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Full Idea
Lust consists of two appetites together, to please, and to be pleased, and the delight men take in delighting is not sensual, but a pleasure or joy of the mind consisting in the imagination of the power they have so much to please.
Gist of Idea
Lust involves pleasure, and also the sense of power in pleasing others
Source
Thomas Hobbes (Human Nature [1640], Ch.IX)
Book Ref
'British Moralists 1650-1800 Vol. 1', ed/tr. Raphael,D.D. [Hackett 1991], p.11
A Reaction
Hobbes would rather burst a blood-vessel than admit any altruism. If you take pleasure in pleasing someone else, why can't that simply be because of the other person's pleasure, with which we sympathise, rather than relishing our own 'power'?
| 6212 | Lust involves pleasure, and also the sense of power in pleasing others [Hobbes] |
| 6211 | Laughter is a sudden glory in realising the infirmity of others, or our own formerly [Hobbes] |
| 6208 | Conceptions and apparitions are just motion in some internal substance of the head [Hobbes] |
| 6209 | There is no absolute good, for even the goodness of God is goodness to us [Hobbes] |
| 6210 | Life has no end (not even happiness), because we have desires, which presuppose a further end [Hobbes] |
| 6213 | A man cannot will to will, or will to will to will, so the idea of a voluntary will is absurd [Hobbes] |