ABSTRACT
Aristotle’s analysis of the concept of pleasure allowed him to assign it a place not only in the lives of the self-indulgent and the ambitious seekers of power and fame but also in ways of life that he regarded as the best for a human to live, whether that life be devoted to genuinely admirable accomplishments or to contemplating the universal and necessary principles governing the world. Pleasure, however, is often assumed to be a hazard that people with high-minded objectives, whatever these may be, must avoid or overcome. This is because ‘pleasure’ (and the same is true of Aristotle’s word h don ) is closely associated in the minds of people with satisfactions derived from such activities as eating, drinking and sex. Sometimes ‘pleasure seekers’ are taken to include those whose excessive passivity amounts to sloth or whose fondness for trivial (non-edifying) entertainment amounts to indolence. Pleasure seekers, in other words, have some of the character traits that according to Mill (see Section 10.1) affect the competence of people to judge what are the better (higher) pleasures.
