The question whether happiness is 'the highest good or subservient to other goods' is a very old one. We ourselves will not pose such a question, because it does not clearly distinguish between monistic, ultimate, perfective, instrumental, and perhaps corrective, values. Only when happiness is said to be the highest good, may we assume that this means that it is claimed that happiness is an ultimate value. But for an extremist, for instance, for whom universal positivity, or some form of positivity more general than happiness, would be the highest good, happiness itself would merely be a perfective value, that is, a nonultimate perfective one. Another question which has occupied theorists is whether happiness, if accepted as a value, would be a dominant (or even the sole) end or not. It would be a monistic end, if it were the sole one (as in utilitarianism); and a dominant end, if it were a 'single, specific end which has more importance than all other ends'; it would be a nondominant end if it fell into 'an overall life-plan or network of ends'. (The latter kind of end has also deceptively been called "an inclusive end".) It has been pointed out that the controversy between those who see happiness as a dominant end and those who do not see it that way is a recurrent issue in philosophy -- and in ideology, it might be added. On the neutralistic model it is not happiness which is the dominant end but situational well-being. That is to say, as far as the situational and happiness-catenary aspects are concerned. If the happiness-catenal is a person, this situational well-being comprises 'er overall life-plan, because it depends also on this life-plan how a person experiences changes in 'er conditions.

Happiness is acceptable for us as an instrumental value, and as one amongst other values. For utilitarians, however, it is an ultimate value, and the sole one (assuming, that is, that they are truly monistic eudaimonists). Nonetheless, it is a value in both neutralism and utilitarianism, and therefore it is worth our while to examine whether certain objections which have been raised to utilitarianism could be raised to our type of eudaimonism as well. We shall, then, not consider objections with respect to autonomy, justice, truth-telling, promise-keeping and others of this kind. They can in our denominational doctrine either be met with the other values or principles we espouse (inclusive of other subnorms of neutrality) or need not be taken seriously at all, when they but too readily draw on 'moral intuitions' which are not ours. An interesting objection to traditional, positive utilitarianism in the present context is, however, that people (and sentient beings in general) would have to produce as many happy beings as possible, even if there were only a marginal difference between their happiness and a life of nanhappiness. For any additional sentient being, however little happy it were, would increase the sum total of happiness in the world, provided that the population increase did not make the existing sentient beings unhappy, or more unhappy than the new utility bearers would be happy.

To bypass the objections against positive utilitarianism, some theorists have proposed negative utilitarianism as the solution to all moral problems. Whereas happiness is the sole, ultimate value in positive utilitarianism, unhappiness is the sole, ultimate disvalue in negative utilitarianism. Negative utilitarianism is not extremistic, and seems to be more in accord with neutralism because unhappiness is, neutralistically speaking, also a perfective disvalue. Yet, the following objection to negative utilitarianism is even more serious than the one to positive utilitarianism: Why not painlessly kill every sentient being in order to minimize unhappiness?. Evidently, the negative utilitarian would not have to kill nanhappy and happy catenals, but painlessly killing all unhappy catenals would minimize the total amount of unhappiness in the world. (It must be assumed, then, that the means to do this are there, and that no-one would be 'so irrational' as to be afraid of a painless death.)

Why do these objections not apply to happiness-catenary neutralism, altho we, too, do consider unhappiness a disvalue, and altho we, too, may accept happiness as a value? The reason is simple: the ultimate, perfective value is neutrality and the ultimate, corrective value is neutralization and not maximization, minimization, catenalization or decatenalization. One does not neutralize the situation of any catenal by creating another, happy catenal, nor does one in this way neutralize the average situation of all existing catenals. And one does not neutralize the situation or happiness-catenary state of an unhappy catenal by making it into a thing that is not catenal anymore with respect to the situation and happiness catenas. The situation of a catenal is only neutralized by making it neutral, or less unneutral. (That traditional gangsters confuse neutralization and decatenalization is just no reason for traditional theorists to follow suit. Or, are both groups themselves perhaps exponents of the same culture?)

Even the average value of situational catenality (which is a hypothetical construct) will not get closer to 0 by adding a catenal in a completely neutral situation, nor will the average value of happiness-catenality by adding a nanhappy catenal. The average value of situational catenality will indeed get closer to 0 by killing a catenal in an unneutral situation, but this will also happen by neutralizing the catenal's situation, and even by adding a catenal in an opposite situation which is equally unneutral. But it does not just follow from the norm of well-being that a neutral, average situation would be superior to an unneutral one. In that case it would suffice to have only unneutral situations in the world as long as the negative situations were balanced by the positive ones. A neutral average is therefore at most the result of a neutralistic subnorm, not the goal or essence of it. This is not to say that looking at the average or total value cannot be useful when one and the same action has a neutralizing effect with respect to the one catenal and an unneutralizing effect with respect to another. But it is precisely the fact that the effects on the individual catenals can be different which makes the average or total value a useful instrument. Yet, this still does not make it an ultimate value in itself.

The essence of every neutralistic subnorm is that each individual value should be 0, if this corresponds to a form of ananormative neutrality. To attain this end, and granting that this is possible, we must neutralize the situation of a catenal, not kill it, nor add another catenal in an opposite kind of situation. Likewise, the average value of happiness-catenality would have to be brought closer to 0 by neutralizing happiness-catenals, not by decatenalizing them, nor by adding happiness-catenals with an opposite happiness-catenary value. This is certainly good news for unhappy happiness-catenals who want to be released from their pains or other feelings of unhappiness without being killed. It looks like bad news for happy happiness-catenals who would have to abstain from all pleasures, unless such abstention were detrimental to their health or to their situation in general. If so, they could do nothing else than to balance happiness-catenary neutralization (fewer pleasures, less happiness) against situational neutralization (as little deterioration of their situation as possible). Should this sound odd, unreasonable or ridiculous, this will in itself be a reason to suppose that nanhappiness is not ananormatively superior to happiness, and that happiness is an 'effect' and sign of situational improvement. In this case happiness is an indication of neutralization and something to be happy about. But even then, happiness must not be pursued as an ultimate end in itself.

Until now we have only compared our position with the positions of positive and negative utilitarianism. But, as a matter of fact, any doctrine that recognizes happiness as a perfective value (even if only one among several others) suffers, at least to a certain degree, from the defects of positive utilitarianism; and any doctrine that recognizes average or total unhappiness as a perfective disvalue suffers from the defects of negative utilitarianism. However, besides the neutralistic and utilitarian positions there are two other main positions. The first one is the position of normative doctrines that do not say anything about happiness-catenary and situational catenality. According to such doctrines it would not matter at all whether human and other sentient beings are happy, nanhappy or unhappy, nor would it matter whether their situations are good or not (while somehow defining good in nonnormative, situational terms). This is the position of those who do not take any position.

Finally, there is the position of ideologies and philosophical theories that do not propagate happiness as a performatory value or unhappiness as a performatory disvalue, but that promise happiness to those who are virtuous and that threaten those who are vicious in terms of the doctrinal prescriptions with unhappiness. (Supernaturally, believers who do not receive their reward or punishment before death may on such a construction also receive it after death, 'preferably' either in the form of eternal bliss or of eternal damnation.) The monomaniac inventors and leaders of such promisory-comminatory doctrines only confess implicitly that personal happiness will always remain the sole, ultimate value, and personal unhappiness the sole, ultimate disvalue, if not of the doctrine in question itself, then of its adherents.