Aristotle: Pleasure

A new translation and edition of Aristotle's Protrepticus (with critical comments on the fragments) -/- Welcome -/- The Protrepticus was an early work of Aristotle, written while he was still a member of Plato's Academy, but it soon became one of the most famous works in the whole history of philosophy. Unfortunately it was not directly copied in the middle ages and so did not survive in its own manuscript tradition. But substantial fragments of it have been preserved in several (...) works by Iamblichus of Chalcis, a third century A.D. neo-Pythagorean philosopher and educator. On the basis of a close study of Iamblichus' extensive use and excerption of Aristotle's Protrepticus, it is possible to reconstruct the backbone of the lost work, and then to flesh it out with the other surviving reports about the work from antiquity (for example in Alexander of Aphrodisias and other ancient commentators on Aristotle). It is also possible to identify several papyrus fragments of the work, and many references and literary allusions in later authors, especially Cicero, whose own lost dialogue Hortensius was a defense of philosophy modeleld on Aristotle's. (shrink)

Aristotle is famous for thinking that all our knowledge comes from perception. But it's not immediately clear what this view is meant to entail. It's not clear, for instance, what perception is supposed to contribute to the more advanced forms of knowledge that derive from it. Nor is it clear how we should understand the nature of its contribution—what it might mean to say that these more advanced forms of knowledge are "derived from" or "based on" what we perceive. Aristotle (...) is often thought to have disappointingly little to say on these matters. I argue here that this thought is mistaken: a coherent and philosophically attractive view of perceptual knowledge can be found in the various texts in which Aristotle discusses perception's role in animal life, the cognitive resources on which it does and does not depend, and the relation it bears to practical and theoretical modes of understanding. This book offers a sustained examination of these discussions and their epistemological, psychological, and ethical implications. It defends an interpretation of Aristotle as a moderate sort of empiricist, who thinks that we can develop sophisticated forms of knowledge by broadly perceptual means—and that we therefore share an important part of our cognitive lives with nonrational animals—but also holds that our intellectual powers allow us to surpass these animals in certain ways and thereby develop distinctively human forms of understanding. (shrink)

This article studies an aspect of the relation between emotions and ethics that is usually neglected in the recent debate on moral emotions. By focusing on the contributions of common or everyday emotions to the development of moral behaviours and attitudes, the debate loses sight of the emotional side of the ethical attitude and the way it involves different, specifically ethical emotions. In contrast, such emotions play an important role in Aristotle’s and Heidegger’s thought. As will be shown, both authors (...) identify emotions that are intrinsically tied to ethics in a broad sense and are structurally different from everyday emotions. Moreover, both characterize the two kinds of emotion in a similar fashion: whereas everyday emotions involve a limited form of activity and refer to a more immediate objective domain, the properly ethical emotions result from a superior form of activity and open up to a vaster domain or even to the entire reality, thus having a metaphysical character. The study of this distinction and what it involves will allow for a better understanding not only of emotions in general, but also of the emotional dimension of ethical life. (shrink)

This essay takes a first step in comparative ethics by looking to Aristotle and the Aztec's conceptions of the good life. It argues that the Aztec conception of a rooted life, neltiliztli, functions for ethical purposes in a way that is like Aristotle's eudaimonia. To develop this claim, it not only shows just in what their conceptions of the good consist, but also in what way the Aztecs conceived of the virtues (in qualli, in yectli).

In Book I of his Nicomachean Ethics (NE), Aristotle defines happiness, or eudaimonia, in accordance with an argument he makes regarding the distinctive function of human beings. In this paper, I argue that, despite this argument, there are moments in the NE where Aristotle appeals to elements of happiness that don’t follow from the function argument itself. The place of these elements in Aristotle’s account of happiness should, therefore, be a matter of perplexity. For, how can Aristotle appeal to elements (...) of happiness not entailed by his argument for what happiness involves? I will examine two instances that exemplify the sort of appeal to outside elements that I have in mind. The first deals with Aristotle’s reference, in NE, I, 8, to certain goods—ancestry, children, beauty—goods unrelated to man’s function or his fulfillment of it, but nevertheless required for his happiness. The second instance involves pleasure. Aristotle makes various arguments, both in Books I and X of the NE, that tie pleasure to the activity of the soul, and the function argument in turn. However, none of these arguments succeeds in demonstrating that pleasure would necessarily follow from this activity. Taken together then, these two examples demonstrate the extent to which Aristotle’s definition of happiness is more inclusive than his function argument permits. (shrink)

In Nicomachean Ethics (= Eth. Nic.) 10.2, Aristotle addresses Eudoxus’ argument that pleasure is the chief good in his characteristically dialectical manner. The argument is that pleasure is the chief good, since all creatures, rational (ἔλλογα) and non-rational (ἄλογα) alike, are perceived to aim at pleasure (1172b9–11).1 At 1172b35–1173a5, Aristotle turns to an objection against Eudoxus’ argument. For some object (οἱ δ᾽ἐνιστάμενοι) to the argument by questioning one of its premisses, namely that what all creatures aim at is the good (...) (1172b12–15). Instead, they claim that what all creatures aim at is not good (ὡς οὐκ γαθὸν οὗ πάντ᾽ ἐφίεται, 1172b36). This claim is reasonably taken to mean that not everything that all creatures aim at is good. But, as we shall shortly see, Aristotle dismisses it in a way suggesting a less charitable interpretation. At any rate, the significance of this objection is that it challenges the strong claim that what all creatures aim at is the good with an argument against the weaker claim that what all creatures aim at is good (or a good). For if the weaker claim is refuted, then the strong claim is refuted as well. Aristotle takes issue with the argument against the weaker claim, but without committing himself to the strong claim. (shrink)

I argue that Aristotelian decisions (προαιρέσεις) cannot be conceived of as based solely on wish (βούλησις) and deliberation (βούλευσις), as the standard picture (most influentially argued for in Anscombe's "Thought and Action in Aristotle", in R. Bambrough ed. New Essays on Plato and Aristotle. London: Routledge, 1965) suggests. Although some features of the standard view are correct (such as that decisions have essential connection to deliberation and that wish always plays a crucial role in the formation of a decision), Aristotelian (...) decisions sometimes must include non-rational desires such as appetite. Consequently, any exegetical account of Aristotle’s notion of decision must be able to accommodate this feature. (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)

The paper defends three claims about Aristotle’s theory of uncontrolled actions (akrasia) in NE 7.3. First, I argue that the first part of NE 7.3 contains the description of the overall state of mind of the agent while she acts without control. Aristotle’s solution to the problem of uncontrolled action lies in the analogy between the uncontrolled agent and people who are drunk, mad, or asleep. This analogy is interpreted as meaning that the uncontrolled agent, while acting without control, is (...) still in possession of her knowledge but she is unable to use it as knowledge due to the temporary disablement of her reason by appetite. Due to this disablement, the uncontrolled agent is temporarily unable to be motivated to act by her knowledge and acts merely on her appetite. Second, I argue that the second part of NE 7.3 provides an analysis of the particular mental state from which the uncontrolled action issues. Its central passage is a description of the uncontrolled agent’s state of mind before the uncontrolled action and not, as it has been traditionally understood, a description of her state of mind during the uncontrolled action. Third, I argue that, on Aristotle’s view, the transition from the state before the uncontrolled action to the state in which the agent already acts without control does not involve any psychological state that would constitute the agent’s choice to abandon her decision and give in to her desires but proceeds on a purely physiological level. (shrink)

The significance of imitation for moral development during childhood, in Aristotle’s ethics, has been recognized and studied. However, what role does imitation play in the morally mature agent’s character development? In this paper, I argue that moral development is possible for the advanced moral agent, when she imitates her character-friend. But the mature agent’s imitation is of a thoroughly different type than the imitation of the young moral agent; the mature imitation mechanism is selective and interpretative. The agent selects from (...) the goodness in her friend, depending on the agent’s own sensitivities, and adopts this goodness as a pattern that allows for personalized implementations, depending on her own dispositions and skills. In this way, the morally mature agent develops her moral character by enriching her epistemic tools and experience within the spectrum of the good. (shrink)

The history of the political thought on pleasure is not a cloistered affair in which scholars only engage one another. In political thought, one commonly finds a critical engagement with the wider public and the ruling classes, which are both perceived to be dangerously hedonistic. The effort of many political thinkers is directed towards showing that other political ends are more worthy than pleasure: Plato battles vigorously against Calicles' pleasure seeking in the Gorgias, Augustine argues in The City of God (...) against the human tendency to hedonism in favor of a profound distrust of pleasure, and even Machiavelli claims in The Prince that it is in the prince's best interest to separate his pursuit of pleasure from his pursuit of political power. The thrust of the majority of political thought is to interrupt the popular equation that links pleasure with the good. Instead, political thought has largely followed Plato's lead and has worked to contain hedonism on two fronts. First, pleasure is rigorously separated from ethical and political good: what is good is not identical with what is pleasurable even if the two sometimes overlap. Second, even where the pursuit of pleasure is judged to be coincident with the good, pleasure should only be pursued to the degree it is rational to do so and pursued in the most rational way. Of course, it is not true that all thinkers hold to these two positions on pleasure. Epicureanism and utilitarianism are two major schools of thought that challenge the first precept equating pleasure with the good. Both Epicureanism and utilitarianism argue that the only good is pleasure. However, it is much less frequently that one finds a thinker challenging the second Platonic position that reason must master and guide our pursuit of pleasure—even the Epicureans and utilitarians believe that pleasure is best pursued rationally. However, Foucault has attracted recent attention by challenging the idea that reason should dominate the pursuit of pleasure. (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)

In the following paper I discuss the under-appreciated role that the concept of the morally serious person plays in Aristotle’s moral philosophy. I argue that the conventional English rendering of spoudaios as “good” has a tendency to cut us off from important nuances in Aristotle’s consideration of the virtuous person. After discussing aspects of his use of the concept in the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics I dismiss a misunderstanding of seriousness as a kind of morally indifferent personality trait. I (...) close by briefly reflecting on how an absence of moral seriousness characterizes much contemporary moral theorizing and produces what Anscombe described as the “corrupt mind.”. (shrink)

I argue that Aristotle took pleasure to be a certain aspect of perfect activities of awareness, namely, their very perfection. I also argue that this reading facilitates an attractive interpretation of his view that pleasures differ in kind along with the activities they arise in connection with.

Pleasure has always been an important issue in morality. And although ethical systems tend to focus the discussion on human action, this agreeable sentiment has remained a recurrent question in moral philosophy. In this paper, I go back to Aristotle’s treatment of pleasure in his writings, particularly in the Nicomachean Ethics. I will argue that the distinction he draws between bodily pleasures and those of the mind represents an important point not only in understanding eudaimonia but also in situating the (...) very nature of ethical debates today. I will try to show how Aristotle’s distinction among pleasure matches up with his differentiation between energeia and kinésis as well as with the distinction between praxis and poiésis, and how these differentiations have enabled Aristotle toevade the pitfall of hedonism. (shrink)

"Its difficulty, astonishingly, reduced Aristotle to babble." Thus G. E. M. Anscombe refers to dealing with pleasure in a philosophical way. Anscombe is not alone in criticizing Aristotle in this area: Ryle, Cope, and Ackrill have also claimed that his writings on pleasure are inconsistent. It has been a well-known and often considered problem: Book VII of the Nicomachean Ethics defines 'pleasure' as the equivalent of an energeia, an activity which requires nothing else to complete or perfect it, while Book (...) X of the same work rejects that definition, claiming in its place that pleasure is a supervenient quality distinguishable from the activity. To complicate the issue, Aristotle's Rhetoric defines 'pleasure' as a genesis or kinesis, a process or movement, an Academic view which is repeatedly countered in the Nicomachean Ethics. ;This dissertation establishes the position that the differences between the three accounts of pleasure in the Aristotelian corpus are real and important, and that Aristotle's account of pleasure is nonetheless consistent. This position is based upon the primal roles of ethical character and the dialectical method in Aristotle's practical works. ;Each of the three treatments of pleasure includes a definition of 'pleasure' which is related to the way it is manifested to people of differing ethical characters with differing practical goals. This is an example of what J. D. G. Evans calls a 'definition ad hominem'. The dialectical method requires each of these definitions ad hominem to stand as a definition and dialectical premiss, even though the definition based on the pleasure of the spoudaios, the ethically excellent person, enjoys a precision the others can only approach. This analysis clears Aristotle of the charges of inconsistency and relativism and, in addition, allows him to mediate some current disputes about pleasure. (shrink)

Aristotle provides two extended discussions on the subject of pleasure within the Nicomachean Ethics. The first, which comprises the last four chapters of Book 7, produces a definition of pleasure in which pleasure is identified with activity (energeia). But in the second discussion of pleasure—provided in the first five chapters of Book 10-this position is characterized as "strange" or "absurd" (1175b 35). Instead of an identification between the two, pleasure is now said to "supervene" upon activity "as the bloom of (...) youth does on those in the flower of their youth" (1174b 33). Why this difference in the characterization of pleasure? Is Aristotle here committing the simple inconsistency of which he appears to be guilty? In the first section of this paper I shall argue that he is not. In the second section of this paper I shall suggest some reasons as to why Aristotle's interests in the subject of pleasure changed in the relatively short interim between Book 7 and Book 10. (shrink)

This thesis' objective is an understanding of Aristotle's two quite different treatments of pleasure in the Nicomachean Ethics. Both treatments have implications for understanding human action and the role of pleasure in the good life. The thesis shows that differences in the treatments are resolvable if, first, an independent common basis for an Aristotelian notion of pleasure is developed and then the contexts of the passages are considered. ;The De Anima's exposition of locomotion as the characteristic activity of the sensient (...) being is used to orient the discussion. From it the basis for a notion of pleasure is established which includes the actuality-potentiality relationships in a sensient act as well as Aristotle's notion of orexis. Because the frameworks of the De Amina and Nicomachean Ethics differ, a transition is needed. Analyzing Aristotle's use of physis as it relates to the acts characteristic of biological and of ethical behaviors shows that the notion of pleasure in both works is an analogous one. The transition enables the concepts involved to be appropriately applied and, in the Nicomachean Ethics, hexeis are seen to operate in an analogous fashion to the De Anima's concept of animate nature. ;It is through a detailed analysis of each passage that the contexts of the passages become clear. The analyses are organized under four broad themes: Aristotle's criticism of other opinions, his position that pleasure is not a process but an energeia, his descriptions of pleasure both as an unimpeded activity of a natural state and as the supervenient end of perfect activity and his use of the notion of pleasure to resolve some difficult ethical problems. Through a close consideration of the needs of their contexts, a harmonious interpretation of pleasure evolves which respects the differences of the passages and accounts for them. (shrink)

Aristotle's Rhetoric defines fear as a kind of pain or disturbance and pity as a kind of pain. In his Poetics, however, pity and fear are associated with pleasure: ‘ The poet must provide the pleasure that comes from pity and fear by means of imitation’. The question of the relationship between pleasure and pain in Aristotle's aesthetics has been studied primarily in connection with catharsis. Catharsis, however, raises more problems than it solves. Aristotle says nothing at all about the (...) tragic catharsis in the Poetics except to state that tragedy accomplishes it. Though he gives a more complete account of catharsis in the Politics, the context of this passage is so different from that of the Poetics that its relevance is questionable. A more promising, but largely neglected, approach to Aristotle's theory of tragic pleasure and pain is through a study of his psychological works. Here, Aristotle describes a number of emotional and cognitive responses to kinds of objects that include works of art. These descriptions support an interpretation of the Poetics according to which a tragedy is pleasurable in one respect and painful in another, and pity and fear, though painful and not in themselves productive of pleasure, are nevertheless essential to the production of the oikeia hēdonē, ‘proper pleasure’, of tragedy. This interpretation has the advantage of not depending on a particular view of catharsis. It also makes much better sense than alternative views, once its seemingly paradoxical aspects are explained with the help of the psychological works. (shrink)

Provides a critical and analytical history of ancient Greek theories on the nature of pleasure, and of its value and rolein human lfie, from the ealriest times down to the period of Epicurus and the early Stoics.

The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle contains two treatises on pleasure and pain, which present different positions on the nature of pleasure and its relation to the supreme good for man. Contrary to the standard approach, which accounts for these differences by assigning these treatises to different periods of Aristotle's philosophical development, I trace their differences to the general thematic development of the Ethics as a whole. This is achieved by an analysis of the themes of pleasure and pain and their (...) relation to the topic of happiness in the order in which they are presented in the Nicomachean Ethics. ;The first book of the Ethics reveals that Aristotle rejects the life of sensual pleasure as the best life for man but accepts the pleasure linked with moral virtue as an element of the supreme good or happiness. Books II-VI of the Ethics point out how pleasure and pain function in the moral life. The conclusion reached by the analysis found in these books is that those pleasures that accompany virtue are good but those that either prevent virtue or lead to vice are bad. Various relations are also discovered between specific moral virtues and the pleasure or pain that the possessors of such virtues would experience. The first ten chapters of Book VII describe the man who is truly virtuous as alone partaking of a kind of pleasure that is free from pain. In the first treatise on pleasure and pain, found in the last four chapters of Book VII, Aristotle describes the activity of soul in accordance with moral virtue as it appears to the man who possesses moral virtue. It is experienced by him as pure enjoyment, as the combination of pleasure and psychical activity in one. In Books VIII and IX Aristotle shows that the activity of true friendship, even more than the activity of soul in accordance with moral virtue, is to be identified with the supreme good for man. This leads to the conclusion that pleasure cannot be the supreme good because, if it were, true friendship would be impossible. The treatment of pleasure in the tenth book of the Ethics deals with the pleasures found in sensation and thought, unlike the first treatise in Book VII, which dealt primarily with the noble pleasure that accompanies the morally virtuous action. Pleasure, as presented in the second treatise, is shown to be essential to, but not identical with, its activity. Finally, the concluding chapters of Book X identify the supreme good with the activity of contemplating, which is seen to have its own unique pleasure, functioning in the manner ascribed to pleasure in its relation to activity in the second treatise on pleasure. ;The Nicomachean Ethics is thus shown to be a consistent, unified work in its dialectical treatment of the topics of pleasure and pain. The differences in the two treatises on pleasure and pain are shown to be understandable when each treatment of these topics is taken as a necessary stage in the gradually unfolding complex description of the human good, which Aristotle presents in his Nicomachean Ethics. (shrink)

FIRST A CRITIQUE OF G E L OWEN'S VERSION OF THE CONTRAST BETWEEN BOOKS VII AND X OF THE NICOMACHEAN ETHICS. IT IS ARGUED THAT BOTH BOOKS ARE OFFERING SIMILAR ACCOUNTS OF THE NATURE OF PLEASURE, WHICH OFFER GENERAL CONDITIONS FOR THE OCCURRENCE OF PLEASURE. HOWEVER, ARISTOTLE IS INTERESTED IN 'REAL' PLEASURE, WHICH IS RELATED TO THE NATURE OF THE RELEVANT BEING. ONLY BY IMPLICATION DOES HE GIVE A GENERAL ACCOUNT OF PLEASURE. THE BOOK X VERSION ENABLES HIM TO HAVE (...) A VIEW OF PLEASURE THAT PRESERVES THE TRUTH IN BOTH HEDONISM AND PLATONIC CRITICISMS OF IT. (shrink)