Perfecting Pleasures: The Metaphysics of Pleasure in Nicomachean Ethics X
Christopher Shields
In Miller, ed., Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics: A Critical Guide
Cambridge, 2011

Shields quotes EN 1174b31-33 as follows: 'Pleasure perfects the activity (energeia), not in the way a state (hexis) does, by being in the activity, but as a sort of supervening end (telos).'" (SHIELDS, p. 191) [PSA: think about the sense in which "the hexis is in the energeia"; given the phrase "as a sort of supervening telos", pleasure seems to be, in Reeve's terms, a form of end completion.]

"[T]he account of pleasure in Nicomachean Ethics X is articulated in broadly functional terms ... in this discussion he is suggesting that ... pleasure perfects a psychic activity, either perceptual or intellectual (EN 1174b14-1175a3)." (SHIELDS, p. 193) [PSA: note the close tie between enjoyment and awareness, whether perceptual or conceptual.] 

"Aristotle's appeal to the form of a process makes a crucial point about his distinction between pleasures and processes. His root concern is really that the framework of a process is wrong for a treatment of pleasure. The form of a process requires there to be a starting point from which a process gets underway, a directionality for the process to take, and an end point whose attainment makes its completion. Without attaining its end point, a process is permanently incomplete. Pleasures, avers Aristotle, are not like that. They are rather more like perceptions: they are the sorts of episodes that reach their arrivals upon their departures. They are always complete at every moment." (SHIELDS, p. 201) [PSA: (1) enjoyments might not be *like* perceptions, but a "supervening end" on or completion of awareness itself; (2) because eudaimonia is an activity, Aristotle's critique also applies to living well.]

Shields provides a lengthy analysis of EN 1174b31-33. He begins by stating that "In order to understand Aristotle's contention ... we must know what he means by saying that pleasure perfects an activity, not as an indwelling state, but rather as a sort of supervenient end." With regard to this last phrase (epiginomenon ti telos), he contends that Aristotle "is thinking of the kind of end that follows upon the activity" (perhaps in a way similar to Csikszentmiyalhi's description of the "flow" state). The intended contrast is with the phrase "indwelling state" (hexis enuparchousa), which is similar to the phrase indwelling nature (enuparchousa phusis) used, for instance, at DA 418b8 and GA 741a1. Here "his point is that a nature (phusis) is something intrinsic to the being, and so the source of its motion and development. This seems a useful comparison, then, since a nature is precisely the sort of feature which can be in one way prior and in another way posterior: an immature member of a species has the nature of its kind, but it has yet to realize its nature completely. In this sense, a nature is present in a regulative way, as an end, without also being fully developed in the process leading to it." [PSA: as above, there might be implications here for our understanding of a hexis, because if a hexis is a kind of "second nature" then that could explain how it is inherent in or a source of the activity in a "regulative way"; see also RICHARDSON-1992a on eudaimonia as a regulative ideal.] Shields continues: "If this is parallel, then when Aristotle says that pleasure is *not* present in this way, his suggestion is precisely that pleasure is not present in the activities that give rise to pleasure, as somehow regulating their expression. This is, however, what we should expect if pleasure is not the primary activity but rather flows from that activity in a consequential sort of way." (SHIELDS, pp. 204-205) [PSA: this further makes sense if the enjoyment is bound up with the *awareness* of the activity, not the activity itself.]

Shields immediately goes on to state: "This equally seems to be the point of the second contextual clue, that the supervenience of pleasure may be compared to the way in which the prime of life supervenes on the pinnacle of life (EN 1174b31-33; cf. Rhetoric 1390b13-15).... Aristotle is here pointing out that one kind of feature can emerge from another kind of feature without additional activity, that the case activity or condition suffices for the supervening activity and condition, even while the supervening activity or condition in no way reduces to its base. Again, if that is so, then pleasure will supervene on certain sorts of activities even while being distinct from them. Since the activities he has in view are episodes of perception and thought, Aristotle will tend to regard pleasures and such activities as intimately related without completely collapsing one into the other." (SHIELDS, p. 205)

"So much, however, only serves to bring our initial problem into sharper relief: if pleasure supervenes on psychic activities, if it emerges from them without being reducible to them, then it is hard to see how it can also manage to complete or perfect them." (SHIELDS, p. 206)

"Aristotle seems to be thinking of pleasure as more intimately related to the activity it completes than the mere epiphenomenal by-product picture portrays. Although a supervenient end, pleasure makes an activity the activity it is: it is inherent in its execution rather than an excrescence of it." (SHIELDS, p. 207) [PSA: here again, perhaps the enjoyment is inherent in the awareness of the activity]

"Pleasure may be a goal of human action, and thus a final cause; but it is not a defining feature of an action. Pleasure is not, for example, the defining goal of perception or thinking. Even so, pleasure, when present, makes these activities what they are, and is thus an efficient cause of them - and is for this same reason a formal cause. More exactly, pleasure is a final cause alongside the final causes of perception and thought, as co-extensive with them." Shields then goes on to quote EN 1175a12-21, where Aristotle states that living is a kind of activity, connecting this with the fact living is essentially perception and thought, i.e., awareness. (SHIELDS, p. 208) [PSA: another way to put it might be that enjoyment is naturally a part of *unimpeded* activity; but we need to consider whether the enjoyment comes from the lack of impediments and what role is played by the nature of these impediments (e.g., internal conflict.]

"[P]leasure is necessarily co-extensive with intellectual or perceptual activity of the highest form.... Thus, when the indwelling final cause is fully active in the right circumstances, ranging over the finest objects, then pleasure accrues, without fail; but this pleasure is not the activity of perception or thought but flows from it even while it completes it." (SHIELDS, p. 208)

"[A] feature that emerges without being an indwelling state nonetheless contributes to determining the identity of the totality. In the case of pleasure, the totality is an activity, an activity of perception or thought." (SHIELDS, p. 209)

"[P]leasures arise in the activities of perception and thought, when our faculties are functioning at their highest level and arrayed over their finest objects.... [P]leasures in turn perfect or complete those same activities: pleasure contributes to such perceptions and thoughts by making them what they are, namely the highest forms of human cognition. A consummate thought or perception, thinks Aristotle, is a pleasurable thought or instance of perception... we are not subjects who experience pleasure independently of our thinking or perceiving. We are rather subjects who experience pleasure *in* or thinking and our perceiving - percisely when our faculties are functioning at their highest." (SHIELDS, pp. 209-210) [PSA: note the connection to theoria as a kind of beholding.]

"[P]erceptions and thoughts *are* pleasures .... pleasure is a supervenient end *and* something capable of perfecting the activity whose end it is.: it is neither a by-product nor an efficient cause existing prior to the activity it perfects." (SHIELDS, p. 210)

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