CHAPTER 6

PLEASURE

Philosophy, as organized human wisdom, is supposed to show a man how to avoid falling
into any unhappy state of failure and frustration, and to give him positive help toward making his
life as satisfactory as can be. In the search for something that might make life satisfactory, the
most obvious candidate is pleasure.

No one objects to enjoying himself, though not all will find their enjoyment in the same
thing. So there is a place for pleasure in the good life. Many think that it is the only element in
the good life, and this view expressed philosophically is called hedonism which is derived from
the Greek word “hedone” which means pleasure.

TYPES OF PLEASURE

Hedonism, or pleasure, assumes two (2) chief forms, based on whose pleasure is sought:
the egoistic hedonism and the altruistic hedonism. The former concentrates on the personal
pleasure of the individual and the latter seeks the pleasure of others; if it embraces the whole
human race is also often called universalistic hedonism. The egoistic variety generally refers to
hedonism whereas the altruistic and universalistic variety refers to utilitarianism.

HEDONISM

Hedonism is the philosophy that pleasure is the most important pursuit of mankind, and
the only thing that is good for an individual. Hedonists, therefore, strive to maximize their total
pleasure (the net of any pleasure less any pain or suffering). They believe that pleasure is the only
good in life, and pain is the only evil, and our life's goal should be to maximize
pleasure and minimize pain.

Hedonistic theories

Hedonism is one of the oldest, simplest and most earthly ethical theories. It was first
proposed by Aristippus, leader of the Cyrenaic school, who identified happiness with pleasure.
According to him, pleasure results from gentle motion, and pain from rough motion. Anything
that is good produces pleasure, and anything that is best produces the most vivid and intense
pleasure. However, virtue restrains us from attaining excessive passion, and thus produces rough
motion and unpleasant.

Ethical hedonism is the view that our fundamental moral obligation is to maximize
pleasure or happiness. Ethical hedonism is most associated with the ancient Greek
philosopher Epicurus (342-270 BCE) who joined to the physical theories of Democritus and
refined hedonism as the ethics most consistent with mechanistic materialism. For Epicurus, the
end of life is not intense pleasure, but an abiding peace of mind, a state of cheerful tranquility.
The wise man so regulates his life as to get into it the greatest amount of pleasure and the least
amount of pain. We must learn to restrict our desires within the bounds in which we think we can
satisfy them. That is good which will increase our pleasure or our general peace of mind, and
anything which decreases it is bad.

Thomas Hobbes subscribe to the hedonistic view with a strong strain of egoism. He
thinks that nothing is by itself good or evil, but that these are names we give to what we desire or
detest. We desire what will give us pleasure, and we detest what gives us displeasure. He does
not think that the tranquility lauded by the Epicureans is possible in this struggling world, but the
formation of the political state is our only means of controlling the struggle and making life
bearable. Society is formed not for the benefit of other people or of mankind as such, but for the
peace and safety of each particular person looking out primarily for himself.

Hedonism with the egoistic aspect is toned down in Jeremy Bentham’s statement of the
hedonistic principle. According to him, nature has placed mankind under the governance of two
sovereign masters: pain and pleasure. They point out what we ought to do, as to determine what
we shall do. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make
to throw off our subjection will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. The principle of utility
recognizes the subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is
to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and law.

Several varieties of egoism have appeared with the pleasure aspect de-emphasized.
Robert Olson argues for a naturalistic pursuit of both personal and social well-being, in which
rational self-interest is the supreme moral criterion and health, friendship, contentment, and
pleasure are the chief goods.

Ayn Rand carries self-interest further and makes a virtue of selfishness. The ultimate
value is man’s survival without which there would be no men to have other values, and each one
is responsible for working out for himself the means to survival. This must be done by reason,
not by whim. No sacrifice for another’s sake is ever necessary, for the compromises we must
make are in our own self-interest. For this is an economic system of laissez-faire capitalism and a
hands-off policy by government are essential. Each working egoistically but rationally for his
own interest will automatically bring about the best interest of all.

Hedonistic arguments and counter-arguments

The refinement of hedonism as an ethical theory involves several surprising and

important distinctions.  Several examples from hedonists and counter-examples from non-
hedonists are discussed.

Hedonistic arguments Non-hedonistic arguments

Pleasure is an evident fact. We do in fact seek We often refuse pleasure for higher motives.
pleasure and shun pain. Some think that we We are not always driven by pleasure. It does
cannot act except for pleasure, or for avoidance not follow that the ‘want’ and the satisfaction
of pain, which is a kind of negative pleasure. must be of the type properly called pleasure.
Others do not insist on the impossibility of That we always act for pleasure can be refuted
acting otherwise, but state that we do not act by deliberately refusing a pleasure.
otherwise. Others will admit that we do often
act otherwise but we ought not, for to deprive
ourselves of pleasure is an unwise wasting of
life’s opportunities.

Even duty and self-sacrifice afford a kind of Satisfaction in doing one’s duty is not the same
intellectual satisfaction. There is something as pleasure. Duty, generosity, self-sacrifice,
intellectually satisfying in a harmonious life, and heroism have their attendant satisfaction,
even if it costs us something to live it. Self- otherwise they could not be motives for acting.
sacrifice for others, if we want to call it that, But to call every such satisfaction by the name
stimulates our imagination, especially when we of pleasure is a misuse of words. The
imaginatively put ourselves in another’s place. accompanying pleasure in an act of duty,
Even heroism under the most tragic generosity, self-sacrifice, or heroism can be
circumstances can be so emotionally appealing absent and, even when it is present, is too
that we choose it rather than live in ignoble paltry to be the main motive. Wisdom dictates
comfort. what act should be done with less painful
enjoyments.

Altruistic behavior has a self-regarding aspect. Enlightened self-interest is not our only
Willingness to curb our appetites for the motive. The good of society does redound to
common good of society is explained by the the good of the individual. Hedonism requires
fact that we ourselves are members of that an individual to draw the line and cooperate
society and share in this common good. Thus with society only so far as he can share in its
there is always a self-regarding interest in what benefits. Enlightened self-interest rather seems
seems to be the most altruistic behavior. Even to be the source from which most of the ills of
love has its self-regarding aspect and is society spring. And, though there is a self-
unfulfilled unless it is returned. regarding aspect in all love, hedonists are not
logical unless they have it the only aspect.

Those who seek a reward in the net world Those who would not do good unless it were
expect to enjoy it. Those who seek a reward in rewarded are unworthy of the reward. To live
a next life are likewise motivated by hedonism. the moral life exclusively for the sake of
They are willing to wait longer for the pleasurable rewards, even in the life to come,
enjoyment they hope for, but it is this would be a form of hedonism. There is surely
expectation of future happiness that motivates nothing wrong in hoping for the happiness of
them to endure their present sufferings. heaven, just as there is nothing wrong in
Christianity has thus been called “egoism with seeking legitimate pleasure on earth; it
a spyglass.” The bliss of heaven is made becomes hedonism only when pleasure is made
appealing by fostering the belief we can now the exclusive end. The true hedonist would not
imagine, and its secure possession forever is do good or avoid evil unless he were rewarded
worth a temporary price. for it. In his mind there is no good or evil
except in the reward. Thus he makes himself,
 the one to be rewarded, the last end, and the
highest good. Most believers in a future life
also believe that this would be the surest way
of losing the reward.

UTILITARIANISM

The extension of hedonism beyond the pleasure of the individual to the pleasure of the
group, and then to the pleasure of all mankind, is called utilitarianism.

Utilitarianism prefers altruistic pleasure of seeking the greatest happiness of the greatest
number, and measures the morality of an act by its utility in promoting the common welfare.

Utilitarianistic theories

Jeremy Bentham starts, as we have seen, with the idea that pleasure and pain are the only
motives governing mankind, and goes on to show that personal pleasure and pain are dependent
on the general happiness and prosperity of the whole community. Therefore in framing a
hedonistic calculus, the calculation of pleasures and pains inseparable from any hedonistic
system, we must consider, among the other criteria of intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity,
fecundity, and purity, also the extent of pleasure and pain, the number of people affected by our
policy of conduct. The moral goodness of an act is judged by its utility in promoting the common
welfare of all as well as the personal advantage of each. The aim of human life is expressed in
the Greatest Happiness Principle: “The greatest happiness of the greatest number.”

Utilitarianism reached its full development in John Stuart Mill. He recognized its strong
roots in hedonism: The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, utility, or the greatest
happiness principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness,
wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. Happiness is an intended pleasure and
the absence of pain; unhappiness creates pain, and the privation of pleasure.

However, whereas Bentham thought that units of pleasure and pain can be calculated
arithmetically and that ethics can be made into an exact science, Mill recognized that pleasures
differ in quality as well as in quantity, that there are higher and lower pleasures, so that a lesser
amount of higher pleasure is better that a greater amount of a lower pleasure, the determination
to be made by a man of culture who can experience both. An existence as free from pain and as
rich in enjoyments as possible, – both in quantity and quality – to be secured to all mankind, is
the end of human action and the standard of morality. Happiness is a good: that each person’s
happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate
of all persons.
 Mill goes on to show that virtue, far from being opposed to happiness, is one of the
elements that make up happiness: the feeling of self-satisfaction in contributing to the common
welfare even at personal expense.

Utilitarianism was then given a new turn by Henry Sidgwick, who united it with
intuitionism. He put utilitarianism to a most searching scholarly examination, but can find no
unassailable proofs for it. Sidgwick was convinced that there is no practical incompatibility
between utilitarianism and intuitionism, though he could find no positive theory to explain their
union. G.E. Moore combines utilitarianism and intuitionism in a different way. He calls his
theory ideal utilitarianism. All actions are to be judged by their consequences, that is, their
usefulness in producing the ideal good for mankind, which includes but is not limited to
pleasure, and is an irreducible and indefinable nonnaturalistic property cognizable by us in some
intuitive way.

Much is made today of a distinction between act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism.
The former asks which act has the greatest utility, the latter which rule has. Both, however, are
forms of utilitarianism, for neither the acts nor the rules have any value in themselves apart from
the consequences to which they lead.

Utilitarianistic arguments and counter-arguments

Since utilitarianism has always had trouble with its own logic, it pointed out these
consequences and criticisms of the great deal of truth to utilitarianism:

Utilitarianistic arguments Non-utilitarianistic arguments

Utilitarianism seeks others’ happiness as well It gives no reason why one should consider
as one’s own. It seeks happiness in which all others. Egoistic hedonism is at least logical in
will be happy rather than only the fortunate proposing that, if pleasure is the highest good,
few. The individual sacrifice required for this each man should seek as much of it as he can
contribution to the general good is a small get. However man should not forego his own
enough price to pay and a restriction that pleasure for the sake of others. If he enjoys
individual pleasure itself ought to impose sacrificing himself for others, that is still
inasmuch as no one should feel happy knowing egoistic hedonism and not utilitarianism.
that his happiness is bought by others’ misery.

It recognizes man’s social needs. As a wise It cannot determine what makes for the general
combination of egoism and altruism, happiness. The greatest happiness of the
utilitarianism is but an expression of the kind greatest number must include, not only the
of life most of us lead. It recognizes that man is present generation, but all future generations.
social, that we are all in this enterprise of life Any action taken now may have an indefinitely
together. Avoidable pain should be eliminated. long train of consequences, and there is
Unavoidable pain can be made tolerable by no nothing in utilitarianism to limit us to
one having to bear more than his share. Thus immediately foreseeable consequences.
utilitarianism is a great stimulus to social
improvement, for it takes man’s egoistic
tendencies and harnesses them to social needs,
since each sees his own happiness integrated in
that of the group.

It curbs man’s selfish greed. Utilitarianism It should logically eliminate sufferers. One of
gives each person the right to seek his own the simplest ways of eliminating pain from the
pleasure and limits him only when he would world is to eliminate the sufferers. But
encroach on another’s equal right. utilitarians in general would repudiate any such
Utilitarianism thus seeks the greatest amount of drastic measures as immoral, yet still they are
individual liberty compatible with the greatest using some other standard of morality than the
amount of public liberty. utilitarian one.

It accepts qualitative differences in pleasures. It has no place for real love. The only kind of
Utilitarianism eliminates the grossness of love utilitarianism can admit is a love based on
egoistic hedonism by a quantitative usefulness, which is so poor a kind of love as
discrimination of pleasures, and thus makes a hardly to deserve the name.
place for culture, taste, and beauty in human
life.

It is open both to virtue and to religion. It makes the noblest acts not good in
Utilitarianism is contrary neither to virtue nor themselves but only useful means. Virtue and
to religion. It demands the social virtues religion can have only a peripheral place in
needed for community living and restrains only utilitarianism. Only morally good acts
to those few whose fanatical or distorted acknowledged in the theory are those which
interpretation of virtue might issue in antisocial maximize the pleasures of this life, and there is
acts. The principle of utility itself encourages no way of knowing an act’s worth for a future
the religious believer to store up for himself life without using some other criterion.
treasures in heaven, if he is convinced of a Utilitarianism remains typical of the bourgeois
future life, and prohibits only the forceful ideal of middle-class comfort and reduces to
imposition of such a belief on others, as that level all aspirations toward nobility and
destructive of freedom and incapable anyway heroism.
of producing internal conviction.

THE PLACE OF PLEASURE IN THE GOOD LIFE

The attempt to make pleasure, either of the individual or of the group, the main purpose
of life and the standard of morality results in failure. But that does not mean that pleasure is not
an important thing in human experience or that it has no ethical significance. If the extreme of
hedonism is to make pleasure everything, the opposite extreme, which we may call puritanical
spirit, is to consider pleasure bad, as if there were something not only frivolous but defiling about
it. The proper attitude must be somewhere between these extremes.

Since no one of our abilities has as its purpose pleasure and nothing else, pleasure is but
the accompaniment of the normal exercise of abilities which exist for the accomplishment of
some other purpose. Pleasure finds its place in the scheme of things by alluring a person to
exercise a natural function that is otherwise beneficial to the individual or the race. However it
would be a mistake to think of pleasure merely as a means to an end. This is what objectively, in
the way external nature is constructed, and man also uses pleasure as a means when he offers it
to others as an incentive. But pleasure considered subjectively, as a personal experience of the
enjoyer, is sought for its own sake and is its own end.

Failure to distinguish these two aspects of pleasure, the subjective and the objective, lies
behind the two extreme attitudes mentioned. One may agree with the view that pleasure is
always good and never bad. If a pleasure can ever be called bad it is not because the pleasing
object is pleasant, but because it has other features connected with it that are harmful or
unworthy, such as violating others’ rights or stunting one’s personality. Thus there is nothing
wrong in seeking pleasure for its own sake, since it cannot be sought otherwise, but it must be
done within proper measure.

Pleasure fails as the highest good, yet it is a very important good. It is a stimulus that
nature uses to allure us to the proper use of our abilities. It is also a subjective experience sought
for its own sake. There is nothing wrong in seeking pleasure for itself, so long as it is kept within
proper bounds and not too much is expected of it. A puritanical attitude toward pleasure is not
praiseworthy. Pleasure is an end and a good, but it is not the last end and the highest good.
 EXERCISE

A. Identification.

1. The principles which states the aim of human life, “The greatest happiness of
the greatest number.”

2. Greek word of hedonism.

3. According to him, nothing is by itself good or evil, but that these are names
we give to what we desire or detest.

4. According to Jeremy Bentham, the moral goodness of an act is judged by its

5. It is one of the elements that make up happiness: the feeling of self-satisfaction

in contributing to the common welfare even at personal expense.

B. True or False.

1. Pleasure a good, but it is not the highest good.

2. The greatest happiness principle recognizes the subjection, and assumes it for the foundation
of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and law.

3. Bentham recognized that there are higher and lower pleasures.

4. For Aristippus, the end of life is not intense pleasure, but an abiding peace of mind, a state of
cheerful tranquility.

5. Altruistic hedonism refers to utilitarianism.

References
https://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_hedonism.html

https://www.utilitarianism.com/hedonism.html