more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
To feel pleasure or pain rightly or wrongly affects our conduct, so our whole enquiry must be concerned with them.
Gist of Idea
Feeling inappropriate pleasure or pain affects conduct, and is central to morality
Source
Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1105a07)
Book Ref
Aristotle: 'Ethics (Nicomachean)', ed/tr. ThomsonJ A K/TredennickH [Penguin 1976], p.96
A Reaction
Apparently the Nazi staff at Auschwitz said that they all felt largely 'indifferent' to what they were doing. Aristotle hopes you can teach these right feelings, but children can develop very unpredictably.
| 134 | Good and bad people seem to experience equal amounts of pleasure and pain [Plato] |
| 361 | It is a mistake to think that the most violent pleasure or pain is therefore the truest reality [Plato] |
| 386 | Intense pleasure and pain are not felt in a good body, but in a worthless one [Plato] |
| 328 | Everything that takes place naturally is pleasant [Plato] |
| 49 | Character is revealed by the pleasures and pains people feel [Aristotle] |
| 53 | Feeling inappropriate pleasure or pain affects conduct, and is central to morality [Aristotle] |
| 3563 | Pleasure and virtue entail one another [Epicurus] |
| 506 | Immoderate desire is the mark of a child, not an adult [Democritus (attr)] |
| 5705 | Nature only wants two things: freedom from pain, and pleasure [Lucretius] |
| 13301 | We are scared of death - except when we are immersed in pleasure! [Seneca] |
| 1478 | Animals don't value pleasure, as they cease sexual intercourse after impregnation [Plutarch] |
| 3777 | Pleasure and pain control all human desires and duties [Bentham] |
| 24166 | Pleasure serves to maintain our relationship with its source [Cochrane] |