THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS & OTHER "PREFERENCES"
Avishai, Bernard
Not long ago, my seniors' writing class at MIT considered the essay of one student—a kind, strapping fellow: no fool—on a political subject of his choice, of all things, the virtues of...
...In some uniquely American sense, I suppose it is: preferences mysteriously absorbed from social 482 place or biological urge, preferences transformed into "values" and then into interests, polls measuring preferences, freedom as the chance to consume what commodities are preferred—such notions turn up all the time in the conversations of people who call themselves liberals, and especially in the explanations of the liberal press...
...Is there really nothing more for a liberal to be "pro" than "choice...
...Not that we should start joining in calls for federal control of the media or anything like that, though we could, for example, demand more federal money for public television and radio, no matter how many people use their services, and in spite of their comparatively elite standards...
...What I mean is that Democrats, too, need something called "vision," and this begins, Commager reminds us, with people who use words such as happiness and commonwealth...
...A few years back, Senator Paul Tsongas argued that the Democratic party, to move with the times, must become more "conservative" in economic matters and more "progressive" in social ones...
...It is all in Gail Sheehy, a colleague reassured me...
...Why should government interfere with prostitution or any other sort of freedom...
...Just realism...
...Urges and feelings shape our attitudes to some extent...
...they are subject to criticism...
...a majority of Americans now feel that prostitution is no crime...
...Institutions liberals had better be for if we are to have "free and equal discussion" at all...
...IF LIBERALS will not be for such values, who will be for them...
...Are there no institutions, aside from the First Amendment, that are intrinsically democratic...
...presumably, journalists could do worse...
...Oh, sure, the police should have better things to do than harass hookers...
...Another student, a perceptive young woman who is usually patient with us all, rejected the idea that legalized hooking will mean less rape...
...for people—John Stuart Mill put it neatly—who are "capable of being improved by free and equal discussion...
...Prostitution will always be with us, his essay began with a certain familiar elegance...
...Or learn to treat the social claims of organized labor as the pleadings of a "special interest...
...obviously, people have differing views of happiness, and the commonwealth may have no more decent ideal than tolerance...
...he persisted...
...Still, before long, the subject seemed pretty much exhausted...
...Not long ago, my seniors' writing class at MIT considered the essay of one student—a kind, strapping fellow: no fool—on a political subject of his choice, of all things, the virtues of prostitution...
...No less than jobs, they require the supports of the welfare state, not its dismantling...
...I think so, though it makes one a little anxious to assert this...
...Of course there are...
...Prostitution is a release-valve for sexual frustration that might otherwise lead to worse things, such as random violence, or rape...
...Sometimes I think that what Reagan really defeated in 1980 was not the ideals of the New Deal but the rhetoric of the sociologists who defended the Great Society...
...Henry Steele Cornmager observed recently that it is disturbing how few public people will speak (or write) of "happiness" nowadays, of the "commonwealth...
...Not so fast...
...I was in no frame of mind to concede that a young woman's person is a commodity...
...But if a poll showed that most inner-city teens believed learning to read and write is a waste of time, should we do away with the laws against truancy...
...even Thomas Aquinas" conceded as much...
...I think he means to lament how few liberals use such words, and that our reluctance to do so is as much a cause of the times as a sign of them...
...What is the principle of tolerance if it is not a claim about what way of life is good for everybody who is literate, individual...
...Is "freedom" merely the chance to satisfy whatever bundle of appetites we happen to carry around at the moment...
...Does every moral argument come from a preacher...
...It so happens that among this teacher's children are two daughters, the newest born last December...
...Here is a man who will use "happiness" and "common good" with little apparent embarrassment, and his mere willingness to do so may be the key to his political success...
...The word "good" cannot mean something private, Aristotle coached us, however much we disagree about the virtues that bring happiness, and however much privacy is judged a good thing...
...as the making of a "minority group...
...Traditionalists"—whom he took for people who would wish to see hookers prosecuted, religious fundamentalists, Moral Majority types—fail to realize that laws against prostitution only drive the whole business into the criminal underworld, where most of what is reprehensible about the sex trade gets going, such as sadism and venereal disease...
...Nor was "business" such an ironic word here, apparently, for what are a prostitute's favors if not services freely contracted for...
...Discipline, civility, literacy, strength, family, "faith"—these things deserve a defense from the left...
...Should we not, therefore, try to think through what a good society should be like, what it would be like if everybody behaved this or that bad way, what kind of relations our human faculties need if we are to become fully human...
...There are moral questions here, I remonstrated, questions that ought not to be put aside for the claim that this or any action is inevitable...
...Besides, polls show that attitudes have changed...
...Notice how television reporters, especially, seem to brighten when they can report on the workings of ambition...
...I mean strong schools, concise language, families that hold together, economic programs that do not break the vessels, architecture that implies faith in the future, books and public airwaves that do not corrupt our children, a national defense based on universal service, a healthful environment, and more...
...Actions ought to come from purposes, and, unlike feelings, purposes are, or can be made, conscious...
...they were acquired from a serious public debate about what permanent standards sustain a liberal democracy...
...When liberals lose sight of how democracy needs such real prerequisites, we lose what binds us into a community, however attenuated...
...just listen to children squabbling...
...When I say what is good for me, I am inadvertently implying a standard for everybody...
...Is every urge an interest...
...there are serious commercial interests at stake...
...Thomas Hobbes thought so...
...Is the preacher's kid listening...
...After class, I heard someone grumble that I must be growing less "liberal" as I approach middle age...
...The more we think about political problems in terms of that student's behaviorist rhetoric—I mean in terms of "systems" and "preferences"—the more we are apt to think that views of happiness are nothing more than idiosyncrasy, a mere matter of taste, not a matter of opinion...
...They are certainly more than what is implied by the term "special interests," though (before Pat Caddell's time, and mine) tolerance has indeed been thought to be among the interests of organized labor...
...We have a pluralist society...
...Because Walter Mondale's "strategist" has discovered how some target group in New York prefers talk of education...
...More nervous, yes, but less liberal too...
...Why—Howell Raines of the New York Times tells us before anything else—does Walter Mondale support education...
...There is a public and a public good...
...Can't we build coalitions without implying that coalition politics is some kind of end in itself...
...Is this a liberal's rhetoric I am learning to despise...
...and Gail Sheehy reports that there may be as many as 250,000 hookers "working" in the United States alone...
...Yet the pursuit of happiness is never entirely a private matter...
...It is by this logic, isn't it, that we learn to speak of sexual preference (remember passion...
...LESS LIBERAL...
...But must we go into every political question as if actions express nothing but feelings, derived from one's place in "society," say, or from guilt-inducing parents...
...Let us also agree that certain values are necessary for all of us, in common, if we are to appreciate what the open society affords—among these, the experience of literacy, some acquaintance with various artistic and literary traditions, the dignity of emotion to be gained in families, faith in the truth and in scientific doubt...
...Some of these arguments went over better than others, of course...
...Ronald Reagan, that's who...
...Another doubted that the surveys were quite right: when were they taken, how many in the sample, did he check for others...
...Perhaps...
...According to this rhetoric, the "commonweal" is literally impossible, a conclusion that will give solace to political consultants (and pimps), but which also seems to make moral debate of any kind obsolete...
...Think of the tax revenues the government is denying itself, as much as $1 billion a year...
...Values such as these are not acquired through common sense...
...Think of the deficit...
...Why should liberals continue to allow Reagan's people—those militaristic simplifiers, those scoffers at academic freedom, those 483 budget breakers and Sugarpop salesmen—to seem to be the country's only spokespeople for what Americans hold in common...
...I was really warming to the subject now...
...These are common values, enabling values, the basics of 1984...
...Time to start talking about punctuation and tone...
...If I understand him correctly, I think he got it exactly backward...
...Well, not the virtues of it, exactly, let us say the inevitability of it...
...We all wanted to find out more about whom he had interviewed...
...By the way, we also lose our best arguments against military interventions in places where illiterate people say they prefer "democracy" but more deeply want to be rid of landlords...
...On the other hand, what more is implied by this kind of journalism than cynicism, or the claim that prostitution is, after all, inevitable...
...Commager's point is, precisely, that principles such as tolerance are also something more than private values...
Vol. 31 • September 1984 • No. 4
