Pleasure sounds simple until we try to name it. A piece of chocolate, relief from pain, a long conversation, intoxication, falling in love, and the quiet after anxiety subsides can all feel good, but not in the same way. We seek some pleasures, depend on others, and use still others to avoid suffering. The real question is not whether pleasure belongs in a good life, but which forms of it deserve to organize one.
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The Big Questions
- What do we actually mean when we say that something is pleasurable?
- Why does repeated pleasure so often lose its force?
- Are we driven more strongly by the pursuit of pleasure or the avoidance of suffering?
- Can a life devoted to pleasure avoid becoming a life of indulgence?
- Is tranquility more desirable than excitement?
- When does relief from suffering become another source of harm?
- What kinds of pleasure leave life fuller rather than merely more stimulated?
The Argument
Pleasure is not one thing produced by a single switch in the brain. It emerges from overlapping systems of reward, comfort, memory, attachment, mood, and bodily sensation. A square of chocolate, a runner’s high, falling in love, and the end of physical pain are all pleasurable, but they pull on us differently. This matters because a desire for “more pleasure” may really be a desire for sharper stimulation, deeper connection, greater calm, or simply less suffering.
Biology helps explain why pleasure and pain can be so powerful, but it cannot tell us which pleasures are worth pursuing. Bodies and brains matter. Mental illness cannot be solved by better philosophy, and medication can be lifesaving. Still, chemistry does not decide whether a desire should be gratified, delayed, redirected, or refused. For that, we need some account of what pleasure is for and how it fits within a life.
Freud sees us as driven by the pleasure principle: the desire for gratification and the avoidance of pain. Repeated exposure, however, dulls the effect. The square of chocolate that once delighted us becomes ordinary, and we need more to produce the same response. This is the familiar hedonic treadmill. The ego delays gratification when waiting promises a greater reward; the superego restrains desire through rules, guilt, and internalized norms. Much of adult life consists of these systems negotiating with one another, not always gracefully.
Freud also argues that suffering comes from the body, the external world, and other people. The last source may be the most common. Relationships provide some of our deepest pleasures, but they also expose us to rejection, conflict, jealousy, shame, and loss. We distract ourselves, intoxicate ourselves, or sublimate frustrated desire into work, art, sport, and other socially acceptable activities. Making a podcast, on this account, may be both a creative act and a refined form of avoidance. I find that explanation useful, although not entirely flattering.
Epicurus offers a different version of the pleasurable life. He is not an advocate of endless indulgence. The best life, for him, is the least disturbed one. Pleasure is freedom from bodily pain and mental confusion. Wealth, power, status, and excess are dangerous precisely because they create desires that cannot easily be satisfied. Simple food, friendship, moderation, and philosophical reflection reduce anxiety. The Epicurean does not seek constant stimulation. He seeks tranquility.
Not everyone wants tranquility. The idea of a psychologically rich life suggests that novelty, complexity, risk, and even suffering can make a life worth living. I understand the attraction. An interesting life can be deeply satisfying. Still, I am not sure it escapes the logic of pleasure. Novelty can become another treadmill, requiring ever more experience to maintain the same sense of aliveness.
We usually confuse at least three things: physical pleasure, quiet well-being, and relief from suffering. All matter. None is free. The sharper the pleasure, the more fleeting it may be. The strategies that blunt suffering may create new forms of it. The question is therefore not whether pleasure is good, but what we are willing to pay for it.
Further Exploration
Sigmund Freud and the pleasure principle
Freud provides a language for understanding how immediate desire, delayed gratification, internalized rules, and the avoidance of suffering compete within ordinary life. Freud’s discussion, in Civilization and its Discontents (book 2) is worth reading.
The hedonic treadmill
The hedonic treadmill explains why repeated pleasures lose their intensity and why a life organized around stimulation tends to require ever more of it. This article explains it from a psychological perspective. Next episode we will explore some biblical discussions.
Epicurean philosophy
Epicurean practice treats philosophy as a form of therapy that repeatedly exposes irrational fears and trains the mind toward moderation and tranquility. The Philosophy Teaching Library at the University of Notre Dame has an excellent discussion of Epicurean views of pleasure and pain.
The psychologically rich life
Lorraine Besser and Shige Oishi published this paper in Philosophical Psychology. Their account challenges the choice between virtue and pleasure by proposing novelty, complexity, risk, and mental engagement as another form of the good life. The download link can be found at Besser’s website.
Reflection
Which activities give you a quiet and durable sense of well-being rather than a brief surge of stimulation?
Where in your life are you pursuing pleasure, and where are you mainly trying to avoid pain?
What would you have to give up to make more room for the pleasures that leave you calmer, fuller, or more alive?
Continuing the Conversation
Do you find Aristotle’s account of happiness persuasive? Is happiness primarily a feeling, or is it better understood as a way of living and becoming?
I invite you to email some of these reflections and questions directly to me. I will not respond to them all individually, but questions from listeners may become the starting point for future episodes.
I have also created a Chatbot to accompany this podcast. You can interact with it here.
Support the Podcast
Happiness and the Pursuit of the Good Life is freely available to everyone. If you find the podcast valuable and would like to help support its production and continued development, you can make a voluntary contribution through PayPal at the link in this page. Your support helps cover hosting, editing, transcription, and the preparation of readings and other resources.
Music: J.S. Bach, Prelude No. 1 in C Major, BWV 846, performed by Kimiko Ishizaka. Public domain / CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Full Transcript
How important is pleasure to you? What about suffering? Can you have one without the other?
In the last episode, we looked at Aristotle, who thought that happiness — or eudaimonia — was not primarily a feeling, but the byproduct of a virtuous life. In this episode, I want to turn to the view he was resisting: the idea that pleasure really does matter, maybe more than we like to admit.
But pleasure turns out to be more complicated than it first appears. It can mean a burst of physical delight, a quiet sense of well-being, the absence of pain, or even the excitement of a rich and interesting life. So today I want to ask three questions: What is pleasure? Why do we seek it? And what role should the pursuit of pleasure play in a good life?
Let’s start with the basics. That would be chocolate.
You’re listening to The Pursuit of the Good Life, a podcast about ancient wisdom, modern psychology, and the search for a life that is not only successful, but meaningful. I’m Michael Satlow.
Today: pleasure — why we seek it, why it so often disappoints us, and whether a good life can be built around it.
Chocolate is pleasurable not because it presses a single “pleasure button” in the brain, but because it interacts with several overlapping systems involved in reward, comfort, memory, mood, and bodily sensation. Dopamine helps reinforce desire and reward-seeking. Endorphins help reduce pain and stress and can contribute to feelings of well-being. Serotonin is involved in mood, appetite, sleep, and digestion. Oxytocin, which plays an important role in bonding and closeness, reminds us that pleasure is often social and relational, not merely physical.
The details are far more complicated than this, and neuroscientists are still arguing about how these systems interact. But the basic point is enough for our purposes: what we call “pleasure” is not one feeling produced by one mechanism. It is a cluster of experiences, and those experiences can pull us in different directions. A square of chocolate, a runner’s high, falling in love, a good conversation, and the relief of pain may all be pleasurable, but they are not pleasurable in the same way.
That matters because when we say that we want more pleasure in life, we may be asking for very different things: sharper bursts of delight, deeper comfort, greater connection, or simply less suffering.
Discussing brain chemistry, of course, also brings up the issue of mental illness. When these systems are disrupted, whether by genetics, stress, trauma, environment, or some combination of factors, the results can be devastating: depression, anxiety, addiction, and other forms of suffering. There is now a vast world of medications designed to affect these systems. They are probably overprescribed in some contexts and underused in others, but for many people they are genuinely lifesaving. They can make the difference between being incapacitated by suffering and being able to live.
This is worth saying because a discussion of pleasure should never imply that we can simply think our way into happiness or out of pain. Bodies matter. Brains matter. Chemistry matters.
But biology can take us only so far. It can help explain why we seek pleasure, why pain overwhelms us, and why some people suffer in ways that others do not. It cannot tell us what pleasures are worth pursuing, which forms of suffering should be endured or avoided, or what role pleasure should play in a good life. To answer those questions, we need to turn from biology to psychology, philosophy, and religion.
Sigmund Freud lived before we knew about neurotransmitters. A neurologist who became the father of psychoanalysis, Freud lived from 1856 to 1939, mainly in Vienna. While Freud’s idea that psychoanalysis can be an effective therapy for a range of disorders has long been questioned, along with his overemphasis on sexuality and his gender bias, many of his insights remain fundamental to modern psychology. This includes his idea of the pleasure principle.
Freud may not have known about neurotransmitters, but he did intuit the psychological reward and aversion systems that they control. He developed a theory known as the “pleasure principle,” which he says arises from our id — that part of our mind that contains our basic instincts and drives. It is the id that drives us to seek immediate gratification of our needs and desires. We especially seek those pleasures that give us the hits that later scientists would identify with a surge of dopamine.
Also presaging the rise of the modern study of the brain, Freud hypothesized that with repeated exposure to pleasing stimuli, we can become desensitized, needing more or different stimuli to elicit the same feeling. The combination of unregulated desire and desensitization can lead, at an extreme, to addiction to intoxicants in increasingly dangerous quantities. More typically, it manifests as what we call the hedonic treadmill.
Someone who eats large amounts of chocolate every day does not get the same marginal psychological benefit from a square as does someone who eats it rarely. The more we have, and the more that we depend on what we have to make us happy, the more we want to maintain that feeling.
Most adults, of course, do not let their desire for pleasure run rampant, at least to some degree because left to its own devices it would be unable to achieve its goals. Over time, our mind develops an ego, which has the function of regulating the id by aligning it with reality. It is the ego that can control the id to delay its drive for gratification so that it experiences even greater pleasure at a later date. I might skip a party in order to complete a work assignment that might lead to a promotion that would give me more money that would help me better fulfill my desires. The desire bubbles up from the id, but the ego figures out if and how to fulfill it.
A person governed only by desire and calculation would be frightening: someone who wants what he wants and uses reality only to figure out how to get it. Most people, fortunately, are not like that. That is due, Freud tells us, to a third part of the mind called the superego. The superego exercises restraint on the id-ego system due to its adherence to a set of norms or principles.
At its basic level, these norms are created through and reinforced by the fear of pain. When we are in a hurry, driving down an empty street, we still tend to obey the traffic laws, at least somewhat. This is due in part to our superego telling us that the pain of getting caught outweighs the benefits of breaking the law, but also in part because we have internalized these norms. We have been habituated to believe that some social norms take precedence over our desires, and breaking them would bring guilt and perhaps shame.
Aristotle might say that the real driver of the superego’s rules is, or should be, reason. The virtues guide the expression of our desires, suppressing, delaying, or adapting them as necessary. Aristotle and Freud would agree that it is the job of parents, teachers, and the community at large to instill children with these self-regulating mechanisms.
We seek to maximize pleasure and reduce suffering. Freud sees suffering as coming from three sources: our body, external sources, and other people. Our bodies are vulnerable, always susceptible to discomfort and pain. Such pain is inevitable. So too, we will all experience suffering due to events that we cannot control. Natural disasters, war, and unfair policing are just a few of many things that can cause us suffering.
For most of us, though, the most common source of suffering comes from our interactions with other people. Humans are naturally social, and a great deal of our pleasure comes from interpersonal relationships. This sociality, though, often and unavoidably comes up against the conflict between and frustration of our desires. We are abandoned, rejected, scorned, or made to feel guilt, shame, or insecurity by others, often when they have no intention to cause us any harm. We experience frequent conflict when we want one thing, and our friend or boss wants something else. To the extent that we live in communities, social conflict and its attendant suffering is built into our nature.
Our day-to-day behaviors, according to Freud, are probably driven more by avoiding suffering than they are by seeking pleasure. We naturally tend toward a few strategies for doing so. We try to distract ourselves from suffering. Hobbies, work, or spending time with friends can do this. Religion, which Freud has little use for, can provide means for alleviating our suffering, often, in his view, through self-delusion. Intoxication, or using substances to numb suffering, is the least healthy response.
Freud posits that another mechanism for avoiding suffering is substitutive sublimation. This is a squishier category that can overlap with some of his other categories. “Shopping therapy,” for example, on the one hand, is a distraction that can temporarily alleviate suffering. More interesting is involvement in creative pursuits, such as art and literature. Painting, or making a podcast, is a distraction and an escapist substitute for activities that cause suffering. At the same time, though, they sublimate desire, channeling frustrated pleasure to a more socially acceptable activity. These activities are at once a flight from suffering and a partial achievement of pleasure. Competitive sports as well can straddle this line. For Freud, then, culture emerges from the combination of flight from suffering and the sublimation of frustrated sexual urges.
For the most part, Freud’s theory is descriptive rather than prescriptive. Both our drive for pleasure and our avoidance of suffering are simply human. Freud, though, doesn’t bother to hide his disdain for religion. He also clearly prefers the creative arts as the best outlet for frustrated sexual urges. Some of Freud’s ideas, such as his definition of pleasure, map well onto what we know about neurotransmitters. Other ideas, such as sublimation, are more speculative. His outdated and sometimes disproved theories of female sexuality do limit his usefulness, but this very fact raises interesting questions about whether there are quasi-innate differences in the ways that men, women, and non-binary people experience pleasure and whether they prefer different strategies for avoiding suffering.
Freud’s notion of pleasure was novel but not revolutionary. It was already proposed by ancient philosophers. We already saw that Freud’s theory of mind largely overlaps with Aristotle’s, even if they use different names for the different psychological mechanisms. His ideas of pleasure track more closely to that of Epicurus, whose writings he certainly knew. Epicurus lived from 341 to 270 BCE. He was nineteen when Aristotle, whom he never met, died. Many of his ideas were foundational to the development of Stoicism.
Epicurus is important because he forces us to distinguish pleasure from indulgence. For him, the most pleasurable life is not the most stimulated life. It is the least disturbed one.
Epicurus believes, like Freud, that the drive toward pleasure is fundamental. Moreover, the achievement of pleasure is our goal as humans. As he writes:
“Since this is the end of living happily; for it is for the sake of this that we do everything, wishing to avoid grief and fear; and when once this is the case, with respect to us, then the storm of the soul is, as I may say, put an end to; since the animal is unable to go as if to something deficient, and to seek something different from that by which the good of the soul and body will be perfected.”
Critiques of Epicureanism zeroed in on his belief that our purpose is to pursue pleasure, or in Greek, hedone. This Greek word becomes the root of hedonism and implies that this is the pleasure of the body. Philosophers and religious thinkers condemned Epicureans for debauchery; whether they actually did so, or were misrepresented as doing so, is historically debatable. In any event, and however later followers of Epicureanism interpreted their founder’s ideas, Epicurus himself meant something different through his use of hedone. He says this explicitly:
“When, therefore, we say that pleasure is a chief good, we are not speaking of the pleasures of the debauched man, or those which lie in sensual enjoyment, as some think who are ignorant, and who do not entertain our opinions, or else interpret them perversely; but we mean the freedom of the body from pain, and of the soul from confusion. For it is not continued drinkings and revels, or the enjoyment of female society, or feasts of fish and other such things, as a costly table supplies, that make life pleasant, but sober contemplation, which examines into the reasons for all choice and avoidance, and which puts to flight the vain opinions from which the greater part of the confusion arises which troubles the soul.”
Pleasure, then, is a natural state that comes to us when we are free of suffering. To reach this condition, we must be free of pain and disturbance. We get to that state — which is very close to one of detachment — by training our minds in sober contemplation. Proper philosophical reflection should teach us that we should pursue our necessary desires in moderation, as well as some of our natural but unnecessary desires. Many desires, though, like those for wealth and power, are limitless and create anxiety, and so should be avoided. We should also realize that our fear of death is irrational. It only causes anxiety and disturbance in the present.
Unlike Freud’s, Epicurus’s writings are prescriptive rather than descriptive. He believed, as did most ancient philosophers, that the goal of philosophy was to create a practical path for living. Reaching the state of tranquility of the soul requires both practice and contemplation. One should live a life of moderation. This means eating simply and avoiding overindulgence in all things. One should make friendships but minimize feelings of jealousy or comparison with others, because these only cause anxiety — storms of the soul. The pursuit of a public life, in politics, for example, is also to be avoided because it is usually motivated by the desire to increase one’s status.
Philosophy is, in the view of the ancient philosophers, a kind of therapy. Continual study keeps reminding us of the irrationality of many of our fears and anxieties, which in turn helps us to dispel, or at least reduce, them. The practice has to be ongoing, since it is for all intents and purposes impossible to reach a state where these fears and anxieties don’t come roaring back. In many respects, and despite their differences, the ideal life of the Epicurean looks a lot like the life of an Aristotelian. The goals, however, are quite different. For the Epicurean, the goal is tranquility and freedom from suffering, which is defined as pleasure. For the Aristotelian, the goal is to cultivate a life of virtue according to reason. The Aristotelian, however, might live this life as a political figure, whereas the Epicurean would not.
But not everyone wants tranquility. Some people do not want the calm life; they want the interesting one.
Lorraine Besser and Shigehiro Oishi authored a paper in 2020 that argues that there is a gap between the eudaimonic and hedonic conceptions of the good life. They suggest that there is yet another way to live the good life, which they call the psychologically rich life. They define this psychologically rich life as “a life full of experiences which generate a state of mental engagement and arousal.” Such a life values complex emotions and novel experiences. It is an interesting life that involves taking risks, going off autopilot, and sometimes embracing suffering. Unlike the seeker of pleasure, or the Epicurean, the goal isn’t equanimity or sensual pleasure. It is tumult that may or may not be pleasurable. Such a life, Besser and Oishi argue, is every bit as good and worthy as the others.
My students have really liked this conception. I remain deeply ambivalent, though. I probably live what would be called a psychologically rich life, and I enjoy it. My life is full of new and interesting ideas and contact with interesting people. My marriage is not free of interesting conflict. I travel to interesting places and work to experience new cultures. Yet while all of these things add satisfaction to my life, I do not see that satisfaction as the goal. They are diversions, things that cause a temporary boost in my good neurotransmitters. In other words, it is a variation of the hedonic life.
Rather than see the psychologically rich life as an alternative to a life of pleasure or meaning, I would see it as a richer form of the life of pleasure. Of course, it adds to life satisfaction. But like a life of pleasure, it is subject to the hedonic treadmill, where ever more experiences become necessary to maintain that level of satisfaction.
I want to suggest that we usually confuse three things: physical pleasure, quiet well-being, and relief from suffering. Physical pleasure is usually immediate, visceral, and fleeting. This is different from the quiet pleasure that accompanies a good conversation, participation in a religious worship service, or a stroll through an art museum. The benefits of these activities might linger a bit longer, be a bit more satisfying than those given by the sharper dopamine-fueled physical pleasures. Relief from suffering, though, involves diversion, intoxicants, sublimation, or detachment.
It is natural and healthy for us to want to experience more pleasure, of both types, and less suffering. The question, of course, is what we are willing to pay to do so. Which tradeoffs are worthwhile? Heavy drinking, for example, or even extensive use of social media blunts suffering, but both have other costs. Few of us have the time, resources, and energy to pursue the sharper physical pleasures continuously. And I would guess that for many of those who do, such a pursuit ultimately falls flat. In the next episode, we will explore one man’s journey as he tried to do exactly this.
So pleasure matters. It would be foolish, and maybe inhuman, to pretend otherwise. But pleasure is not one thing. It can be a burst of delight, a quiet sense of well-being, or the relief that comes when suffering loosens its grip. The question is not whether we should want pleasure. Of course we do. The question is what kinds of pleasure are worth organizing a life around.
In the next episode, we will look at one man’s attempt to pursue pleasure as fully as possible — and at what happened when the pursuit began to collapse under its own weight.
For this week, here is a question to sit with or journal about: What activities give you that quieter, more durable sense of well-being — not just a quick hit of pleasure, but a sense that life feels a little fuller, calmer, or more alive? Why do they have that effect? And what would it cost to make more room for them?
You’re listening to The Pursuit of the Good Life, with me, Michael Satlow. Readings, resources, and ways to support the podcast are available in the show notes and at mlsatlow.com. I welcome your questions and feedback.
Disclaimers
I used an AI chatbot that I trained to generate some of the text this post (I used AI only for light editing on the podcast itself). I take full responsibility for its contents. Also, for some of the Amazon links I may receive affiliate benefits for any purchases made through the provided links.