Our moral responsibility is then not to God or History or any empty abstract talk of values but to each-other and we must interrogate norms and practises which suggest otherwise.

His closing suggestion for making this world a better one is decidedly humble, but perhaps this is in line with the books ethos. He advocates not for social revolution or mass immediate change, but for his readers to become 'Nomadic Epicurean Gardens'. Doing what they can to look after those around them and build pockets of micro-resistances to the boredom and tyranny of the world.

This is a far reaching book that does well to unify Onfray's critical look at our current, sorely limited, idea of what philosophy can be, with his more bold and hedonistic sensibilities. It's iconoclastic in a constructive way and subtly political in a way that is more humanistic than it is partisan. An important read for ethicists and lay people alike.

Brief Thoughts: Rousseau's Social Contract.

Rousseau's shadow history is that of an unwitting proto-apologist for 20th century authoritarianism. Considering this, how much of his work is salvageable from an anti-authoritarian standpoint?

To be clear, his idealism is frighteningly Orwellian. Most worrying is his concept of the sovereign will: a justification for a perfectly paternalistic government that enforces laws in the knowledge that, despite any individual protests, it really has everyone's interests at heart. The abstract notion of a perfect righteous governtment is itself not so troubling, more-so the fact that Rousseau thinks that such an institution is worth attempting to emulate in an imperfect concrete world. A quote by Vaclav Havel springs to mind:


"[There is] a direct and logical progression from beautiful utopias to concentration camps... [which are] ...but an attempt of utopians to dispose of those elements which do not fit into their utopias" - Havel quoted in John P. Clark's "The Impossible Community: Realizing Communitarian Anarchism" p. 131.

However, to view The Social Contract from this angle alone neglects the other points in his work where Rousseau acts as a pre-configuration of later left libertarian ideas.

For all its naivety, the book contains a number of perspicacious observations which still prevail in contemporary political thought. For instance, the noted distinction between socially constructed civil liberty and the baser, more solipsistic, "natural liberty". This distinction, which is nonetheless considered by its detractors a pernicious one that foists too much work on the shoulders of liberty resulting only in perversion, has had an explicit influence on the work of participatory democrats and finds many other parallels in anarchist thought.  

Other notable themes of contemporary interest are Rousseau's delineations of  the economic and political conditions necessary for wide-spread direct democracy and his post-classical interpretation of democratic subjects. Radical egalitarians, especially those with a love of democratic institutions, have often been quick to emphasise the incompatibility of inequality of wealth with harmonious and stable democratic arrangements. This is true for both for participatory democrats and for anarchists: though anarchists don't often argue for the harmony of egalitarianism via an explicitly democratic teleology. 

The "post-classical democratic subject", typically a response invoked to explain humans who are ambivalent to increases in their own access to democracy and liberty, is present and considered here:

"Aristotle was right; but he mistook the effect for the cause. Anyone born in slavery is born for slavery - nothing is more certain. Slaves in their bondage, lose everything, even the desire to be free." Rousseau, The Social Contract p.51-52

And a call for a revision of the classical political subject, which Rousseau's analysis is an early answer to, is found in Saul Newman's "The Politics of Post-Anarchism":

The crucial question raised by Deleuze and Guattari - "how can desire desire its own repression...?" - confronts all radical politics with a central ambiguity. The classical anarchists were not unaware of this problem; indeed, Kropotkin attributes the rise of the modern state in part to people becoming "enamoured of authority" and to their self-enslavement to increasingly centralised systems of law and punishment. However, this problem, while acknowledged, was not sufficiently addressed or theorised in anarchism. Yet it creates certain obvious difficulties for anti-authoritarian politics, unsettling the notion of the moral and rational agent who revolts against an immoral and irrational power.  - Saul Newman in "The Politics of Post-Anarchism" p.60 

So despite their notoriety Rousseau's ideas still have some currency: or at least there are ideas in his political philosophy that are not so offensive that anti-authoritarians discard them out of hand. That said, how do we separate the libratory Rousseau from the tyrannical Rousseau? Where does the problem lie, precisely?

The primary culprit would seem to be his uncritical endorsement of majoratarianism vindicated through his abstract soveriegn will. Rousseau's trust in the sovereign will excludes the possibility of it being usurped by interest groups or becoming exploitative of persistent minorities. Perhaps possibilities of abstention and conscientious objection, along with a greater cynicism towards majoritarianism and the power structures of the state, could render him more palatable?

Indeed modern liberatory writers who adopt his ideas are often markedly unanimous in their avoidance of the problematic concept of sovereign will, even while borrowing from the rest of his political canon. It seems while Rousseau's rhetoric is in places an unfortunate overture to the brutal regimes of the last century, many anti-authoritarians still owe him a philosophical debt. 

Huxley's Brave New World: A Hedonist's Response

"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
 
- John the Savage repudiating Mustapha Mond in Brave New World.


There is common comparison made between Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's 1984. One that remarks that while Orwell described the authoritarianism of his time, Huxley predicted the "soft-power" at work today. Read in this way the core theme of Brave New World is similar to that of emanicpatory writers like Rousseau: humans are frequently complicit in their own enslavement. This comparison suffers however from a certain level of western-centrism and misses some of the finer details of the dystopia which Huxley created.


Firstly, and a similar point is levelled by Nadya Tolokonnikova against Slavoj Zizek, the notion that modern capitalism controls its subjects through pleasure ignores the sweat-house labour and dictatorial right wing governments that have arguably played a big role in shaping modern global capitalism. Secondly, in Brave New World there is no evidence that humanity willingly gave up its Bibles or poetry; such things are banned and an inescapable system of social conditioning is required to force these artefacts of ancient pleasure into obsolescence. The depravity of the new world's citizens is artificial it is not an organic product of Huxley's subjects and their desires. As a hedonist of sorts,  while I could cry that Huxley's society is the product of authoritarianism and not pleasure seeking humans, that would do Brave New World a dis-service: the book did give me cause to reflect on hedonism and the relationship between pleasure and authenticity.


 The first thing that struck me as of particular philosophical interest was "Soma". Soma is the fictional drug taken by the new world's inhabitants and it functions as a very trenchant iteration of Nozick's experience machine. Unlike Nozick's original machine, soma requires very little in terms of metaphysical "jump": one could liken it to heroin without the side effects. Furthermore soma highlights the escapist tendencies of Brave New World's inhabitants. By taking soma the characters leave the reality which they ostensibly cannot deal with and submit themselves to a realm of pleasure inaccessible to more sober minds. This idea of "pleasure as escapism" may present some problems for a hedonistic outlook and raises questions about the dialectic between "fake pleasure" and "real pleasure".  Are there pleasures that fail to be valuable because they have no relation to objects outside of the subjects experience? Are mind altering substances providing fake happiness or real happiness?  Is a drunk happy to see you or do they merely think that they are in a welcoming mood?


Currently, I see little reason to make a hard distinction between the pleasures that are accrued through synthetic chemical manipulation, such as alcohol or soma based pleasures, and the organic chemical manipulations achieved through sugar, salt or a caressing touch. Furthermore if the thing that scares us about Soma is that it "merely creates pleasure" then what is that missing ingredient that allows us to be satisfied even if we are not enjoying ourselves? Pain? The outlook of John the Savage is rather reminiscent of Seneca: the roman philosopher who believed that suffering and tribulation should be cherished as a source of meaning in an otherwise empty life.

I can empathise with the Senecan position: life would become very boring if one was absolved of all tragedy. This I do not think is necessarily a problem for hedonists as the hedonic treadmill ensures that we will never run out of tribulations to give purpose to our growth. It may be that the reason we want struggle is that it gives context to our successes. We want struggle and heartbreak not because we don't value pleasure but because struggle and heartbreak make our pleasure worthwhile. 

My response to those who raise up Huxley's Brave New World as a warning against hedonism is that its citizens are not really committed hedonists. They are cattle who have been forcefully deprived of a range of pleasures, primarily intellectual ones, and conditioned to accept passivity as a state of enduring desirability.

When it comes to the relationship between pleasure and eudemonia what Brave New World articulates is a critique of lazy infantilization posing as the good life. As I have argued before, empty gluttonous carnality is not the same thing as an ethical and well-disciplined regime of hedonism.

Consent as a Foundation of Justice: It's not as straight-forward as some would think.

Consider these five examples.



Example A:

Kirsten the store clerk is working late at a petrol station one evening when an armed robber comes through the door and points a gun at her head. The armed robber tells her to hand over the cash or she will be killed.

Kirsten agrees to hand over the cash.




Example B:

Paul gets lost walking in the desert and, through no fault of his own, is bitten by a rattlesnake. He runs to get help and after an hour of desperate searching comes across a man who sells rattlesnake anti-venom.

The salesman informs Paul that the salesman is the only one around for miles and it is an absolute certainty that without the purchasing of anti-venom Paul will die.

The salesman tells Paul that Paul must not only pay the market value for the anti-venom (100$) but Paul must also allow the salesman to urinate in Paul’s mouth.

Paul chooses the latter.




Example C:

Mark is a right-wing libertarian. Mark despises the fact that he is taxed by a government which he deems to be incompetent and injust.

One day a friend mentions to Mark that there are large areas in the Antarctic wilderness where no government influence is present. Mark is then left with a choice. He can either pay for the travel costs (Mark is very wealthy) and live a life free from government or he can choose to continue living with governments that tax him and misallocate what is, in Marks eyes, his money.

Mark chooses to stay put.


 
Example D:

Sam and Mick are co-workers. Mick is offered the opportunity to work in the same office space as Sam where Mick will have access to better facilities that will make his work more productive. However Sam has a personal vendetta against Mick and is liable to make rude comments and act in a dismissive or insulting manner towards Mick, making Mick's work life more stressful.

Mick declines the offer to work in the same office space as Sam.



Example E:

Sally likes Rose and wants to go on a date with her. One day Sally asks Rose if she would like to get coffee with her next saturday.

Rose says yes.

————

All five of these examples present situations in which an actor provides some form of consent or non-consent, in the sense that they agree to co-operate or not co-operate with another actor or proposal that has been offered to them.


Obviously, that is not to say that all five examples are examples of "genuine consent". It would seem that. at the very least, in one or two of the examples consent was obtained by nefarious and immoral means that would, depending on your moral outlook, invalidate the given consent.


The tricky question is what is genuine consent and when does it happen?

Often, especially when it comes to sex, genuine consent is characterised as "enthusiastic and informed consent" but I do wonder how far the addition of "enthusiasm" really gets us.

I mean sure in the bedroom if someone is not enthusiastic about the sex which their partner aims to initiate with them then that is a pause for concern, but outside of the bedroom how realistic is it to equate legitimate consent with enthusiasm?


Surely in an economic context, or even of the context of house-hold chores, it's reasonable to presume there are some arrangements which I can legitimately consent to despite not being enthusiastic about their undertaking. I can agree with flat-mates to hoover the lounge on a sunday, mop the kitchen on a wednesday and not play music without headphones after 10pm without actually enthusiastically wanting to do any of those things.


So what are the factors that go into making consent genuine outside of enthusiasm?
Well what seems to be important when judging the five cases above is context: Is there a threat of violence? What penalties will the agent incur if they do not consent? Are the penalties proportionate/reasonable?

The individual speech of act of consent, the mere utterance of "I agree" or "I will", is morally neutral. We can't discern whether or not that act of consent is respectable until we are given information about the context in which it was uttered.  


That is not to say that consent isn't important. Even as a utilitarian I hold to the idea that providing people with the ability to choose (or consent) between various options is the best if not most pragmatic method available to facilitate other peoples happiness.


All of this is just to point to the problem with taking a prima facie approach to consent as it relates to justice. Just social and political relations include consent. To say that a just world is a world in which we all consent to the institutions that affect our lives seems fairly straightforward. However the specification of what kinds of economic, political and social contexts are capable of giving sufficient grounds to consent requires a great deal more theorising.