Vox Issue XIII- The Pursuit of Happiness

VOX The STudenT JOurnal Of POliTicS, ecOnOmicS and PhilOSOPhyPublished termly by the club of PeP at the university of york

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Issue XIII- Autumn 2010

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VOX The STudenT JOurnal Of POliTicS, ecOnOmicS and PhilOSOPhy

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thE PURSUIt OF hAPPINESS

ISSUE XIII - AUTUMN 2010

5HAPPINESS, PLATO AND EDUCATIONDr Robin Barrow

DOES POLICY DESIGNED TO INCREASE GDP ALSO INCREASE HAPPINESS? Claire E. Sherwin

ESSAYS

VOX is a student academic journal that aims to provide a platform for the exchange of ideas and insight into the debates relating to Politics, Economics and Philosophy (PEP).

VOX is published triannually by the Club of PEP at the University of York and distributed on York’s campus as well as other universities world-wide.

MILL, LIBERTY AND HAPPINESSDan Iley-Williamson

HAPPINESS AND PUBLIC POLICYProfessor Emeritus Lord Richard Layard

THE UNHAPPINESS OF SUSTAINABILITYLuke Smalley

ARISTOTLE AND THE ENDS OF LIFEJames Hodgson

POST-MODERNISM: THE PATH TO LISTLESSNESSClement Wee

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“Happiness is like a butterfly;the more you chase it,

the more it will elude you,but if you turn your attention

to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder”

Henry David Thoreau

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WHAT IS HAPPINESS? SOME PEOPLE CLAIM IT IS THE MUTUAL AFFECTION AND SUPPORT WE FIND IN OTHERS, WHILE OTHERS SAY IT IS FINANCIAL

security and the fulfilment of our physical needs. This issue of Vox is an explora-tion of the pursuit of happiness: what we think will make us happy and how- or whether- we can achieve it. This issue has articles by students and professional academics, exploring the various aspects of the pursuit of happiness. We have articles discussing the role of education in creating happy people in society (5), as well as whether public policy should focus on economic development and increases in GDP, or whether we need to focus on the personal development of the individual within public policy (9, 12). Authors consider the role of environmental management in ensuring the wellbeing of human society (18). Discussions of Postmodernist philosophy explore whether it can lead to genuine freedom and happiness within society, or simply imprison us with unat-tainable ideals (27). We have an article on Mill, reconciling his strong defence of freedom as necessary to happiness with his utilitarian ethics (15). Finally we have an article on the Aristotelian conception of happiness as the highest good which humans can possess (23). This will be the first issue of Vox for the first years, so we hope that you will enjoy it, and that you might even be inspired to get involved with us either by writing for the next issue or by becoming involved with the production side of Vox. If you are interested in becoming a part of the Vox team, please don’t hesitate to email us at [email protected]. Details of how to contribute to our next issue are on the back cover.

Elena Villarreal Editor

EDITORIAL

EDITORIAL TEAM

Editor: Elena VillarrealCo-Editor: Adam CzoppLayout Editor: Emily CowardExternal Liaisons Officer: Fay Farstad

Sub-Editors:Dan Iley-WilliamsonFirdaus KoderIeuan FerrerMira Wolf-BauwensStephanie PansarClement Wee

Peer Reviewers and Proofreaders:Cameron DwyerClaire SherwinRiccardo MastiniRisga CarsonAbir AhmmedLorna BrankleyFrances Croft-WangAlexa MitterhuberLuke Smalley

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IN 1975 I PUBLISHED A BOOK EN-TITLED PLATO, UTILITARIANISM,

AND Education, in which I argued broadly that Plato’s political and edu-cational system in the Republic was designed in a utilitarian spirit to secure the greatest happiness possible for the community as a whole. In 2010 it was reprinted, at more or less the same time as coincidentally I published a new book on Plato in the Continuum Library of Educational Thought. Nei-ther the word ‘utilitarian’ nor ‘happi-ness’ occurs in the index of the new volume (though ‘eudaimonia’, the Greek word conventionally translated ‘happi-ness’, is mentioned twice). I also published in 1975 Moral Philosophy for Education, which placed particular emphasis on utilitarianism as an ethical theory. In 1976 came Common Sense and the Curriculum which according to the dust-jacket blurb out-lined a “principle… for the selection of worthwhile curriculum content…derived from utilitarianism”. In 1980 came Happiness and Schooling which, it was claimed, “concludes…by sug-gesting action which could be taken in schools in order to promote hap-

piness”; in 1982 Injustice, Inequality and Ethics, which looks at a number of is-sues, including education, from a utili-tarian perspective; and in 1991 Utili-tarianism: a Contemporary Statement. Yet, despite the fact that in 2003 Nel Nod-dings published Happiness and Educa-tion and that in the last ten years there has been a lot of explicit interest in happiness in relation to schooling and education, my 2007 Introduction to Moral Philosophy and Moral Education, though it mentions utilitarianism in passing, is not written from a utilitarian perspec-tive nor does it particularly emphasise happiness. The questions that these bibli-ographical reflections raise for me are: why do I now play down utilitarianism in relation to both Plato and educa-tion? Why have I been so foolish as to fail to take advantage of the con-temporary interest in happiness and education? Have I simply changed my mind on these issues? Well, yes and no. First, while I think that I was correct to argue that Plato was trying to create a society in which all could equally find happiness, it was not

hAPPINESS, PLAtO AND EDUCAtIONSOME PERSONAL REthINKING

By Dr Robin Barrow

perhaps entirely plausible, and certain-ly not politic, to argue that he was a prototype utilitarian. In other words, on this issue I have changed my lan-guage for tactical reasons rather than changed my substantive position. It still seems to me quite clear that critics who see Plato as believing that some people are by nature superior to oth-ers tout court, and as such worthy of more consideration and ultimately more happiness than others, are sim-ply wrong. Of course he believes that different people have different talents; but it is fairly clear that he subscribes to neither a simplistic “nature” nor “nurture’ view. What we become is partly a product of, as we would say, our genetic inheritance and partly of environmental (including educational) factors. That is Plato’s view, and that is a sensible view. His aim is to take advantage of the different talents that people variously come to possess in such a way as to ensure a cohesive and co-operative society that works in the interests and to the advantage of all. Secondly, researching and writing about happiness turned out to

be very important to my educational theorising generally in an indirect and unanticipated way, because it was my introduction to the dangers and short-comings of much empirical research in the social sciences, especially edu-cation. Most academic work on hap-piness then, as still today, was empiri-cal, and, as I discovered, it was mostly vitiated by conceptual inadequacy in that, by and large, it defined happiness either in terms of self reporting or of crude behavioural signs. Thus individ-uals were judged to be happy on little more than their own assertion that they were, or on the grounds that they smiled, didn’t complain, etc. There was also a common tendency to con-fuse matters of definition with empiri-cal findings. For example, it might be claimed that “happy people have good relationships”. Well, of course they do. You wouldn’t call someone with bad relationships, which they recognized as such, happy, whatever else you did. The genuinely empirical question is: what about solitary people who don’t have any real relationships (or people who don’t recognise their relationships as being bad)? The suggestion that it has been demonstrated that they must be unhappy is very implausible. Add to these problems the astonishing tendency to confuse correlation with causation and it becomes evident that the claims of social scientists require careful scrutiny. Though I have not pursued my interest in research into happiness, I have applied the lesson I

VOX - The STudenT JOurnal Of POliTicS, ecOnOmicS and PhilOSOPhy iSSue Xiii - auTumn 2010

Individuals were judged to be happy on little more than their own assertion that they were, or on the grounds that they smiled, didn’t complain, etc.

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learnt there to a critical study of the claims of empirical research in educa-tion and sadly found a great deal of it embarrassingly wanting. (See, e.g., Giv-ing Teaching Back to Teachers.) Thirdly, there is at least one respect in which I have indeed changed my mind, and that is with regard to the relevance of happiness to education. Here we need a preliminary distinc-tion between schooling and educa-tion. I share, of course, the widespread view that ideally we would like children to be happy at school and that they should grow up to be well-adjusted and happy people. But it seems to me very dangerous to assume that edu-cation is in any sense directly about happiness. The education that mat-ters, in my view, is the understanding of the world in which we live and our place in it; and education in this sense, I would argue, is worth having for its own sake, even if the knowledge does nothing for our happiness. As a matter of fact, I think it not unreasonable to hope that, by and large, well-educated people will both be better able to con-tribute to the happiness of society and to find happiness for themselves than poorly educated people; but that does not mean that we should judge the suc-cess or failure of our education system by the extent of human happiness. Related to this is a concern that, leaving aside conceptual distinc-tions that at some point need to be drawn between, e.g., contentment, ec-stasy, self–esteem, well-being, happi-

ness, and so on, there is too great an emphasis in schooling today on self-esteem or the importance of feeling good about oneself. Of course, once again I share the widespread hope that people will feel good about themselves, but I want to add the qualification “provided they should feel good about themselves”, and in any case I want to argue that we should not judge our educational success by this criterion.

An educated person has to get things right rather than feel that he has got them right. In short, I do not share the view that the happiness of students is a primary concern in education and I no longer hold the view I once did to the effect that the school system should be more concerned with contributing to the ultimate happiness of society than with educating individuals. Fourthly, I still think that Pla-to is well worth studying in relation to education. But today I would place my emphasis firmly on the theory of Ideas or Forms, the notion of differ-ential education for different aptitudes, and the issue of moral education. The

I think it not unreasonable to hope that, by and large, well-edu-cated people will both be better able to contribute to the happiness of society and to find happiness for themselves


theory of Forms, which seems to me at one level simply the outline of the kind of conceptual analysis which is at the heart of philosophy and which is a crucial part of any coherent thinking about the world, should inform both the work of educational theorists, which it all too seldom does, and the school curriculum itself. The issue of differential education has for too long been either ignored or treated in bla-tantly ideological ways; but it is surely an issue that now needs to be thought about from the beginning, and Plato has a lot to contribute to such a de-bate. Moral education remains for us, as it was for Plato, a matter both of fascination and practical importance.

Finally, a few stray thoughts: I would today show more interest in Aristotle’s views on ‘eudaimonia’, as many are currently doing. I would stand broadly by my analysis of happiness and, in so far as I have to adhere to any particular ethical viewpoint, I would remain of a utilitarian persuasion. But here I must mention another concern I have: the tendency for philosophy, particularly in North America, to be taught in terms of schools of thought and, worse still, for academics to define themselves in terms of being, e.g.. phenomenolo-gists, Kantians, utilitarians. It seems to me that once you adopt and work within a framework you are merely do-ing a form of calculation, rather than engaging in real thinking. I would still defend the curriculum that I argued for in Common Sense and the Curriculum. It was not then and is not now a par-ticularly unusual curriculum. But it does increasingly need to be defended in this day and age.

Bibliography available online at www.voxjournal.co.uk

_____________________________Dr Robin Barrow is a professor of philosophy of education at Simon Fraser University where he specialises in epistemology and moral philosophy.

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YOU’RE A 21 YEAR OLD, JUST GRAD-UATED FROM UNIVERSITY, BUT

you are not graduating alone. You have a crippling £20,000 weight on your shoulders which needs to be paid off. You don’t know if you can ever be happier than when you were a carefree student, making the most of your gov-ernment subsidised loan. You have a choice to make: do you take a job that you are passionate about? It may not pay well, but you don’t dwell on this. There is a ‘set point’ of happiness from which, even if you deviate in the short term, you will always return to. On the other hand, do you take the highly paid graduate scheme? It doesn’t mat-ter what your absolute income is, as your happiness is only contingent on your income in relation to your fellow graduates. These two options are the fundamental conclusions, in a gradu-ate’s analogy, of the Easterlin paradox. This essay will explore which conclu-sion of the Easterlin paradox is most plausible: is directing policy towards increasing happiness pointless, due to the ‘set point’ which will inevitably dominate? Is the only happiness that income can create relative? Or must Easterlin’s analysis be pushed further to encompass more variables to com-

plete his paradox? In this paper I argue that what is missing from Easterlin’s paradox is an appreciation of social capital. I argue for cohesion between what was before a dichotomy in psy-chological and economical theory, which ends in showing the importance of social capital in people’s lives and, quantitatively speaking, their utility function. To make a qualified and quan-titative judgement on a person’s happi-ness, one cannot simply rely on stan-dard economic theory, based on utility and revealed preference data, as much as one cannot simply rely on psycho-analysis. What one needs to do is to ‘combine the techniques typically used by economists with those more com-monly used by psychologists’ (Gra-ham, 2005, p43). This new and increas-ing trend to measure welfare is not a replacement of the more traditional income-based measures of welfare, but can be used along-side them to create a complete picture of a person’s aggregate economic and social welfare. The increasing inclination towards this type of research has resulted in a fairly youthful branch of economics: The Economics of Happiness.

DOES POLICY DESIGNED tO INCREASE GDP ALSO INCREASE hAPPINESS? A StUDY USING thE EAStERLIN PARADOX

By Claire E. Sherwin


Easterlin ‘analysed the rela-tionship between real GDP per capita and self-declared happiness’ (Castri-ota, 2006, p3) in a seminal paper in 1974. He used standard measurements of GDP and set them against the an-swers to a generic question related to well-being: ‘On the whole, are you satisfied with the life you lead?’ (Tella and MacCulloch, 2005, p3). The con-clusions drawn from this paper (The Easterlin paradox) state that ‘within countries wealthier people are, on av-erage, happier than poor ones’ as well as that, ‘studies across countries and over time find very little, if any, rela-tionship between increases in per cap-ita income and average happiness lev-els’ (Graham, 2005, p7). This paradox has been corroborated by more recent statistics. Although the standard of living in the industrialized nations has been steadily increasing over recent decades, reported levels of well-being have declined over the last quarter of a century in the US and have run ap-proximately flat through time in Brit-ain (Blanchflower, Oswald, p1). These

findings can be seen supporting two main theses. The first, purported by many, states that it is not in fact absolute income which determines the happiness of people, but income rela-tive to those surrounding them. There is also the idea that there is a specific point of happiness that one always re-turns to. For example if you unexpect-edly inherit a large sum of money, or are made redundant, in time you will acclimatise to your new financial situ-ation and return to the set happiness level. Thus policy making, with the di-rect incentive to increase happiness, is futile. If we take the idea that ‘riches do bring you happiness, provided you are richer than other people’ (Layard, 1980, p737) it would naturally follow that the economists’ utility function should be adjusted. An accurate utility function would be one that included relative income, not absolute income. However, those who believe that the paradox proves a ‘set point’ of happi-ness would argue that what was truly missing from the utility function was a

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host of psychological and natural vari-ables, such as stress levels, pollution levels and working hours, that could reduce utility in a standard model. The main variables, I believe, that need to be added into a person’s utility function, are the level and the value of their social capital. Social capital is manifest in family ties, rela-tionships and friendships. Psychologi-cal research has proved that the need for social capital is an innate need which can be inferred by ‘the infant’s non-verbal demand for care and nour-ishment’ (Pugno, 2008, p8). This goes against many popular doctrines, cen-tred in seventeenth and eighteenth century thought, that had us born into isolation, and the necessity for social capital only emerged when we chanced upon societal bonds (Rousseau, 1762). However, as we are now a civilisation with strong societal bonds, we are obliged to take the necessity of psy-chological research as given, even if we don’t think these bonds are innate. The necessity for social capital then becomes fundamental to our human happiness, and thus should be factored into our utility function. This variable is positively cor-related with a higher relative income being necessary for happiness. This is because, as people’s social capital flour-ishes, their need to compete materially with their neighbours is decreased. Conversely, as social capital is in de-cline due to marriages breaking up, and so family and friendship ties breaking

down, the need for material goods in-creases. This is shown by data from Pugno’s paper, where ‘Americans who regard it as important to earn much more money than the average rose from 45% in 1975 to 60% in 1991’ and simultaneously, ‘the deterioration of family cohesion... documented by specific studies on marriages’ has also been seen (Pugno, 2008, p6). For this argument to hold true we are making the assumption that the accumulation of income does not correlate with the accumulation of social capital, which I believe to be a plausible assumption given the innate property I believe so-cial capital to stem from.

In conclusion, I believe that relative income, along with relative so-cial capital, is the most accurate mea-surement of happiness we can hope to gain. The idea of a ‘set point’ of hap-piness seems to work if you are to take individual periods of time, or even a time series up until recently. However, the data collected over the past few decades indicates a consistency, and in some areas a decline in well-being, which discredits the ‘set point’ theory, or at least necessitates that the ‘set point’ within the theory must be con-stantly changing, having accounted for

Relative income, along with rel-ative social capital, is the most ac-curate measurement of happiness we can hope to gain.


a host of different factors, one major one being social capital. The conclu-sion of the Easterlin paradox, that happiness is relative to surrounding people, seems to be more solid. How-ever, Easterlin is lacking statistics and analysis; predominantly statistics con-taining information on non-monetary capital. Therefore, we must advise our 21 year old case study to make sure that they not only aggregate an in-come that ensures their happiness, but also the social capital that may achieve the same end; and that happiness can-not be purchased, as true social capital

is accumulated through other means. Therefore, psychology and economics must combine. Policy that focuses on creating societal bonds must be used alongside policy to increase GDP if the policy aim is the increase in happi-ness.

Bibliography available online at www.voxjournal.co.uk____________________________________Claire E. Sherwin is a third year undergraduate reading Politics, Philosophy and Economics at The University of York.

hAPPINESS AND PUBLIC POLICYBy Professor Emeritus Lord Richard Layard

HAPPINESS IS NOW ON THE AGENDA, AND ABOUT TIME TOO.

But is this just a trendy fad, or should there be a permanent change in the way we think about the purposes of politics? I think there has to be a permanent change. It is not, of course, new to say that the aim of govern-ment is to enable people to lead hap-pier lives. In the eighteenth century enlightenment it was standard to believe that the best society is where the people are happiest, and the best policy is what produces the greatest

happiness. These admirable views did much to inspire the social reforms of the century that followed. But in many cases it was difficult to apply the principle because so little was known about what makes people happy. How-ever the last thirty years have seen a major scientific revolution, and we now know much more about what causes happiness – using the results of psy-chology and neuroscience. The first thing we know is that in the last fifty years average happiness has not increased at all in Britain nor in the USA – despite massive increases in

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living standards. This is because above an average income of about £10,000 per head richer societies are no happi-er than poorer societies. Richer people are of course on average happier than poorer people in the same society, but this is largely because people compare their incomes with other people. If everyone gets richer, they feel no bet-ter off. In rich societies like ours what really affects happiness is the qual-ity of personal relationships. Always top comes the quality of family life, or other close personal relationships. Then comes work – having it (if you want it) and enjoying the meaning and comradeship it can bring. And then comes relationships with friends and strangers in the street. Some societies are much hap-pier than others – and Scandinavian countries always come out near the top. This is largely because people trust each other more there than in other countries. In Britain and the US the number of people who believe that “most other people can be trusted” has halved in the last fifty years, and this reflects the growth of an individu-alism which makes personal success more important than almost anything else. These facts call for a revolu-tion in how we think about ourselves and about how the government can help us to flourish. It becomes clear that faster economic growth is not the most important objective for a soci-

ety. We should not sacrifice human relationships or peace of mind for the sake of higher living standards, which will be growing anyway.

We need a fundamental rethink of our policy priorities, which (as David Cameron has argued) would give high-er priority to family life and the way people support each other in commu-nities and at work. This debate is only just beginning. In my book Happiness: Lessons from a New Science I make a few illustrative proposals.1. The most important thing we can affect is the values which our children acquire. Schools should teach them systematically that the secret of a happy life is in giving to other people. Evidence-based programmes exist for doing this, and should become a part of our core curriculum. Topics cov-ered should also include the responsi-bilities of parenthood and the art of effective parenting.2. The least happy people in our soci-ety are people with a record of men-tal illness. Three-quarters of people with depression or hyper-anxiety re-ceive no treatment, although psycho-logical therapies exist which can cure over half of these terrible cases. Such

In rich societies like ours what re-ally affects happiness is the quality of personal relationships.

therapies should be available free on the NHS.3. Advertising makes people feel they need more and thus makes them less happy with what they have. As in Swe-den, we should ban advertising aimed at children under 12.4. We should stop apologising about taxes: they discourage us from working even harder and sacrificing further our relationships with family and friends. We should also persist with income redistribution, since an extra £1 gives more happiness to poor people than to rich. That argument also implies redis-tribution to the Third World.And so on. Our living standards are not threatened by China or India. In fact we are in a new situation for mankind where further wealth-creation is now unnecessary for survival. If we want to become still happier, we need a new strategy from the one pursued over the last fifty years – we need to put human relationships first.

This is not a dangerous form of utopianism which will lead to an over-active nanny state. One thing happiness research shows is that regu-lation as such causes irritation and un-happiness. So we should stop regulat-ing things which have minimal effects on human happiness, while in other areas the state should be more pro-ac-tive (including the support of creative leisure, sport and exercise.) Unless we find new priorities, our happiness will remain where it has been for the last fifty years. But we can do better than this. We have conquered absolute poverty and the issue now is how to improve our human relation-ships. Let the debate go forward.

Bibliography available online at www.voxjournal.co.uk_____________________________Richard Layard is the Emeritus Professor of Economics at The LSE and Founder of the Centre for Economic Performance.


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J. S. MILL’S CLASSIC LIBERAL TEXT ON LIBERTY PROVIDES A VIGOROUS

defence of freedom from the dangers of state coercion and ‘the despotism of custom’ (Mill, 1991, p78). Yet Mill is also one of the great advocates of utilitarianism, as he sets out in his other classic, Utilitarianism. In its traditional Benthamite form, utilitarianism holds that everything, besides happiness, is of mere instru-mental value. This potentially causes tension in Mill’s work, as it often ap-pears that the pursuit of happiness is obstructed by liberty, and vice versa. In this article I shall examine the extent of this problem, and, crucially, deter-mine the foundations of Mill’s liberty principle. I shall conclude by arguing that, in spite of the supposed appear-ance of undermining tensions, Mill’s arguments for liberty and utilitarian

ism can be reconciled into a coherent single body of thought. The variant of liberty Mill presents is, in Berlin’s terms, ‘nega-tive’ as it advocates freedom from constraint, either by the state or soci-ety (Berlin, 1969). He sets out his no-toriously difficult ‘harm principle’ by arguing that power can only be right-fully exercised over an individual to “prevent harm to others” (Mill, 1991, p14). What constitutes ‘harm’ shall not be considered here, but instead how uncompromising this principle is: the individual’s ‘independence is, of right, absolute.’ (Mill, 1991, p14). He goes on to say that ‘individual spontaneity is hardly recognized by the common modes of thinking, as having any in-trinsic worth’ (Mill, 1991, p63). Here he implies individuality does have in-trinsic value, contradicting the utili-tarian belief that, in his own words, ‘pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends’ (Mill, 1987, p278). Because the utilitarian believes ‘the good’ is found through maximising happiness and minimising pain, notions of liberty are only given instrumental value (i.e. to what extent

MILL, LIBERtY, AND hAPPINESSRECONCILING MILL’S ON LIBERTY wIth hIS UTILITARIANISM

By Dan Iley-Williamson

“Individual spontaneity is hardly recognized by the common modes of thinking, as having any intrinsic worth” (Mill, 1991, p63)


liberty furthers happiness). As such, it might seem that Mill is being incon-sistent, for can the apparently flexible position of utilitarianism support the rigidity of his liberty principle? He does, however, explicitly state that his foundation for liberty is utility: ‘I re-gard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions’ (Mill, 1991, p15).

Hence the question may seem like a done-deal, with Mill unequivo-cally justifying his theory on utility, but as one commentator has said of Mill’s argument: “if it is genuinely utili-tarian, [it] doesn’t work, or if it does work, then it isn’t genuinely utilitarian” (Arneson, 1997, p83). This is thought because many feel no form of utili-tarianism can uphold Mill’s highly de-manding liberty principle, for it rejects typical utilitarian policies, such as pa-ternalism. A key thinker who believes Mill abandons utilitarianism is Berlin. He argues that because Mill departs so thoroughly from the Benthamite conception of utilitarianism (where “push-pin is as good as poetry” (Mill,

1987, p174)), to call On Liberty a utili-tarian thesis would be mistaken. This is thought because, Berlin supposes, if Bentham had been offered the chance to drug humanity in a manner where ultimate contentment was found, and pain eliminated, he would have read-ily accepted it, assuming “the largest possible number of men receive last-ing happiness”, yet Mill would have determinedly refused (Berlin, 1969, pp177-178). Hence, Berlin thinks that although Mill “is officially commit-ted to the exclusive pursuit of hap-piness… his voice is most his own when he describes the glories of indi-vidual freedom” (Berlin, 1969, p178). Consequently, he argues that Mill’s utilitarianism no longer resembles its traditional meaning, thus rendering the term vacuous. Instead Mill’s high-est values are ‘individual liberty, vari-ety, and justice’ (Berlin, 1969, p181). Therefore, by this interpretation, On Liberty should not be read as a utilitar-ian essay; instead liberty and diversity are given intrinsic value. In contrast to Berlin’s inter-pretation, there are those who argue that Mill can base his principle of liberty on utilitarianism. This would make a simpler reading of On Liberty since in his Autobiography he says he never ‘wavered in the conviction that happiness is the test of all rules of conduct, and the end of life’ (Mill, 1989, p117). So, how can Mill’s heart-felt utilitarianism be reconciled with his equally emphatic demands for lib-

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erty? The answer lies in his particular form of utilitarianism. He argues for ‘utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being’ (Mill, 1991, p15), and it is this that provides the founda-tions for his liberty. This is so because Mill’s utility amounts to a form of ‘in-direct utilitarianism’ (Gray, 1996, p14) that recognises the power of liberty to advance man’s chief concerns. For his liberty principle is consistent with his utilitarianism, but it is not the hedo-nistic utility that he was indoctrinated into. Instead, Mill has a resolute pic-ture of what the ‘good life’ entails, and his utilitarianism rests on this concep-tion. The ‘good life’, in Mill’s view, is found through following the path one chooses for oneself, not giving into a simple, banal ‘quiet life’ that the ‘despotism of custom’ (Mill, 1991, p78) dictates. He believes that when the mentally engaged way of life is followed the ‘higher faculties’ are ac-tive, and the pleasure found through their working is of a better quality be-cause the active mind is better than the sedated – ‘it is better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied’ (Mill, 1987, p280-281). This explains Mill’s rejection of Bentham’s utilitarianism, for Mill distinguishes between the quality of pleasure, hence why he believes poetry is superior to push-pin – poetry, engages with the higher faculties (and consequently is

a higher pleasure), while push-pin (an early equivalent to billiards) merely en-gages with the base, simplistic facul-ties (and therefore is a lower pleasure).

With this weight given to the higher faculties, it can be seen why Mill places such importance on liberty, for it is through liberty, through the freedom to question and argue, to choose the ends of one’s life for oneself, that one’s mind is forced to fully engage, rather than being confined to the dol-drums of conformity. The tragic tale of Socrates shows that where liberty is restrained, and intellectual ques-tioning is forbidden, those that delve furthest into the ‘higher faculties’ are suppressed and bound. Because of this, the greatest pleasures can only be maximised through granting liberty, hence why Mill advocates ‘indirect utilitarianism’, not the crude hedonism of Bentham. As can now be seen, Mill’s lib-erty principle is founded on utilitarian-ism. But as Berlin noticed, yet incor-rectly defined, it is utility of a radically different form to Bentham’s. It argues that ‘experiments of living’ (Mill, 1991, p63) are necessary for man to discover the plurality of ways that best suit indi-

Utility must be found in man’s ability to flourish for himself, and to live up to his progressive potential.


thE UNhAPPINESS OF SUStAINABILItYBy Luke Smalley

BERTRAND RUSSELL ONCE ASKED WHAT THE POINT WAS OF

making everyone wealthy if the rich themselves were unhappy. Russell’s question captures a theme in con-temporary reactionary politics: that economic development and material abundance are not guarantors of hu-man happiness. Indeed, taken to its extreme, the argument claims that they are intrinsically opposed to any de-velopment of human happiness. This theme grounds itself in the politics of ‘sustainability’, a movement that seeks to halt further industrial development and reverse the process in the already developed world. Such a movement, it will be claimed, is intrinsically opposed

to human happiness, but this opposi-tion hides behind economic and scien-tific claims that are false. This article will uncover the political and moral claims behind the scientific ‘fig leaf ’ that the sustainability agenda uses to hide them. At its core, sustainability is an ideological doctrine against furthering human development. Johnathan Por-ritt, a leading advocate of ‘sustainabil-ity’, believes ‘that quantitative demand must be reduced, not expanded’ (Por-ritt, 1984). The sustainability move-ment’s avocation of reducing con-sumption habits stems from a belief about limits to ‘growth’. The ‘limits to

vidual flourishing; without liberty man is confined to a stagnant and intellec-tually sedated existence. Consequently, happiness is only truly achieved when the individual uses his ‘higher faculties’ to choose his ends, thus making liberty a necessary, although not a sufficient condition, to man leading the ‘good life’. For not only must man be given the room to develop his ‘higher facili-ties’, that is to say, he must be given lib-erty, but he must use it, and this is Mill’s great positive message – to engage ful-

ly with life, not to merely use the ‘ape-like [faculty] of imitation’(Mill, 1991, p65), but to be one’s true, and full, self.

Bibliography available online at www.voxjournal.co.uk_____________________________Dan Iley Williamson is a second year undergraduate reading Politics, Philosophy and Economics at The University of York.

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growth’ thesis has two central claims. Firstly, that continued consumption is impossible at increasing levels, be-cause of the finite productive limits of the Earth; that is, our attempts to increase our consumption habits will be curtailed, either by ourselves or by nature. Secondly, it argues that a soci-ety of reduced consumption will be a more fulfilling place than the current world we live in today. A society that lives ‘closer’ to nature, it is argued, will be more spiritually fulfilling than a life dominated by material goods. This type of argument is often backed up by ‘happiness studies’, which allege to show no correlation between the raw wealth of society and the happiness of its citizens (Layard, 2006). Oxfam ar-gues that ‘Africa should make more use of the skills of its nomadic peoples to help combat the challenges of climate change’(BBC News, 2008). Here, life-styles that are ‘close to nature’ are glo-rified for their sustainability and social values. It is claimed that the developed world should follow the example of these societies, adopting a symbiotic relationship with nature, both eco-nomically and socially, which will al-low human beings to pursue social and spiritual happiness far removed from the inhuman realm of modern indus-trial society. It is therefore argued that societal wealth does not guarantee hu-man fulfilment, and that measures of wealth such as GDP are very poor indicators of human well-being. In this sense, sustainability has two faces.

Firstly, it makes a scientific and eco-nomic claim that there are ecological limits to how much human beings can develop, and secondly it makes a moral and political claim that living ‘closer’ to nature improves human well-being.

Sustainability makes economic and sci-entific claims that target industrialism, rather than capitalism. For example, Porritt paints both capitalism and so-cialism with the same brush, deriding their ‘adherence to the belief that hu-man needs can only be met through the permanent expansion of the pro-cess of production and consumption’ (Goldsmith et al., 1986). In attacking industrialism, rather than capitalism, sustainability departs from the tradi-tional Left critique (which argues that poverty is a product of social relations governed by capitalism). It makes a new argument, that industrialism de-grades nature, and that this degrada-tion causes poverty. Such a claim is made apparent in the Environmental Justice movement in the USA, which claims that environmental degrada-tion is suffered most acutely the poor. Andrew Dobson uses the example of Hurricane Katrina, which affected poor people more than wealthy ones, not because poorer areas were affected more severely, but because people with money where more easily able to flee

Freedom is often seen as a prerequisite for human happiness...


the city. Advocates of sustainability conclude that it is the degradation of the environment (i.e. natural disasters caused by climate change) that causes human misery (Dobson, 2007, p18). Dobson seems to miss the contradiction in his argument. By ar-guing that natural disasters harm the poor more severely, he gives an ex-ample of how living ‘closer’ to nature proves detrimental to human well-be-ing. By observing that material wealth in fact allowed individuals to better deal with a natural disaster, we could argue that further industrial develop-ment, such as the construction of bet-ter levees, cheaper and more efficient transport and more resilient building materials, would have produced a so-cial good, despite its consequent envi-ronmental degradation. Sustainability simply cannot argue that industrial de-velopment, and resultant environmen-tal degradation, is a primary factor in the impoverishment of millions of human beings. Whatever arguments we may posit against the capitalist eco-nomic system (and capitalism is argu-ably a very bad way of achieving equi-table distribution of development), it cannot be denied that capitalism has achieved levels of material satisfaction in the West that those who were alive during the industrial revolution could only have dreamed of. It cannot be ar-gued that labour-saving devices such as trains, cars, centralised electricity generation and the Internet, have no use value to society, and it is simply a

fallacy to argue that economic devel-opment has run in parallel to lower liv-ing standards and declining indicators of social development, because exact-ly the opposite is the case. Because of this fact, environmentalism must posit a limit to development in the future, which brings us to the environmental-ist’s conception of economic resourc-es and the ‘limits to growth’ thesis. The starting point for thinking about ‘sustainable societies’ is the no-tion of ‘limits to growth’; that is, ‘that aspirations of ever-increasing growth and consumption cannot be fulfilled because resources are finite’ (ibid., p609). But this misconceives resources as having only a material basis, rather than a combination of both mate-rial and intellectual factors that involve both scientific and political grounding.

Our dependence on Earth’s resources is unsustainable not simply because they are materially finite. If this were the case, society’s ‘sustainable’ depen-dence on solar, wind and tidal power would also be unsustainable, because these are also materially finite. This is

It is simply a fallacy to argue that economic development has run in parallel to lower living stan-dards and declining indicators of social development...

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an argument drawn from the sustain-ability movement itself, because the movement insists that governments must invest huge amounts of capital into renewable energy development. The sustainability argument is there-fore predicated on the need for the transformation of a relationship with a material, and the continued develop-ment of technology in order to realise this. A further aspect of the ‘limits to growth’ thesis is the idea that tech-nological advancement must eventu-ally hit a brick wall. The sustainability movement possess an extreme pessi-mism about the ability of science to continually provide solutions to prob-lems generated by industrial develop-ment. But such a claim denies the abil-ity of society to make more efficient use of resources and space as techno-logical advances occur. Famines and droughts are often used as examples that food production and water pro-

vision have reached their limits, but these problems aren’t problems of substance, they are problems of tech-nology and politics. It is now widely argued that famines occurring today are a result of government misman-agement, rather than a shortage of food (Sen, 1983). Furthermore, there is a huge abundance of water on the planet, but the problem is that most of it is undrinkable. This is a problem of technology, rather than of substance (Grimond, 2010). Sustainability simul-taneously highlights problems, and for-bids our ability to solve them. This type of argument isn’t grounded in science or economics, as has been shown, but finds itself in the moral and political doctrine which lies behind the science. Sustainability, then, is not ‘common sense’, nor is it economic or scientific ‘fact’. Instead, it is part of the political and moral doctrine made by the environmental movement itself. Sustainability, by labelling in-


dustrial development as ‘bad’, attacks many of the things that actually liber-ate human beings and improve their well being. Freedom is often seen as a prerequisite for human happiness, and included within this is the idea of free-dom of movement. Developments in transportation have allowed human beings access to new opportunities, resources, and ideas. The growth of the railroad globally during the 1840s and 50s shows just what an incredible force freedom of movement can be. By claiming that such expansion of movement is ‘bad’, the sustainability movement cuts right at the heart of human freedom. Human satisfaction is no longer at the heart of social de-cision making. Instead, government policy, construction projects, global sporting events and the like must be judged on their environmental impact, rather than their ability to satisfy hu-man desires. Sustainability necessarily leads to questions of population control, because more people require more resources to consume. David Atten-borough claims he has “never seen a problem that wouldn’t be easier to solve with fewer people, or harder, and ultimately impossible, with more” (BBC News 2009). But claims such as these are intrinsically opposed to questions of human freedom. Liberal society is built upon the idea that indi-viduals are the best judges of what is in their best interest. ‘Nobody’ claims Ludwig von Mises, ‘is in a position to

decree what should make a fellow man happier’ (Mises, 1966). But population control necessarily implies that others should have a say in how individuals lead their lives. The fact that most peo-ple find the idea of population control abhorrent might explain why the sus-tainability movement uses science and economics to hide its views. Furthermore, development raises people out of poverty and al-lows them greater choice in their lives. John Locke, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1975), makes a distinction between free and reflexive behaviours. Here Locke claims action should be distinguished from ‘behav-iour’ by its intentionality. He writes that individuals have a power to choose whether to pursue certain desires over all others, with the power to suspend certain desires. He claims that this is the source of all liberty. A situation of poverty is characterised by behaviours which are unintentional. Those living in poverty are coerced into behaviours they must commit in order to survive. The human being has little choice over what her actions are to be; she must spend the vast proportion of her ex-istence scratching out a living from nature. Development liberates human beings from this natural existence, al-lowing them to produce the means of subsistence in a fraction of the time it would take if they were to rely on ‘natural processes’ to deliver them. This has a twofold effect on human happiness. Firstly, by producing a great

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abundance in the necessities of life, human beings are no longer primar-ily motivated by their impulsive de-sires. Once the longing for food, water and warmth have been satisfied, hu-man beings can make rational choices. Secondly, by reducing the amount of time needed to produce the means of subsistence, human beings unlock vast amounts of time in which to achieve their goals and ambitions. By arguing against development, the sustainabil-ity movement directly opposes raising people out of these unfree situations. In doing so, they posit an anti-human agenda, which is passed off as having scientific and economic grounding. Once it is realised that such claims are

not ‘fact’, they can be criticised as po-litical and moral claims and shown to be highly unpopular with the majority of people who value their freedom.

Bibliography available online at www.voxjournal.co.uk_____________________________Luke Smalley is a graduate student reading International Political Economy at The University of York.

IN THE TEXTS WHICH HAVE BEEN PASSED DOWN TO US AS THE

Ethica Nicomachea, Aristotle sets out to find the highest good which a hu-man being can possess. At the very beginning of his treatise, he declares that “every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim” (Aristotle, 1998, p1). The atten-

tive reader might say this isn’t a very promising start as Aristotle has seem-ingly already committed a gross logi-cal error: he has taken the idea that everything aims at some good to entail that there is one good at which all ac-tion aims. It is as if, having declared that everyone has a mother, Aristotle has then inferred that there must be someone that is the mother of every-one. Despite this shaky start, what Ar-istotle has to say about the proper ends

ARIStOtLE AND thE ENDS OF LIFEBy James Hodgson

of a human being’s life can be made coherent, and is still worthy of close attention. Never one to be deterred by these things, Aristotle continues his investigation in characteristic fashion, canvassing the general opinions of the many and the wise, and seeing which beliefs are more basic and irreducible than others. When he returns from his survey, he notes that “verbally there is very general agreement; for both the general run of men and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness, and identify living well and faring well with being happy”. How-ever, “with regard to what happiness is they differ, and the many do not give the same account as the wise” (ibid., p5). Some people insist on associating happiness with wealth; some say that happiness is synonymous with plea-sure; others claim that being happy

means attaining honours; and others still observe that one cannot be called happy without one’s health (although this only seems to register with people when they fall ill). What then can we say about the content of happiness? Simply agreeing to disagree isn’t very satis-fying, and Aristotle doesn’t take the general confusion lying down. In the course of his investigations, he notes that goods may be thought of in two ways: they are either thought of as good in themselves; or as good for achieving some purpose which is external to themselves. Therefore, a good has intrinsic value if it is want-ed for its own sake – that is, even if nothing resulted from our owning it, we would still find it desirable. Now, it seems likely that the chief good would be a good of this sort, since it wouldn’t be wanted only for the sake of some-thing else. Neither, however, would it be wanted for the sake of anything else at all – the end of all action would have to be just that. Finally, Aristotle thinks that the chief good would be self-sufficient, in the sense that noth-ing could be added to it to make it bet-ter. So far, the candidacy of hap-piness for the status of chief good seems to meet all three conditions. But we still aren’t much clearer over the form that happiness takes, or what gives it content. A clearer account might be given, says Aristotle, “if we could first ascertain the function of


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man. For just as for a flute-player, a sculptor, or any artist, and, in gener-al, for all things that have a function or activity, the good and the ‘well’ is thought to reside in the function, so would it seem to be for man, if he has a function” (ibid., ,pp12-13). This nat-uralism is probably the most puzzling aspect of Aristotle’s theory for a mod-ern audience. He appears to be saying that what is best for us depends on what it means to be human, and there-fore happiness takes the same form for everyone. While this may seem a strange idea to us, it is not very far from what we would normally accept as obvious. For example, we may say human rights exist in virtue of some-one’s status as a human being. But we could go further and say that they are rights to be human – that is, rights to a certain kind of life which it is right for a human being to live.

What Aristotle is talking about then, isn’t so far removed from our everyday moral ideas that we can’t take him seriously. He continues his in-vestigations by noting that, if humans do have a function, it would probably

relate to that which is peculiar to them. So we can exclude simple nutrition and growth, because we have that in common with plants. Likewise, we can exclude sense-perception, because we share that with animals. What is pecu-liar to humans, then, is “an active life of the element that has a rational prin-ciple; of this, one part has such a prin-ciple in the sense of being obedient to one, the other in the sense of possess-ing one and exercising thought” (ibid., p13). Therefore, what counts as best for human beings is to exercise excel-lently the faculties of reason and to or-der one’s emotions under the guidance of reason. So we have discovered what is best for human beings, where happi-ness takes the form of the exercise of reason to an excellent degree. But we are still left with our problem from the beginning: Aristotle seems to commit a logical fallacy in his investigative pro-cedures. One way to rectify this prob-lem is through an ‘inclusive’ reading of the text – that happiness as described by Aristotle is not simply another in-trinsic good, but is a third species of good. That is, happiness encompasses all those goods which are valued for their own sakes, which reason tells us are worthy of our desire. It is by their status as good for their own sakes that they form ingredients of happiness, and in this way happiness is given form. This also chimes with Aristo-tle’s criterion of self-sufficiency – hap-piness must include all those goods

What counts as best for human beings is to exercise excellently the faculties of reason and to order one’s emotions under the guidance of reason.


which are in themselves, because otherwise some other good may be added to happiness and so make it even better.

However, simply spelling out the content of happiness is not enough. We also need to attain those ‘external’ goods through which we can achieve those which are valuable for themselves. Without them, achiev-ing happiness will be either impossible or very difficult, says Aristotle. “There are some things the lack of which takes the lustre from happiness – good birth, goodly children, beauty; for the man who is very ugly in appearance

or ill-born or solitary and childless is not very likely to be happy, and per-haps a man would be still less likely if he had thoroughly bad children or had lost good children or friends by death” (ibid., p17). And we should add that these goods should be spread over a complete life, because “one swallow does not make a summer … and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy” (ibid., p14). Happiness is therefore not to be confused with momentary pleasure, or the pursuit of one’s existing desires. It is the life-long project of the fulfil-ment of our basic nature.

Bibliography available online at www.voxjournal.co.uk_____________________________James Hodgson is a graduate student reading Political Philosophy (The Idea of Toleration) at The University of York.

“One swallow does not make a summer … and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy”

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HERE IS A RIDDLE: WHAT ARE YOU IF YOU FIGHT OPPRESSION AND

still feel unhappy at the end of it? Here is the answer: a postmodernist. It seems unintuitive to suggest that unhappiness could ever result from fighting oppression, since freedom is supposed to bring about happiness. There is, however, one way in which such an outcome might occur. If the fight against oppression becomes op-pressive in itself, continued fighting will result in unhappiness. It is like an addiction that requires increasing amounts of the stimulant to satisfy. In this article, I shall be argu-ing that this is precisely the case with the last great philosophy of Western society – postmodernism – and all its adjuncts. I shall argue that postmod-ernism’s desire to see the End of His-tory has finally led to its own end, and briefly present a view of what is com-ing up next.

The Picture of PostmodernismPostmodernism is the philosophy that concentrates on the disassembly of dominant ideologies in order to achieve freedom. Like all philosophies,

postmodernism has its differing sub-varieties and different mannerisms of philosophers. However, due to the lack of space, this article shall focus on Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrilliard, and Jacques Deridda who I argue to be the foundational writers of post-modernism. Each adopts a particular niche for his philosophy: Focault’s is sexuality, Baudrilliard’s is industry, and Deridda’s is literature. However, they share a com-mon argument: Modernism has im-posed oppressive structures that need to be destroyed as quickly as possible. Structures in this context refer to conventionalized social relationships, as well as ossified belief-patterns that permeate individual, and group,

consciousness. Foucault (1965) argues that the oppression was in hetero-sexuality; Baudrilliard (1981) argues

If the fight against oppression becomes oppressive in itself, contin-ued fighting will result in unhap-piness.

POStMODERNISM: thE PAth tO LIStLESSNESSBy Clement Wee

that the oppression was in advertising, which creates a “hyper-real” simula-tion; Deridda (1966) argues that op-pression was inherent in discourse, in the idea of forcing a structure onto a discourse that is naturally without structure. They also share a common convergence: to the idea that structure itself is oppressive. Foucault (1977) argues that the enforcement of het-erosexuality extended to every corner of culture in order to preserve the power of Church and State; Baudril-liard (1981) stresses that the whole of society was “hyper-real”; Deridda (1976) famously argues that the “pho-nocentrism” of discourse is “phal-logocentric” and calls for a “project of Deconstruction” to be carried out, even in the University (Derrida, 2001). For these philosophers and, more importantly, their adherents, there is only one solution: get rid of all structures entirely. The rationale given is that structures are an arte-fact of modernism, and modernism is way past its prime. Amongst all the structures present, the most op-pressive are cultural structures called metanarratives, which seek to confine people’s perceptions of their environ-ment. Such metanarratives include re-ligious myths, the Enlightenment Cult of Reason and the Capitalist Myth of Progress (Eagleton, 1996). The aim of postmodernists is thus to demolish all metanarratives and prevent new ones from rising in their place, in order to achieve freedom and

happiness for all, including those who believe in those narratives. The differ-ence between these three philosophers is not as much in principle as in ap-proach. Foucault emphasizes political action, and is a central figure in inspir-ing the Gay Movement, whilst Bau-drilliard emphasizes changing personal psychology and Derrida emphasizes adopting a mode of cultural analysis. In the end, the three approaches meld together in one programmatic chain: change the way you think, analyze cul-ture based on your new way of think-ing, and then challenge conventions based on the results of your analysis.

The Weakness of PostmodernismAt each stage of the program, a prob-lem that demonstrates the weaknesses of postmodernism surfaces. In the first stage – changing one’s worldview - postmodernism begins by imposing an obstacle to beginning to think in the first place. At the second stage, it fails to provide a grounding for analy-sis, and at the final stage it de-fangs you totally by removing all grounding from life. In this way, one travels on a path from hope to listlessness, thus indicating the self-contradiction inher-ent in the postmodernist programme. As pointed out above, post-modernism eschews structures en-tirely. Deridda (1966) exemplifies this when he argues that culture is a field of “play”, since structure has been “ruptured”. For a postmodern-


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ist, structures themselves are results of oppression, and must be at least avoided at all costs. However, con-cepts themselves are structures, being, as they are, ordered arrangements of acquired and expected mental experi-ence , so if one were to operate totally without structures, one would not be able to use concepts. In principle, that would include even Cartesian primi-tive concepts. In effect, postmodern-ism renders thinking impossible. The fundamental precondition of being able to think is the ability to appreci-ate where you are coming from. That requires a map of some sort, and a map itself is a form of structure. Post-modernism destroys that from the outset. Ellis (1989) observes that this first difficulty is often side-stepped by postmodernists who aim to have their cake and eat it i.e. destroy structures and then use what they destroy. The

culprit for this is the notion of the discontinuous subject, an entity which alters its identity consistently. The dis-continuous subject thus lacks a “cen-tre” unlike other subjects oppressed by “centres” which comprise essential qualities. (Eagleton, 1996) As Eagleton (1996) observes wryly, however, abso-lute “de-centredness” is unsustainable in the long-run because that would lead to total loss of identity; every identity presumes a centre. It would lead to the absurd situation whereby children failed to recognize their par-ents every single week. If one chooses to ignore the problems with the first step, the sec-ond step faces a similar problem of lack of grounding. Postmodernism supplants metanarratives with micro-narratives, that is, narratives that are only applicable in particular periodic and cultural contexts. Eagleton (1996)


contends that this reduces postmod-ernism to only being able to critique postmodernists, which is of no use to postmodernism, or to anyone else for that matter. The relativist approach of postmodernism imprisons the postmodernist in the present, unable to make commentary on the past, or sketch a vision of the future, as the postmodernist narrative may only ap-ply, strictly speaking, to the current era in which the postmodernists are ascen-dant. Postmodernists are reduced to the equivalent of navel-gazing, since one can ultimately be “postmodern-ist about postmodernism” (Eagleton, 1996).

If one chooses to ignore the implications yet again, the problems of the final step, the implementation step will be plain in view. This is what Reisman (1995) identifies as a defective view of freedom. Freedom cannot ex-ist outside a structure, because a struc-ture sets up boundaries that provide individuals space to exercise their free-dom (ibid.). However, postmodernists aim to destroy structure to the core,

even just raw prioritising. As such, they fall victim to what the political writer Alan Toffler (1971) calls the “tyranny of over-choice”: overwhelmed by the number of choices which there are, having lost a means by which to se-lect the most appropriate choice. The freedom that such a dazzling array of choices has on offer is – borrowing a postmodern term – “hyper-real”; that is, illusory. The worst of it is that the choices that the postmodernist faces are choices about identity (a la the dis-continuous self). Because postmod-ernism’s vague notion of “otherness” is insufficient to generate a coherent identity for the postmodernist, the postmodernist is stuck trudging a pool of micronarratives, unable to univer-salize any one of them. In the end, all that the postmodernist is left with is a frustration indicating a freedom that should have been found but is still left wanting because of the way postmod-ernists have perceived it; deconstruc-tion has turned into an infinite regress. This is not happiness, but listlessness. The End of History is the end of life.

After PostmodernismIs there a way out of this gloomy prospect? Cultural critic Alan Kirby seems to think so. Kirby (2009) argues that society at large is gradually mov-ing beyond post-modernism. Instead, society is embracing what Kirby calls “Digi-modernism” which, in his char-

The relativist approach of post-modernism imprisons the postmod-ernist in the present, unable to make commentary on the past, or sketch a vision of the future

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acterization, is Reisman’s (1995) capi-talism charged with the steroids of the internet. He criticises the authors of Wikinomics for an excessively busi-ness-like vision of the world to come. However, in doing so, Kirby neglects to notice that both of them agree on at least one point, that “Digi-modernism” involves individuals building a new order out of the vari-ous pieces of culture postmodernism has ejected from society, a way to once again start building the Yellow Brick Road. Kirby (2009) argues that we have come full-circle: from modern-ism to post-modernism, then back to modernism.

I rather think that society is heading towards Eagleton’s (1996) idea of a union and melding between modernism and postmodernism. Such a union produces a variegated, yet uni-fied identity and such an identity is the best guarantor of freedom, and thus, our ultimate goal as humans, happi-ness.

Bibliography available online at www.voxjournal.co.uk_____________________________Clement Wee is a second year under-graduate reading Politics, Philosophy and Economics at The University of York.

Monday, 15th of November at 6.15 pm in P/X/001YorkWorks Conference brings you:

Ernst & Young TeachFirst Deloitte Hallmark

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VOX The STudenT JOurnalOf POliTicS, ecOnOmicS and PhilOSOPhy

voxjournal.co.uk

VOX - the Student Journal for Politics Economics and Philosophy is call-ing for articles to be submitted for the Spring Issue 2011, with the broad theme “Rights and Duties”.

Articles should be between 1,000 and 1,250 words in length.

If you would like to write on this theme, please e-mail your article to [email protected] by the 20th December.

You may wish to write on a topic from the list below:

• Human Rights: “Nonsense on stilts”? • Are moral imperatives categorical or hypothetical?• The moral status of non-humans (Personhood and issues in bioeth-

ics)• Taxation and redistribution: what do we owe to each other?• Are political institutions dignified institutions?• Does social choice theory leave any scope for altruism?• Could Pareto efficiency ever reflect our moral rights and duties?• ____________ (Your own idea) (Undergraduates, Graduates and Academics Welcome)

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Vox Issue XIII- The Pursuit of Happiness