PLEASURE
[1152b] TO CONSIDER PLEASURE AND PAIN BELONGS TO THE PROVINCE of the political philosopher; for he is the master-craftsman of the end with a view to which we call one thing bad and another good in the abstract. Further, it is one of our necessary tasks to consider them; for we laid down that [5] moral virtue and vice are concerned with pains and pleasures, and most people say that happiness involves pleasure—this is why the blessed man is called by a name derived from delight.1
Some think that no pleasure is a good, either in itself or coincidentally, since the good and pleasure are not the same. [10] Others think that some pleasures are good but that most are base. Again there is a third view, that even if all pleasures are good, yet the chief good cannot be pleasure.
They hold that pleasure is not a good at all because every pleasure is a perceptible process to a natural state, and no process is of the same kind as its end—for instance, no process [15] of building of the same kind as a house. Again, a temperate man avoids pleasures. Again, a wise man pursues what is free from pain, not what is pleasant. Again, pleasures are a hindrance to thought, and the more so the more one delights in them, for instance in sexual pleasure—for no one could think of anything while absorbed in this. Again, there is no craft of pleasure; but every good is the product of some [20] craft. Again, children and brutes pursue pleasures.
They say that not all pleasures are virtuous because there are pleasures that are ignoble and objects of reproach, and because there are harmful pleasures (for some pleasant things are diseased).
They say that pleasure is not the chief good because pleasure is not an end but a process.
These are pretty much the things that are said.
[25] That it does not follow from these grounds that pleasure is not a good, or even the chief good, is plain from the following considerations. First, since that which is good may be so in two ways (good in the abstract and good for a particular person), natures and states, and therefore also movements and processes, will be correspondingly divisible: of those which are thought to be base some will be base in the abstract [30] but not base for a particular person but desirable for him, and some will not be desirable even for a particular person but only at a particular time and for a short period, and not in the abstract; while others are not even pleasures but seem to be so, namely all those which involve pain and whose end is therapeutic—for instance, those of the sick.
Further, one kind of good being an activity and another being a state, the processes that restore us to our natural [35] state are coincidentally pleasant (the activity at work in the appetites concerns the remaining part of our state and nature); [1153a] for there are pleasures that involve no pain or appetite (for instance, those of contemplation), nature in such a case not lacking anything. An indication of this is the fact that men do not delight in the same things2 when their nature is being replenished as they do when it is in its restored state: in its restored state, they take delight in the things that are pleasant in the abstract, and when it is being replenished they enjoy the contraries of these as well—for then they [5] enjoy even sharp and bitter things, none of which is pleasant either by nature or in the abstract. Nor, then, are the pleasures; for as pleasant things differ from one another, so do the pleasures arising from them.
Again, it is not necessary that there should be something else better than pleasure, as some say the end is better than the process; for pleasures are not processes nor do they all [10] involve process: rather, they are activities and ends, and they attend not acquisition but use. Not all pleasures have an end different from themselves, but only the pleasures of persons who are being led to the completing of their nature. This is why it is not right to say that pleasure is a perceptible process: it should rather be called an exercise of the natural [15] state, and instead of ‘perceptible’ ‘unimpeded’. It is thought by some to be a process because they think it is good strictly speaking; for they think that an activity is a process—which it is not.
To say that pleasures are base because some pleasant things are diseased is like saying that healthy things are base because some healthy things are bad for business: both are base in the respect mentioned, but they are not for that reason base—indeed, [20] contemplation itself sometimes harms health.
Neither wisdom nor any state of character is impeded by the pleasure arising from it: it is alien pleasures that impede; for the pleasures arising from contemplation and learning will make us contemplate and learn all the more.
The fact that no pleasure is the product of a craft arises reasonably enough: there is no craft of any other activity but of the capacities. (Though for that matter, the crafts [25] of the perfumer and the patissier are thought to be crafts of pleasure.)
The arguments that the temperate man avoids pleasure and that the wise man pursues the painless life, and that children and brutes pursue pleasure, are all refuted by the same [30] consideration. We have said how pleasures are good in the abstract and how they are not all good: both brutes and children pursue pleasures of the latter kind (and the wise man avoids their pains)—those which imply appetite and pain, and the bodily pleasures (which are of this nature) and the excesses of them, in respect of which the self-indulgent man is self-indulgent. This is why the temperate man avoids these pleasures; for he has pleasures of his own.
[1153b] Further, it is agreed that pain is bad and to be avoided; for some pain is bad tout court, and other pain is bad because it is in some respect an impediment. Now the contrary of that which is to be avoided, qua something to be avoided and bad, is good. Pleasure, then, is necessarily a good. For the answer [5] of Speusippus, that it is just as the greater is contrary both to the less and to the equal, is not successful—for he would not say that pleasure is essentially something bad.
If certain pleasures are base, that does not prevent the chief good from being some pleasure—just as some knowledge might be, though certain kinds of knowledge are base. Perhaps it is even necessary, if each state has unimpeded exercises, [10] that whether the exercise (if unimpeded) of all our states or of some one of them is happiness, this should be the most desirable—and this is a pleasure. Thus the chief good is some pleasure, though most pleasures are perhaps base in the abstract.
For this reason all men think that the happy life is pleasant [15] and weave pleasure into happiness—and reasonably too; for no activity is complete when it is impeded, and happiness is a complete thing: this is why the happy man needs the goods of the body and external goods and fortune—in order that he may not be impeded in these ways. Those who say that the victim on the rack or the man who falls into great [20] misfortunes is happy if he is good, are, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, talking nonsense. Because we need fortune, some people think good fortune the same thing as happiness; but it is not, for even good fortune itself when in excess is an impediment, and perhaps then is no longer justly called [25] good fortune; for its limit is fixed by reference to happiness.
The fact that all things, both brutes and men, pursue pleasure is an indication of its being somehow the chief good:
No voice is wholly lost that many peoples … 3
But since no one nature or state either is or is thought the [30] best, all do not pursue the same pleasure—yet all pursue pleasure. But perhaps they pursue not the pleasure they think they pursue nor that which they would say they pursue, but the same pleasure? For all things have by nature something divine in them. But the bodily pleasures have appropriated the name both because we most often steer our course for them and because all men share in them: thus because [1154a] they alone are familiar, men think there are no others.
It is evident also that if pleasure and its exercise is not a good, it will not be the case that the happy man lives a pleasant life; for to what end should he need pleasure, if it is not a [5] good? He may even live a painful life; for pain is neither bad nor good if pleasure is not: why then should he avoid it? Nor will the life of the virtuous man be pleasanter, if his activities are not more pleasant.
WITH REGARD TO THE BODILY PLEASURES, THOSE WHO SAY that some pleasures are very desirable, namely the noble [10] pleasures, but that the bodily pleasures and those with which the self-indulgent man is concerned are not, must consider why4 in that case the contrary pains are depraved. For the contrary of bad is good. Are the necessary pleasures good because that which is not bad is good? Or are they good up to a point? For in the case of states and processes where there is no excess of good, there is none of pleasure either, and [15] where there is, there is of pleasure too. But there is an excess of bodily goods, and the base man is base by virtue of pursuing the excess, not by virtue of pursuing the necessary pleasures (for all men in one way or another delight in fine food and wines and sexual intercourse—but not as they ought). Contrariwise with pain: he does not avoid the excess—he [20] avoids it altogether; for pain is not the contrary to excess of pleasure, except to the man who pursues this excess.
Since we should not only state the truth but also the cause of error—for this contributes towards producing conviction, since when a reasonable explanation is given of why what is [25] not true appears true, this convinces people the more of the truth—so we must state why the bodily pleasures appear the more desirable. First, then, it is because they expel pain; and it is because of the excesses of pain that men pursue excessive pleasure, and in general bodily pleasure, supposing pleasure to be a therapy. Now therapeutic pleasures are intense—that [30] is why they are pursued—because they show up against their contrary. (Pleasure is thought not to be virtuous for two reasons, as has been said, namely because some pleasures are actions of a base nature—either congenital, as in the case of a brute, or due to habit, as those of base men; [1154b] while others are therapies of something lacking, and it is better to be in a state than to be getting into it, whereas these arise during the process of being made complete and are therefore coincidentally virtuous.) Further, they are pursued because of their intensity by those who cannot take delight in other pleasures. So some people5 manufacture thirsts for themselves. When these are harmless, there is nothing to [5] criticize; but when they are harmful, it is base. For they have nothing else to enjoy, and a neutral state is painful to many people because of their nature. For animals are always exerting themselves, as the students of natural science testify, saying that sight and hearing are painful—but we have become [10] used to this, as they say. Similarly, in youth people, because they are growing, are like drunken men, and youth is pleasant. Those of an atrabilious nature always need therapy; for their body is ever irritated owing to its composition, and they are always under the influence of intense desire. Pain is driven out both by the contrary pleasure, and by any chance pleasure if it be strong; and for these reasons they become [15] self-indulgent and base. But the pleasures that do not involve pains do not admit of excess; and these are among the things pleasant by nature and not coincidentally. By things pleasant coincidentally I mean those that are therapeutic (for because people are treated through some action of the part that remains healthy, for this reason the process is thought pleasant); and things naturally pleasant are those [20] that stimulate the action of the healthy nature.
There is nothing that is always pleasant, because our nature is not simple, but there is another element in us as well, inasmuch as we are perishable, so that if the one element does something, this is unnatural to the other nature, and when the two elements are equalized, what is done seems [25] neither painful nor pleasant. For if the nature of anything were simple, the same action would always be most pleasant to it. This is why god always takes delight in a single and simple pleasure; for there is an exercise not only of movement but also of immobility, and pleasure is found more in rest than in movement. But ‘change in all things is sweet’, as the poet says,6 because of a certain viciousness; for as it is the [30] vicious man that is changeable, so the nature that needs change is bad; for it is not simple nor upright.
We have discussed continence and incontinence, and pleasure and pain, both what each is and in what way some of them are good and others bad. Finally, we shall speak of friendship.
1 μακάριος (‘blessed’) from χαίρειν (‘delight in’).
2 Omitting ἡδεῖ (‘the same pleasant things’).
3 Hesiod, Works and Days 763.
4 Placing a comma (rather than a full stop) after ἀκόλαστος.
5 Reading τινές (Rackham) for τινάς.
6 Euripides, Orestes 234.