1. Michael Lacewing enquiries@alevelphilosophy.co.uk
Aristotle on pleasure
Michael Lacewing

2. Is pleasure good?
Aristotle: pleasure is good, and eudaimonia involves pleasure
Obj: The temperate person avoids pleasure.
Not true. The temperate person avoids is an excess of certain bodily pleasures.
Obj: The practically wise person doesn’t seek pleasure, but only avoids pain.
Not true. The practically wise person seeks pleasure in accordance with reason.
As pain is bad and to be avoided, the contrary of pain, pleasure, is good and to be pursued.

3. Is pleasure good? Obj: Pleasure interferes with thought.
Not true. The pleasures of thinking assist it. Of all pleasurable activities, the pleasures of other activities interferes.
Obj: Not all pleasures are good, e.g. bodily pleasures or taking pleasure in something disgraceful.
Only an excess of bodily pleasures is bad.
However, disgraceful pleasures are not good.

4. Disgraceful pleasures
Can we say that pleasure is good, yet disgraceful pleasures are bad?
All real pleasures are good. Disgraceful pleasures are not really pleasures (only pleasant to bad people).
The kind of pleasure involved is good, but the instance is bad because caused by something disgraceful.
Pleasures are of different kinds, and only some pleasures are good.

5. Pleasure is good
Every creature aims at pleasure. This is a good indication that it is, for each thing, the good.
It is not the only good, as we aim at other things as well.
Everything avoids pain, so its contrary, pleasure, is good.
We choose pleasure for its own sake, not for some further purpose.
Adding pleasure on to any good makes it more desirable.

6. What is pleasure? Pleasure is the unimpeded activity of our faculties
Not simply a kind of indefinable sensation
Think of ‘being in the zone’
Pleasure in using a sense is greater when that sense is at its best and used in relation to its best object
E.g. looking at something beautiful
Pleasure in exercising a faculty that is not impeded

7. What is pleasure?
Pleasure is not something simply caused by, and separate from, such unimpeded activity.
It ‘completes’ the activity, i.e. it is a part of it
The pleasure is in the activity itself and intensifies and supports it

8. Good and bad pleasures
Each kind of activity has a corresponding kind of pleasure
A pleasure is good when the activity that produces it is good and bad when the activity is bad.
The pleasures most suited to human beings are those related to our characteristic activity
The virtuous person does this best, and so what is truly pleasant is what is pleasant to the virtuous person