ȃȁȃ Partʺʺ: Politics and Philosophyforth by trying to show that they tend toward happiness or misery; but
I cannot imagine how one could argue for happiness and against misery
themselves. But if one could so argue, the argument would necessarily
invoke some further, deeper, value judgment, which would then be the
fundamental one.)
Mises hastens to disavow hedonism in the narrow sense: despite super-
ficial critics, “happiness” does not mean mere material, bodily pleasures.
Advanced utilitarians, he says, interpret pleasure and pain, utility and disu-
tility, in the “purely formal” senses of those words, emptying them of all
specific content. Ļey refer to whatever individuals in fact try to achieve
or avoid (MisesȀȈȂȂ/ȀȈȅǿ, pp.Ȅȁ,ȀȄȀ; MisesȀȈȆȈ/ȀȈȇȄ, pp.Ȁȁ–ȀȂ; Mises
ȀȈȃȈ/ȀȈȅȂ, p.ȁȀ). Mises recognizes that many people, especially creative
workers, are not driven by material desires or narrow self-interest alone.
Ļey may also be expressing competence and strength and even heroism
(MisesȀȈȀȈ/ȀȈȇȂ, pp.ȀȈȂ,ȁȀȂ). “Ļere are people whose only aim is to
improve the condition of their own ego. Ļere are other people with whom
awareness of the troubles of their fellow men causes as much uneasiness
as or even more uneasiness than their own wants” (ȀȈȃȈ/ȀȈȅȂ, p.Ȁȃ).
Mises’s remarks about the merely formal content of “happiness” hardly
settle all questions about fundamental value judgments. Room remains for
discussing whether the utilitarian criterion should be the true happiness of
individuals or instead, if there is a difference, the satisfaction of whatever
desires individuals suppose they have. Still, Mises is on the right track.
“Happiness,” before being unpacked, is an inadequate term for the ulti-
mate utilitarian value judgment. I can only take stabs at labeling what
is ultimately desirable: it is individuals’ success in making good lives for
themselves, or fulfillment, or satisfaction, or life appropriate to human
potentiality. No single word is an adequate label; but when a single word
is required as shorthand, “happiness” is the traditional choice.
Ļis formulation might be criticized as being all-encompassing to the
point of vacuousness. Yet it is not vacuous: alternative criteria are con-
ceivable. Ļey include conformity to the supposed will of God; or per-
formance of duty for duty’s sake alone, with no analysis of consequences
entering into the identification of duties; or conformity to intuited ethical
precepts for conformity’s sake alone; or respect for individual rights that
have simply been postulated rather than argued for on utilitarian or any
other grounds, and again regardless of consequences; or conduciveness to
the flourishing of the highest or noblest specimens of the human race,
however ordinary people might then fare (a view sometimes attributed,