Gordon Clark: Hedonism (Baker's Dictionary of Christian Ethics)

1973. In Baker's Dictionary of Christian Ethics. Carl F.H. Henry, ed. Washington D.C.: Canon Press. [Reprinted in 1988 by Baker Book House.] Hedonism

HEDONISM. See also Greek Ethics; Happiness; Pleasure; Utilitarianism. Hedonism is the theory that pleasure is the good. Egoistic hedonism plausibly restricts pleasure to the pleasure of the individual. Utilitarianism defines the good as the greatest possible amount of pleasure for all sentient beings. Psychological hedonism, which Jeremy Bentham (q.v.) inconsistently incorporated in his utilitarianism, holds that as a matter of scientific fact, pleasure is man's only motive. 

Plato mentions some Sophists who were hedonists; but the first school of hedonism were the Cyrenaics. They restricted pleasure to sense pleasures and tended to stress the most licentious. This form of hedonism has the advantage of providing a clear cut definition of pleasure.

The Epicureans, while they enjoyed eating and acknowledged the pleasure of sex, put more emphasis on peace of mind. Thus they would refrain from injustice because, even if one were not arrested by the police, there would always be that disquieting possibility. As for sex, Epicurus actually recommends celibacy (q.v.). These moral advances over the Cyrenaics are purchased by the failure to give a clear cut definition of pleasure. True, the Epicureans defined pleasure negatively as the complete absence of pain. But as Plato had earlier noted, a broad definition of pleasure allows for such different types of life that, if one of them is good, another cannot be.

Bentham's Utilitarianism suffered implicitly from the same defect; and Mill's explicitly. He distinguished between the pleasures of a man and those of a pig. But this is equivalent to denying that pleasure as pleasure is the good.

Gordon H. Clark