Pleasure is a source of enjoyment or delight, as described by dictionary.com. Hedonism is the pursuit of or devotion to pleasure, especially to the pleasures of the senses. Your view of pleasure clearly depends on which time period you are living in, talking about, and what you believe. For example if you lived when Epicurus lived you might believe that pain and pleasure are two different things, but if you live now and listen to Queen you might believe that pain and pleasure are not completely different things.
One of the major philosophers that was in the "Three Classical Theories..." article was Epicurus. Epicurus' theory or view was called Hedonism, which is the belief that pleasure is the sole good. He did not agree with Plato's statement that said, "Pleasure must be in some way an ingredient of happiness." For much of his life Epicurus lived solely on bread, and it was said that he would not, for a time, drink anything except for water. He considered "the good" to be pleasure, but recognized that if a person simply pursued pleasure he would soon have pain. Living pleasantly without suffering from any undesirable effects of living is the acceptable way to live life. The authors of the essay suggest that Epicurus is not only telling us that we should live to acquire pleasure, but he is also trying to give us the tools to live a happy, pain-free life. Epicurus believes that if your pleasurable life leads to a pain, then your life would--simply--be a bad one. Epicurus wrote about two distinguished pleasures. The first being dynamic, which is gluttony and fame that a person achieves during life by public service, marriage, and drinking. Each of these is bad because they follow up with pain. Then there is passive ...
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...s are saying that he needed pleasure or company of another, but did not receive it and was in pain. This line of the song shows that instead of pleasure there is no pleasure and there is numbness and the absence of pleasure. From the reading on Epicurus his theory he would believe that you do not go looking for pleasure because pain will soon follow after, and there might not even be pleasure it might just lead to pain without the pleasure.
Epicurus was ascetic to his theories about pleasure and how a person should live their life. If pleasure is a source of enjoyment and delight then Epicurus believed that we should live our lives happy and to the fullest. Living in 2004--today--and reading about what philosophers wrote about long ago about how to life a pleasure-full life makes people reflect on their own lives and see if they are living a "good life."
Hedonism is a theory of morality. There are several popular philosophers who support hedonism; some of whom offer their own interpretation of the theory. This paper will focus on the Epicurean view. Epicurus, a Greek philosophers born in 341 B.C., generated a significant measure of controversy amongst laymen and philosophical circles in regards to his view of the good life. Philosophers whom teachings predate Epicurus’ tended to focus on the question of “How can human beings live a good, morally sound, life?” Epicurus ruffled feathers and ultimately expanded the scope of philosophy by asking “What makes people happy?”
The word hedonism originates from the Greek name for pleasure. In chapter 1 of The Fundamentals of Ethics, Shafer-Landau defines hedonism as the view that "there is only one thing that is intrinsically good for us: happiness. Everything else improves our lives only to the extent that it makes us happy" (25). Enjoyment is said to be the key to a good life. Throughout the chapter, he goes on to list the most important reasons for hedonism's popularity.
Timothy Brook’s book, The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China is a detailed account of the three centuries of the Ming Dynasty in China. The book allows an opportunity to view this prominent time period of Chinese history. Confusions of Pleasure not only chronicles the economic development during the Ming dynasty, but also the resulting cultural and social changes that transform the gentry and merchant class. Brook’s insights highlight the divide between the Ming dynasty’s idealized beliefs, and the realities of its economic expansion and its effects. Brook describes this gap through the use of several first hand accounts of individuals with various social statuses.
“All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (D of I 261). This statement, written by Thomas Jefferson, has to be one of the most controversial statements ever written. It does however agree with one of our earlier authors we read. Epicurus would agree with Jefferson in the manner that everyone should search for happiness. He tells us that “one must practice the things that produce happiness, since if that is present we have everything and if it is absent, we do everything in order to have it” (Letter to Menoeceus). It is apparent to Epicurus that the search for happiness is an absolute goal. Everyone either gets it or spends their life looking for it. Because of this, it is obvious to see how this author would agree with Jefferson by saying that we are given an unalienable right to pursue happiness. Another philosopher of our first semester that would have to agree with Jefferson is Aristotle. Unlike his teacher, Plato, Aristotle believed in the senses and also felt happiness was, what he called, one of the goods. “We think happiness is the most choiceworthy of all goods” (Nicmachean Ethics: Bk1 ch.
Epicurus was admittedly a Hedonist, and this philosophy has had a huge influence on his work. Especially so on his death argument. Hedonism is, “the doctrine that pleasure is the only thing that is good in itself for a person, pain the only thing that is bad in itself for a person.”
The pain in which people are avoiding can be psychological/ emotional, or physical. Hedonism can be acknowledged in two ways; the way the constitution stresses it is the ‘pursuit of happiness’, but some people do not use this as a way to better themselves. It is meant to be used as a means to better one’s self and strive for excellence. Whereas people use this as a reason to use substances to alleviate pain and discomfort stemming from a physical sensation, or from
claims that “the absence of pain in the body and of disturbance in the soul is a pleasure itself.”(uc davis/goals 1.30) Even though Cicero had a slightly different personal outlook on the definition of pleasure, he still gave reason to support Epicurus’ theory arguing “since when we are freed from pain we rejoice in this very liberation from and absence of annoyance, and since everything in which we rejoice is a pleasure then it is right to call the absence of all pain pleasure.”(uc davis/goals) Cicero and Epicurus’ theories may vary slightly, but they both hold the same core value, that pleasure is the ultimate good in life. However, Pleasure comes in many different forms. The type of pleasure that is advocated by Epicurus and Cicero is not that of vice and over-indulgence, but rather that which has no consequence and is pure of heart. For example, following the Epicurean philosophy, getting drunk, smoking, stealing and any other acts of lust or greed are not considered pleasurable due to fact that they all might have unfavorable repercussions. Temperance is a core value in the Epicurean society in order to achieve true pleasure, however if transitory intemperance is required to avoid greater pain, then it is accepted as a necessary evil.
Happiness is often viewed as a subjective state of mind in which one may say they are happy when they are on vacation with friends, spending time with their family, or having a cold beer on the weekend while basking in the sun. However, Aristotle and the Stoics define happiness much differently. In Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle describes happiness as “something final and self-sufficient, and is the end of action” (NE 1097b20). In this paper, I will compare and contrast Aristotle and the Stoics’ view on human happiness. Aristotle argues that bodily and external goods are necessary to happiness, while Epictetus argues they are not.
Moore, Andrew, "Hedonism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL = .
The pursuit for happiness has been a quest for man throughout the ages. In his ethics, Aristotle argues that happiness is the only thing that the rational man desires for its own sake, thus, making it good and natural. Although he lists three types of life for man, enjoyment, statesman, and contemplative, it is the philosopher whom is happiest of all due to his understanding and appreciation of reason. Aristotle’s version of happiness is not perceived to include wealth, honor, or trivial
Inman, 2003).Besides that, Hedonic goods are multisensory and provide for experiential consumption, fun, pleasure, and excitement. Flowers, designer clothes, music, sports cars, luxury watches, and...
Aristotle feels we have a rational capacity and the exercising of this capacity is the perfecting of our natures as human beings. For this reason, pleasure alone cannot establish human happiness, for pleasure is what animals seek and human beings have higher capacities than animals. The goal is to express our desires in ways that are appropriate to our natures as rational animals. Aristotle states that the most important factor in the effort to achieve happiness is to have a good moral character, what he calls complete virtue. In order to achieve the life of complete virtue, we need to make the right choices, and this involves keeping our eye on the future, on the ultimate result we want for our lives as a whole. We will not achieve happiness simply by enjoying the pleasures of the moment. We must live righteous and include behaviors in our life that help us do what is right and avoid what is wrong. It is not enough to think about doing the right thing, or even intend to do the right thing, we have to actually do it. Happiness can occupy the place of the chief good for which humanity should aim. To be an ultimate end, an act must be independent of any outside help in satisfying one’s needs and final, that which is always desirable in itself and never for the sake of something else and it must be
However, we can wonder if the pleasures that derive from necessary natural desires are what actually brings us happiness, since having a family, friends, a good job and doing fun things seem to bring the most joy in life. Plato’s ideas on life are even more radical, since he claims that we should completely take difference from our bodily needs. Therefore it seems that we should only do what is necessary for us to stay a life and solely focus on the mind. Although both ways of dealing with (bodily)pleasure are quite radical and almost impossible to achieve, it does questions if current perceptions of ‘living the good life’ actually leads to what we are trying to achieve, which is commonly described as
Happiness can be viewed as wealth, honour, pleasure, or virtue. Aristotle believes that wealth is not happiness, because wealth is just an economic value, but can be used to gain some happiness; wealth is a means to further ends. The good life, according to Aristotle, is an end in itself. Similar to wealth, honour is not happiness because honour emphases on the individuals who honour in comparison to the honouree. Honour is external, but happiness is not. It has to do with how people perceive one another; the good life is intrinsic to the...
When talking about pleasure there needs to be a distinction between the quality and the quantity. While having many different kinds of pleasures can be considered a good thing, one is more likely to favor quality over quantity. With this distinction in mind, one is more able to quantify their pleasures as higher or lesser pleasures by ascertaining the quality of them. This facilitates the ability to achieve the fundamental moral value that is happiness. In his book Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill offers a defining of utility as pleasure or the absence of pain in addition to the Utility Principle, where “Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” (Mill 7). Through this principle, Mill emphasizes that it is not enough to show that happiness is an end in itself. Mill’s hedonistic view is one in support of the claim that every human action is motivated by or ought to be motivated by the pursuit of pleasure.