Hedonism: what it really means

by Dr Robert Muller, Medium: https://medium.com/@DrRobertMuller/hedonism-what-it-really-means-1f0768742594

(Image: classicalwisdom.com)

The philosophy of bourgeois society, after the rise of the middle-classes, was based on utilitarianism, which, according to Daniel Bell, is ‘a hedonistic calculation of pleasure and pain’. Such beliefs and ways of conduct partly paved the way for modern-day hedonism. Such hedonism is characterised by Bell as “the idea of pleasure as a way of life”. Furthermore, Bell argues that hedonism now provides the basis for the cultural justification of capitalism. Bell calls such hedonism ‘fun morality’.

In the contemporary era, if a person is not having fun, there is a period of soul-searching in which the individual attempts to establish what the problem is. Such ‘fun morality’ stands in stark contrast to the ‘goodness morality’ promoted within the Protestant ethic in which impulses must be controlled and resisted. Within such fun morality, instinct has become the basic justification for life in the contemporary era. Pleasure and the release of impulse become the priorities of living.

For Bell, hedonism is a ‘world of make-believe’ in which one lives for the future, dreaming of what will happen rather than what is happening. In this way, Bell’s conception of hedonism represents the idea of ‘self-autonomous illusory hedonism’ in which illusions are created in the mind of the individual, dwelt upon and often dreamed of.

Social Changes Leading to Hedonism

Bell points out the social changes which occurred throughout the 20th century which have helped to usher in the hedonistic ethic. He argues that the demographic changes that occurred in the first decades of the 20th century resulted in the rapid growth of American cities and a resultant decline in influence of ‘small-town’ lifestyles and mentality. 

Furthermore, this period saw the emergence of an economy based increasingly on consumption. Such a change, according to Bell, was in direct contrast with the Protestant ethic and as a result, began to undermine the older tradition. The emphasis on consumption saw priorities move towards ‘spending and material possessions’ and away from ‘thrift, frugality, self-control and impulse renunciation’. On top of these changes, the automobile, and the spread of media, particularly the increasing popularity of movie theatres and radio, helped to lessen the isolation of rural communities and to create a national culture with more homogeneous goals.

Further social change occurred throughout the 20th century, acting to undermine the last vestiges of the Protestant ethic. Bell cites changes in banking as a significant step towards the cultural inculcation of hedonism. With credit and overdraft facilities becoming commonplace by the end of the 1960s, the consumer no longer saw the need to delay gratification through the curbing of impulse. Instead, those impulses could now be given free rein when they arose. With credit, the longing of the consumer could be satisfied immediately. 

Throughout the 20th century, the shift in emphasis from an economy based on production to one based on consumption, saw consumer durables and the invention of credit and installment plans, together with the growth of marketing and advertising, which promoted spending and instant gratification, leading to the undermining of the Protestant ethic. Ultimately, these transformations brought about the end of Puritanism as the moral underpinning of American life. American capitalism, ‘the new capitalism’, claimed to produce abundance, and the fruits of the system were promoted as ‘the glorification of plenty’. A higher standard of living, not work as an end in itself, then becomes the engine of change.

Replacement of the Protestant Ethic by Hedonism

Bell’s thesis is that the Protestant ethic has been undermined and displaced by an ethic of hedonism or a ‘pleasure ethic’, as a culture based on consumerism took hold. The Protestant ethic had provided a transcendental justification in people’s lives and had served to place limits on the accumulation and experience of luxury. On the other hand, capital accumulation was not subject to these same limitations, as long as such accumulation was sober, rational, and responsible. Bell argues that once the Protestant ethic began to fade as an influence upon modern society, all that was left was hedonism.

Such private wants and unlimited ends with which to attain them (due to the burgeoning of the ‘new’ capitalism of America), had a belief in individualism as their underlying justification. According to Bell, bourgeois middle-class society had incorporated strands of both Protestantism and individualism. On the one hand, the Puritan style of capitalism which emphasised a certain type of character based on ‘sobriety, probity, work as a calling’ in a particular form of capitalist economic activity, contrasted and acted in tandem with a secular Hobbesianism, a radical individualism which saw humans as unlimited in their appetite, which was restrained in politics by a sovereign but ran fully free in economics and culture. Gradually, the relationship between these two sets of ethics weakened. Secular individualism gained in strength at the cost of the Protestant ethic, a situation continuing into the present.

Ultimately, the changes that were wrought by the transformations of the early decades of the 20th century, heavily promoted hedonism but could not provide any justification for it. Hedonism lacked a value system with which to replace the old one.