Nature's Evil [calibre 5.27.0]

In Hume’s view, by imitating oriental luxuries – supplanting fur by wool and silk by cotton, enjoying ever cheaper sugar and tobacco – European societies enter the ‘progress of improvement’. Descending the social ladder, these ‘innocent gratifications’ overcome sloth and invigorate labour. ‘Where luxury nourishes commerce and industry, the peasants, by a proper cultivation of the land, become rich and independent; while the tradesmen and merchants acquire a share of the property.’ With constant new goods available to them, peasants become hard-working and free-minded. Increasing revenue and acquiring property, shopkeepers turn into a middle class – ‘that middling rank of men, who are the best and firmest basis of public liberty.’ Indolence leads to dearth, which leads to barbarity: ‘when sloth reigns, a mean uncultivated way of life prevails amongst individuals, without society, without enjoyment.’ Poor land and bad work are connected to unsociability and ignorance. Like Adam Smith, Hume extended his sympathies only to those commodities that belonged to the mainstay of the English trade and detested Spanish ones: ‘since the discovery of the mines in America, industry has encreased in all the nations of Europe, except in the possessors of those mines.’ 13

Without having any data, Hume produced a pioneering theory of demand-side modernisation, as it would be called nowadays. ‘The ages of refinement are both the happiest and most virtuous,’ he wrote. Refinement comes from industry, knowledge and civility. It leads to progress and happiness. It depends on certain commodities that bring ‘innocent gratifications’, and not so much on supply but on demand for these commodities. ‘In a nation, where there is no demand for such superfluities, men sink into indolence.’ In contrast, ‘encrease and consumption of all the commodities which serve to the ornament and pleasure of life, are advantageous to society.’ 14 Hume uses these ambiguous terms, ‘commodities’ and ‘luxury’, interchangeably; he also gives the same meaning to ‘delicacies and luxuries’. It is wrong to understand these commodities in line with a traditional idea of luxury, such as particularly expensive items of art or furniture. Clearly, Hume is interested in the conversion of luxury goods into items of mass consumption which form ‘a kind of storehouse of labour’ – drugs on the one hand, textiles on the other. When demand for these commodities meets supply, which happens only in a refined and industrious country, people reveal their public virtues. ‘Particular clubs and societies are everywhere formed. Both sexes meet in an easy and sociable manner; and the tempers of men, as well as their behaviour, refine apace.’ 15

In the revolutionary year of 1793, the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham subjected these ideas to a radical re-evaluation. Bentham’s utilitarianism developed in a direct polemic with mercantilism: the purpose of the state was not to accumulate gold in its coffers but to promote the utility or well-being of its citizens, which Bentham defined as the difference between the sum of their pleasures and the sum of their sufferings. Pleasure is not a natural constant but is formed by habit, and its total sum can grow infinitely. Like Montesquieu’s ‘sweet commerce’, Bentham’s ‘principle of utility’ belonged to the age of sugar, when trade unexpectedly turned into a promise of peace, and pleasure into the central concept of political philosophy. Bentham noted with surprise that even the richest men of the ancient world didn’t know sugar, but for his contemporaries it was quotidian. Calling upon the French revolutionary Convention Nationale to emancipate the sugar colonies in the West Indies, Bentham developed a sound theory of monopoly. ‘Monopoly produces mischief without remedy.’ 16 It increases prices and amplifies their fluctuations; it reduces the number of traders and impoverishes or enslaves the workers. Affirming a role for pleasure and presenting its maximisation as the duty of the state, the utilitarian philosophy of Bentham articulated the very essence of an empire whose crowning glory was the sugar islands.

Bentham is one of the most quoted philosophers from the classical age. He was first rediscovered by Michel Foucault, who presented Bentham’s Panopticon as a universal image of power. 17 Foucault did not address the anti-imperial overtones of this imagery. In fact, Bentham invented the Panopticon while he was living and working in a colony of the Russian Empire, as a secretary of Prince Potemkin in Krichev, in modern-day Belarus. Later, he spent decades trying to build his utopian Panopticon in England. In his article ‘Panopticon versus New South Wales’, Bentham explained the benefits of organising an internal panoptical colony rather than transporting convicts to Australia. Closer to our time, the distinguished Australian philosopher Peter Singer proposed utilitarianism as the foundation of moral philosophy. In contrast to sceptical Hume, Bentham believed that the ‘felicific calculus’ was capable of infinite growth. A good government had a duty to maximise the sum of pleasures, and this is what is called progress. But this utilitarian progress means the total sum of man’s addictions, which expands at nature’s expense. Perhaps this calculus needs broadening. It should also take into account the experiences of nature – her pleasures and sufferings, elements of growth and destruction. This comprehensive calculus would enable the mutual recognition of man and nature, though their relations are not symmetricaclass="underline" in this couple, man is uniquely susceptible to addiction.