Secular Ethics and Hedonism

 Secular Ethics – A branch of moral philosophy in which ethics is based solely on human
faculties such as logic, empathy, reason, or moral intuition
 It is not derived from belief in supernatural revelation or guidance—a source of ethics in
many religions.
 Secular ethics refers to any ethical system that does not draw on the supernatural and
includes humanism, secularism, and freethinking.
 Human beings, through their ability to empathize, are capable of determining ethical
grounds.
 The well-being of others is central to ethical decision-making.
 Human beings, through logic and reason, are capable of deriving normative principles of
behavior.
 Human beings have the moral responsibility to ensure that societies and individuals act
based on these ethical principles.
 Societies should, if at all possible, advance from a less ethical and just form to a more
ethical and just form.
 Secular humanism is a comprehensive, non-religious life stance incorporating:
 A naturalistic philosophy
 A cosmic outlook rooted in science
 A consequentialist ethical system
 Secular Ethics is an inclusive approach to embrace our shared human inner values. It is
not dependent on any particular religion. It respects all human beings (believers/non-
believers), all communities, all cultures, and all religions. It is based on common sense,
common experience, and scientific evidence.
 Secular humanism is comprehensive, touching every aspect of life including issues of
values, meaning, and identity.
 Secular humanism is nonreligious, espousing no belief in a realm or beings imagined to
transcend ordinary experience.
 As a secular life stance, secular humanism incorporates the Enlightenment principle of
individualism, which celebrates emancipating the individual from traditional controls by
family, religion, and state, increasingly empowering each of us to set the terms of his or
her own life.
 Secular humanism is a philosophy, belief system, or life stance that embraces human
reason, logic, secular ethics, and philosophical naturalism while specifically rejecting
religious dogma, supernaturalism, and superstition as the basis of morality and decision-
making.
 Secular ethics provides a moral, ethical model for the whole world. Surely it can provide
an ‘antidote’ for the root causes of our world dilemmas. The foundation of secular ethics
is laid by compassion and common humanity.
Hedonism
 The word ‘Hedonism’ is derived from the Greek hedone (“pleasure”), from hedys (“sweet”
or “pleasant”).
 All hedonistic theories identify pleasure and pain as the only important elements of
whatever phenomena they are designed to describe.
 Hedonism is a philosophical approach to life that is centered on the pursuit of pleasure.
It dates back to Ancient Greek philosophy with the Cyrenaics, a school of thought led by
Aristippus of Cyrene in the fifth century BC.
 Cyrenaics – In ethics, they advocate pleasure as the highest good. Furthermore, bodily
pleasures are preferable to mental pleasures, and we should pursue whatever will bring
us pleasure now, rather than deferring present pleasures for the sake of achieving better
long-term consequences. In all these respects, their iconoclastic and ‘crude’ hedonism
stands well outside the mainstream of Greek ethical thought, and their theories were
often contrasted with Epicurus’ more moderate hedonism.
 Hedonism has continued to evolve since its birth in Ancient Greece, branching out into
different areas. However, its core concept has remained the same: pleasure should be
sought and suffering avoided.
 Hedonism focuses on the pursuit of pleasure above all others and that people have the
right to seek as much pleasure as possible, as it is the highest good to attain.
 The major thinkers related to this are Aristippus of Cyrene, Epicurus, and Michel Onfray.
 Takes into account Mental / Emotional / Physical Pleasures
 For example – Eating a delicious meal or engaging in recreational activities increases
dopamine levels in the brain, producing feelings of pleasure and satisfaction.
 The Hedonic Calculus – The concept, which has its roots in ancient Greek philosophy, is
based on hedonic calculus / a method of weighing pleasure and pain to determine
whether an action or decision is right or wrong (Tubbs, 2009).
 Theories of Hedonism – psychological, ethical, and axiological
  Hedonism- Prioritizing pleasure / pursuing pleasure / sensual self-indulgence
 Ethical Hedonism- Viewing pleasure (the absence of pain) as moral right or good
 Criticism of Hedonism –
 focuses on pleasure;
 materialistic and selfish behavior;
 subjective outlook;
 overlooking negatives;
 short-term pleasure/long-term well-being
Epicureanism, in a strict sense, is the philosophy taught by Epicurus (341–270 BCE).
In ancient polemics, as often since, the term was employed with an even more generic (and
clearly erroneous) meaning as the equivalent of hedonism, the doctrine that pleasure or
happiness is the chief good.
In popular parlance, Epicureanism thus means devotion to pleasure, comfort, and high living,
with a certain nicety of style.
Hedonism and epicureanism are both philosophical concepts that revolve around the pursuit
of pleasure. However, they have different connotations and implications. Hedonism is often
associated with excessive and uncontrolled indulgence in pleasure, while epicureanism is
more about enjoying pleasure in moderation and with refinement.
According to Epicurus, someone who is incapable of living prudently, honorably, and justly
cannot live pleasurably, and vice versa.
The ideal Epicurean life involves calculating the relative roles of bodily and mental pleasures
and of static and ‘kinetic’ pleasures.
Egoism – In philosophy, egoism is the theory that one’s self is, or should be, the motivation
and the goal of one’s own action.
Ethical Egoism – Ethical egoism, in philosophy, is an ethical theory according to which moral
decision-making should be guided entirely by self-interest.
Psychological Egoism – Ethical egoism is often contrasted with psychological egoism, the
empirical claim that advancing one’s self-interest is the underlying motive of all human
action.
Rational egoism (also called rational egoism) is the principle that actions are rational only if
they maximize one's own interests.
 * Ego – the self especially as contrasted with another self or the world.
Psychological hedonism is the theory that the ultimate object of desire is pleasure. Things are
desired not for their own sake but only for the sake of pleasure they will give us. Psychological
hedonism, in philosophical psychology, is the view that all human action is ultimately motivated
by desires for pleasure and the avoidance of pain.

 Charvaka (also given as Carvaka) was a philosophical school of thought, developed in India
c. 600 BCE, stressing materialism as the means by which one understands and lives in the
world. Materialism holds that perceivable matter is all that exists; concepts such as the
soul and any other supernatural entities or planes of existence are simply inventions of
imaginative people.
 Charvaka is a philosophical Indian school of materialists who rejected the notion of an
after-world, karma, liberation (moksha), the authority of the sacred scriptures, the Vedas,
and the immortality of the self.
 It is a form of Indian hedonism.
 Its followers were hedonists advocating a policy of total opportunism; they urged princes
to act exclusively in their own self-interest, thus providing the intellectual climate in which
a text such as Kautilya’s Arthashastra (“The Science of Material Gain”) could be written.
 The Charvaka vision rejected all supernatural claims, all religious authority, and scripture,
the acceptance of inference and testimony in establishing truth, and any religious ritual
or tradition.
 The essential tenets of the philosophy were:
1. Direct perception as the only means of establishing and accepting any truth
2. What cannot be perceived and understood by the senses does not exist
3. All that exists are the observable elements of air, earth, fire, and water
4. The ultimate good in life is pleasure; the only evil is pain
5. Pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain is the sole purpose of human existence
6. Religion is an invention of the strong and clever who prey on the weak