Early on in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle observed that thrivings and corruptions of character are centrally concerned with managing life's pleasures and pains, joys and distresses; as two examples, the cowardly person fails to act courageously out of a desire to avoid even necessary pains, whereas the decadent person fails to act moderately out of a desire to pursue even unnecessary pleasures. Here in Book VII, Aristotle expands on those observations and provides a stronger foundation for his claims.
The key insight is that pleasures and pains are bound up with the activities they accompany, since activities have their own inherent pleasures. The pleasure of, say, solving a challenging math problem is quite different from the pleasure of drinking a big glass of cold water after working outside in the hot sun. More specifically, not all pleasures involve satisfying a craving (e.g., eating sweets) or relieving a pain (e.g., recovering from an illness), for some pleasures arise simply from activating a capacity (e.g., learning a skill) or exercising a natural faculty (e.g., seeing). Because the latter pleasures are not dependent on an outcome whose value lies outside the activity itself, they are good in themselves; they can even be beautifully right (1151b19, 1154a9). Thus Aristotle defines enjoyment or pleasure as the natural, unimpeded activity [energeia] of an acquired trait [hexis], of which he identifies at least six: craft [technē], understanding [epistēmē], insight [nous], wisdom [phronēsis], sagacity [sophia], and the various forms of ethical thriving [aretē]. (The status of craft here is somewhat ambiguous; I'll write about that some other time.)
According to Aristotle, the pleasures that are good in themselves cannot really be taken to excess (1154a13-14); however, his argument isn't clear to me. He might be saying that although you could engage in too much thinking or seeing or what have you (to the exclusion of other important activities), you can't pursue the pleasures of thinking or seeing to excess because those pleasures arise and are pursued only in and through activities that are good in themselves since they are constituents of human fulfillment [eudaimonia] and also are natural manifestations of deeply human capacities and traits. By contrast, the pleasures of eating, drinking, and sex can be taken to excess (which is why we need the virtue of moderation) since they are bound up with activities that human beings share with the other animals and thus are not distinctively human.
Similarly, Aristotle's focus on unimpeded activity is intriguing, but I don't fully understand it yet, either. What are the impediments to the natural activities of our acquired traits? Are they purely external (e.g., physical, social, political) or can they also be internal (e.g., psychological)? Does the lack of impediments lead to what Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi called the state of flow?
These matters might become clearer when we get to Book X, where Aristotle presents a separate and somewhat different account of pleasure. But first we'll go through Books VIII and IX, which provide Aristotle's highly influential analysis of human relationships, especially the activity he calls philia (usually rendered as "friendship" even though it includes love, acquaintanceship, brotherhood, etc.).
(Cross-posted at philosopher.coach.)
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