Written on August 5, 2007
Jean Kazez comments on Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom
, raising an issue about happiness in an unjust society. Haidt used the example of a Brahmin who is happy because of the coherence of his senses, thoughts, and society, despite the injustice of the caste system, an image of happiness which Kazez objects to. It comes down to an issue of moral relativism, whether morality is socially determined or independent of social mores. If morality is independent of society then a sensitive person would not be happy in an unjust society. Otherwise I suppose a sense of injustice could arise when a society fails to live up to its own ideals or there are conflicting ethical ideals within a society.
A similar conflict (or at least an ambiguity) between relative and absolute morality occurs within Hindu mythology – see The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology by Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, ch. 5 “The Paradox of the Good Demon: The Clash Between Relative and Absolute Ethics.” Or, for a scifi treatment of the issue, Sideshow
by Sheri S. Tepper (which, as I recall, takes an anti-relativist position).
Kazez is the author of Weight of Things: Philosophy and the Good Life
.
