Hedonism

The hedonism (of the Greek hèdus , “pleasant, pleasant”) is philosophical doctrines which makes Plaisir the goal of the existence.

Possible meanings

Hedonism like philosophical thought

As such, the hedonism does not have a single definition so much philosophical the currents known as hedonists are multiple, various and particular. Nevertheless, one can note that all the thinkers whom one can qualify hedonists grant on the fact that the pleasure is the sovereign well, and that the pain must be rejected. Thus, the morals of life must be centered on the realization of a life happy and directed towards the pleasures of the existence and on the rejection of the causes of sufferings. A formula of Chamfort summarizes it rather well of what the ideal hedonist consists: To enjoy and make enjoy without making of evil neither to you nor with anybody, here is the base of any morals.

The hedonism with the philosophical direction rests thus on two essential points:

  • Initially the research of the pleasures and the rejection of the displeasures. The conjunction of these 2 points prevents the simple immediate, instantaneous pleasure with the contempt of the consequences: any pleasure is not hedonist. Certain pleasures must be évincés because they lead to future displeasures so large that the immediate pleasure is too weak compared to the suffering to come. The hedonist thus evaluates the situations according to the pleasure and/or of the displeasure, at the same time in the immediate future and in the future.
  • So the hedonism imposes a calculation , an arithmetic . The hedonist is at the same time a person who knows herself, knows the real-world and can project herself and anticipate in order to know what leads to the pleasure, the displeasure, with durability, with the immediacy. This calculation hedonist, known as also utilitarian , is essential to live peacefully. The possibility of moral contracts returns accordingly to the direction where several people can intend themselves to share pleasures of the existence and to reject displeasures together.

The direct consequence is that there is no morals hedonist ready with employment. Each one must discover which it is, which it is and build its own morals hedonist. There is thus hedonism only ethical (within the meaning of science of the values morals ). There is morals hedonists, and not a moral hedonist. The pleasures of the existence are multiple and function of each individual. Thus, each thinker hedonists tried to direct his life according to its personal provisions. However, common topics are found: the friendship (expensive topic with Epicure), tenderness, free sexuality, pleasures of the table, conversation, a life without disorder (research of the Ataraxie ), a body in good health. One can also find the nobility of heart, the knowledge and sciences in general, the reading, the practice of arts and the physical exercises, the social good, etc In same time, the pains and the displeasures to be avoided are the conflict relations and the proximity of the people without contractual capacities (without words), the lowering and the humility, the tender with an imposed order, the violence, the deprivations and the frustrations justified by fables, etc

Thus, there is no hedonism without personal discipline, asceticism, self-knowledge, of the world and others. The direct foundations of a philosophy hedonist are curiosity and the taste for the existence on the one hand, and on the other hand the autonomy of thought (and not belief), the knowledge and the experiment of reality (instead of the faith). The thought hedonist was firmly fought by the authoritarian regimes (which they are monk, philosophical or political).

Many philosophers hedonists, or having a design which approached some, held of the postures Athées or Agnostiques (Epicure), materialists (Démocrite), even also Libertaires (Michel Onfray, asserting the libertarian socialist company like the political method of the hedonism).

Vulgar hedonism

With the vulgar direction, one understands by hedonism the research of the rough pleasure like quasi-instinctive and animal impulse. The hedonist is a person who aims only her egoistic pleasure, solitary, often with the detriment of the others of which it uses and misuses at its own ends. For the vulgar hedonist, all is an occasion to be satisfied in the most total contempt of others. Only count its pleasure, its desires, its desires and their immediate satisfactions personal. This meaning of the term hedonism originates in the fight between the various currents of thought in Occident. The advent of Christianity, then of German philosophy, as current of thought dominant had as a direct consequence that the dictionaries, the lesson and the history " des" philosophies were written by holding of this kind dominating. Thus, like ancient philosophy materialist, the cynicism or the utilitarianism of the 19th century, the hedonism was caricatured and deformed with an aim of giving him a common image pushing back without preoccupation with a philosophical and historical veracity.

Hedonism in ethnology

“Hédonistique” is an adjective created by ethnologists to indicate the companies in which the interactions are intended to prolong them or to establish some, contrasts about it with the agonistic companies where the interactions are directed to stop them or to decrease them.

History

The doctrines are in particular associated in the Antiquité with Aristippe de Cyrène and the Cyrénaïsme, but also with Épicure, although their definitions of the pleasure are different.

Épicure recalls that a current excessive pleasure must be prevented if it leads to a future pain whereas Cyrénaïques insisted on the fact that the pleasure is always the goal present of the action, even if this end is relativized and changes in time.

Jeremy Bentham, the founder of the Utilitarianism, included/understood it like a “calculation hedonist”, which was to systematize the idea of measurement of the pleasures in the Philèbe of Plato. This calculation constitutes one of the bases of modelings in the Decision theory.

John Stuart Mill, which took again the utilitarian doctrines, then reproached Bentham for not having given qualitative hierarchisation of the nature of the pleasures. But such a hierarchisation makes leave the hedonism to introduce there other valorizations and other ends (like that of “good life for the man”, which seeks a value of happiness in addition to the pleasures).

See too

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