Hedonism

We can't experience pain and we don't like it.

We can experience pleasure and we do like it. But what the hedonist does is he puts that suffix on the end, ISM, and turns it into a philosophy of ultimates, an ultimate standpoint of value. So the truth and goodness are determined in the final analysis by this calculus of pain and pleasure.

Yesterday we heard some common modern expressions. That's your truth. This is my truth. Well, as we close this week's study of worldviews, we'll consider what led people to start saying, if it feels good, do it, or interacting with ideas, not by thinking, but by feeling.

I feel like I disagree with that. So you won't want to miss today's episode of Renewing Your Mind. I hope you've been helped this week, and perhaps you've been able to put a name to some of the ideas that you hear around you, whether online or in the media.

Well, this entire study is 12 messages. So please consider requesting the series and working through it and reading R.C. Sproul's practical book, Making a Difference.

You can request this resource bundle when you give a gift of any amount at renewingyourmind.org. But today is the final day, so be quick. Let's consider today's worldview. Here's Dr. Sproul on hedonism. I want to turn our attention now to hedonism.

Again, we have a case that we use a word to describe a movement or a philosophy that not everybody in the culture is aware of. I'm sure that there are vast numbers of people in America who have never heard the word hedonism, but I can't conceive of anybody of age in America who has not experienced the impact or the import of hedonism as a life and worldview. Hedonism as a philosophy has this basic principle for its foundation. Hedonism defines the good or the true in terms of pleasure and pain. That is the summum bonum, the highest good of man, the ultimate purpose for his being is found in the enjoyment of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. And so what the hedonist is searching for constantly and continuously is an increase in pleasure and a decrease in pain.

I want to just make a tiny little distinction here. The true hedonist seeks not so much for the maximum of pleasure as he seeks for the optimum of pleasure, that which will be the most pleasurable, all things being equal. Well, historically we see the rise of hedonism, not as a new thing springing onto the twentieth-century culture, into the vacuum of the absence of the transcendent, which we've discussed. But hedonism has its roots very, very early in the world.

I mean, we could trace it to the Garden of Eden if we had to, but in terms of a formal philosophy, we find it back in the ancient Greek culture, in the school of the Cyrenaics. Now, the Cyrenaics were what I would call crass hedonists, crass or crude hedonists. Now, you may have never heard of the Cyrenaics, but you have seen visual images of their philosophy of life manifested many, many times through Hollywood productions and through TV dramas and so on. You've seen the pictures of the ancient Roman orgies where people are just indulging themselves without restraint in reckless abandon in wine, women, and so on, right?

I think of Fellini's Satyricon as perhaps the most vivid portrayal of that kind of a lifestyle that Hollywood has ever produced. Or we think of the ancient Bacchanalia. Have you ever heard of the old Bacchanalia, which was the festival of the celebration of Bacchus, who was the god of the vine, the god of grapes, the god of wine? And the Bacchanalia was this wild, orgiastic celebration done in honor of the god Bacchus. And we also think of the way in which hedonism became not only a philosophy in parts of the ancient world, but actually a religion.

Have you heard of the Dionysian style of the orgy, the Dionysian frenzy, where the god Dionysius, or Dionysius, was worshipped? He was the counterpart to Bacchus. He was worshipped as the one who would give us an ability to break out of the chains that inhibit us in terms of our normal states of consciousness and awareness. I mean, the Greek philosophers understood that there were limits to what we were able to know through empirical perception, through the use of our five senses.

And there was a limit to the knowledge that we could reach by speculation on the basis of reason. And so some sought a release from the prison house of the normal restraints of human knowledge that could come through some kind of intuition or mystical experience. And so there were those who made a religion out of worshipping the god that they thought would give them the ability to transcend the normal limits of consciousness. And that was the god Dionysius who provided the means of drunken stupor, wherein one state of drunkenness, the normal inhibitions of our wakeful life are removed. And people believed that they, through drunken stupor, could make contact with the supernatural world in a mystical experience of getting high, if you will.

The experience was not called getting low. It was getting high, breaking through the limits and the structures of normal consciousness. And this was added into all kinds of sexual involvement and even temple prostitution, where the prostitutes were there presumably to help a person break down their inhibitions so that they could make contact with the gods and experience the feeling of ecstasy, which was the release of the soul that was understood really physically or sensuously. Now, as I say, it's the Cyrenaics who adopted this crass form of radical indulgence in drunkenness and sex and all of that sort of thing. And oftentimes we think falsely of the radical hedonists as being the Epicureans, but the Epicureans were the next stage. The Epicureans were much more sophisticated advocates of hedonism. In fact, today we will often use the term Epicurean to define what kind of person? A person with exquisite taste, a person who can identify the finest wines, but who is not himself a drunkard, the person who has a gourmet palate and understands the intricacies of the culinary arts. We call him an Epicurean, a person who understands the finest clothes and the finest rugs and that who appreciates the finer things of life is often called an Epicurean. But he is also a person who is devoted to his creature comforts, isn't he?

He lives for the enjoyment of a very sophisticated level of pleasure. Now, the Epicureans adopted a more moderate or what I call refined variety of hedonism because they learned very early the problem of Cyrenaic hedonism, the problem of all hedonism, the problem of what is called the hedonistic paradox. How many of you have ever heard of the hedonistic paradox? The hedonistic paradox is this. The problem the devotee of hedonism encounters is this. What happens if he fails to achieve the measure of pleasure that he seeks? What happens?

What intrudes into his life? Frustration. Is frustration painful or pleasant?

It's painful. So that if you don't get the pleasure you're seeking, you experience frustration, and there's a sense in which the more that you seek the pleasure and the more you fail to achieve it, the more pain that intrudes into your life because of your frustration. But what happens if you achieve it? If you achieve it for too long, you become sated, you become bored, and boredom, which is the counterpart of frustration, is also painful to the pleasure seeker. And so the hedonistic paradox was if you achieve what you want, you lose.

If you don't achieve what you're searching for, you lose. And also the Epicureans understood the price tag for pleasure. They understood that if you overindulge, like we have a sign down in the dining room, those who overindulge what?

Bulge. You know, second on the lips, lifetime on the hips. That's part of the hedonistic paradox. The momentary enjoyment of pleasure can have consequences that are painful. And the Epicureans understood that, and they said if you indulged in too much wine, then the end result would not be this exquisite enjoyment of fine-tasting wine, but it would be the awful hangover of the next day.

If you overindulged in sexual activities, you were increasing your odds for future misery in terms of venereal disease or whatever. And so they tried to create a more balanced enjoyment of pleasure and pain, just a little bit of adultery, you know, just a little bit, just enough to spice up life, to keep the excitement flowing in the human heart. In addition, the Epicureans were seeking for the same thing that the Stoics were seeking for, but they were seeking it in a completely different manner. The ultimate goal of Epicurean philosophy was the achievement of what was called philosophical adorachia. Philosophical adorachia. How many have ever heard of that word? Adorachia today, the only time you hear this word in our culture today is it's a brand name for tranquilizer.

Okay? And the quest for philosophical adorachia among the ancient Epicureans and the Stoics was simply the quest for peace of mind, the search for peace of mind. Now, is that something unique to the Epicurean? Doesn't everybody want peace of mind?

Sure. The Stoics felt that the only way to find peace of mind was by adopting a philosophy of what they called imperturbability, don't let anything get to you. You know, you adopt a Stoical attitude to all things, don't get emotionally involved, don't get your hopes up, don't get your hopes down, but maintain an emotional state of equilibrium where nothing phases you. You adopt a detached type of feeling towards things over which you have no control. In fact, it was based on a very deterministic understanding of the world that all things happen by fixed mechanical causes according to the Stoics, and we can't change things. Que Sera Sera was originally the song of the Stoic.

All right? And they said, the only thing that I have control over in my life is not what happens to me. If I'm going to get hit by a car this afternoon, I can't help that. The only thing I really have control over is how I react to it inwardly. And so, the Stoics sought to master the ability of being cool.

I'm not letting anything shake you up inwardly. That was their approach. The Epicureans approached it the other way. They believed that you could change the state of affairs and the events that affect you in your life, and that happens primarily through an active pursuit of pleasure and an active avoidance in pain. There are very few people in our culture who will call themselves hedonists, who will come right out and say, that's my philosophy of life. I live for pleasure and for the avoidance of pain.

Hugh Hefner might attach his name to a philosophy like that, but most of us, even in a secular environment, still have negative value judgments about that kind of view of reality. Yet at the same time, we all recognize that there is a little bit of a hedonist in all of us. I mean, even the masochist is a hedonist, and he's a reverse hedonist. He seeks to maximize pain, but not so that he can avoid pleasure, but what?

So he can gain it. He just has sort of a short circuit in terms of pain and pleasure, but he's still seeking pleasure. Now who does not want to have experiences that are pleasant, and who really wants to enjoy pain?

I sure don't. I want pleasure, and I want to avoid pain, and I want comfort, and I want to be able to have a full stomach at the end of the night. I want to feel good. I don't want to feel bad.

Is there anybody who's different from that? There's a sense in which what hedonism does is capitalizes on a certain built-in given to human nature, something which is universal. I mean, we are creatures of sensation. We have feelings. We can't experience pain, and we don't like it.

We can experience pleasure, and we do like it. But what the hedonist does is he puts that suffix on the end, I-S-M, and turns it into a philosophy of ultimates, an ultimate standpoint of value. So, the truth and goodness are determined in the final analysis by this calculus of pain and pleasure. Christianity tells us going in that if we embrace certain values, there will be pain in it. Christ was not a hedonist when He went up to Jerusalem.

He had a duty to perform which was good and which was true, but which was painful. The hedonist would declare Christ a fool, forever, voluntarily accepting that kind of pain, unnecessarily. Hedonism is hardly altruistic, and yet Christianity calls us not to seek suffering, not to seek pain, or to flee from that which is pleasant. There's no sin in enjoying the pleasant and enjoying the freedom from pain, but there are times when the Christian must choose the road that inevitably leads to pain. And so, we do not establish hedonism as the summum bonum, the highest good.

We believe that the highest good will ultimately bring us the maximum pleasure and the minimum pain, because from a Christian perspective, the maximal location of pain is in the pit of hell, and the optimum abode of pleasure is in the kingdom of God. But pleasure is defined differently from what it is in hedonism. Hedonism tends to see that pleasure strictly in sensuous, sensual-feeling levels, physical, quantified dimensions. Now, let's look for a moment at modern forms of hedonism. We have seen in our own generation extreme forms of escapism manifested in our own contemporary culture.

There seems to be a strong pursuit of happiness, but the pursuit of happiness has been translated by the new generation into the pursuit of euphoria, that happiness has been translated almost exclusively into the category of feeling. I'm sure you've already noticed this, but just sometimes, you know, like when you hear a new word, this is not a new word, but when you hear a new word, you know, for the first time suddenly you hear it five times that week, you just become aware of it. What I'd like you to do is pay attention when you see this word or hear this word in your culture. See how the word feeling functions in your culture. This term, this concept is so pervasive in our society that standard traditional forms of language, standard traditional categorical propositions and prefatory statements about theoretical thought have changed to accommodate this word. What I'm saying, and there are a lot of big words here very simply, is I read students' papers all the time.

It drives me nuts. I wear my hand out using the red pencil when they keep saying, when they're presenting a case in the paper, I feel that we should do this. I feel that Descartes is wrong, or I feel that Kant has made a mistake here.

Do you see that in your students? I feel, I feel, and I circle it all. I say, what do you mean you feel that Descartes made a mistake? Don't tell me you feel that Descartes made a mistake.

What you mean is you think that Descartes makes a mistake. You're thinking of a cognitive process here. It's not a feeling.

It's thinking, and I want to see the substance of your thought on your paper. I don't want to have you bleeding all over the paper in terms of your feelings. The exploration of feelings is a very appropriate science for the physician or even for the psychologist. When somebody comes in to me for counseling, I know that feelings are important enough that I don't say to that husband, what do you think of your wife? I'm asking the feeling questions because I know they're the loaded ones. That's where the emotion is, and I'll say, how do you feel about when she does this or that?

How do you feel when he does that or that? I'm trying to get out of it. I'm trying to get out the feelings because I don't want to deny for a moment that feelings are a very, very vital part of what it means to be human, but they're not the same thing as thinking. But the feeling has become so exaggerated in our culture that even in our speech patterns, we're talking about feeling ideas, feeling thoughts instead of thinking thoughts and thinking ideas. We've seen the explosion of a relatively new science, the science of psychology, in terms of its public involvement, that we're a nation preoccupied with the analysis of our moods, which is again a focus on our feelings.

Other things, of course, are much more obvious. We see the explosion of the use of artificial forms to induce euphoria, drugs. This is the drug culture today. Think of the cocaine industry in this nation, the marijuana industry, or the rapidly rising rate of teenage alcoholism, which was featured in local television programs recently called the chemical people. I remember in 1963 when I was working at St. Francis Hospital in Pittsburgh, a Cadillac limousine drove up in front of that hospital, and a girl was escorted out of that Cadillac and brought into the psychiatric ward of the hospital and admitted to the alcoholic ward. She was 15 years old.

And I remember the buzz that went through the hospital at that time. It was scandalous that there was such a thing as a 15-year-old alcoholic in 1963. Today there are literally millions of hardcore teenage alcoholics in our culture because of the impact of a philosophy of radical and crass neediness, that life is to be lived to escape pain and responsibility, anything that's uncomfortable, anything that's unpleasing. As I was reading again a woman who was teaching literature saying that the school board demands that they choose books that the teenagers will enjoy while they're teaching them literature. Nobody is saying that they have to enjoy the study of mathematics, but they must enjoy the books that are selected. And so instead of teaching children great literature, the literature courses become hours of entertainment so that the kids can feel good. I mean, it's controlling the environment.

Just in a couple minutes I have left, let me just point out some things. Hedonism by saying that the avoidance of pain and the pursuit of pleasure is a good is making a value judgment, and it produces at the same time a system of ethics, which in turn produces a behavioral pattern of morality. What are some of the popular axioms or maxims of current-day hedonism?

You've heard this one a jillion times. If it feels good, it is good. Their goodness, the good, is determined by what? Feeling.

Uh-oh, feeling. Again, I only have seconds left, and so I will just give a quote that I heard last week from Helen Gurley Brown to indicate how much the society has changed with respect to its values vis-à-vis hedonism. She has given to us a new definition of promiscuity. When I was in high school, the word promiscuity meant having sexual relationships with more than one person outside of marriage. That was the given definition of promiscuity. The new definition by Helen Gurley Brown of promiscuity is having sexual relationships with more than one person in the same day, in the same day. That's the new definition of promiscuity. Again, the whole sex ethic, the whole sexual revolution that the nation has gone through does not happen in a vacuum.

There are cultural and philosophical and ethical reasons for these changes that take place. And when the transcendent is removed and any ultimate basis of truth and goodness is destroyed, what are you left with but in your feeling? That was R.C. Sproul on this Friday edition of Renewing Your Mind, reminding us that our feelings are not the basis for truth and goodness.

R.C. Sproul was the founder of Ligonier Ministries, a ministry started over 50 years ago and now serves millions of Christians every year all around the world. Over his decades of ministry, he wrote prolifically and recorded an extensive library of video and audio teaching series. If you would like streaming access to that library that features Dr. Sproul and other gifted teachers, then I invite you to become a Ligonier Ministry partner. Your monthly financial support will help bring trusted teaching to the next generation and this vast library into the world's top 20 languages. To thank you and to encourage you, not only will you receive streaming access to our teaching series library, you'll also receive Table Talk magazine, a Reformation study Bible and exclusive discipleship resources. You can become a partner today by clicking Give Monthly when you respond to today's offer at renewingyourmind.org or you can learn more at ligonier.org partner. We also have a convenient link for you in the podcast show notes. If you're unable to partner with us at this time for the final day when you give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org or by calling us at 800 435 4343, we'll grant you lifetime digital access to this series Christian Worldview and the study guide and we'll send you the companion book by Dr. Sproul, Making a Difference.

So give your gift today at renewingyourmind.org before this offer ends at midnight. Before we go today, joining me in the studio is the president of Reformation Bible College, Dr. Stephen Nichols. Dr. Nichols, all week RC Sproul has been helping us think about different worldviews, different isms that are out there, pluralism, relativism, even today, hedonism. Well, as the president of a Bible college, how is RBC helping shape the thinking of the next generation?

Well, it's precisely because of a series like this that we have RBC. Dr. Sproul recognized as one of his books has it, there are consequences to ideas. And we need to recognize these ideas are powerful.

We see it every day playing out in the news, don't we? The answer to these problems is fundamentally theological, because at the core of all of these issues we're talking about is theology. So one of the things we do at RBC, in fact, it's the center of what we do at RBC is theology, because we want to ground students in these timeless truths, knowing that will prepare them best for these timely issues.

We know the issues we face now. We're unsure of what issues we're going to face 10 years from now, 20 years from now, but if we can have students grounded, solidly grounded upon God's word and a confessional theology, that's going to be the best way for them to be not only defenders, but contenders for a Christian worldview. And the curriculum at RBC was designed by Dr. Sproul, wasn't it?

It absolutely was. You know, I look at this curriculum, I teach some of the courses and I think this is the college I wish I could have gone to. It's just such a wonderful mix of biblical survey and hermeneutics to even understand the biblical text and those rules of interpretation, the skills of interpretation.

It's systematic theology. Of course, I love to teach apologetics, which we all know was dear to Dr. Sproul's heart. But also we have the great works at RBC and engaging those classics of literature and art and music. So it's just a wonderful curriculum that we have at RBC. Now there's a new opportunity at RBC that you'd love to share with our listeners.

Yes, you can get an RBC education without the pain. You can get all the gain without the pain and that's by auditing a class. So we have auditors who come on to our campus, but we also now have opened our online classes to auditors. So I think this could especially appeal to the Renewing Your Mind audience.

They love content and that's what we have to offer. But you don't have to take the exams and you can read the books if you want to, but you don't have to turn in a reading report to write papers. So the auditing feature is just a wonderful new feature that we have for people to benefit wherever they are from an RBC education. Now the courses that are being offered this fall include apologetics, which as you said, you'll be teaching, biblical hermeneutics, biblical theology one, history of Christianity one, and an introduction to theology. Yeah, these are all really foundational courses and they're taught by just a wonderful faculty. The introduction to theology class is taught by Keith Matheson and those readers of Table Talk will readily identify the name Keith Matheson. He is such a good and faithful guide in theology. When it comes to church history, that's taught by our vice president for academics, Dr. John Tweedale, and he just loves church history. His passion for it just comes out in his teaching and he so wants to connect the church today to the church in the past just to help the church be more faithful as disciples in this moment. As we move into the biblical theology class, that's taught by Dr. Shaw.

Dr. Shaw taught for decades at a seminary before he came to us and is just a brilliant scholar of the Old Testament, but a solid churchman. So, he'll walk you through biblical theology, the Old Testament, and then our biblical hermeneutics, which is really crucial. That course, again, that helps you get into understanding the text. That's taught by one of our faculty, Professor Bernsen, and he's always a student's favorite. So, it's a wonderful lineup of courses and just a great faculty to come alongside you and teach you these subjects. And because this is auditing, it's already affordable, but I believe if Renewing Your Mind listeners want to register and they register before next Friday, there'll be a discount.

That's right. And next Friday, of course, that's the first week of classes. So, you could get right in that first week of classes and have this discounted rate. For one course, it's $120, and that's a whole semester, three hours each week.

But we also have bundled classes. So, you could take three classes for 300. So, if you really wanted to be an RBC student, we've made that easy for you to do. And so you know, the lectures are recorded, you get access to that lecture, and you have a whole week. You could watch it anytime during the course of that week, and then the next lecture will pop up.

Well, Dr. Nichols, if I decided to order one of these classes, what would the experience be like? We want to make you feel as much as possible as if you are in the classroom. We have a number of cameras in the classroom. We have online students who are taking these courses for credit. And so the faculty members not only engage the on-campus students who are sitting there, but they also engage the online students.

So, there's plenty of interaction through the cameras. It's sort of like if we were to open the windows in the back of the classroom and you were just to sort of stand there and look in. It's as close to being in the classroom as possible.

That's the experience we've crafted for you. So, if our listeners would like to register for a class and secure that discount by registering before next Friday, August 16, what should they do? All they need to do is visit learning.reformationbiblecollege.org. It will show you all of the classes. There's even little videos there to give you an introduction, and you can sign up for the classes. Very easy process right on that site, learning.reformationbiblecollege.org. Dr. Nichols, thank you for stopping by the studio today, and we'll make sure we put a link to Reformation Bible College in the podcast show notes as well. It's always good to be with you, Nathan. Join us next week to hear messages from this year's Ligonier National Conference, The Way, The Truth and The Life. That's beginning Monday here on Renewing Your Mind.