Abstract

This article deals with the following question. Does Freud's description of pleasureas the result of a (significant) reduction of tension (pleasure principle), imply that all pleasure is to be understood in terms of tension, and moreover, in terms of a transition between two states of tension, and again in terms of a reduction of tension? Although Freud certainly provides grounds for such an interpretation, a closer reading of his work (in particular his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, 1905) reveals how he distinguishes at least three sources of pleasure that we can connect with three majorphilosophical traditions. First of all, there is the pleasure generated by a reduction of tension which follows the satisfaction of a need. This so-called end-pleasure ("Endlust"), fully consonant with the pleasure principle, constitutes a neurophysiologicalquantitative reading of a platonic line of thought: pleasure as a filling up of a deficiency (Philebus). Freud discerns another kind of pleasure in the experience of movement or action itself. With this second kind of pleasure, pleasure-in-movement ("Lustcharakter der Bewegungsempfindungen"), he follows a truly anstotelic way of thought, according to which pleasure consists in the (unimpeded) execution of an (immanent) activity (Ethica Nicomachea). There is yet a third form of pleasure, not in the decrease, but precisely in the increase of tension, that Freud thematises as fore-pleasure ("Vorlust"), pleasure-in-excitement. In the expectation of satisfaction (as relief of tension), increasing tension, although a source of displeasure according to the pleasure principle, may not only be endured but also enjoyed for itself through the intervention of (conscious orinconscious) representations. Of this fore-pleasure, that opens out into the realm of mental pleasure and joy, we find an antecedent in the joy in Hope ("gaudium ex spe") of Thomas Aquinas. But due to the loss of transcendental superstructure, Freud's fore-pleasure represents a strongly sharpened concept, just as the corresponding experience has become greatly intensified in the contemporary cultural climate