Alternative Values brings together in one place what people have said about the pursuit of wealth, power, fame, praise, glory, and physical pleasure over the centuries. It is set up in the form of a debate: arguments that one should ardently pursue some of our most common desires are juxtaposed with arguments that pursuing them is a foolish or even tragic waste of one’s life.
In Plato’s Gorgias, Callicles argues that “The person who would truly live ought to allow personal desires to wax to the uttermost [and] when they have grown to their greatest . . . have the courage and intelligence to minister to them and satisfy such longings.” The Buddha, by contrast, warns that “From craving arises sorrow,” and Einstein agrees that “I am happy because I want nothing.” Epicurus provides a somewhat different perspective: “Personal pleasure [should be] the objective,” but the truest pleasure is “the absence of . . . turmoil in the mind.” Willa Cather counters that “There is only one big thing—desire,” and Bette Davis says proudly that “My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist.” Thomas Hobbes agrees that “To have no desire is to be dead,” and Isaiah Berlin characterizes “the doctrine that . . . what I cannot have I must teach myself not to desire . . . [as] a sublime but unmistakable form of . . . sour grapes.”
This is truly a perennial debate, one that all of us must try to resolve for ourselves, but also a debate that can be enriched and clarified by paying close attention to what others have thought and said over the years.