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deaths!26 As we saw in Chapter 6, Buddhist ideas do have some influence on the goals that Japanese people set themselves in life. Nevertheless, on the whole, there and in other Buddhist countries, only a tiny minority of those who call themselves Buddhists really live the compassionate ethical life presented in the story of Buddha's life and teachings. In the pre-Christian Western tradition, as we saw in Chapter 1, Socrates attempted to answer Glaucon's challenge by claiming that only the good person is really happy. To do so, he argued that the good person is one who has the parts of his or her soul in the proper relationship to each other. In the Phaedrus, Plato puts forward the same view by picturing reason as a charioteer, commanding the two horses of spirit and appetite. Socrates and Plato held that nobody does wrong willingly; people do wrong only if their reason is unable to control their spirit (that is, emotions like anger or pride) or their appetite (for example greed or lust). To this Aristotle made the sensible comment that the doctrine is 'manifestly at odds with the observed facts'. The assumption that Socrates and Plato make is that to know what is good is already to seek to bring it about. They drew no distinction between knowing what is good and deciding to do it. Though not in itself convincing, this idea began a long line of philosophical thought designed to show that if only we reason correctly, and are not swayed by desires to act contrary to our reason, we will freely choose what is right. Kant belongs in this broad tradition, even though Socrates and Plato saw the choice of a good life not as a sacrifice of one's own interests in the name of duty, but as the wise choice of a life that was more successful, and hence happier, than the life that was not lived so wisely. David Hume, the great eighteenth century Scottish philosopher, has in modern times been the source of the most fundamental opposition to the Kantian tradition in ethics.
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Hume held that every reason for doing anything has to connect with some desire or emotion we have, if it is to have any effect on our behaviour. (The view of ethics taken by logical positivists like A. J. Ayer in Language, Truth and Logic is a recognizable philosophical descendant of Hume's position.) If Hume is right, the only way to answer the question: 'What should I do?' is by asking, first: 'What do you really want to do?' Hume hoped that the answer would mostly, if not always, be that one wanted to do what was good or right, not (as Kant would have insisted) because it is one's duty, but because of the naturally sociable and sympathetic desires human beings have. Hume belongs to a school of British philosophy that recommends the ethical life on the basis of enlightened selfinterest. In contrast to Hobbes's pessimism, philosophers like the Earl of Shaftesbury, Bishop Butler (a bishop of decidedly secular tendencies, as far as his moral argument was concerned) and David Hume all took a much more positive view of human nature. They saw human beings as naturally sociable and benevolent creatures, and therefore argued that we find real happiness in the development and satisfaction of this side of our nature. They stressed the rewards of a noble character, a good reputation and an easy conscience. They urged us to follow our natural affections for others, and wrote of the joy of true friendship, based on openness and honesty. They also pointed to the probability that wrong-doing will be detected. 27 On the whole, those who belong to this school of thought hold that human beings are more strongly motivated by feelings of benevolence and sympathy for others than they are by more hostile emotions. Fortunately, therefore, in doing what we want to do, most of us, most of the time, will also do what is good for others. By the nineteenth century, however, a more pessimistic outlook prevailed. Jeremy Bentham, the founding father of