I. Introduction
Welfare perfectionism holds that φ is intrinsically good for x if and only if, and to the extent that, φ perfects (or is a perfection of) x's nature or certain key faculties of x.Footnote 1 Because x's nature and faculties are typically defined without reference to individual (i.e., subjective) attitudes, preferences, desires, values, and mental states of x, welfare perfectionism is taken to be an objective – as opposed to subjective – theory of well-being. This is because subjective theories ground well-being in a subject's attitudes, preferences, desires, values, or mental states, whereas objective theories ground well-being in facts that are, at least to some degree, independent of such subjective considerations.Footnote 2
There are various forms of welfare perfectionism. After all, a full theory of welfare perfectionism would require a description or definition of x's nature or faculties; determining the essence, core capacities, or central features of (for example) human nature is by itself a momentous philosophical undertaking, which engenders endless debate and disagreement. Two perfectionists with differing accounts of human nature, then, would likely have different substantive accounts of what is good for humans. Moreover, philosophers might disagree about how to characterize x in the first place. In the case of humans, one might disagree about whether the nature to be considered is human nature (i.e., the nature of a biological species), or rational nature (i.e., the nature of a rational decisionmaker), or any other alternate characterization.Footnote 3 Finally, perfectionists might disagree about how one perfects his or her nature – what actions, occasions, or things actually perfect x's nature in a way that contributes towards well-being.Footnote 4 Nevertheless, these various flavors of welfare perfectionism share the name insofar as they maintain that well-being is constituted by the perfection or fulfillment of certain potencies.
Every theory has critics; welfare perfectionism is no exception. Many philosophers find welfare perfectionism implausible because it is arguably under-inclusive. That is, it fails to count as good certain acts, events, and things that intuitively improve one's quality of life. For example, some philosophers intuit that the satisfaction of desires – at least in some circumstances – directly contributes to well-being. Likewise, philosophers intuit that the experience of pleasure – at least in certain circumstances – directly contributes to well-being. The problem for welfare perfectionism is straightforward: neither desire-satisfaction nor the experience of pleasure seems to perfect (or be perfections of) one's nature.
This, then, leaves two options for the welfare perfectionist. He can “bite the bullet” and argue that these intuitions are mistaken; that we are wrong to think that pleasure and desire-satisfaction themselves impact well-being. Alternatively, he can explain how such intuitive goods – despite their apparent incompatibility with welfare perfectionism – can nevertheless directly contribute to well-being. In this article, I advance the latter approach. In particular, I argue that at least for some perfectionists – and specifically for Thomas Aquinas – desire-satisfaction and pleasure both contribute to well-being, even within welfare perfectionism. Whatever other objections people may have to the philosophy of Aquinas, one cannot argue that his perfectionistic theory of well-being neglects the intuitive importance of desire-satisfaction and pleasure.
A brief roadmap. In the first section, I will present the arguments made against welfare perfectionism by its critics, in particular those who believe that perfectionism cannot accommodate our intuition that certain elements of experience – such as pleasure or satisfaction – make our lives better. I will then briefly describe two leading perfectionist theories, so we can see why such theories do in fact seem to exclude desire-satisfaction and pleasure from the conversation about what's good for us. I will then go on to explain why certain forms of perfectionism need not reject the importance of desire and pleasure. To do this, I will sketch out – in fairly general terms – certain aspects of Aquinas’ philosophy. His account of human well-being provides a historical example of a perfectionist theory that affirms the importance of desire and pleasure. We end with the conclusion that, regardless of the substantive merits of the Thomistic approach, welfare perfectionism is perfectly consistent with the intuition that satisfied desires and pleasure tend to make our lives go better.
II. Critiques of welfare perfectionism
This, then, sets up a simple critique of perfectionism. In our daily lives, we often assume that pleasure is, all things being equal, better than pain. We assume that a life in which no desires are satisfied is missing out on something. The importance of satisfying our desires and having a pleasant go of life is straightforward and intuitive. Thus the critique: welfare perfectionism, it seems, cannot accommodate the intuitive importance of desire-satisfaction or pleasure. The life of practical or theoretical excellence – as Aristotle would have it – and the life of rational perfection – as Kant would have it – prioritizes reason over the will, and virtuous conduct over pleasure-seeking. If the only intrinsic good is (say) rational excellence, then the satisfaction of desires or the experience of pleasure make no difference in how good one's life is. The result would be a strange conception of welfare – one completely detached from subjective experience, pleasures, attitudes, preferences, desires, and values. Perfectionism, therefore, does not give us a plausible account of well-being.Footnote 5
This argument has been framed in various ways. L. W. Sumner argues that perfectionist theories are not plausible theories of well-being because they fail to take into consideration an agent's evaluative perspective in determining what is good for him.Footnote 6 Sumner claims that, because perfectionism fails to take into account an individual's perspective, it fails at a conceptual level. I take this to be an extremely strong position – most philosophers, I think, do not assume perfectionism fails at the conceptual level. Nevertheless, perfectionist theories of well-being are said to “deny the influence of our desires.”Footnote 7 And philosophers committed to the importance of desire within welfare theories might therefore be turned off by perfectionism. Thus the challenge: can perfectionism recognize the necessity of desire-satisfaction within the good life?
A second challenge concerns the role of pleasure within the good life. Richard Arneson argues that perfectionism “denies value to much that seems worthwhile.”Footnote 8 For example, he points to our intuition that certain “cheap thrills” seem to make our lives go better. As Arneson explains, cheap thrills are
activities that provide pleasure and excitement without any significant effort or sacrifice on the part of the agent and also without the exercise or development of any of the agent's significant talents. Cheap thrills are pleasures with no redeeming social value beyond their pleasantness.Footnote 9
Arneson goes on to say:
I take it that the pleasures of cheap thrills will not register at all on a perfectionist measure of the prudential value of people's lives, but I would think that if these pleasures were to disappear without replacement, the world would be immensely worse and most human lives significantly blighted.Footnote 10
We might call this the cheap-thrills challenge: can perfectionism affirm the intrinsic goodness of a broad class of lesser, minor goods unassociated with effort, sacrifice, or talent? Can perfectionism recognize the intrinsic value of “cheap thrills”?
I believe that both questions can be answered in the affirmative. A perfectionistic account of well-being can accommodate simple pleasures and “cheap thrills” – and it can do so without devolving into an objective-list theory.Footnote 11 While several of the more popular perfectionist theories of welfare do deny the importance of desire and pleasure, the theory of Thomas Aquinas, which I will briefly outline in the second half of this article, does not. And this shows, if I am successful, that perfectionism as such need not deny the importance of desire-satisfaction and pleasure.
III. Leading theories of welfare perfectionism
Two of the leading welfare perfectionists, Thomas Hurka and David Brink, do indeed suggest that desire and pleasure are largely irrelevant to well-being – or at least, can only play an accidental or instrumental role. The argument that perfectionism counter-intuitively neglects such presumably important things as pleasure and desire-satisfaction, then, may be well-grounded when applied to their theories. And, as mentioned previously, such arguments are intuitive. All things being equal, we often think, a more pleasant human life is preferable to a less pleasant one; a life in which more desires are satisfied is likely better than one without such satisfactions.Footnote 12 Neither Hurka nor Brink take this to be a compelling objection against their approaches – they simply deny that pleasure or desire-satisfaction plays a meaningful role in the quality of one's life. But this is not a necessary consequence of perfectionism. Rather, perfectionism can easily accept the proposition that satisfaction and pleasure play meaningful roles in the good life.
However, it may nevertheless still be important to explain why perfectionists such as Hurka and Brink – as well as other perfectionists with similar theories – do not find pleasure or desire-satisfaction important to well-being. In this section, I will present a brief sketch of their respective positions, presenting also their reasoning behind why they reject pleasure and desire as important.
A. Thomas Hurka and the Aristotelian approach
In the opening pages of his 1993 book Perfectionism, Thomas Hurka presents the core of his theory of perfectionism:
Certain properties, [perfectionism] says, constitute human nature or are definitive of humanity – they make humans humans. The good life, it then says, develops these properties to a high degree or realizes what is central to human nature.Footnote 13
For Hurka, this is the distinguishing feature of perfectionism. Various perfectionistic philosophers – including Plato, Aristotle, Marx, Kant and others – may disagree with one another about what properties actually constitute or define human nature, but they nonetheless agree that such properties are central to morality or well-being.
The relevant properties are those essential to human nature – that is, only those properties that humans possess necessarily.Footnote 14 This is, at least for Hurka, one of the central selling points of his theory – that perfectionism calls us to develop that which is most fundamental to us as humans. Hurka readily adopts a broadly Aristotelian view of human nature which thereby informs his understanding of the human good: “physical perfection, which develops our physical nature, and theoretical and practical perfection, which develop theoretical and practical rationality.”Footnote 15
This results in a rather constrained view of the good; any purported good must somehow instantiate physical excellence or develop human nature as an exercise of “sophisticated rationality.”Footnote 16 With this in mind, it is rather easy to see why desire-satisfaction or pleasure count for nothing when it comes to well-being. As Hurka explicitly states: “[w]hatever some philosophers have claimed, our intuitions recognize that mere pleasure is not a serious value.”Footnote 17 Moreover, “perfectionism does not find intrinsic value in pleasure, not even pleasure in what is good, nor does it find intrinsic disvalue in pain.”Footnote 18 Pleasure, he argues, is a purely passive phenomenon, whereas in perfectionism, “the good is largely active.”Footnote 19 Insofar as pleasure is simply something that happens to an agent, rather than something that the agent does, pleasure does not contribute to someone's perfection.
This position, I should point out, is not merely a consequence of Hurka's denial that he is engaging in welfare theory. The account of human perfection that he gives does not (obviously) hinge on whether he is employing it within a theory of morality or of well-being. Pleasure is passive, says Hurka, and therefore it does not play a role in human perfection – regardless of whether human perfection is considered in light of morality or prudential value.
At the same time, Hurka's Aristotelian perfectionism is still able to accommodate a broad range of possible activities. For example, he argues that using one's rationality to further the good of other people is itself intrinsically good – this allows him to say that, for example, love is a good thing; or at least that “the active pursuit of others’ perfection” is intrinsically good.Footnote 20 So relationships of love – which are often characterized by desire and pleasure – can still be important within Hurka's framework. It is simply that what is valuable about such relationships is that they require the use and development of practical rationality. After all, coordinating efforts with other people (including in situations that deal with the aspirations, intimacies, and vulnerabilities of others) would itself be an exercise in practical rationality and could thereby be counted as intrinsically valuable. Pleasure and desire might then play an instrumental role in these relationships – that we may be more inclined to make a greater effort in our relationships insofar as we desire the good of the other person, or insofar as we enjoy their company and success.Footnote 21
Nevertheless, the point remains: satisfaction and pleasure do not contribute to Hurka's account of human perfection. Hurka acknowledges that perhaps some theory could be created that recognizes both perfection and satisfaction as goods; this kind of “hybrid” or “pluralistic” theory is of course quite possible. He says:
My claim is not that satisfaction has no value. Pure perfectionism makes this claim, but there is also the possibility of a pluralist theory that weighs perfectionist ideas against others about, for example, pleasure or desire-fulfillment. Such a theory can combine these ideas in different ways. It can treat satisfaction as simply another value alongside perfection, or it can say that satisfaction has value only, or has the most value, when it is satisfaction in perfection, for example, pleasure in scientific research.Footnote 22
Such hybrid or pluralistic accounts will be discussed below. But it seems that any theory which accepts the importance of satisfaction or pleasure, at least according to Hurka, cannot be a pure perfectionistic theory – it must be some other kind of theory (i.e., an objective-list theory).
There is tension between this claim – that counting desire and pleasure as important is incompatible with pure perfectionism – and the claim that historically perfectionist accounts have adopted views of desire that are supposed to fit within a perfectionist framework. For example, Hurka mentions that philosophers like Aquinas say that humans have certain natural desires, quoting Aquinas’ passage that reads:
Each thing is inclined naturally to an operation that is suitable to it according to its form: thus fire is inclined to give heat. Wherefore, since the rational soul is the proper form of man, there is in every man an inclination to act according to reason.Footnote 23
Hurka likewise acknowledges that pleasure has been invoked as an important concept within some accounts of perfectionism.Footnote 24 But according to Hurka, such invocations of pleasure and desire “can only be accretions to perfectionism.”Footnote 25 They obscure the real working of the theory and can cause confusion. Furthermore, Hurka believes it to simply be false that humans have natural inclinations towards reason and perfection, and that even if humans do typically enjoy their perfections (and perfecting activities) this is not always the case. Perfectionism would be best off if it were to reject such a view.Footnote 26 Such accretions to perfectionism, Hurka asserts, “divert attention from what is most important in perfectionism and invite needless objections.”Footnote 27 Hurka describes, instead, a “non-teleological” form of perfectionism – one in which natural inclinations, natural desires, and natural ends play no real role in well-being and perfection.Footnote 28
Thus we see no indication from Hurka that desire-satisfaction or pleasure – in themselves – have any place in human perfection. Rather, he seems to believe that insistence upon their importance is either evidence of a non-perfectionist theory or an unnecessary and unhelpful accretion to perfectionism. And while it's true that an insistence upon the importance of desire-satisfaction and pleasure is unnecessary for perfectionism, I believe it renders perfectionism more intuitively plausible. As I will argue, Aquinas’ view on pleasure and desire allows the Thomistic approach to withstand the objections raised above.
B. Brink's approach
Another of the leading theories of perfectionism is offered by David Brink, who channels Immanuel Kant and T. H. Green in his approach. Brink is wary of desire-based approaches to well-being, as he believes they lack the normative authority that prudential value ought to have. He instead prefers objectivism to subjectivism: “one might understand a person's good in objective terms as consisting, for example, in the perfection of one's essential (e.g., rational or deliberative) capacities or in some list of disparate objective goods (e.g., knowledge, beauty, achievement, friendship, or equality).”Footnote 29 Of these two types of objectivist approaches, Brink prefers the first. He provides a few reasons. First, he points out that the second option (i.e., the objective-list theory) “may seem the only way to capture the variety of intrinsic goods.” The problem, however, is that “if it is a mere list of goods, with no unifying strands, it begins to look like a disorganized heap of goods.”Footnote 30 Moreover, he suggests that the objective-list account suffers from the same problem as does desire-satisfaction: it does not adequately account for well-being's supposed normative authority, because the objective list theory cannot explain “why we should maintain our concern for items on the list if we already care about them and why we should care about items on the list if we do not yet.”Footnote 31
He avoids this “heap of goods” problem by adopting the second objectivist approach. He adopts a kind of perfectionism which “identifies a person's good with the perfection of her nature and, in particular, with the development of her deliberative competence and the exercise of her capacities for practical deliberation.”Footnote 32 Brink states the doctrine of perfectionism simply: “Perfectionists identify the good with perfecting one's nature.”Footnote 33 As a general rule, “perfectionist ideals often prize creative achievements that exercise the agent's rational capacities in some way and condemn shallow and undemanding lives.”Footnote 34
A key difference between Brink's approach and Hurka's Aristotelianism is how they identify the relevant nature that is to be perfected. Hurka argues that it is human nature that ought to be perfected, keeping in mind that a human is a rational – but also biological – organism. Brink, on the other hand, focuses primarily on nature as rational agents; he grounds the standards of perfection not in contingent facts about our biological and psychological makeup, but in the nature of rational agency itself.Footnote 35
Brink finds this approach appealing because it preserves the “resonance condition” – that is, that the good resonate with an individual for whom it is good – “without resort to problematic commitment to desire-dependence.”Footnote 36 The fact that a creature has a certain biological makeup provides no claim of normative authority upon that creature, nor does the mere fact that the creature has a particular desire for something or other. Instead, the demands of practical reason generate both (1) normative authority and (2) resonance, insofar as we are rational creatures engaged in exercising our rationality. We cannot escape the demands of rationality, and rationality cannot fail to resonate with a rational creature (with any intent on exercising rationality). But the same cannot be said of biological essence; while we cannot escape our biological natures, we might not treat the imperatives of biological existence – reproduction, health, digestion, etc. – as normative, and we may decide to forgo all of them completely.
Unlike philosophers within the Humean tradition, Brink does not see practical reason as simply an exercise in efficiently obtaining objects of desire. If practical reason does indeed have normative authority, practical reason must be more than the mere exercise of instrumental rationality. According to Brink, desire has no “per se authority,” and as such, desire cannot ground the normativity of practical reason.Footnote 37 One following this route can similarly assume that pleasure likewise has no per se authority, and does not factor into an analysis of whether someone is exhibiting excellence in practical reason. Reasons, and not mere desire or pleasure, are and ought to be the starting point for practical reason. The ultimate upshot is that, under Brink's theory, pleasure and desire-satisfaction are of little to no import for well-being. Because practical rationality is the sole determiner of one's well-being, and because pleasure and desire are only – at most – accidentally related to rationality, Brink's perfectionism fails to accommodate the intuitive goodness of both pleasure and desire satisfaction.
C. Modifications and hybrid theories
Someone therefore attracted to the idea that perfection is prudentially valuable must either accept the fact that certain intuitive goods like pleasure and desire-satisfaction are not, in fact, goods, or he must find a theory that counts perfection as good without neglecting the goodness of pleasure and satisfaction. For those who prefer the second option, the most obvious tactic would be to adopt instead an “objective list” theory that gives perfection a prominent place on the list of objective goods.Footnote 38 This, one might think, provides the best of both worlds. We can still count perfection as good, but we can also call things like pleasure and desire-satisfaction good as well.
Many contemporary philosophers have put forward various hybrid approaches, including William Lauinger and Robert Adams, both of whom add certain “desire-fulfillment” or “enjoyment” conditions onto objectivist theories.Footnote 39 Fred Feldman has entertained modified forms of hedonism that take into account the “worthiness” of certain pleasures.Footnote 40 Antti Kauppinen proposes a hybrid form of perfectionism that takes into account the “shape of a life.”Footnote 41 The basic idea that these theories share is that straightforward perfectionism is not enough to account for the intuitive goodness of desire-fulfillment, pleasure, or other activities not obviously geared towards self-perfection.
I find much to like in these proposals, because they do point to shortcomings in some of the more popular perfectionistic theories within the literature. Nevertheless, none of these hybrid accounts explains why the additional conditions required for intrinsic goodness – for example, desire-fulfillment, pleasure, shape of life – should count as intrinsically good for us. In most cases, they appeal to our intuitions, but do not provide any account of how these hybrid features connect with some notion of perfection or human nature. As such, the hybrid theories lack the explanatory unity that perfectionism is supposed to provide. And one of perfectionism's chief strengths is its explanatory unity: that the perfection of something just is what it means to be good for it.
So whatever the merit of such theories may be, they are not perfectionist theories. But I believe that a perfectionist theory can indeed recognize the importance of both desire-satisfaction and pleasure. And indeed, I believe Thomas Aquinas has already laid out such a position; in the remaining pages, I will sketch out an interpretation of Aquinas’ theory such that desire-satisfaction and pleasure can indeed be understood to be intrinsically good.
IV. A way forward: Thomistic perfectionism
We can thus see the problem for perfectionism. Insofar as pleasure and desire-satisfaction are (intuitively) intrinsically good for our well-being, perfectionism – as described above – remains an implausible theory. To be sure, this does not prevent perfectionists from continuing to defend the theory, arguing (for example) that desire-satisfaction and pleasure are not all they're cracked up to be. Nonetheless, if perfectionism is to find any wider appeal, there must be some way to account for the goodness of desire-satisfaction and pleasure – or at least some way to account for the intuition that they are good.
The perfectionist could, of course, argue that the satisfaction of certain desires would indeed be good for someone. For example, if one desired increased knowledge, or health, or practical wisdom, the perfectionist would happily admit that the attainment of such goods would benefit that person. But this is not sufficient to dispel the critiques of perfectionism. After all, it seems that the attainment of such goods is not good by virtue of the subject's desires, but because such things are good in themselves. Such a modest admission on the part of the perfectionist would not make his theory any more accommodating of desire-satisfaction or pleasure; after all, the satisfaction of many other desires (e.g., immoral or frivolous desires) would not contribute to that person's well-being.
What the perfectionist needs, then, is a way to incorporate the satisfaction of desire and the attainment of pleasure into the description of perfection itself. That is, unlike Adams, Lauinger, Feldman, and others, the perfectionist must not simply add a pleasure or desire requirement to an objectivist theory of well-being. Rather, pleasure and desire satisfaction must be examples of, essential to, or – at very least – proper accidents of, perfection itself. Under such a view, it cannot be objected that pleasure and satisfaction are not incorporated into the good – because they will be.
A. Aquinas’ mechanics of desire
Ultimately, the goal of this argument is to show that desire and pleasure can be understood in terms of human perfection. And I believe that the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas does just that. However, it should be noted from the outset that Aquinas does not think that we can reach full perfection in this life.Footnote 42 As such, any perfection that we talk about as attainable in this life – which is the primary focus of this article – is only “perfection” in an analogical sense. They are relative perfections; they do not constitute perfection in the fullest sense of the term. I do not take this to be a major difficulty for Aquinas’ view, as I presume that most perfectionists share the view that we cannot actually achieve full human perfection in this life, and yet some things are indeed intrinsically good for us.
We should begin by examining Aquinas’ understanding of desire. Humans have various appetitive faculties – that is, certain aspects of our psychology draw us towards certain things.Footnote 43 The things towards which we are drawn are the objects of desire. For Aquinas, our appetitive faculties are drawn to these objects of desire because those objects appear (in some way or another) good to us.Footnote 44 And while certain interpretations of this doctrine are controversial, it need not be so in this context. Aquinas does not mean that everything is desired because we believe it to be good – an object of desire may strike our sub-rational sensitive faculties as good, contrary to our better judgment.Footnote 45
An appetite is an inclination towards something – to some end or object proper to the appetitive faculty.Footnote 46 Upon obtaining this end, the appetite is satisfied – the movement from desire to satisfaction is now complete. It is in this sense that the object of desire, as obtained by the agent, “perfects” or “completes” the appetite. The attainment of the object of desire is thus perfective of the desiring faculty. As one Thomistic scholar put it: “goodness is understood in terms of desirability [and] desirability is understood in terms of completion.”Footnote 47
Given the framework of Aquinas’ perfectionism, it is those inclinations that we have by virtue of human nature that direct us towards the objects and ends that fulfill us. Following Cicero, Aquinas argues that the “natural inclinations” or “natural appetites” of humans incline us towards the constitutive components of human happiness.Footnote 48 The constitutive components of human happiness are grounded in our nature as human beings; certain things (or families of things) categorically “perfect” or “complete” these natural appetites. For example, humans – by their animal nature – have an intrinsic desire for health and its components.Footnote 49 By their rational nature, humans have an intrinsic desire for knowledge.Footnote 50 These goods “perfect” aspects of our human nature – the body and mind, respectively. And it is precisely for this reason that we are inclined towards them.Footnote 51 Perfection, for Aquinas, is not a matter of achieving certain goals that could potentially be alienating for the agent; it is a matter of satisfying the deepest desires of the individual according to the kind of thing he or she is. And as each constituent component of happiness – health, virtue, friendship, knowledge, etc. – is the fulfillment of these natural desires, they are “perfections” that ought to be sought.
Such an approach differs from objective-list theories insofar as it makes a claim about why certain things, when obtained, are good. It is not merely a brute fact that certain things are good for us (as the objective-list theorist maintains); rather, things are good for us because they are the proper objects of our natural inclinations.Footnote 52 Such things perfect our faculties (this is why we tend to desire them), and it is therefore good for us when our desires for them are satisfied. We would be worse off – less perfect – if we lacked such goods in our lives, and thus the satisfaction of our desires for such things is a necessary condition for perfection.Footnote 53
This raises the following objection: doesn't this describe an accidental relationship between desire-satisfaction and perfection? In other words – what makes something contribute to someone's well-being? A traditional perfectionist might say that natural inclinations might be useful epistemic or motivational guides for the agent discerning his good, but ultimately well-being is constituted by objective perfectionist goods regardless of his inclinations. If this is my position, then what new insight am I really offering, and how does desire-satisfaction actually play a role in human well-being? A hybrid theorist, on the other hand, might find something an aspect of well-being if (and only if and because) it is an objective-perfectionist good that is actually desired.Footnote 54 And yet I've denied this approach insofar as I'm offering an alternative to hybrid theories. Finally, if I focus purely on inclinations, ignoring the importance of objective goodness or perfectionism, how is this a perfectionist theory (much less an interpretation of Aquinas)? Just what, a skeptic might ask, are the conditions under which something is good for someone?
Let me respond by taking a step back. We are inclined by our human nature (i.e., by our natural inclinations) towards certain things because they are the kinds of things that (by virtue of human nature) perfect or fulfill us (or at least our natural inclinations).Footnote 55 It is a neat circle – one that I do not find terribly problematic, given Aquinas’ belief that a provident Creator has created human nature such that it is naturally inclined towards that which fulfills it.Footnote 56 When understood under the aspect of goodness, something is good because it is desirable (i.e., as the object of our natural inclinations), but when understood under the aspect of being, something is good insofar as it is a fullness-of-being or actuality. When explaining why something is good (under the aspect of goodness), the explanation will need to say something about desire. The upshot: things can be good for people, even within a traditional perfectionist theory of welfare, because they are the objects of our desires – specifically, our natural inclinations.
Because the objects of our natural inclinations and the objective perfectionist goods are extensionally the same, it would be odd to say that well-being is constituted by objective perfectionist goods regardless of one's natural inclinations; nor can we say that well-being is constituted by the object of one's natural inclinations regardless of what objectively fulfills our nature. But the relationship between the objects of our natural inclinations and objective perfectionist goods goes beyond mere extensional identity. The essence of goodness is its desirability; that is, what makes something “good” is the fact that it perfects or completes some inclination.Footnote 57 And insofar as we have our natural inclinations by virtue of our formal cause (i.e., our nature), the objects of our natural inclinations are, consequently, objective perfectionist goods.Footnote 58 Thus I am not claiming that the objects of our natural inclinations (or the realization of them), along with some other requirement, constitute an aspect of human well-being. I am rather arguing that those objects of our natural inclinations (or the realization of them) constitute aspects of human well-being, full stop.Footnote 59 But the theory I am putting forward is nonetheless objective and perfectionistic, so long as we understand the metaphysics and meta-ethics that undergird it.Footnote 60 I recognize, of course, that contemporary analytic moral philosophers may be wary of certain metaphysical commitments, perhaps especially those found in the work of a medieval Catholic Aristotelian. But the point is not to convince the readers of the merits of Thomism in general, or even my take on Aquinas’ approach to perfection – rather, I simply aim to show that there is nothing in principle preventing perfectionistic theories from acknowledging the importance of desire-satisfaction.
Given Aquinas’ theory of human nature and perfectionism, we might easily see how things like vitality, family harmony, strong relationships, and philosophical knowledge might fulfill our natural inclinations. But this does not seem to account for the intuitive goodness of many other (perhaps “lesser”) things – a glass of beer, thirty minutes of peace and quiet, a trip to the amusement park, and the like. Even if Aquinas’ perfectionism recognizes the importance of desire-satisfaction in some contexts, the scope of this recognition seems rather limited.
There are two options. Someone defending Thomistic perfectionism might simply deny the intrinsic goodness of these lesser purported goods. If such things – a glass of beer, some peace and quiet, and amusement-park trips (pick your example) – are in fact valuable, they are only instrumentally so. Perhaps they give us an opportunity to recharge, to relax, and to energize ourselves so that we can then pursue intrinsic goods. But the Thomist cannot always rely on this option if he is to avoid the charge that perfectionism cannot acknowledge the goodness of “cheap thrills” and other lesser pleasures and (purported) goods. The other option is therefore to provide an explanation of how, precisely, such lesser goods and cheap thrills can contribute to our well-being within a perfectionist theory. That is, one must show that the purported goods somehow fit into a perfectionist framework – and here I gesture at how this might be accomplished given the framework outlined above.
We should recall that perfectionist philosophers often disagree about what kinds of objects or activities perfect the kinds of beings that we are. There's a whole host of possible things that could be plausibly argued perfect or fulfill us or our natural inclinations: life, vitality, food, drink, knowledge, play, beauty, friendship, practical reason, religion, leisure, marriage, and so on.Footnote 61 After all, such things are generally not sought for the sake of anything else. Moreover, most humans appear to share an inclination for such goods. This gives us at least prima facie grounds for believing that such things are, in fact, fulfilling and perfective of us.Footnote 62 So the goal would be to show how any purported lesser good or cheap thrill – the glass of beer, the peace and quiet, the amusement-park visit – somehow instantiates some object of our natural inclinations.
This, it seems to me, provides great flexibility to the perfectionist in accommodating a broad range of possible (though minor) intrinsic goods. If something can be counted as leisurely activity intelligibly done for its own sake, we can plausibly count it as an instance of intrinsic value. Likewise, all the actions that we undertake for the sake of friends or sociability – even if it's just a matter of getting a few drinks, going to the amusement park, or playing parchisi. A whole host of objects and activities could therefore be counted as intrinsically good under a particular theory of perfectionism.
This at least makes some headway in showing that perfectionism needn't deny the intrinsic goodness of many (or most) purported “lesser goods.” If a plausible perfectionist theory claims that “leisure” or “play” are proper objects of our natural inclinations, and a lesser good can fit under that rubric, then clearly perfectionism need not deny its intrinsic goodness.
Nonetheless, one might continue to press the issue. What if there's some purported lesser good that can't be interpreted as instantiating some proper object of a natural inclination? Arneson, recall, describes cheap thrills as those activities that provide no value beyond their pleasantness.Footnote 63 So even if we have partially addressed his concern – after all, the theory outlined above does not require effort, sacrifice, or significant talent for something to count as good – Arneson might insist that there still are intuitive goods that slip through the cracks of even this form of perfectionism.
The perfectionist thus has two options. First, he could bite the bullet and simply deny that there are any such intrinsic goods that don't fit under the “natural inclination” rubric. Second, he might provide a theory of human nature and/or of pleasure such that pleasure counts as a perfective good – at least to a certain degree.Footnote 64 In what follows, I will sketch out how the Thomistic framework allows for the second option.
B. Pleasure as perfection
Aquinas does not deny the goodness of pleasure. In fact, he considers pleasure to be good for its own sake. As a perfectionist, then, Aquinas must explain how pleasure is perfective. The starting point is Aristotle's account of pleasure, whereby pleasure is the “natural consequence of any operation perfect in its kind.”Footnote 65 Pleasure, under this account, is a property (in the Aristotelian sense of “proper accident”) of perfection.Footnote 66 A property – even a proper accident – need not always be present. After all, a three-legged dog is still a dog, even if four-leggedness is a property of dog-ness. It is in this sense that “pleasure does not constitute man's happiness, but is something added to it.”Footnote 67
The non-essential nature of pleasure does not negate its intrinsic goodness. Pleasure is “good simply, is good in itself.”Footnote 68 Of course, Aquinas acknowledges that certain circumstances may make it so that experiencing pleasure might be all-things-considered bad, morally dangerous, or simply “unsuitable.”Footnote 69 Nonetheless, he takes the position that, on top of the realization of some perceived good – that is, some perceived perfection or fulfillment – “there is added another good, which is pleasure.”Footnote 70 This is because pleasure itself is an additional kind of perfection or fulfillment. Pleasure is how we subjectively experience the completion of an operation, movement, or inclination when recognized or perceived as such.Footnote 71 It is “the emotional response to a present [perceived] good,” which itself “perfects” the activity, operation, or inclination.Footnote 72 In other words, “pleasure perfects activity by way of final cause.”Footnote 73 It is the subjective, experienced end towards which an inclination, operation, or activity is directed.
The result is an account of pleasure that treats pleasure as a non-instrumental good. And while its goodness is derivative of (perceived) objective goodness, it does not follow that pleasure does not intrinsically improve human well-being.Footnote 74 Aquinas, therefore, can maintain his perfectionist theory while claiming that “pain attacks the general well-being of the organism, whereas pleasure merely increases that well-being.”Footnote 75 Experiencing pleasure may not always be morally good, nor will it always yield a net improvement in one's well-being (since one might take pleasure in harmful things, and since one's moral rectitude is arguably part of one's well-being). As one scholar notes:
Inasmuch as pleasure is an actuality or perfection, it is obviously good in the being of nature; but it is not immediately apparent as to whether all pleasure is morally good, that is, in conformity with reason . . . It will derive its [moral] goodness or badness from the activity [which] it completes.Footnote 76
Pleasure may be intrinsically good – but it is not the good.Footnote 77 Thus the Thomist can indeed affirm, with Arneson, that if pleasure did not count as intrinsically good, “the world would be immensely worse and most human lives significantly blighted.”Footnote 78 Thus the Thomistic approach to perfectionism can accommodate the claim that, all things being equal, a pleasant life is better than an unpleasant one.
So how might Thomistic perfectionism take on Arenson's “cheap thrills”? Even if that cheap thrill does not instantiate some proper object of a natural inclination, the pleasure that the cheap thrill produces is nonetheless intrinsically good. Moreover, the pleasure is good precisely because it is a kind of perfection: it is the subjective experience of the objective completion or fulfillment of some activity, operation, or inclination. And again, none of this suggests that an instance of pleasure experienced in a “cheap thrill” ought to be pursued in any given situation – after all, doing so might be (at least in some cases) morally suspect or all-things-considered prudentially bad. Some substantive theory of practical reasonability or morality would govern whether someone ought (all things considered) to pursue a particular cheap thrill, but the cheap thrill (or at least the pleasure gained from it) would nonetheless still be good for the agent.
V. Conclusion
The conclusion, then, is that perfectionism can indeed affirm the importance of desire-satisfaction and pleasure. The perfectionist may consistently hold that desire-satisfaction is a necessary condition of perfection. To be perfect is to be without want, and our deepest wants, which would result in the most satisfaction, are for those objective goods which perfect our faculties. When we are morally, spiritually, and physically healthy, we experience the enjoyment of those goods – and this enjoyment is, like the rosy glow of youth, a property, proper but non-essential to the good it attends that makes our lives better. After all, pleasure is the subjective experience of the perfection of a faculty's operation.
Perfectionism, thus, can rebut one of the primary attacks against it: it does not deny the importance of desire-satisfaction and pleasure within the good life. In fact, it can positively affirm their goodness – within certain limits. Pleasure is not the good – nor is any created or temporary object that gives satisfaction the good. But it does not follow from this that pleasure and desire-satisfaction are unimportant. The goodness of pleasure is perfectly consistent with the claim that human perfection (in full) does not consist in pleasure or any other created good. Aquinas recapitulates Augustine's famous dictum about the restless human heart:
For man to rest content [an effect of perfection] with any created good is not possible, for he can be happy only with complete good which satisfies his desire altogether [i.e., which perfects him]: he would not have reached his ultimate end were there something still remaining to be desired.Footnote 79
Far from neglecting the importance of desire, Aquinas ensures that desire plays a key role in his account of human perfection. The goods that partially or temporarily give rest to the inclinations of the soul are indeed perfective to the extent that they do satisfy our longing; but insofar as they fail to satisfy our highest longing (according to Aquinas, for the fullness of Truth and Goodness, the proper objects of our reason and will, respectively), our pursuit of such lesser goods cannot bring us the fullness of perfection. And, according to Christian doctrine, grace perfects nature; any defect or imperfection in one's life (for surely there will be many) can be overcome by the superabundance of God's grace; this is why it is consistent for someone like Aquinas to (1) affirm the intrinsic goodness of pleasureFootnote 80 and thus (2) accept that pleasure is a kind of perfectionFootnote 81 while simultaneously (3) claiming that pleasure is not fully perfective of human life.Footnote 82
This is not an argument about semantics. Perhaps some people will read Aquinas and simply deny that he is a perfectionist, since he affirms the importance of desire-satisfaction and pleasure. But we should not forget that Aquinas (probably) talks about perfection more than any other philosopher, and explicitly considers perfection to be the ultimate end and good of man. It would be quite odd to exclude such a figure from discussions of perfectionism – especially on the grounds that he has a different conception of perfection than certain contemporary philosophers. Second, perhaps my definition of perfectionism is a little revisionary. But perhaps such revision is needed when certain key figures in the history of philosophy are excluded from a particular philosophical conversation because later philosophers define their terms in ways that don't easily map onto older schools of thought. It would be unfortunate if certain scholars prematurely dismissed perfectionism as a viable theory of well-being because they conflate perfectionism – a general family of theories articulated by various philosophers throughout history – with a very narrow set of theories presented by contemporary philosophers.
