Lachs, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness
Andrew Fiala
California State University, Fresno
Once we overcome our dread of the different, the richness of the world engulfs us
as a wave and leaves our cleansed souls with gratitude and amazement.
--John Lachs, Stoic Pragmatism, 127
I am extremely grateful to John Lachs for his guidance and mentorship (and to the
organizers of this conference for including me). And I am grateful for Lachs’ work,
which reminds us to savor the wonderful diversity of things. The apparent simplicity of
Lachs’ philosophy grows out of a sustained critique of much of what is wrong with
academic philosophy, abstract ethics, and disengaged political theory. Lachs offers a
simple recipe for peace and prosperity. If more of us took Lachs seriously, violence
would diminish, happiness would increase, and personalities would flourish. His humane
vision of the world celebrates life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Lachs is an empiricist, a pragmatist, and a relativist of sorts. His avoids
dogmatism. Instead of pontificating, he wants us to develop insight grounded in the
world of experience. Such insight is partial and fragmentary—and not revolutionary. By
recognizing the diversity of human natures and pluralism in the realm of theory, Lachs
leaves us without that singular Archimedean lever that could move the world. Lachs is
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also aware that for every challenging social and ethical problem we confront, there are
multiple answers, including the very real possibility that the status quo is an improvement
over the past. This conciliatory and piecemeal approach can be disappointing for those
who want splashy social theory that is more critical, more systematic, and more
revolutionary. But throughout his work, Lachs reminds us of the dangers of allencompassing systems and totalizing critique. He routinely warns us against “grand
history,” “abstract moralizing,” and “grand dreams of perfect people” (to quote phrases
found in the titles of some of Lachs’ essays). Instead, Lachs returns us to ordinary life
and everyday people. He engages in the real world, where means and ends are integrated
and open to the broad range of human experience. This “eliminates the prerogatives of
the eternal” as he says in his essay on “The Rat Race.”i Lachs is disenchanted with the
revolutionary dreams of utopian thinkers. His anti-utopian approach turns away from
perfectionism, while encouraging us to embrace the readily available joys of immediacy.ii
Lachs’ work is obviously influenced by the notable names in American philosophy—
Santayana, Dewey, James, Emerson, and the rest. Lachs also has much in common with
Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson wrote that all men are endowed by their creator with the
right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Jefferson’s affirmation of life, liberty,
and happiness reflected his worldview, which was a mix of Epicureanism, Stoicism,
Christian morality, and Enlightenment hope for progress.iii Jefferson explained that he
wanted to bring Jesus, Epicurus, and Epictetus together—and to defend the philosophy of
this triumvirate against Plato and the Christian fathers. There is no doubt that Jefferson
would have approved of much of Lachs’ philosophy of life—with the fatal exception of
Jefferson’s revolutionary agenda.
2
Lachs advocates a practical unity of theory and life. He says that, “our books should
be the author of our deeds”—and he encourages us to “present ourselves as living
examples of what we teach” (Relevance, 10). But given his conciliatory approach to
ethics and to social and political theory, it is not clear that Lachs would approve of
something as drastic as a revolution. Lachs appears wary of revolution because he is first
and foremost a teacher. We teach others by living well.iv Force and coercion teach the
wrong lesson.
Of God and Human Rights
Lachs’ conciliatory and cautious approach to social change is connected to his
approach to human rights and theology. Jefferson claims that we are endowed by our
Creator with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I suspect that
Lachs would not agree. He does not begin from a claim about a divine endowment of
rights; nor does he think that our rights are absolutely inalienable.
Lachs’ discussions of epiphenomenalism and God in Mind and Philosophers provide
us with a starting point in theology. Lachs returns us, in that work, to the realm of
common sense and a basically conciliatory approach to metaphysical disputes. Lachs
resolves the dispute between dualists and materialists in favor of an account of mind that
is nonreductive: the phenomenon of mind is preserved, even if the material basis of mind
is acknowledged along with the mind’s impotence. Lachs resolves disputes between
theists and atheists in favor of a view of God that is similarly conciliatory. In the
theological case, Lachs hones in on the contradiction inherent in the idea of divine
omniscience and omnipotence. With regard to omniscience, Lachs discovers a basic
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contradiction: God cannot be omniscience since an omniscient divinity cannot experience
doubt—and if the divinity cannot experience something, He cannot have knowledge of
it—and so God cannot be omniscient. With regard to omnipotence Lachs argues: if God
has effective power, He must be in time; but if God is an omniscient spectator, he must
be a passive observer outside of time. Lachs resolves the God question with an
epiphenomenal account of the divinity.
Lachs’ account of God is humanistic. In Mind and Philosophers, God is the unity
of the totality of happiness and value in the world—and who is thus an object worthy of
our worship and an expression of our highest ideals (Mind and Philosophers, p. 63-66).
Lachs explains that this God is brought into existence by the complex diversity of the
flux of nature: “He is the sum of the whitecaps on that restless sea” (64). “He is the
compete record of the world’s achievement… God, then, is an ever-increasing whole to
which each conscious being—human animal, and whatever other kind exists—may make
its contribution. Any experience that is of value permanently swells the aggregate” (64).
Lachs concludes that God is not a tyrant who wants obedience—but a process that results
from the way that our happiness contributes to the totality of good in the world.v This
idea of God inspires us with its humanity.vi
Lachs’ view of religion is not merely as a consolation for our fragility and
finitude. In apparent agreement with Santayana, Lachs explains that he embraced “the
mysteries of Christianity” in his own way (Freedom and Limits, 18). His recent writing
attempts to “articulate ways in which a commitment to transcendence can be combined
with cold-eyed naturalism.” He continues, “My interest is in seeing religion as a
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celebration of life, rather than as a consolation for its losses and our finitude” (Freedom
and Limits, 18).
There are some mysteries of religion here, about which Lachs may yet inform us.
But it is clear that Lachs cannot believe in the God of Divine Command theory, a
Catholic natural law theory, or even the deistic God who endows his creatures with
natural rights. Lachs does not think that human rights (if there even are such things in
Lachs’ ontology) come from an endowing Creator or can be grounded in an account of
the nature of things. Lachs holds that human rights are “choice-inclusive facts,” and that
the language of “rights” is simply a way of emphasizing how important these facts are for
us.vii
Unlike Jefferson, who grounds life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in an
Enlightenment claim about the inalienable endowment of the Creator, Lachs leaves us
with life, liberty, and happiness as important goods to be developed in the world—among
the vast diversity of goods. And he suggests that through the development of these
goods, we move toward a higher unity, which we might call God. But this higher unity is
always on the way and in process. In a sense, Lachs turns Jefferson on his head. Instead
of seeing the inalienable endowment of our rights as a non-negotiable fundamental
ground for political life, Lachs encourages us to explore life, liberty, and happiness—and
he suggests that good judgment and common sense teaches that even life can become a
burden. Instead of declaiming life, liberty, and prosperity as rights that are not
exchangeable, Lachs seems to suggest that these are privileges which we can enjoy and
develop, when we are willing to put forth the effort to contribute to our own living, our
freedom, and our own happiness.
5
Letting a Hundred Flowers Bloom
Lachs’ basic view of ethics is that we ought to care about the happiness of others
while respecting their liberty. This rules out paternalism and meddling—and it permits
broad latitude for free choice with regard to a variety of topics (drugs, suicide, sexual
morality, and so on). Lachs’ basic libertarianism and his relativism (or as he says in
places, his “relationalism”) leads to a robust social and political philosophy. Lachs’ basic
political philosophy is grounded in tolerance and pluralistic affirmation of the radical
diversity of human natures. He laments the “monstrous egotism displayed in judging
another” (Relevance, 27). He criticizes dogmatism and monism, while celebrating
pluralism. He concludes: “Society would not collapse if we were to let a hundred
flowers bloom. To be sure, it would be different in structure and operation from what it
is today. It would be different and it would be better” (Relevance, 28). The idea of
letting a hundred flowers bloom comes to us from Chairman Mao—who used this a ploy
to draw out social critics—who were then re-educated or executed. Mao used the
hundred flowers movement to entice “snakes out of their lairs” so the state could chop of
their heads.viii Lachs is clearly not advocating Maoism—but the history of the phrase is
useful for reminding us of one critical problem: sometimes liberty and happiness are
understood in ideological fashion. The Maoists encouraged a false kind of liberty—they
expected the hundred flowers to bloom in conformity with Maoism. Lachs does not
expect that kind of conformity. But one objection to Lachs is that there is a risk that
libertarian ideas are not either neutral or good. Some worry, for example, that
libertarianism can mask a kind of ideology. For religious fundamentalists and others,
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liberty looks like a bad idea that is foisted upon them in the name of social improvement
(but which comes with associated costs in terms of the demise of traditional cultural
values). Multicultural theorists, feminists, communitarians, and other social and political
philosophers have struggled with this problem—and associated worries about the extent
to which we have to tolerate the intolerant, about the damage to local cultures that occurs
when economic and political globalization arrives, and concerns about the injustices
woven into the ideology of free market capitalism.
To my knowledge, Lachs does not engage directly with this sort of critique.
Rather, he straightforwardly affirms the vision of a world that is opened by liberty.
Lachs is one of the few contemporary social and political philosophers who has defended
the idea that the world we live in is actually better, and who encourages us to overcome
the “all-encompassing guilt” that flows through Western culture (Stoic Pragmatism, 115).
As Lachs explains in In Love with Life: “Not only are we in love with life; life now is
more worthy of love” (In Love with Life, 14). Lachs maintains that socially, politically,
scientifically, and educationally we are doing better (in the Western world) than we once
did. One reason we are doing better may be that we are also more sensitive to the worries
of the communitarians and multiculturalists. Lachs’ libertarian tent is expansive—
although one wonders what he would say about the question of what to do about
intolerant and closed cultures.
One solution is to note that Lachs does not deny that there is progress to be made.
But there are limits woven into reality. Lachs is not a metaphysical optimist. He admits
the fact of death and the existence of evil (we each contain a bit of Karl the Nazi, as
Lachs once explained). But from Lachs’ vantage point, experience teaches that we are
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“both better and better off” (to quote the titles of another of Lachs’ essays). Lachs is also
not naïve about the facticity of death. His extensive reflection on end of life issues
provides an existential anchor to his philosophizing. He is not naïve about suffering—
even though he thinks that respect for autonomy should allow suicide as a solution to
suffering. But clearly, Lachs does not think that suffering can be redeemed in either the
Hegelian philosopher’s spiritual vantage point or in a more religious theodicy. His
existential solution is to weave Stoic indifference together with the pragmatic effort to
amerliorate things. As he puts it in In Love with Life, “Of course we die. By why should
that spoil breakfast?” (109). With regard to the challenge of multiculturalism, Lachs
might respond that it is true that there are closed and recalcitrant culture—but why should
that spoil our slow and steady progress?
Peace, Prosperity, and Education
Lachs embraces finitude with a grain of salt and a cup of cheer—and witty turns
of phrase that themselves provide solace and energize the spirit. Lachs’ good-humored
approach to philosophizing about life, politics, and society is infectious. There is no
denying the stamp of his personality on his work: his enthusiasm, good sense, and pithy
phraseology. Sometimes you can hear him smiling as you read his work. His own
energetic love for life helps to explain his celebration of the prosperity that results from
human creativity and labor. After all, teaching and writing are human creative arts:
Lachs clearly enjoys both—and they give meaning and joy to life. For Lachs, material
and technological development are wonderful things, which make life better. These
improvements are the result of common sense, philosophical honesty, and human
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ingenuity. In celebrating prosperity and technology in his own lively writing, Lachs
reminds us of the fun of being human.
At bottom, the goodness of the life Lachs imagines is grounded in “activity” of
the Aristotelian sense. While Aristotlelian activity is an end in itself, it is also socially
useful. Lachs argues that productive labor and material wealth help to defuse religious
intolerance, nationalistic fervor, and ethnic division (Stoic Pragmatism, p. 168). He also
suggests that philosophical enlightenment and understanding lead toward a recognition of
pluralism. At the level of theory, Lachs works to defuse absolutism and dogmatism,
which he thinks leads to oppressive conformity. At a more practical level, he advocates
the spread of commerce, trade, and technology as a solution to violence and war.ix
Lachs suggests that political life ought to be understood as a means of protecting
happiness in its diverse manifestations—rather than as a way of imposing one idea of
happiness on people (or even worse, as a Machiavellian or Nietzschean game of power).
Political and religious conflict results from ideas about a promised land and a place and
time of ideological domination. Lachs suggests that the antidote for all of that is material
well-being accompanied by liberty and philosophical education.
Lachs is not utopian. He knows that the task of amelioration is on-going. But
since Lachs is not interested in developing or defending a strong Platonic or Hegelian
notion of the state, his solution is educational. Lachs grounds his diagnosis of social
dysfunction with the problem of mediation. Violence can be understood, he argues, as a
response to alienation. He suggests that there is a sort of aesthetic and psychological
benefit to violence: “violence restores the aesthetic magnificence of the directly present”
(Relevance, 107). The solution to this is to foster immediacy in other ways. And for this
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to happen we must first understand the problem of mediation and alienation. And then
we must educate people better. We must see that “the mediated world is our own
creation” (Relevance, 112). Once we see that, we can change the world and improve it
further.
Lachs (along with his co-author, Shirley Lachs) argues that education is one of the
most intimate and important of social projects. He laments the fact, however, that
education has come to be seen as a merely “bureaucratic job” (Relevance, 107). In that
circumstance, we end up with “uncaring irresponsibility” (Relevance, 136). The solution
to the ills of our educational bureaucracy is more caring, more community, and more
virtue. Furthermore, Lachs suggests that the role of the state is an educational one.
Lachs suggests that the state should be less focused on employing force to mandate
solutions to social problems—and more focused on educating the public. Lachs wants
teaching to retain its origin as a “calling” and to not become a bureaucratic or mechanical
act. In his reflections on the value of universities in the age of the internet, Lachs points
out the role of faculty as “mature human beings” who embody “living knowledge”
(Community of Individuals, 27). Teachers and professors are most beneficial when they
are engaged with students as real persons, embodying wisdom and providing a source of
intergenerational friendship.
Instead of a promised land, Lachs argues, people need a “land of promise, of
actualizable hope for peace and the contentment of material goods” (Stoic Pragmatism,
168). Lachs explains that this is why immigrants scramble to come to America—and he
suggests that the path toward world peace is to find ways to extend material prosperity
and liberty to all people of the world.x A good and satisfying life involves “work and
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consumption.” This leads Lachs to reject welfarism that produces dependency and
disempowers people (a point about which the details matter—and which I think Lachs is
a bit too quick to judge).
Relativism and World Peace
Lachs’ recipe for world peace is deceptive simple: to celebrate human diversity
and allow people the freedom to work while trying to help them become happy without
meddling. Respect for life and liberty are fundamental—and combined with holding
people responsible for their misdeeds.xi
With regard to diversity, Lachs’ discussions of “human natures” (in the plural) is
important for understanding his critique of violence. Diversity and relativism make it
difficult to justify violence and hatred.xii Of course, Lachs is clearly not an absolute
pacifist. He clearly understands the problem power as found in sources such as Plato,
Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. Lachs makes it clear that our desire for operational
independence and stability can easily extend toward the desire to control others. Citing
William James’ idea about the need for a moral equivalent of war, Lachs notes, “some
people love war and adventure with all their souls, and nothing but fights and danger and
risky exploration can make their existence worthwhile… some people just cannot be
happy without being pugilists” (Community of Individuals 57).xiii
In the terms of Lachs’ larger social and psychological theory, the problem of
violence and war is a problem of mediation: violence and war are seductive because they
can return us to immediacy. To prevent the desire for immediacy to become anti-social
and violent, education is needed. Lachs suggests that the desire for immediacy can be
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transformed in a nonviolent direction, when we come to understand both our felt
dissatisfaction with mediation and the need to work diligently to make the social and
political world more humane.xiv
Given these insights, Lachs warns that pacifism (although he does not use the
term) is a threat to liberal democracies. In Meddling, Lachs explains that liberal
democrats engage in the “comfortable illusion” that everyone is enlightened and willing
to talk about their differences. But his analysis of violence and will-to-power make it
clear that not everyone is a well-adjusted liberal who wants to talk things over. A
significant problem occurs, according to Lachs, when liberal democracies lack the will to
fight—and totalitarian states and warrior regimes attack, taking advantage of their
complacence. Lachs concludes, “there may come a time when war will seem a childhood
disease of humankind, but that time has not arrived” (Meddling, 111). Again, Lachs hints
that the solution is material progress: more liberty, opportunity, prosperity, and
education.
A Critique of Lachs’ Poetic Simplicity
It should be clear that I think that Lachs’ philosophy and worldview are
inspirational. However, let’s note another point of critique. Lachs’ work can appear to
consist of much anecdotal evidence, moralistic exhortation, and wishful thinking. As one
early critic put it in a review of Intermediate Man, sometimes it seems that in Lachs’
work the poet gets the better of the philosopher.xv
Consider Lachs’ use of homespun analogies, anecdotes, and examples. This is
central to his philosophizing. One recurrent theme is food and drink; another theme
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focuses on animals; and still other themes come from domestic and family life. Lachs
suggests that we can learn much from our desire for food, for example. The desire for
more and new things is “embraced in cooking, where we seek surprising ways to enhance
the taste of meals” (Stoic Pragmatism, 107). From this and other examples Lachs
concludes that we believe that nothing is good enough. Or consider Lachs’ discussion of
backyard raccoons in his account of how welfare handouts create dependency. “Even
animals display this tendency. At one point we put out some leftovers for a group of
raccoons; the next night, they brought their friends and waited for the handout.
Generally, when something desirable is free for the taking, intelligent creatures of all
sorts avail themselves of it” (Meddling, 92). There is much fun and enjoyment in reading
Lachs, since these examples and anecdotes keep us grounded in the world of lived
experience. But one wonders about the data with regard to issues such as welfare,
poverty, unemployment, and healthcare. Are human welfare recipients really like hungry
raccoons? Is the craving after the divine and the perfect really similar to our desire for a
tasty meal?
Despite his obvious awareness of the complexity of the issues, Lachs’ writing
often appears a bit simplistic. Indeed, Lachs tendency to simplify may be what led
Dennis Schmidt to once accuse Lachs of being a modern day Dr. Pangloss who has fallen
for the trap of “one-dimensional” thinking (which Schmidt invokes with a nod to
Marcuse).xvi Cynthia Willett has added to the critique of Lachs by implying that Lachs
has been seduced by affluence and comfort and that this leaves him complacent about the
injustices of the world and perhaps also complicit, insofar as he (and most other affluent
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Americans) enjoys a life that is built upon the backs of slaves.xvii Even fans of Lachs’
work worry that it is at times too rosy and optimistic.xviii
One could approach this critique in an ad hominem fashion, arguing that Lachs
privileged vantage point in the ivy covered walls at Vanderbilt prevents him from seeing
the suffering and injustice that reside just down the street and across the bridge. Is Lachs
merely reporting what the world looks like from his own point of view? Or is he able to
ground his philosophy in something more objective.
Consider the question of loving life. For those already in love with life—and for
those fortunate enough to live in North America and to teach philosophy for a living—the
love of life is obvious. But what about children suffering from Ebola in Africa? What
about women and girls oppressed by their families, religions, and governments? What
about war, rape, arson, disease, ignorance, and so on? Lachs does not deny that we die—
as we noted above. But when he follows this with by asking why we should let that
“spoil breakfast,” we might point out that there are some who die precisely because they
do not have enough to eat for breakfast. A critic might argue that Lachs’ tendency to
simplify is a type of denial: to insist that life is worth loving is to deny the experience of a
large number of people, whose lives are not worth living.
Let’s make this concrete by returning to the question of violence, war, peace, and
military power. Lachs does look askance at those who “exalt the glory of dying for
country or for God”: he links voluntary and mechanical sacrifice to the “values of the ant
hill” (Meddling, 108). And yet he praises military service, especially when employed in
defense of liberty (Meddling, 126-7). There is a contradiction here that needs resolution.
Perhaps a more thorough explanation of the just war theory would help, along with a
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more detailed account of the necessity of the division of labor in society. And beneath
this, one wishes that Lachs would weigh in on questions about the military-industrial
complex, American imperialism, and the other moral complexities introduced by those
who are critical of the power of institutionalized and structural violence.xix
Conclusion: Engaged and Limited Public Philosophy
In reply to this type of criticism, I believe we ought to consider the facticity of
philosophizing. Consider the audience and intent of Lachs’ work. Lachs’ audience
varies. In Love with Life is a popular work—and different in tone from something like
Stoic Pragmatism, which is primarily addressed to other philosophers. We should
recognize the plurality of authorial voices in Lachs’ work. This pluralism in method fits
his larger idea: one of his strategies is to argue against the monistic and dogmatic
absolutism of some philosophers who speak as if they have taken flight with Hegel and
the owl of Minerva. Lachs’ strategy is often deflationary and mischievous. The
homespun examples and anecdotes are a dialectical antidote to Hegelian pretentiousness
and world-weary critical theory.
Lachs teaches that philosophy arises in the middle of things. Its contributions are
minor and limited. We are constrained by context, history, and point of view. No
philosopher can deal with all questions and problems at once. There is darkness. But
Lachs choses to look on the bright side. That’s a welcome breath of fresh air in a world
that is afflicted by negativity and death.
Instead of piling on complexity with the critical theorists, existentialists, and postmodernists, Lachs offers a simple retort: open your eyes and your hearts to the world and
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you will find that there is much to love, that happiness does happen, that most of us share
a commitment to the value of liberty, and that we are making progress toward a better
world. Lachs represents an antithesis to the image of the philosopher as the recondite
whiner and nihilistic doomsayer. There is much to criticize in the world; but there is also
much to celebrate if we only allow the richness of the world to engulf us, leaving us filled
with gratitude and amazement.
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Works by John Lachs Cited
A Community of Individuals. New York: Routledge, 2003.
Freedom and Limits. Ed. by Pat Shade. Bronx, NY, USA: Fordham University Press,
2014.
In Love With Life: Reflections on the Joy of Living and Why We Hate to Die. Nashville:
Vanderbilt University Press, 1998.
Meddling: On the Virtue of Leaving Others Alone. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2014.
Mind and Philosophers. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1987.
The Relevance of Philosophy to Life. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1995.
Stoic Pragmatism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012
i
He continues in that essay, describing his pragmatic, Deweyan ideal of philosophy and social theory as
follows: “It restores the dignity of everyday activities and establishes them as proper elements in
meaningful lives. It refuses to view the totality of our condition as flawed… and looks, instead, for
concrete ways to enhance enjoyment in the present and to increase it in the future” (Relevance, 90).
[The idea of “good enough”] rejects the relevance of the ideal of perfection and strikes at the root of our
compulsion to pursue unreachable ideals. It liberates us to the enjoyment of the possible without
eliminating standards or moral effort. It enables us to still our will by achieving what we can and
celebrating what we do. By no means least, it dissolves the eternal dissatisfaction that permeates Western
industrial society, and it substitutes joy in the immediacies of life for all-encompassing guilt (Stoic
Pragmatism, 114-15).
ii
Thomas Jefferson, “Letter to William Short Monticello, October 31, 1819” in Jefferson: Political
Writings (Cambridge University Press, 1999), 313-16.
iii
iv
One hint about this is found in his critical discussion of colonialism—which is another form of meddling,
which Lachs rejects. “The fact that one nation may be ahead of another in moral growth does not entitle it
to take over the other’s life. Contrary to what aggressive colonial power supposed, no civilized state has a
right or an obligation to civilize the world. Open communication, a shared life, and setting a good example
suffice to make the ways of liberal democracies attractive to many nations “(Stoic Pragmatism, 35). Lachs
also says “We learn to pursue our true good the way we learn to fish: by experience… (Relevance, 36).
“I am quite certain that a God of the sort I have described actually exists. For if there is a single
experience that has intrinsic value, there is a sum or totality of such experiences. Each feeling of happiness
or joy, therefore, confirms the existence of the Deity. Finally, I am persuaded of the religious adequacy of
this living God. Machines do not worship, but there are few men who do not find or look for a god to
serve. The ideal of maximizing value that this concept of God expresses is thoroughly civilized and
humane. If this notion of God took the place of the older ones in our great religions, the believer could
v
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adore a Being of pure value instead of a kindly tyrant. Then each time we achieved a suitable state of
mind, we could rejoice in the certain knowledge that that small part of us will live forever as a part of God”
(Mind and Philosophers, 66).
Lachs’ theology echoes the wisdom of Emerson, Santayana, Royce, and Bertrand Russell—along with
Harstshorne and Feuerbach. Lest this be dismissed as an early work without lasting impact for
understanding Lachs’ work, note that Lachs appears to continue to affirm this idea of God. One hint comes
from an essay Lachs published in 2004 (“The Difference God Makes” in Midwestern Philosophy Journal—
republished in Stoic Pragmatism) where he contrasts Royce, who affirms God with Santayana, who does
not. Lachs concludes: “Although we hear much about the decline of religion, the promise of safe haven
provided by caring omnipotence continues to attract masses of people. Rejecting the hypothesis that God
governs all, on the other hand, leaves us with a bleak universe of temporary joy and ultimate demise. It may
be easy to adopt this attitude in the strutting fullness of life, but age and debility tend to turn the mind to
searching for aid from a higher power” (Stoic Pragmatism, 157).
vi
vii
Declaring certain values natural rights, for example, puts us in a more powerful position than if we
simply announced our intention to fight for them. Asserting that certain social structures, political
arrangements or modes of behavior are direct outcomes of human nature makes them appear more weighty
than if we merely said that we favor them (Relevance, 237).
“The Silence that Preceded China’s Great Leap into Famine” Smithsonian Magazine, September 26,
2012 (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-silence-that-preceded-chinas-great-leap-into-famine51898077/#hSRj9E5CSzcLjMRj.99)
viii
ix
It is no overstatement that replacing war with commerce is a turning point in the moral evolution of
humankind. Instead of wanting other people dead, we want them to live and prosper. Our relation to them
becomes internal: in trade, their good is essentially linked to ours, so what harms them harms us, as well. A
momentous expansion of the self follows inevitably. We begin to view our trading partners in the same
favorable light in which we bathe ourselves. Their habits become interesting, their choices respectable,
their fates important (“Better and Better Off” in Community of Individuals, 106-7).
“Although affluence in a commercial world brings with it all the problems of overconsumption, there is in
the end no alternative way to eradicate nationalist, ethnic, and religious violence” (Stoic Pragmatism, 169).
x
“In humane societies people are free to do much or all that relates to them alone, but not to hurt or murder
others. To hold people responsible is to teach them responsibility… The same approach may slowly reduce
the desire of terrorists and warlike states to create conflagrations around the globe. No person or state
should want to run the lives of others. So we need to say clearly that we respect independence and wish to
leave everyone alone, but we will not tolerate aggressive and destructive acts” (In Love with Life, 88).
xi
“Condemnation of other persons and nations becomes difficult in proportion as we see the legitimacy of
differing ideals. Accordingly, justifications of hatred and war would be recognized as specious and
dismissed by all who take the relativity of values seriously” (Relevance, 27). A slightly different version of
these sentences can be found in Lachs, “Pluralism and Choice Inclusive Facts” in Shade, ed. Freedom and
Limits (Bronx, NY, USA: Fordham University Press, 2014), p. 228.
xii
Or as he explains in The Relevance of Philosophy to Life, the desire to “do something of moment” can
lead individuals to turn to violence. “There is a surprising, positive side to the horrors of war. Many
people report that great danger leads to an exhilaration that renders experience vibrant…The routine of a
safe society obliterates the momentousness of life; war reacquaints us with energizing danger, with death,
contingency, and finitude… The exercise of great power, especially physical power that threatens damage,
vitalizes experience. The predictable triviality of life is gone, and we are suddenly exposed to the sacred
depths of existence, the finality and irreversibility of what happens to us” (Relevance, 106-7).
xiii
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“If we see the modern world as of our own making, it will not seem so oppressive and alien. The more
we view it as our own, the less we shall be content to blow it up or to see it burn” (Relevance, 111-12).
xv
James Chesher, Review of John Lachs, Intermediate Man in Reason Papers 11 (Spring 1986) at
http://reasonpapers.com/pdf/11/rp_11_10.pdf
xvi
Dennis J. Schmidt, “Scales: Human or Otherwise: On Moral and Material Complexity” The Journal of
Speculative Philosophy 15.3 (2001) 190-194
xvii
Willett argues with regard to Lachs: “His defense of the American way of life encourages us to overlook
the damage that modernization and capitalist production have done to our emotive and social lives. It is
good to be comfortable, but comfort is not enough. The attitude of complacency that comfort instills allows
us to ignore the fact that we do not live on the island called America, but at the top of a social and
economic pyramid of global proportions, and that this pyramid is built by slaves” [Cynthia Willett, “The
Pyramid that Slaves Built: A Reply to John Lachs” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 15.3 (2001) 184189].
xviii
One review of In Love With Life by Richard Hart raises a significant question. “The book’s title and
subtitle, In Love with Life: Reflections on the Joy of Living and Why We Hate To Die, may strike some as
too optimistic or idealistic, as painting too rosy a picture of human experience. Perhaps to some it even
begs the question, for Lachs seems to presume that (1) we humans do essentially love life (or ought to if we
see clearly), and (2) that as a result of this passionate love we truly hate to die. Is this a given or is it true
only foe some fortunate souls, for instance, philosophers or artists who revel in pondering life? [Richard E.
Hart, “Review of In Love with Life,” Metaphilosophy Vol. 32, No. 5, October 2001].
xiv
xix
Lachs is clearly suspicious of overweaning legislation, and he is not overly fond of the wisdom of
political representatives. It is surprising that he appears to sanguinely endorse military solutions to global
problems. I have no doubt that some limited military solutions may be needed in the real world. But there
are deep structural and ethical problems connected to militarism: from the absurdity of nuclear deterrence
to the problem of unilateralism in military and foreign affairs. Lachs does touch upon some of these
problems in Intermediate Man—in his discussion of the moral slippage that leads to war crimes. But one
wants a more sustained and deeper critique. Similar complaints against Lachs can be lodged from those
who would prefer that he say more about racism, sexism, environmental degradation, and a host of other
ills.
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