Joy, Sin, and Pseudoscience, Part III

In my previous two posts—Part I and Part II—I briefly examined the historical background of the contemporary assault on traditional morality, and looked at the claims of two new books purporting to give scientific and philosophical reasons for rejecting the notions of sin and vice, in favor of a strictly hedonistic conception of the human good.

Today, I want to look at the other side of the coin. If we reject the scientistic and reductionistic views of human nature, and the hedonistic conception of human flourishing—as we must—what are we to put in their place?

Does the conservative moralist have anything to offer humanity besides gritting one’s teeth? Doesn’t there have to be room for joy in a good life, as well as duty?

The answer to this important question is: The question is ill-posed.

It is by no means a matter of either/or.

Let’s back up and start with the fact that most normal human beings have a healthy sense of right and wrong, in spite of everything.

The human conscience is an elementary datum of our experience. We may quarrel about where it comes from, but we cannot seriously question its existence. Too much of our ordinary, everyday experience of the world presupposes it.

Why does It’s a Wonderful Life show up on our TV screens every December like clockwork? Because it may be relied upon to produce a particular sort of experience—the catch in the throat—which consists in the recognition of moral goodness, and is intensely pleasurable.

The sophisticates may scoff, but this sort of well-nigh universal experience reveals something both deep and fine about human nature.

The secular-liberal worldview, of course, denies there is any such thing as human nature in my sense. But while the atheist left may preach relativism and nihilism as much as they like, if their theories of morality really were correct, they would not have work so hard to convince us.

There is an in-built resistance to the intellectual plagues of our times in the hearts of most ordinary people.

Although it is of course true that if you work hard enough to undermine the social structures supporting individuals—family, work, faith, community—you will persuade a certain proportion of people to dispense with their consciences. That is what has been happening to American society the past 50 years now.

For, there is no denying we are also built to experience physical pleasure. It is standard animal equipment, and we are animals.

But we are not only animals. We are animals that have acquired minds or spirits.

And for us, our worst pains and our greatest pleasures lie not in the flesh, but in the soul.

Guilt is good for us because it is a warning signal that what we have done—or more generally, the way we are living—is wrong. To banish guilt from the human psyche makes as much sense as extirpating pain from our stomachs or our fingertips.

Without pain in our fingertips, we would not be able to flinch from a hot stove. Without pain in our stomachs, we would not be able to vomit up a bad meal.

Similarly, without pain in our consciences, we would not be able to learn from our moral mistakes, or to find the right path again once we have strayed from it.

But our natural instincts include rewards as well as punishments.

Just as sweetness is a sign of ripeness in fruit, so too is joy a sign of the rightness of an action or a way of thinking or feeling.

Of course, we are allowed to enjoy the pleasures of the body—so long as they are pursued in accordance with the dictates of conscience.

But by far the greater pleasures afforded to human beings by God or nature are those of the spirit itself. True joy is of this sort.

I close with an extended passage from Dickens’s Pickwick Papers, as a concrete illustration of what true joy consists in, pace Simon Laham and Emrys Westacott.

Dickens’s greatest literary skill lay in evoking human nobility—a task that is very difficult to pull off without falling into either mawkishness or insipidity. And yet Mr. Pickwick, whose cardinal attributes are kindness and good will towards all, is one of his liveliest and finest creations.

The passage I shall cite comes at the end of the novel (Chapter 57), in a grand summing-up. All of the tribulations of his friends have been put right, mostly through Mr. Pickwick’s own benevolent interventions. And now his friends have gathered around him to wish him well in his retirement:

And in the midst of all this, stood Mr. Pickwick, his countenance lighted up with smiles, which the heart of no man, woman, or child, could resist: himself the happiest of the group: shaking hands, over and over again with the same people, and when his own hands were not so employed, rubbing them with pleasure: turning round in a different direction at every fresh expression of gratification or curiosity, and inspiring everybody with his looks of gladness and delight.

Breakfast is announced. Mr. Pickwick leads the old lady (who has been very eloquent on the subject of Lady Tollimglower), to  the top of a long table; Wardle takes the bottom; the friends arrange themselves on either side; Sam takes his station behind his master’s chair; the laughter and talking cease; Mr. Pickwick, having said grace, pauses for an instant, and looks round him. As he does so, the tears roll down his cheeks, in the fulness of his joy.

Let us leave our old friend in one of those moments of unmixed happiness, of which, if we seek them, there are ever some, to cheer our transitory existence here. There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast. Some men, like bats or owls, have better eyes for the darkness than for the light. We, who have no such optical powers, are better pleased to take our last parting look at the visionary companions of many solitary hours, when the brief sunshine of the world is blazing full upon them.

We have no need of pseudoscience to convince us that Dickens is right, and that joy consists not in sin, but in goodness.

The evidence is there in our own reaction to the goodness depicted in his works.