Pleasure is a dirty word.
I mean this in two ways. First are the connotations or associations of the word. If a colleague asked you, “How much pleasure have you had this morning?” you might fire off an email to HR. If you saw the title “Learning to find pleasure,” or “Enjoy more pleasure,” you’d probably expect it to be in the roped-off section of the bookshop. Pleasure is frequently associated with the erotic. But second, pleasure is a dirty word because, across a variety of religious traditions and over several millennia of philosophical thought, “pleasure” has often been seen as base: vulgar, crude, and animalistic. Those who seek pleasure are no better than pigs rutting and scoffing in the mud.
In this week’s Mini Philosophy interview, I spoke with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek, who has literally written the book on pleasure: The Philosophy of Pleasure: An Introduction. De Lazari-Radek is a hedonist, which means she thinks that the only good in life is pleasure and the only bad in life is pain. We want pleasure; we don’t want pain.
For de Lazari-Radek, it is ridiculous to call pleasure bad or dirty because pleasure is an experience — an immediate, unmistakable signal that something is good. And here we learn how to find more of it.The
basic reality of pleasure
Pleasure doesn’t have to be some “higher” mystical state of joy or euphoria. It certainly doesn’t have to be some kind of “guilty indulgence.” Pleasure is a basic, biological feature of being a living animal — as basic as warmth or tiredness. De Lazari-Radek insists it’s not a sensation — not the same thing as the taste of chocolate or the pressure of a hug — but a feeling, an evaluative gloss you lay over whatever else is happening. She calls it a “sugar coating” we apply to experience: It’s the sense of “Yes, this.”
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