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NE 7.13: pleasure as unimpeded activity
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Thomas
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Feb 06, 2007 22:39 PST
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Happiness and pleasure are both unimpeded activities; yet I would
speculate that reaching the type of pleasure that matches happiness
(pleasure of contemplation) would require a long process of overcoming
one's own limitations, to reach that degree of inner freedom...
But Happiness requires external goods too: "Happiness is essentially
perfect; so that the happy man requires in addition the goods of the
body, external goods and the gifts of fortune, in order that his
activity may not be impeded through lack of them."
There is also a rough attack on Plato's Socrates (for example in the
Gorgias, of course we will never know if it was Plato's view, and
Aristotle doesn't say so either): "Consequently those who say that, if a
man be good,he will be happy even when on the rack, or when fallen into
the direst misfortune, are intentionally or unintentionally talking
nonsense."
Thomas
1153b1-1154a7:
XIII. That pain moreover is an evil and to be avoided is admitted; since
all pain is either absolutely evil, or evil as being some way an
impediment to activity. But that which is the opposite of something to
be avoided--opposed to it as a thing to be avoided and evil--must be
good. It follows therefore that pleasure is a good. Speusippus
<vor?type=phrase&alts=0&group=typecat&lookup=Speusippus&collection=Perseus:collection:Greco-Roman>
attempted to refute this argument by saying that, as the greater is
opposed to the equal as well as to the less, so pleasure is opposed to a
neutral state of feeling as well as to pain. But this refutation does
not hold good; for Speusippus
<vor?type=phrase&alts=0&group=typecat&lookup=Speusippus&collection=Perseus:collection:Greco-Roman>
would not maintain that pleasure is essentially evil.
[Aquinas explained this:
"For this reason Speusippus, a nephew and successor of Plato in the
Academy, answered that, as the greater is opposed to the less and the
equal, so is pain opposed to pleasure, not as to an equal but as the
greater to the less and conversely. Not as an extreme evil to a medium
good but as one extreme evil to another, for example, what is deficient
to what is excessive, or the reverse. But Aristotle says that this
answer is not plausible because it would follow that pleasure is really
evil according to its own nature, like excess and defect. But no one
maintains this."]
[2] But granting (2) that some pleasures are bad, it does not therefore
follow (3) that a certain pleasure may not nevertheless be the Supreme
Good; just as a certain form of knowledge may be supremely good,
although some forms of knowledge are bad. On the contrary (i) since
every faculty [hexis] has its unimpeded activity [energeiai
anempodistoi], the activity of all the faculties, or of one of them
(whichever constitutes Happiness) , when unimpeded , must probably be
the most desirable thing there is; but an unimpeded activity is a
pleasure; so that on this showing the Supreme Good will be a particular
kind of pleasure, even though most pleasures are bad, and, it may be,
bad absolutely. This is why everybody thinks that the happy life must be
a pleasant life, and regards pleasure as a necessary ingredient of
happiness; and with good reason, since no impeded activity is perfect,
whereas Happiness is essentially perfect; so that the happy man requires
in addition the goods of the body, external goods and the gifts of
fortune, in order that his activity may not be impeded through lack of
them.
[3] (Consequently those who say that, if a man be good,he will be happy
even when on the rack, or when fallen into the direst misfortune, are
intentionally or unintentionally talking nonsense.)
[4] But because Happiness requires the gifts of fortune in addition,
some people think that it is the same thing as good fortune; but this is
not so, since even good fortune itself when excessive is an impediment
to activity, and perhaps indeed no longer deserves to be called good
fortune, since good fortune can only be defined in relation to Happiness.
[5] (ii.) Moreover, that all animals and all human beings pursue
pleasure is some indication that it is in a sense the Supreme Good:
No rumor noised abroad by many peoples
Comes utterly to naught.
[6] But they do not all pursue the same pleasure, since the natural
state and the best state neither is nor seems to be the same for them
all; yet still they all pursue pleasure. Indeed it is possible that in
reality they do not pursue the pleasure which they think and would say
they do, but all the same pleasure; for nature has implanted in all
things something divine. But as the pleasures of the body are the ones
which we most often meet with, and as all men are capable of these,
these have usurped the family title; and so men think these are the only
pleasures that exist, because they are the only ones which they know.
[7] (iii.) Moreover, it is clear that if pleasure is not good and
activity is not pleasure the life of the happy man will not necessarily
be pleasant. For why should he need pleasure if it is not good? On the
contrary, his life may even be painful; for if pleasure is neither good
nor evil, no more is pain either, so why should he avoid it? And if the
good man's activities are not pleasanter than those of others, his life
will not be pleasanter either.
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