Society And its Purpose
Book 4 - Psychological Laws and the End of Civil Societies
CHAPTER 3
The judgment which produces contentment constitutes
EUDAIMONOLOGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS in human beings
525. Not every judgment we make about our state produces contentment. We can err when judging our well-being just as we can err about anything else. The external manifestations of our contentment can be even more false and deceptive. We sometimes make every effort to deceive ourselves and others in this matter, and succeed, although we are no happier for that. For example, we sometimes see in people on the verge of despair an increase in their attempts to convince themselves of their happiness; a sick person close to death sometimes deceives himself and wishes to be deceived about the great event that lies before him.
Sometimes, in the midst of all the disasters around us, our pride will not let us believe we lack the power to make ourselves happy, and forces us to do extraordinary things to increase this futile illusion. Exaggerations of extreme happiness are sometimes proper to the insane, only to be followed by abysmal sadness. Repeated, affected assertions of unhappy people about their state of perfect peace and contentment are frequently warning symptoms of deep despair.(249) Hence the judgment we make about ourselves is certainly not enough to make us happy. It must be supported by some real object; in a word, the judgment has to be true if it is really to complete our state of contentment.
526. I must make another observation which at first sight will seem strange: if the judgment is to put the seal on our feelable contentment and satisfy us, it must of its nature be infallible. Let me explain.
In Certainty I showed that direct knowledge is immune from error.(250) But the judgment which produces contentment is a direct, immediate judgment about our state of satisfaction. Every other judgment made by reflection can be erroneous. The first, however, which we make about the satisfaction of all our desires and constitutes our eudaimonological consciousness, (251) cannot be erroneous because it is generated naturally, not freely. At the same time, our state, when judged by our understanding, is too close to permit any mistake in our perception of it.(252)
When the object is distant or multiple and we cannot repeat our judgment about it at will, it is easy to understand how we can err and even maintain the error. But when the object is present, much more evident, supremely important and united to us, in fact our very self, how can our judgment, repeated, as it were, at every moment of our existence, be subject to error? Even if it were a reflective judgment, no human being can delude himself for an instant that he does not see the truth whose light shines brightly within him, resplendent to his gaze.
527. But, as I said, our judgment is not reflective. We are dealing with a primitive, not a secondary act of understanding. Secondary, reflective acts enable us to represent to ourselves all or part of our state as different from us, and thus err. But with our first, direct act our understanding can judge our state not as something different from us but as our very own feeling. The act itself which makes us aware that our desires are or are not satisfied is of this kind; the ancients called it `judgment by the human spirit'.(253) Clearly, we cannot err in this act because we cannot be aware of contentment when we are not content, nor be unaware of our contentment when our heart speaks only of contentment. This act of judgment with which we form our contentment is intimately joined to our feeling; it encompasses all we feel within , that is, our very selves. When this judgment is made, the person making it is in total intimacy with what is judged. In order to know with certainty the state of our spirit, we must therefore have recourse to this eudaimonological consciousness as the most upright judge of the satisfaction the human heart may or may not have achieved.
Notes
(249) As we know, Rousseau, in his last writings about himself, continually exaggerated the supreme happiness he enjoyed in his solitude. A little later, the unhappy man seems to have attempted suicide and killed himself!
(250) Cf. OT, 1258-1263.
(251) Eudaimonological consciousness is a direct, natural judgment we make about the satisfaction of our desires: direct, because the satisfaction of our desires (its object) is judged directly; natural, because direct. Its directness makes impossible all difference between the thing judged and the opinion passed upon it; every difference presupposes a third thing in between, and this would destroy the supposition that the judgment is direct.
(252) Cf. OT, 1194-1202.
(253) `Your spirit, not human opinion, must judge that you are rich' (Cic., Parad., 6).