This study aims to provide a coherent new interpretation of the notorious anti-hedonism of Speusippus, Plato’s nephew and the second scholarch of the Academy, by reconsidering all the relevant sources concerning his attitude toward pleasure—sources that seem to be in tension or even incompatible with each other. By reassessing Speusippus’ anti-hedonism and Aristotle’s response, it also sheds new light on the Academic debate over pleasure in which he and Aristotle participated: This debate is not merely concerned with the truth and (...) credibility of the arguments for or against hedonism; there are also notable differences among the participants in their understanding of the practical significance of evaluating hedonic experiences. This new interpretation allows us to better understand Aristotle’s selective representation of the intra-school debate and some neglected features of his responses to different interlocutors. (shrink)

Human lives are full of pleasures and pains. And humans are creatures that are able to think: to learn, understand, remember and recall, plan and anticipate. Ancient philosophers were interested in both of these facts and, what is more, were interested in how these two facts are related to one another. There appear to be, after all, pleasures and pains associated with learning and inquiring, recollecting and anticipating. We enjoy finding something out. We are pained to discover that a belief (...) we hold is false. We can think back and enjoy or be upset by recalling past events. And we can plan for and enjoy imagining pleasures yet to come. This book is about what Plato, Aristotle, the Epicureans and the Cyrenaics had to say about these relationships between pleasure and reason. (shrink)

The prelims comprise: Pleasure as a Good Aristotle on Pleasure Limitations and Drawbacks The Coherence of Aristotle's Treatment of Pleasure and Pain Conclusions Notes Reference.

The debate over the value of pleasure among Eudoxus, Speusippus, and Aristotle is dramatically documented by the Nicomachean Ethics, particularly in the dialectical pros-and-cons concerning the so-called argument from contraries. Two similar versions of this argument are preserved at EN VII. 13, 1153b1–4, and X. 2, 1172b18–20. Many scholars believe that the argument at EN VII is either a report or an appropriation of the Eudoxean argument in EN X. This essay aims to revise this received view. It will explain (...) why these two arguments differ in premises, contents and purposes, and why these distinctions matter for a proper assessment of Aristotle’s understanding of pleasure and pain in general and his dialectical art in particular. (shrink)

Plato’s nephew Speusippus has been widely accepted as the historical person behind the mask of the anti-hedonists in Phlb. 42b–44c. This hypothesis is supported by, inter alia, the link between Socrates’ char- acterization of them as δυσχερεῖς and the frequent references of δυσχέρεια as ἀπορία to Speusippus in Aristotle’s Metaphysics MN. This study argues against assigning any privileged status to Speusippus in the assimilation of δυσχέρεια with ἀπορία. Instead, based on a comprehensive survey of how δυσχερ- words were used in (...) classical antiquity, the semantic shift of δυσχέρεια can be explained in an alternative way. (shrink)

according to some interpreters of John Locke’s moral philosophy, there is an inconsistency between Locke’s adoption of hedonism and his commitment to a natural law view of ethics. Indeed, Locke is not fully explicit about the relationship between pleasure and pain and the natural law in the Essay concerning Human Understanding. But the thesis I defend in this paper is that the idea of convenientia, according to which God harmonizes the natural law with human nature, can be used to (...) understand how Locke synthesizes the hedonism he adopts in the 1670s, and ultimately expresses in Book II, chapter 20 of the Essay, with the natural law doctrine he maintains over the course of his lifetime. As I argue, God’s providential.. (shrink)

In this dissertation I analyse the concepts of pleasure and unpleasantness and outline an approach whereby the insights gained about pleasure and unpleasantness are applied to the analysis of a number of feeling and emotion concepts. In trying to understand what pleasure is and hew it is related to pain and unpleasantness, I tackle various basic questions about the role of pleasure, pain, and unpleasantness in motivation and about the intrinsic goodness of pleasure and the intrinsic badness of pain and (...) unpleasantness. In pleasure's nature of being good, wanted, and sought and pairfs nature of being bad, unwanted, and avoided we locate the way in which pleasure and pain are opposites and the central defining properties of the 'pleasant' and the 'unpleasant'. Within my analysis of pleasure and unpleasantness I reach the conclusion that pleasure and unpleasantness are 'special experiences' : I explain what is involved in this claim and defend it against the objections which Ludwig Wittgenstein raised in his Private Language Argument. The view of the emotions which I outline and defend is the view which Aristotle, Spinoza, and many other philosophers have held. According to this view, emotions or 'feelings' such as con¬ fidence or fear, delight or misery, and pride or shame, are 'modes' of pleasure or unpleasantness. Given my views on pleasure and unpleasantness, it would follow that a number of emotions are, in part, the 'special experiences' of pleasure and unpleasantness. (shrink)

I distinguish two kinds of pleasures – value–based pleasures, which can be explained in terms of the values of those who experience them, and brute pleasures, which cannot be so explained. I apply this distinction to three related projects. First, I critically examine a recent discussion of moral character by Colin McGinn, arguing that McGinn offers a distorted view of good character. Second, I try to elucidate certain remarks Aristotle makes about the relationships between pleasure and courage and pleasure and (...) temperance. Third, I appeal to the distinction to elucidate the topic of moral improvement. (shrink)

The Pleasures of Reason in Plato, Aristotle, and the Hellenistic Hedonists se centra en la relación mutua entre las capacidades humanas de sentir placer y dolor y el carácter afectivo que las une con las facultades cognitivas de aprender, comprender, recordar, evocar, planificar y anticiparse. Para esto, Warren consagra toda su agudeza analítica a eminentes obras del pensamiento antiguo: particularmente nos referimos a los diálogos platónicos República, Protágoras y Filebo. Otro tanto hace con De Anima, De Memoria et Reminiscentia, Ética (...) a Nicómaco, Retórica y Poética de Aristóteles. Finalmente, hacia la mitad y sobre el final del libro, se dedica a poner en diálogo sus análisis sobre Platón y Aristóteles con las escuelas hedonistas clásicas del helenismo: epicúreos y cirenaicos. (shrink)

This paper explains the motivation behind Aristotle’s appeal in Nicomachean Ethics 1154b7–9 to the physiologoi, who notoriously declare that animals are constantly in pain. It argues that the physiologoi are neither the critical target of this chapter nor invoked to verify Aristotle’s commitment to the imperfection of the human condition. Rather, despite doctrinal disagreement, they help Aristotle develop a naturalistic story about how ordinary people easily indulge in sensory pleasures.

The anonymous anti-hedonists at Philebus 44a–53c make three bold claims: (1) there are in fact no such things as pleasures; (2) what the hedonist followers of Philebus call pleasure is really nothing but escape from pain; (3) there is nothing healthy in pleasure (pleasure is never a good). These anti-hedonists are commonly identified with Speusippus, Plato’s nephew and his successor as head of the Academy. In this paper I first argue that this widely favoured view should be rejected. I then (...) make the case that they should instead be identified with the Socratic philosopher Antisthenes. This identification helps us understand better certain aspects of the argument in the Philebus, in particular the character Socrates’ focus on philosophical method when critiquing the anti-hedonist position. (shrink)

At least since Burnyeat’s “Aristotle on Learning to Be Good,” one of the most popular ways of explaining moral development in Aristotle is by appealing to mechanisms of pleasure and pain. Aristotle himself suggests this kind of explanation when he says that “in educating the young we steer them by the rudders of pleasure and pain” (Nicomachean Ethics X.1, 1172a21). However, I argue that, contrary to the dominant view, Aristotle’s view on moral development in the Nicomachean Ethics is not mainly (...) about learning to feel pleasures and pains in relation to the right kinds of objects and activities. I show that given Aristotle’s account of the relationships between pleasure and virtuous actions, on the one hand, and between pleasure and virtuous dispositions, on the other, pleasure can only have a supporting role in our learning to be good, and not a guiding one. (shrink)

Fred Feldman's fascinating new book sets out to defend hedonism as a theory about the Good Life. He tries to show that, when carefully and charitably interpreted, certain forms of hedonism yield plausible evaluations of human lives. Feldman begins by explaining the question about the Good Life. As he understands it, the question is not about the morally good life or about the beneficial life. Rather, the question concerns the general features of the life that is good in itself for (...) the one who lives it. Hedonism says (roughly) that the Good Life is the pleasant life. After showing that received formulations of hedonism are often confused or incoherent, Feldman presents a simple, clear, coherent form of sensory hedonism that provides a starting point for discussion. He then presents a catalogue of classic objections to hedonism, coming from sources as diverse as Plato, Aristotle, Brentano, Ross, Moore, Rawls, Kagan, Nozick, Brandt, and others. One of Feldman's central themes is that there is an important distinction between the forms of hedonism that emphasize sensory pleasure and those that emphasize attitudinal pleasure. Feldman formulates several kinds of hedonism based on the idea that attitudinal pleasure is the Good. He claims that attitudinal forms of hedonism - which have often been ignored in the literature -- are worthy of more careful attention. Another main theme of the book is the plasticity of hedonism. Hedonism comes in many forms. Attitudinal hedonism is especially receptive to variations and modifications. Feldman illustrates this plasticity by formulating several variants of attitudinal hedonism and showing how they evade some of the objections. He also shows how it is possible to develop forms of hedonism that are equivalent to the allegedly anti-hedonistic theory of G. E. Moore and the Aristotelian theory according to which the Good Life is the life of virtue, or flourishing. He also formulates hedonisms relevantly like the ones defended by Aristippus and Mill. Feldman argues that a carefully developed form of attitudinal hedonism is not refuted by objections concerning 'the shape of a life'. He also defends the claim that all of the alleged forms of hedonism discussed in the book genuinely deserve to be called 'hedonism'. Finally, after dealing with the last of the objections, he gives a sketch of his hedonistic vision of the Good Life. (shrink)

This paper examines Aristotle’s vocabulary of pain, that is the differences and relations of the concepts of pain expressed by synonyms in the same semantic field. It investigates what is particularly Aristotelian in the selection of the pain-words in comparison with earlier authors and specifies the special semantic scope of each word-cluster. The result not only aims to pin down the exact way these terms converge with and diverge from each other, but also serves as a basis for further understanding (...) Aristotle’s philosophical conception of pain. (shrink)

In this paper I shall speak sympathetically of a hedonistic theory of intrinsic value which, ignoring any other such theories, I shall simply call the hedonistic theory of value. How far I am finally committed to it will partly appear at the end.

Traditional hedonists like Epicurus, Bentham and Sidgwick were quantitative hedonists who assumed that pleasures and pains differ, not just from each other, but also from other pleasures and pains only in such quantitatively measurable ways as intensity, duration, and nearness or remoteness in time. They also differ with respect to their sources or causes. John Stuart Mill introduced an interesting and important complication into the modern theory of hedonism by insisting that pleasures also differ qualitatively as well as quantitatively. This (...) article thoroughly and critically examines Mill’s attempt to explain what qualitative differences might mean, and it proposes, defends, and extends a plausible theory of qualitative differences. (shrink)

In this article, I examine two of the standard objections to forms of value hedonism. The first is the common claim, most famously made by Bradley and Moore, that Mill's qualitative hedonism is inconsistent. The second is the apparent problem for quantitative hedonism in dealing with malicious pleasures. I argue that qualitative hedonism is consistent, even if it is implausible on other grounds. I then go on to show how our intuitions about malicious pleasure might be misleading.

Aristotle repeatedly qualifies the pleasure of courageous actions relative to other kinds of virtuous actions. This article argues that the pleasure of courageous actions is qualified because virtuous activity and its pleasure is dependent upon external conditions, and the external conditions of courageous actions are particularly constraining. The article shows that Curzer’s explanation of the qualified pleasure of courageous actions by the presence of pain violates Aristotle’s commitment to virtuous actions as being pleasant by their nature.

This volume deals with the general theory of pleasure of Plato and his successors. The first part describes the two paradigms between which all theories of pleasure oscillate: Plato's definition of pleasure as the repletion of a lack, and Aristotle's view that pleasure is the perfect performance of an activity. After an excursus on Epicureans and Stoics, the book concentrates on Neoplatonism, opposing the 'standard Neoplatonic view' of Plotinus and Proclus to the original viewpoint of Damascius' commentary on Plato's "Philebus," (...) The volume sheds light on the discussion between hedonists and anti-hedonists, by concentrating on the 'crucial point' at which any philosophical analysis of the good life (hedonistic or other) ought to argue that the life of the philosopher is the most desirable, and thus truly pleasurable, life. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Pleasure and Pain in LiteratureOliver ConollyWhy do we enjoy the depiction, in imaginative literature, of situations that typically arouse negative emotions such as pity, sadness, and horror? One view, which aims to dissolve rather than solve the problem, is that we do not enjoy them at all. According to this theory—the pure pain theory—the problem does not arise in the first place. But the theory must explain why we (...) chose to undergo such painful experiences. Are we simply aesthetic masochists? The pure pleasure theory, by contrast, denies that there are any painful aspects to our experience of such literature. This theory must explain how we can take pure delight in the literary depiction of suffering. Are we simply aesthetic sadists? Lying between both extremes is the hybrid theory, which asserts that there are both painful and pleasant aspects of such experiences. The hybrid theory must specify which aspects of the experience are painful and which pleasant. In this paper a version of the hybrid theory is advanced and defended.IThe pure pleasure theory denies that we feel painful emotional identification with fictional characters. Why take this view? One reason is that it is a way of resolving the paradox of fiction, as formulated by Colin Radford.1 The paradox asserts that there is an inconsistency between the propositions that: (1) we have emotions for fictional characters, (2) we know that they do not exist, (3) it is irrational to have emotions for non-existent objects. Each proposition seems plausible, yet one must be false. Whilst most of the participants in the debate have attacked the notion that feelings for fictions are irrational, some have [End Page 305] denied that we have such feelings in the first place. One intuition guiding this denial is that the depiction of a fictional horrible event is likely to be less painful than the depiction of an identical but real event. In other words, the mere fictionality of an event is liable, by itself, to diminish the pain we are liable to feel at its depiction in comparison with a real event: I label this the fictionality gap. If the fictionality gap exists, it applies across the board, to the sufferings of Pip in Great Expectations as well as those of King Lear. The characters in those works are fictional, and so the lessening of the pain we feel at their fates must, if the fictionality gap holds, hold merely in virtue of the fact that they are fictional.It has often been noted—rather than argued, but this is question of impression rather than logic—that one would feel more affected were the stories real rather than fictional. The kinds of events depicted in King Lear—ugly struggles for power, the manipulation of the naïve, the impotence of the good, inconsolable grief—are not in themselves other-worldly, and can be imagined taking place in reality. However it is much more difficult to imagine King Lear in its full particularity taking place in the real world, given the theatricality of its form and language. In order to imagine King Lear as real, one would have to rob it of Shakespeare's poetry, which is other-worldly in its eloquence. French proponents of the Three Unities thought that theatre should aim at, among other things, verisimilitude, but never overcame the problem that the fact that characters in French theatre speak in rhyming couplets might detract from that verisimilitude, which it clearly does. This worry about the transplantability of King Lear into the real world appears to be less of a problem in relation to realist novels, which, as their appellation suggests, are easier to imagine taking place in the real world. Not only is the language used in realist novels less exalted than that used in tragedies, the situations such novels depict tend to be more likely to occur. Clearly, the realist novel is capable of depicting horrible or unpleasant events. About such novels, say, Madame Bovary, it seems to make sense to ask ourselves how we would feel about them if we read them as true stories.I would like however to question the very intelligibility of the... (shrink)

Because virtuous action is the fulfillment of our nature and so is constitutive of good living, Aristotle argues for a conceptual connection be-tween virtuous action and pleasure. Yet courage does not seem to conform to this account of virtuous action. Because courageous action involves confronting the fearful, which is painful, and because courageous action can fail to achieve the desired goal, it seems contrary to experience to claim that all truly courageous action is pleasant. I offer a defense of Aristotle’s (...) claim that courageous action is necessarily pleasant. To do this, I give a more detailed explanation of the hierarchical, metaphysical relation between process and activity in courageous action. Virtuous activity, as instantiated in courageous actions, is necessarily pleasant because it is an end-in-itself and complete, and so requires pleasure as the full engagement of the agent in the action. (shrink)

Este artigo discute artigos fundamentais da influência de Platão e Aristóteles em Santo Tomás.

This is another addition to the already abundant literature concerning the meaning of pleasure and pain. Yet, this book manages to be highly original on material which has been debated many times. Further, Cowan has profited from the arguments preceding his. Cowan's book falls into two general parts. The first contains a serious attempt to answer questions concerning the meaning of the concepts of pleasure and pain. A certain dialectic is apparent in his argument in that his solution consists in (...) an attempt to reconcile two contradicting positions; the "received doctrine" in which the terms 'pleasure' and 'pain' name sensations or feelings which are conceived as "mental denizens" known only to the subject, and those theories in which pleasure and pain are identifiable with some sort of objective criteria, i.e., behavior or brain patterns. Cowan concedes that each view contains a part of the truth and tries to preserve both the private character of these concepts as well as their public aspect. Secondly, Cowan undertakes a defense of hedonism against two of the most disastrous objections to it. His defense in both cases rests on his contention that the classical hedonists understood the terms 'pleasure' and 'pain' in a highly technical sense quite different from our ordinary uses of these terms. Cowan argues the original thesis that these hedonists were not defining 'good' by 'pleasure' but were taking a meta-ethical position regarding the use of evaluative terms. Cowan further argues that the psychologist B. F. Skinner is a contemporary exponent of psychological hedonism and then considers the value of psychological hedonism in the form of Skinner's thesis of "operant conditioning" as an explanation of human behavior. These positions are controversial and the reader will have to decide for himself how sound the arguments for them are but Cowan has added fresh light to this perplexing material.--E. J. C. (shrink)

According to hedonism about well-being, lives can go well or poorly for us just in virtue of our ability to feel pleasure and pain. Hedonism has had many advocates historically, but has relatively few nowadays. This is mainly due to three highly influential objections to it: The Philosophy of Swine, The Experience Machine, and The Resonance Constraint. In this paper, I attempt to revive hedonism. I begin by giving a precise new definition of it. I then argue that the right (...) motivation for it is the ‘experience requirement’ (i.e., that something can benefit or harm a being only if it affects the phenomenology of her experiences in some way). Next, I argue that hedonists should accept a felt-quality theory of pleasure, rather than an attitude-based theory. Finally, I offer new responses to the three objections. Central to my responses are (i) a distinction between experiencing a pleasure (i.e., having some pleasurable phenomenology) and being aware of that pleasure, and (ii) an emphasis on diversity in one’s pleasures. (shrink)

berkley's pathogen model of sex differences in pain is inconsistent with women outliving men by several years. The vagina is far more resistant to pathogens than is the rectum. Vaginal stimulation produces intense analgesia in rats and humans. Possible evolutionary and cardiovascular factors are also noted.