Christian August Crusius: Instruction to live reasonably - No true happiness before death

As it must be evident by now, Crucius values virtuous living most highly. Still, he does not reject other possible goals at least if they do not contradict virtuous life, which would just eventually evoke the wrath of God.

The only question is then what this secondary goal might be. A natural candidate might be satisfaction or pleasure caused by fulfillment of some desire. Since such pleasures are relative to desires, which humans have plenty, a single case of pleasure cannot be very high on the list of goals. What could be high is a state of ultimate happiness, in which all desires would be constantly fulfilled and no unhappiness would be anymore possible. Crucius notes that this rather sensualistic sounding end is something we cannot achieve during our temporal life, so that it cannot be any realistic goal for this life.

Crucius sets then his goal somewhat lower. Although we would not be in a pleasurable state, we could still be content, if we just were free from pain. Now, humans cannot be wholly content - this would mean that we wouldn’t be active anymore - but we could still be content in the sense of being pleased in some measure and being free of pain in some measure. The best state we could hope for during our temporal life would be such, in which the amount of pleasure would be remarkable, even if it must be just temporary.

Crucius goes into very particular details, when describing means for increasing happiness. Thus, he notes that one key element is to to make sure that desires are hindered as rarely as possible, and when they do, this hindrance must be as non-painful.To achieve this, Crucius notes, our desires should be such that they encourage us and others to act virtuously. Furthermore, to ease the pain, Crucius’ suggests the antidote of thinking pleasant things, which pushes bad thoughts away.

Although Crucius thus accepts pleasures in some measure, he is of the opinion that as a whole humans have a too strong desire for pleasure. Thus, he concludes, we should restrict desire for temporal satisfaction. Crucius therefore advocates continence of all sorts, whether it concerns gluttony or ambition. His particular target is sexuality, which he deems to be too strong a desire, useful only very rarely and detriment to virtue, unless bound by custom of marriage.