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23. Ethics / A. Egoism / 2. Hedonism

[central aim of life being individual pleasure]

9 ideas
Is the happiest state one of sensual, self-indulgent freedom? [Plato]
     Full Idea: Callicles: If a person has the means to live a life of sensual, self-indulgent freedom, there's no better or happier state of existence.
     From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 492c)
If you lived a life of maximum pleasure, would you still be lacking anything? [Plato]
     Full Idea: Would you, Protarchus, gladly live your whole life experiencing only the greatest pleasure? Would you think you were still lacking anything?
     From: Plato (Philebus [c.353 BCE], 21a)
     A reaction: the pleasure machine problem
A life of pure pleasure with no intellect is the life of a jellyfish [Plato]
     Full Idea: A life of pure pleasure with no intellect is not the life of a human being, but the life of a jellyfish.
     From: Plato (Philebus [c.353 BCE], 21c)
Hedonists must say that someone in pain is bad, even if they are virtuous [Plato]
     Full Idea: A hedonist must say that someone who happens to be feeling pain rather than pleasure is, as long as the pain lasts, a bad man, even if he is the most virtuous man in the world.
     From: Plato (Philebus [c.353 BCE], 55b)
Licentiousness concerns the animal-like pleasures of touch and taste [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: Licentiousness is concerned with such pleasures as are shared with animals (hence thought low and brutish). These are touch and taste.
     From: Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1118a25)
     A reaction: Nietzsche is the best opponent of this view, when elevates purely physical pleasures such as dancing to a supreme status. It must be possible to give a justified account of 'high' and 'low' activities, perhaps related to increased generality + universals.
All inventions of the mind aim at pleasure, and those that don't are worthless [Metrodorus of Lamp., by Plutarch]
     Full Idea: Metrodorus says that all the wonderful, ingenious and brilliant inventions of the mind have been contrived for the sake of pleasure of the flesh or for the sake of looking forward to it, and any accomplishment not leading to this end is worthless.
     From: report of Metrodorus (Lamp) (fragments/reports [c.291 BCE], Fr 6) by Plutarch - 74: Reply to Colotes §1125
     A reaction: It is very hard to think of counterexamples! Would anyone bother to work out the theorems of number theory if they didn't enjoy doing it? Would any sensible person make great sacrifices if they didn't think that increased happiness would result?
People need nothing except corn and water [Chrysippus, by Plutarch]
     Full Idea: Chrysippus praises ad nauseam the lines "For what need mortals save two things alone,/ Demeter's grain and draughts of water clear".
     From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1043e
     A reaction: "Oh, reason not the need!" says King Lear. The remark shows the close affinity of stoicism and cynicism, as the famous story of Diogenes is that he threw away his drinking cup when he realised you could drink with your hands.
Things are good and evil only in reference to pleasure and pain [Locke]
     Full Idea: Things then are good and evil only in reference to pleasure and pain.
     From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.20.02)
     A reaction: This is presumably the seeds of utilitarianism, and is evidently at the core of empiricism. In "Gorgias" Socrates explained why it is wrong.
Hedonism offers no satisfaction, because what we desire is self-betterment [Green,TH, by Muirhead]
     Full Idea: Hedonism failed because it offered as an end of human aspiration an object in which the human spirit, pledged by its own nature to self-betterment, …could never find satisfaction.
     From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II
     A reaction: It is always both sad and amusing to see that 150 years ago someone wrote of a doctrine that is still with us that it has 'failed'. Nowadays they try to say the same of physicalism. His objection rests on optimism about humanity.