History: Pleasure

So just what Dante scorns as unworthy alike of heaven and hell, Botticelli accepts, that middle world in which men take no side in great conflicts, and decide no great causes, and make great refusals.In what follows, I examine a notion of desire that, I shall claim, is implicit in Immanuel Kant's theorization of aesthetic judgment in the Critique of Judgment.1 At first, this undertaking is likely to seem misguided. After all, Kant grounds his attempt to provide an a priori (...) foundation for judgment on the tripartite distinction between the faculty of cognition, the feeling of pleasure and displeasure, and the faculty of desire. Only the second of the three pertains to aesthetic judgment; and it... (shrink)

Pleasure is a long-discussed issue in philosophy, because it is the result of soul and its powers which are discussed in philosophy. Therefore, such philosophers as Aristotle, Farabi, Avicenna, and Mulla Sadra have discussed it extensively in their writings. In his various works, Avicenna has scrutinized the problem of pleasure. Having referred to one type of pleasure special for each human power, he regards the apprehension of absolute good as the most delightful thing for intellective soul, which should be achieved (...) by removing and overcoming its obstacles, including soul’s negligence over its. (shrink)

Providing an explanation of pleasure, man’s perfection and essence in Sadrian theosophy, Bentham’s act-based utilitarianism which bases the value of act on its pleasure, his seven criteria and criticizing them, the present paper seeks to prove that the existence of perfection is prior to the existence of pleasure raised from perfection in Sadrian theosophy. Ordinary man’s motive to act is first to achieve pleasure and then the perfection itself. In this case, therefore, pleasure is posterior to perfection in terms of (...) existence and subject can be prior to achieving and approximating perfection in terms of motive. Of course, some followers of Sadrian theosophy believe that friends of God have disconnected from their pleasure and that achieving perfection is prior to pleasure in terms of existence and the aim of subject is prior to the existence and perception of pleasure for them. Therefore, friends of God worship Him for His essence not for pleasure which is posterior to absolute perfection. According to Bentham, however, the only motive of man’s acts is pleasure, that is, subject is prior to achieving and approximating pleasure in terms of motive and pleasure in prior to everything in terms of existence. (shrink)

In his different books and treatises, Sohrewardi proposes different definitions for pleasure. These definitions differ with each other in terms of the quality and quantity of the qualifications used in them. He believes that there is strong relationship between pleasure and light. In some of his works, Sohrewardi divides pleasure into sensory and spiritual pleasures, and in some others into bodily and heavenly pleasures. He refers to eternal pleasure in other occasions. On the other hand, he divides pleasure into sensory (...) and intellectual and the latter into external and internal, and believes that internal pleasures are superior to external ones, and intellectual pleasures are superior to sensory ones. He explains these aspects of superiority by using peripatetic and illuminative methods. He also believes that pleasure is not univocal but equivocal. The present paper investigates the nature and types of pleasure in Sohrewardi’s view. Einollah Khademi. (shrink)

This paper considers Freud's 1920 text, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, in light of Jacques Derrida's critical commentary on it in The Post Card. Against the deconstructive reading that highlights the performative aspects of Freud's speculative remarks, David-Ménard reads Freud's theory of the death drive as an epistemological and experimental hypothesis necessary for giving an account of the complexity and diversity of the clinical phenomenon of repetition in psychoanalysis. Though the death drive never appears locatable as such in the various examples (...) given by Freud, it is nonetheless accessible in the constellation of differences produced by traumatic dreams, children's games, etc. (shrink)

In the Critique of Judgment Kant repeatedly points out that it is only the pleasure of taste that reveals to us the need to introduce a third faculty of the mind with its own a priori principle. In order to elucidate this claim I discuss two general principles about pleasure that Kant presents, the transcendental definition of pleasure from § 10 and the principle from the Introduction that connects pleasure with the achievement of an aim. Precursors of these principles had (...) been employed by Kant and others in empirical psychology. But how can such principles of empirical psychology be transferred to transcendental philosophy? I suggest that Kant accomplishes this by deriving the connection of pleasure with achievement of an aim from the transcendental definition and the assumption that faculties have interests. I finally reconstruct § 11 as a ‘regressive argument’ from the peculiarities of the pleasure of taste to the need to acknowledge a new faculty. (shrink)

© British Society of Aesthetics 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society of Aesthetics. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] interpretations of Kant’s ethics have tended to foreground its more humane characteristics, stressing the prominence of emotion, habituation and virtue, distancing us from the harsh and mechanical Kant of legend.1 At the same time there has been increasing interest among aestheticians in the moral significance of the aesthetic and in the role it may (...) play in moral development. The Possibility of Culture, a study of the role Kant ascribed to aesthetic experience in fostering the development of moral character, is thus timely and welcome. Murray draws upon texts not traditionally considered in studies of Kant’s aesthetics, especially the Anthropology and the Doctrine of Virtue, while placing relatively little emphasis on the well-worked questions surrounding the justification of judgements of... (shrink)

A significant feature of John Stuart Mill's moral theory is the introduction of qualitative differences as relevant to the comparative value of pleasures. Despite its significance, Mill presents his doctrine of qualities of pleasures in only a few paragraphs in the second chapter of Utilitarianism, where he begins the brief discussion by saying: utilitarian writers in general have placed the superiority of mental over bodily pleasures chiefly … in their circumstantial advantages rather than in their intrinsic nature.… [B]ut they might (...) have taken the … higher ground with entire consistency. It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognize the fact, that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. It would be absurd that while, in estimating all other things, quality is considered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasures should be supposed to depend on quantity alone. (shrink)

the philebus is a puzzling dialogue, both for the substantive views it puts forward,1 and for the unexpected twists and turns of the discussion. Commentators frequently complain about the dialogue's lack of unity, due to its many apparently unnecessary digressions and interruptions.2 The discussion of the so-called 'divine method' seems to be one of the worst offenders on this score, for it is described and exemplified at length, only to be set aside as unnecessary shortly afterwards.I argue that the divine (...) method plays a vital role in the subsequent examination and evaluation of pleasure and knowledge. I focus in particular on the application of the divine method to pleasure, since the method is... (shrink)

The principle with which Hume accounts for the seemingly unaccountable pleasure that we take in tragic drama is placed in its theoretical context, and the various metaphors that Hume uses in describing this principle are examined. These metaphors are then brought to bear on an interpretative controversy concerning the result of Hume's principle for the subordinate passion. It is argued that, while Hume's considered position should have been that this passion is destroyed at the end of the process, it is (...) most likely that Hume did not consider the question very carefully, so as to form a definite answer in his own mind. (shrink)

After establishing a general connection between the power of judgment and the feeling of pleasure and displeasure in the "First Introduction" to the Critique of the Power of Judgment, in the "Published Introduction", Kant proceeds to restrict this connection gradually to aesthetic judgments and to judgments that deal with the systematization of nature. This restriction leaves teleological judgments out of the formerly established general connection. The aim of the article is to give an account of the necessary procedures that had (...) to be adopted by the reader of Critique of the Power of Judgment in order to maintain the connection between teleological judgments and the feeling of pleasure, namely a connection that, in principle, all reflecting judgments were meant to have.Depois de ter estabelecido uma conexão geral entre a faculdade do juízo e o sentimento de prazer e desprazer na "Primeira introdução" à Crítica da faculdade do juízo, Kant, na "Introdução publicada", restringe, gradativamente, essa conexão aos juízos estéticos e aos juízos que lidam com a sistematização da natureza. Essa restrição acaba por deixar os juízos teleológicos fora da conexão geral anteriormente estabelecida. O objetivo do artigo é propor os passos necessários para restabelecer a conexão entre os juízos teleológicos e o sentimento de prazer e desprazer, pois se trata de uma conexão, a princípio, supostamente válida para todos os juízos reflexionantes. (shrink)

In this paper I present an interpretation of the role of pleasure in Kant’s theory of desire formation. On my reading Kant’s account of how desires are formed does—in spite of what some commentators say—commit him to hedonism. On the face of it, Kant writes of the determination of the faculty of desire in three distinct ways, but I argue that these accounts can be reconciled in a single, more comprehensive theory. This comprehensive theory has the virtue of complementing and (...) elucidating some of the lesser-known things that Kant has to say on the nature of pleasure in the Critique of Judgment and Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. (shrink)

In Plato's "Philebus" Socrates and Protarchus dispute whether pleasure, like belief, can be false. Their dispute illustrates a broader pattern of disagreement between them about how to evaluate pleasure. Of two contrasting conceptions of false pleasure-derived from work by Bernard Williams and by Sabina Lovibond respectively-false pleasure of the Lovibond type best answers the challenge to which Protarchus' resistance gives rise. Socrates' own example of false pleasure may be read in this way, in contrast to its prevailing interpretation, and this (...) alternative reading seems better suited to the argument's context, both immediate and distant. (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)

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)

Le propos est précédé par une illustration, la seule de l’ouvrage, extraite d’une Histoire de l’industrie du coton en Grande-Bretagne parue en 1835. Il s’agit de la reproduction d’un dessin représentant le processus d’impression de motifs sur du calicot. On y voit deux hommes travailler, de façon semble-t-il minutieuse, sur deux grandes machines installées dans un atelier spacieux. L’illustration est égayée par les motifs imprimés sur les pans de tissu, qui occupent une grande partie de l’esp..

Le propos est précédé par une illustration, la seule de l’ouvrage, extraite d’une Histoire de l’industrie du coton en Grande-Bretagne parue en 1835. Il s’agit de la reproduction d’un dessin représentant le processus d’impression de motifs sur du calicot. On y voit deux hommes travailler, de façon semble-t-il minutieuse, sur deux grandes machines installées dans un atelier spacieux. L’illustration est égayée par les motifs imprimés sur les pans de tissu, qui occupent une grande partie de l’esp..