Questioning Fyfe’s Desirism: Introduction

With a minor caveat or two, I tend to agree with Dostoevsky that, “Without God everything is permissible.”

Alonzo Fyfe hosts Atheist Ethicist, a blog focused on, well.. atheism and ethics. Alonzo defends the moral theory of desire utilitarianism, sometimes referred to as desirism, and I took this to be his introductory-level article on the theory.

It so happens that I accept many if not most of Fyfe’s starting premises. I’ll also freely concede that I (and arguably every other person in the world) will make decisions according to the basic tenets of the theory. To recast a classic Dylan song in desirist language, everyone aims to fulfill some desire, from the selfless servant to the wandering nomad to the greedy capitalist. Even the most ascetic monk struggling to eliminate desire (tanha) acts to fulfill a desire: the desire to spiritually mature.

In the rest of this introduction, I hope to illustrate that I’ve understood Fyfe’s core premises as he himself delineates them, and addressed desirism accordingly, both of which are preconditions for any worthy response.

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