Pleasure in Ancient Greek Philosophy

@inproceedings{Wolfsdorf2012PleasureIA,
  title={Pleasure in Ancient Greek Philosophy},
  author={David Conan Wolfsdorf},
  year={2012}
}
1. Introduction 2. Pleasure in early Greek ethics 3. Pleasure in the early physical tradition 4. Plato on pleasure and restoration 5. Plato on true, untrue and false pleasures 6. Aristotle on pleasure and activation 7. Epicurus and the Cyrenaics on katastematic and kinetic pleasures 8. The Old Stoics on pleasure as passion 9. Contemporary conceptions of pleasure 10. Ancient and contemporary conceptions of pleasure Suggestions for further reading. 
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27 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
1
Background Citations
4
Methods Citations
1

27 Citations

The Place of Flawed Pleasures in a Good Life. A Discussion of Plato’s Philebus
The Philebus describes the “good” that enables human eudaimonia as a “mixture” in which cognitive states have to be combined with certain types of pleasure. This essay investigates how the various…
Kant on Feelings, Sensations and the Gap Between Rationality and Morality
Abstract In §3 of the Critique of Judgement Kant argues that if the feeling of pleasure were a sensation distinct from whatever representation gives rise to the feeling, then we would be – in the…
Aristotle's Ethics
This Element is an examination of the philosophical themes presented in Aristotle's Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics. Topics include happiness, the voluntary and choice, the doctrine of the mean,…
The Divine Method and the Disunity of Pleasure in the Philebus
Scholars frequently complain that the Philebus lacks unity. One of the most puzzling passages in the dialogue is the introduction of the so-called 'divine method,' which is described in detail…
Hobbes and the Two Faces of Ethics
Reading Hobbes in light of both the history of ethics and the conceptual apparatus developed in recent work on normativity, this book challenges received interpretations of Hobbes and his historical…
Making Sense of Plato’s Taste
This paper focuses on philosophical “taste” in the Republic, aiming to contest the notion that Plato conceptualizes philosophy as a disembodied activity. While it has been noted that Plato often…
A History of the Mind and Mental Health in Classical Greek Medical Thought
TLDR
This book aims to do justice to early medical accounts by illustrating their richness and sophistication, their links with contemporary cultural products, and the indebtedness of later medicine to their observations.
Plato on Incorrect and Deceptive Pleasures
Abstract In the Philebus, Socrates argues that pleasure, like judgment, can be “false” (pseudēs). Most scholars who discuss this claim restrict their interpretation to Socrates’ first argument that…
E PICURUS AND A ESTHETIC D ISINTERESTEDNESS
A BSTRACT : Aesthetic disinterestedness is one of the central concepts in aesthetics, and Jerome Stolnitz, the most prominent theorist of disinterestedness in the 20 th century, has claimed that (i)…
Epicurus’ 'hedonai katastematikai' and 'kata kinesin' versus Ribot’s static and dynamic passions
TLDR
Epicurus’ and Ribot’s distinctions appear to be useful for advancing a theory of affectivity, particularly in integrating various affective phenomena in one model in the form of a hierarchy and pointing to the principle the hierarchy is organized by.
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References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 117 REFERENCES
The Greeks on Pleasure
'a wealth of detailed and resourceful argument that helps us to a deeper understanding of the major philosophical issues' Terence Irwin, Times Literary Supplement
False Pleasures, Appearance and Imagination in the Philebus
This paper examines the discussion about false pleasures in the Philebus (36 c3-44 a11). After stressing the crucial importance of this discussion in the economy of the dialogue, it attempts to…
The Hellenistic philosophers
Preface Introduction Part I. Early Pyrrhonism: 1. Scepticism, tranquillity and virtue 2. Timon's polemics Part II. Epicureanism: 3. Physics 4. Epistemology 5. Ethics Part III. Stoicism: 6. The…
Six Theses About Pleasure
In this essay I defend six theses about pleasure: 1. 'Pleasure' has one English antonym: 'unpleasure'. 2. Pleasure is the most convincing example of an organic unity. 3. The " hedonic calculus " is a…
The Nature of Pleasure: A Critique of Feldman
In these remarks on Feldman's recent book, Pleasure and the Good Life, I concentrate on Feldman's account of pleasure as attitudinal. I argue that an account of pleasure according to which pleasure…
Pleasure and Activity in Aristotle's Ethics
In both of his main discussions of pleasure (in books VII and X of our Nicomachean Ethics) Aristotle associates pleasure very closely with a special kind of kvtQyFta, a word which I shall translate…
The feels good theory of pleasure
Most philosophers since Sidgwick have thought that the various forms of pleasure differ so radically that one cannot find a common, distinctive feeling among them. This is known as the heterogeneity…
The reduction of sensory pleasure to desire
One of the leading approaches to the nature of sensory pleasure reduces it to desire: roughly, a sensation qualifies as a sensation of pleasure just in case its subject wants to be feeling it. This…
Ethics and human action in early Stoicism
This book reconstructs in detail the older Stoic theory of the psychology of action, discussing it in relation to Aristotelian, Epicurean, Platonic, and some of the more influential modern theories.…
Aristotle on Pleasure and Perfection
Aristotle clearly distinguishes himself from the hedonists when he claims that there is no such thing as undifferentiated pleasure. Pleasure cannot serve as the final goal of our actions because…
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