Is Unhappiness Morally More Important Than Happiness?

Abstract

Karl Popper, I believe, has answered for the majority. There is, from the ethical point of view, he has said, symmetry between suffering and happiness. . . . Human suffering makes a direct moral appeal, namely, the appeal for help, while there is no similar call to increase the happiness of a man who is doing well anyway. . . . Instead of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, one should demand, more modestly, the least amount of avoidable suffering for all.' It is unfortunate that what Popper says there was later dubbed Utilitarianism.2 That name suggests that the issue matters only to utilitarians, whereas it matters to anyone who any way gives weight to people's welfare. If one gives any weight to utility, then what relative weights, the general question is, should one give to the positive and negative sides of the scale? The answer that we have equally strong obligations to promote happiness and to eliminate unhappiness we might call, order to preserve proper distance from parochial issues of utilitarianism, the Positive Doctrine. The answer that the obligation to promote happiness is, as Popper puts it,3 in any case much less urgent than the obligation to eliminate unhappiness we might call the Doctrine. As Popper's words suggest, the Negative Doctrine has various forms. A Strong Negative Doctrine would maintain that promoting happiness is not morally obligatory at all-morally desirable and commendable, of course, but no part of what one is morally required to do. A Weak Negative Doctrine would maintain, instead, that promoting happiness is a slighter obligation than eliminating suffering. (Finally, one could also hold a Very Weak Negative Doctrine, which eliminating suffering is granted more weight than promoting happiness on practical grounds. It is usually more difficult to see how to make a person happy than to see how to reduce his suffering; perhaps governments that seek to promote the good life fall into a paternalism that degenerates too easily into tyranny. Although this last form of the Negative Doctrine is not unimportant, I shall not look into it.) These two doctrines, as I have formulated them, lessen the generality of the discussion. Some who give weight to utility would not be happy with either. For instance, it might be objected that our most stringent obligation of this sort is to avoid deliberately causing suffering, our obligation to relieve 1The Open Society and Its Enemies (London, 1966), 5th ed., vol. I, pp. 284-5. 2By R. N. Smart, Utilitarianism, Mind, 67 (1958). SOp. cit., vol. I, p. 235.