Pleasure Essays

  • What is Pleasure?

    911 Words  | 2 Pages

    The word pleasure means a state of enjoying, satisfaction, sex… When I first think about it, I think as it is a way of having fun from something simple. I don't think pleasure is like passion. It doesn't have to mean you a lot. It isn't a wish or a goal or a life time wish. It is just finding joy from something simple and good enough to satisfy you. I concerned about it because in my mind the first definition that came up to my mind was sex. I was prejudiced about this word. But why should I be

  • The Pleasure of Drugs

    1532 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Pleasure of Drugs The Oxford Dictionary defines pleasure. It is a feeling of satisfaction or joy. It is enjoyment. It is a source of pleasure or gratification. It is formally a persons will or desire. Finally they define it as sensual gratification. Now if we put these all together in one sentence, pleasure is something that brings an overall feeling of satisfaction and gratification while fulfilling desires. If that doesn’t sound good, what does? We have already determined that people

  • What Is Pleasure?

    566 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

  • Ther role of Pleasure

    561 Words  | 2 Pages

    In utilitarianism, the word utility is used in a very formal sense and not in the dry vernacular of everyday language. At first glance it would seem that unity and pleasure cannot coexist in Mill's world. But Mill argues that attainment of pleasure is the very center of utilitarianism. According to his Greatest Happiness Principle, any action that promotes happiness and prevents pain is right and any action that produces the reverse of happiness is wrong. For utilitarianism the entirety of moral

  • Pain for Pleasure Endured

    1573 Words  | 4 Pages

    Pain for Pleasure Endured The intricate and complex nature of the relationship between pain and pleasure has been a source of contention and diversity of opinion for people of all eras. Shakespeare’s character Othello claims that "tis happiness to die." (Act 5 ln 295). In his situation the painful experience of dying is what he considers pleasure, he later verifies his belief in his statement by choosing to stab himself. Sir Philip Sidney, in his poem Astrophil and Stella states that "in my

  • Aristotle on Nobility and Pleasure

    1094 Words  | 3 Pages

    “The lovers of what is noble find pleasant the things that are by nature pleasant; and virtuous actions are such… Their life, therefore, has no further need of pleasure as a sort of adventitious charm, but has pleasure in itself.” Ethics, I.8 Aristotle was a student under Plato, and although he did not believe in the metaphysical Forms that Plato so firmly believed in, he did apply an element of the theory behind the Forms. Instead, what Aristotle postulated was that there was some ultimate, some

  • Simple Pleasures

    780 Words  | 2 Pages

    Simple Pleasures " Tis a gift to be simple, tis a gift to be free." --Shaker hymn Someone once asked me when I had felt the most alive. I pondered for some time and let the memories walk slowly across my consciousness. A vision of a cold, crisp, sunny , fall day kept coming back to me, the kind of day that invites you to be outdoors, and when you get there, treats you to a blast of air-conditioned air. Everything seemed to be changing as if someone had sent a notice saying, "fall is leaving

  • Aristotle and the Highest Form of Pleasure

    3863 Words  | 8 Pages

    Aristotle and the Highest Form of Pleasure After nine books of contemplating different aspects of the human good, Aristotle uses this opportunity to claim contemplation as the highest form of pleasure. The final book in Nicomachean Ethics is concerned with pleasures: the understanding of each kind, and why some pleasures are better than other pleasures. The book is essentially divided into two main parts, being pleasure and happiness. I will use Terence Irwin’s translation and subdivisions

  • Aristotle, Temperance, Pleasure, and Pain

    5231 Words  | 11 Pages

    Aristotle, Temperance, Pleasure, and Pain(1) ABSTRACT: Aristotle argues that temperance is the mean concerned with pleasure and pain (NE 1107b5-9 and 1117b25-27). Most commentators focus on the moderation of pleasures and hardly discuss how this virtue relates to pain. In what follows, I consider the place of pain in Aristotle’s discussion of temperance and resolve contradictory interpretations by turning to the following question: is temperance ever properly painful? In part one, I examine the

  • Aristotle's Poetics: Complexity and Pleasure in Tragedy

    2113 Words  | 5 Pages

    Aristotle's Poetics: Complexity and Pleasure in Tragedy Aristotle 384-322 BC First, the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things imitated. We have evidence of this in the facts of experience. Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced

  • Seeking Pleasure And Agression Is Part Of Human Instinct

    1445 Words  | 3 Pages

    Seeking Pleasure and Agression Is Part of Human Instinct Name: Mohamed Fakhry A.Wahab Based on Freud concepts of pleasure and aggression, discuses Hay Ibn Yaqzan and The Island of Animals It is said to be that seeking pleasure and aggression are a part of our human Instinct. We seek pleasure to shorten the time of our unhappiness. We live in a constant struggle to be always happy, and we use all the ways that take us to happiness. Aggression, on the otherhand, is a part of our human nature, which

  • Pleasure - The Driving Force in all Human Achievement

    732 Words  | 2 Pages

    Pleasure - The Driving Force in all Human Achievement Every choice we make as humans, whether conscious or not, is made with our own pleasure in mind. When we choose to buy a pack of chocolate, go to church, or even go to work, we do it with the goal of maximizing our own pleasure. The choices we make are those that we feel will give us the greatest pleasure. We spend our entire lives trying to maximize pleasure and minimize pain; this is the essence of man. Aristippus was one of the first

  • Higher and Lower Pleasures: Their Effects on Millian Utilitarianism

    1253 Words  | 3 Pages

    In this paper, I examine Mill’s distinction between higher and lower pleasures that he presents in his Utilitarianism. Then, I raise objections to Mill’s distinction by focusing on the ambiguity of his definition of pleasures and his concept of the competent judge. I conclude that, with a recalculation of the definition of pleasures, his distinction of higher and lower pleasures can support a broader theory of utilitarianism. 1. Examining Mill’s Distinction Utilitarianism is a moral theory that is

  • Life in Utopia: Monotonous Life Against Pleasure

    971 Words  | 2 Pages

    MONOTONOUS LIFE AGAINST PLEASURE Just because everything is pre-planned, life in Utopia is so very monotonous that people had to adopt a pleasure-based approach about life, based on happiness and happiness alone: “In fact, they do everything they can to make people enjoy themselves.”²⁹, “Here they seem rather too much inclined to take a hedonistic view, for according to them human happiness consists largely or wholly in pleasure.”³⁰ That hedonism is not rooted in pure and plain pleasure of self-amusement

  • Reassemblage: Challenging the Relationship between Women and Visual Pleasure

    908 Words  | 2 Pages

    Reassemblage: Challenging the Relationship between Women and Visual Pleasure Visual pleasure, derived from images on film, is dominated by sexual imbalance. The pleasure in looking is split between active/male and passive/female. In her essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" Laura Mulvey asserts the fact that in mainstream films, women are simultaneously looked at and displayed. That is to say, the woman is both an object of desire and a spectacle for the male voyeuristic gaze. The male's

  • Robert Nozick's Experiment, The Experience Machine and the Inclusion of Meta-Pleasure

    712 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Experience Machine and the Inclusion of Meta-Pleasure Robert Nozick is a philosopher who seeks to disprove the utilitarian notion of hedonism through a thought experiment that he has entitles “The Experience Machine” (Nozick 646). I will first explain the concept of utilitarianism and hedonism, then the experience machine before I give a reply about the inclusion of a third category of pleasure which I have called “meta-pleasure”. Finally, I will show how technology may be disproving the entire

  • How Cinema and Theater Convey Pleasure in the Acts of Search and Lust

    1863 Words  | 4 Pages

    How Cinema and Theater Convey Pleasure in the Acts of Search and Lust In her essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, British film maker Laura Mulvey attempts to demystify how pleasure can be fulfilled in film. Contending that a pleasure in looking (scopohilia) and a pleasure in possessing the female as what to be looked at (voyeurism) fufills the audience’s desires, Mulvey suggests how filmmakers use this knowledge to create film that panders to our innate desires. In “Meshes of the Afternoon”

  • Life's Simple Pleasures in William Wordsworth's I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

    1922 Words  | 4 Pages

    Life's Simple Pleasures in William Wordsworth's I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud Edna St. Vincent Millay once wrote, "And all the loveliest things there be come simply, so it seems to me." This aphorism clearly accents the meaning of William Wordsworth's poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud." In his work, the speaker reminisces about a past experience in which he saw a beautiful multitude of daffodils swaying in the breeze. As he recollects this scene, the speaker gradually realizes the true beauty

  • My Stay at Blackpool Pleasure Beach

    891 Words  | 2 Pages

    Disney world, Paris, Australia, Italy; all amazing places I’m sure, but I’ve never been. Although there is one place I have been to; it was none other than Blackpool Pleasure Beach! So you say to yourself, on one hand there is Blackpool and on the other there is Australia… now I know which one I’d rather go to. However, it all boils down to one thing: money. Good old money; that “green stuff” which makes the world go around. So with lack of that very thing, it had to be ‘sunny old Blackpool’: how

  • Feldman’s Four Formulations of Attitudinal Hedonism

    2038 Words  | 5 Pages

    of hedonism center around the notion that pleasure is what makes a life worth living (for the person living that life). In other words, if one obtains (receives or acquires) pleasure from life, then one’s life is going well. Additionally, the more pleasure a life contains, the better the life (the more prudential value it contains). Feldman, however, promptly classifies two interpretations of pleasure: pleasure as feeling (sensory pleasure) and pleasure as an attitude (the attitude of enjoyment)