I haven’t made you work in while, have I? Grab some coffee, gingko biloba, Adderall (kidding!) or do your pranayama cleansing breath, because we are going to do some philosophy today.

I gave a paper recently, the theme of which was “What is the Good?”. My contribution focused on the connection between health and the good. But on the ride home, as I was listening to my audio of Jo Goodman’s Everything I Ever Wanted (a Compass Club book — South’s story, with the actress India Parr. Review coming.) I started to think about whether there is a take or a vision of the good life that pervades the genre.

In part A of this post, I give you some background on philosophical approaches to well-being. In part B, I talk about the view of the good life found in the romance genre. If you’re pressed for time or not feeling very philosophical today, I think skipping to part B will work just fine.

A. In philosophy, there are three basic types of theories about the good life, or well-being:

1. Hedonism — a hedonist thinks there is but one thing that determines how well your life is going, and that’s pleasure. As Jeremy Bentham wrote, in his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation: ‘Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do’. Bentham tended to think of pleasure as a kind of sensation that pervades all different kinds of things we enjoy, and believed that the more pleasure we could experience, the better our lives would be.It didn’t matter much what the pleasure was. Or, as Bentham put it, “pushpin is as good as poetry.”

There are a number of problems with this view, the first being that it doesn’t feel the same when we experience different kinds of pleasurable activities. Another problem is that it seems to lead to the conclusion that the beings with the simplest lives will have the best lives, such that if you could change places with a lower life form that  — say, a clam — you should.

One solution is to claim, as John Stuart Mill did, that not all pleasures are equal. The best life is really the one with the most higher pleasures, by which he meant pleasures of the intellect. It is not true, Mill said, that people would consent to be changed into a clam or a swine, even if they knew the clam or swine had a more contented life, because most people prefer a life with the kinds of pleasures only humans an experience, like friendship, love, reading, great food, spirituality, walking, music, fulfilling work, etc. If our pursuit of the higher pleasures means we get frustrated more, or have less overall contentment, so be it. It is still a better life from a hedonist’s point of view because the pleasures we do get outweigh those elementary pleasures a swine enjoys.

Whether Mill’s version is really still hedonism is something philosophers argue about.

2. Desire theories are motivated by a seemingly insurmountable problem with hedonism, which is that if hedonism is true, it looks like you could be put into an “experience machine”, which simulated any of the experiences that give you pleasure (including the higher pleasures of which Mill wrote) and that would have to count as equally good as actually experiencing those things. That is, if your well-being is determined solely by how you feel, inside, and not by the causes of the those feelings (i.e. really writing a great novel, versus being hooked up to a virtual reality machine that makes you feel just the same) then we have no way to say the person who spends her life in an experience machine is worse off than the person who really has all those great experiences. And we want to say that, I think.

So maybe it’s not the pleasure, but the satisfaction of the desire.  And the only thing that will really satisfy your desire to be a great author is writing a great book. Taking a pill or getting into a machine that simulates the feeling will not satisfy the desire.

Desire theories say your life is going well is your desires are satisfied. A really simple version won’t work, though, because we all have desires that should not be satisfied if we really want to be happy. So, for example, satisfying the desire to punch someone in the face, or grab a stranger’s butt, or do something rash or downright tragic — like an adolescent suicide — is not a desire that should be satisfied.

So desire theorists modify the theory to say that your desires should be informed (you wouldn’t really desire that dangerous drug if you knew how addicting/harmful it is, for example, or you wouldn’t desire to go out with that cue guy if you knew he was a serial killer. Still, though, if you really hols this theory about well-being, you have to accept that any informed desire contributes to someone’s well-being, even a really odd one, like a brilliant mathematician who is not mentally ill choosing to count blades of grass all day, every day.

For a desire theory to work, the person has to desire the thing for it to contribute to her well-being. So if the brilliant mathematician is informed, and not mentally ill, and desires the grass counting, then that’s the good life for her, and there’s nothing we can say about it. We might think that her working as a mathematician would better contribute to her well-being than sitting outside the math lab counting blades of grass, buy if SHE doesn’t desire work as a mathematician, then it doesn’t contribute to her well-being, no matter what others might think.

This kind of situation makes many people question “desire theories”. And it points to a seemingly deeper problem: if I want to be a great novelist, what I think is good about that is the great novel, not my desire to write one. My feeling good at having the desire satisfied is a result of the fact that I have created or done something good. What’s “good” isn’t that my desire is satisfied. These theories view the satisfaction of the desire as what’s “good”, but for many people, what’s “good” is independent of our desires … it’s the desired thing or state of affairs itself.

3. Taking off from that insight, we have what are often called “objective list” theories. As the name implies, these theories say that our well-being consists in a list of things, and that these things are independently, objectively good, such that if someone doesn’t desire them, no matter — they still contribute to that person;s well-being.

Parenting involves a lot of objective list making. I know that eating their vegetables and brushing their teeth and limiting their time on the computer is good for my kids, regardless of what they think, prefer, or desire. These things contribute to their good, period, so I enforce them. Think also of loved ones or friends you may have thought of as making a mistake: marrying the wrong person, taking illicit drugs, quitting school, etc.  They are satisfying their own preferences and fulfilling their desires, but you try to convince them that their choices will not be good for them. Maybe you make arguments and give reasons. In such cases, you are acting like a person who believes in an objective list theory of the good.

A lot of people have a very negative reaction to this kind of theory of well-being. they say that everybody decides for themselves what contributes to their own well-being — it’s totally subjective. And besides, how can one theory fit all humans? We are all so different!

One response is that while objective list theories tend to be paint in broad strokes. You might have a list that includes things like health, friendship, justice, and happiness, but individuals can specify for themselves exactly how each good contributes to their own well-being.

Take “health”, for example: what is it? Is a gifted young runner with a progressive disease who will lose her leg eventually, who asks for an early amputation and a prosthetic so she can start training for the Olympics making a healthful decision? We have to figure this out. And autonomy is on most objective lists. So, for example, when my kids become adults, it will be a part of their well-being to feel in control of their lives, free from the undue interference of their meddling mother.  To go back to the health example, respect for autonomy is why we let patients make their own health care decisions, even those that might compromise their health. Yes, health is a value, but so is directing your own life. Finding the balance between respecting your kids’ autonomy and protecting them is one of the challenges in parenting.

Now, what goes on the list? How do we know? Well, there are a few different approaches one might take. One approach I am sympathetic to is championed by Martha Nussbaum. It’s called the capabilities approach, and it begins by asking the kind of question Aristotle would ask:  what activities typically performed by human beings are so central that they seem definitive of a truly human life?

In answer to this question, she ends up with a list that includes: a life of normal human length, bodily health and integrity, senses, imagination and thought, practical reason, affiliation, getting along with living plants and animals, and autonomy (control over your environment, both political and material). The reason she uses the term “capabilities” is to allow that some people might not choose to actualize all of these possibilities, but they should at least have the chance to. So, for example, someone can choose as an adult to never use her imagination, but a society that actively discouraged, or even failed to encourage (for example by cutting all funding for art and literature in schools and elsewhere), citizens to use their imaginations would be thwarting a basic condition of human well-being.

But, in general, the way you come up with an account of the good is via intuition, reflection, and conversation. It’s not written in the stars. And I don’t think anyone can get through life without reflecting at least occasionally on whether their life is going well. To ask yourself if your life is going well is to presuppose some account of the good. I think this asking this question about our lives is a unique and vital human capacity.

B. The vision of the good in romance novels

I’m just going to make some suggestions here, with minimal argument, and I invite you to add to them, or disagree with me.

I think, in general, we get an objective list account of the good in romance novels. Think of all those rakes that need reforming — this is not hedonism. I could be persuaded that a sophisticated desire theory fits, but the commitment to love and marriage is so strong that I can hardly think of a happily single character in romance fiction. It’s never enough that the heroine and hero end up with an HEA: we have secondary romances, and sequel after sequel in which all the brothers and sisters and cousins and friends get married. EVERYONE must be happily in love.

So, I think an objective list account fits, and I think that romance novels portray a world in which romantic love is a necessary condition for the good life. But not just fleeting romantic love: it has to be enduring, part of a very deep emotional, supportive bond. Not only that, but it has to include fantastic sex. So, it’s a very robust conception of romantic love. Love in romance novels is not just a feeling (“I’m in love love loooooove”), but a way of life.

I also think material welfare is a key component of most romance novels. And not just material comfort, but significant wealth. Pretty much the entire subgenre of historical romance is confined to the peerage (and if one partner isn’t, then s/he is either (a) elevated by the end (she was a duchess all along!), or (b) marries up. I’ve never read historical wherein the poor partner drags the rich partner down to the gutter with her. And then there’s those Harlequin Presents with all the sheiks and billionaires.

Of course, you do have the contemps, especially single titles, but also Blazes, Superromance, and other Harlequin lines, that have middle class couples. And urban fantasy tends to be populated with scavenging nothing-but-her-dagger-and-tramp-stamp-to-her-name heroines. (Someone should write a paper on the economic landscape of UF romance). But in the main, middle class (by which I mean salaried, home/condo and car owning, not pay check to paycheck living) and up is where most heroes and heroines end up.

Another key component is physical and mental health. Theoretically, this needs to be distinguished from freedom from disability, because disability can coincide with otherwise excellent health. But in practice, most heroes and heroines live both healthful and disability-free lives. Sometimes, it’s a major part of the story to bring the hero and heroine back to a state of complete health, whether it’s getting over PTSD, addiction, battle wounds, smallpox, a curse, etc. I can think of a few books in which disability persists to the last page, but none in which disease or general ill health do.

While physical beauty is not part of health in my opinion (indeed, the things we do to achieve physical beauty often have deleterious effects on our health), I’ll stick it in here, because the hero and heroine are usually good looking. At worst, they are “plain” at the start and their beauty grows in their lover’s eyes as the book progresses. But even in those cases, the reader is usually cued in to the fact that the character was good looking from the start, but the hero or heroine was unable to see it (for example, the contemporary hero usually prefers statuesque blonds, and the heroine is a curvy redhead. The reader knows that curvy redheads — and this one in particular — are quite attractive, but the hero doesn’t see it at first.

Affiliation is another one. Most heroes and heroines have loved ones, whether they are family or friends or fellow members of the Bortherhood. It’s a key component of many romances that broken relationships, especially with family, such as parents, are repaired.

Autonomy — I think this one is crucial, especially for the heroine. She may end up in quite a traditional feminine role, but it’s always presented as an informed choice — which also happens to be in her best interests.

Integrity — can you think of a hero or heroine who utterly lacks integrity? At worst, they come to have it in the end. Of course, it depends a bit on how you define integrity, but think of it as standing for something, not being a will o the wisp when it comes to your values and sense of self.

Moral virtue — There’s a bit of a debate in philosophy over whether one can have moral integrity without virtue. For example, would a person whose only goal is the accumulation of wealth, who lets no friendship, regard for justice, or anything else to get in his way, really be a person of integrity? Luckily, we don’t have to worry too much about integrity and moral virtue coming apart in romance novels because I think we almost always have both. And by moral virtue, I don’t mean sexual purity (although there is often that with regard to the heroine), but rather a good character, described as honest, just, unselfish, etc.

I can think of a few things, such as spirituality, that would be on many people’s lists of what is necessarily for their well-being which are mostly absent in romance (except the Inspiration romances, of course). And there’s little concern for the environment or nonhuman animals (the occasional domesticated pet nothwithstanding). Also, political autonomy, i.e. active democratic participation, is pretty nonexistent.

So what do you think?