Human Nature and Good Lives: Etzioni’s Elisions

In “Happiness Is the Wrong Metric,” Amitai Etzioni argues against the self-satisfier conception of human nature: the view that humans are exclusively motivated by a pursuit of their happiness, where happiness is defined in terms of their satisfactions. The self-satisfier conception is reductionistic and harmful in thinking about good lives, good societies, and sound social policy. In its place Etzioni recommends a moral-wrestler conception of human nature that highlights the pursuit of moral values, especially duties to promote the common good, highlighted in his communitarian ethics, along with the pursuit of happiness. Unfortunately, his dichotomy between the self-satisfier and moral-wrestler conceptions is itself reductionistic. The moral-wrester conception needs to be broadened into a value-seeker (and value-wrestler) conception of human nature that takes seriously non-moral values, widens morality to include virtues as well as duties, and adopts a more plausible view of happiness.