On Getting Better

Abstract

On the face of it, Phillips's claim is that we are getting better all the time, or at least that we may do so. For him, “to talk about getting better . . . is to talk about pursuing the life we want.” His book, always suggestive and often brilliant, entails an argument in moral philosophy, roughly in favor of Millean experiments in living. A number of difficulties, however, arise. The first and perhaps the foremost is that the moral philosophy is covered by several layers of sheep's clothing. The first three chapters of the book (“Cure,” “Unsatisfying Pleasures,” “Truth”) put forth a version of psychotherapy that substitutes a cheerful William James for Freud and, ultimately, for every conceivable psychoanalyst. James is also the explicit topic of the fifth and final chapter (“Loose Change”). Phillips argues that James's description of conversion turns out to be a theory of change and that “the new way we should describe change is experimenting with beliefs.” To believe is, for Phillips's James, “to act as if something is true.” The lupine part of Phillips's argument, and the most complex and best section of the book, comes up in the fourth chapter (“On Not Having Experiences”). The picture painted is not rosy. Children, babies, and conceivably the rest of us are depicted there as Humean skeptics, for whom, since there cannot be any future experiences, there really cannot be any criteria for engaging in any particular experiment in living. Alas, our present condition does not allow for any experience of the future—which is to say that pragmatism about the future is just wishful thinking; we cannot experiment with experience. Phillips perceives the deep affinity between Humean and Freudian metaphysics but is unwilling to subscribe to either version. He somehow knows that there is no getting better there.