What do you think? Discuss:
Definitions:
he·don·ism (hdn-zm)
n.
1. Pursuit of or devotion to pleasure, especially to the pleasures of the senses.
2. Philosophy The ethical doctrine holding that only what is pleasant or has pleasant consequences is intrinsically good.
3. Psychology The doctrine holding that behavior is motivated by the desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain.
Pleasure is a core aspect of life, unavoidable without which you would probably be hard pressed to identify with anything remotely resembling human. It's place in our life can to a large degree be explained in an evolutionary context, motivating and inhibiting behaviour. It's a particular interface we have with our environment, carving out a certain relationship we have with it.
Saying that, I think pleasure as a motivational model for human behaviour is pretty limited. If you think about most of you life and the choices, rarely are they responding to forces of pleasure and pain. I think Nietzche's 'will to power' contends as a model of human motivation quite well to the seemingly more widespread or at least day to day belief that it's all about pleasure and pain.
Of course pleasure is not well defined, and you can have different qualitative forms of pleasure, from basic animalistic gratifications to more sophisticated intellectual pleasures. The merits of different forms may have to be considered somewhat separately.
As with most things, moderation and responsibility lie at the heart of the question of good. Harm to others will be morally wrong, whilst abuses that lead to self harm will be a danger rather than a particularly moral consideration.
In a somewhat stoic sense, the animalistic pleasure aspect of you can be considered somewhat removed from the rational you. It's indulgence can be a a form of surrender of freedom, yielding to the sovereign master of pleasure and pain, which if it defines all that you are or hope to be makes you a prisoner of your impulses, which could be not only a danger to others but a tragedy from the perspective of a potentially rich and free life. One needs only take a look at the heroin addict to appreciate this dark side of pleasure.
On the other side of things I think society today, especially in the west is much too much in the business of constraining the freedom to feel honestly. Arbitrary rules and social customs painfully manipulate our life into one that does not reflect our true nature and we deny ourselves pleasures everyday, often for no good reason. In a large part I have a lot of blame directed at the abrahamic religions for fostering an environment of guilt and subservience that permeates all the culture affecting even those who don't identify as religious.
So as too much can be damaging so too can too little, or rather the repression of ones authentic emotional nature.
Pleasure in its most intense form can be referred to as ecstasy, in which one looses oneself in the experience. Interestingly this out of body experience can be considered a form of death, and through which you can philosophise that through having death does one create meaning in life. So I think the presence of pleasure and pain in our life runs quite deep in our soul, and I often sigh* at various dogmas and laws that seem to label actions as immoral such as sexual activities and drug use for the seemingly suspicious reason that through their practice you can 'loose yourself' and experience this form of death which liberates you. A sense that these rules and perspectives are there to clip the wings of people, and insidiously promote a subdued, tame and servile people.
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