English Version | A myth's unmethodical disassembly

Not everything that is said about hedonism is a lie, but most of it is not true. Corroded by time and corrupted by use, hedonism has become an easy word to define, most of the time, what it does not mean, and to mean almost always what it does not define. Let's look at this set of philosophical theories that has been aging very badly. Aristippus of Cyrene has had enough of young hedonists.

Artwork by João Oliveira
Artwork by João Oliveira

Legend has it that Casanova was one day in the middle of one of his capital sin feasts - gluttony and lust to disguise idleness - when he stopped and thought "wait a minute, Giacomo, aren't you being hedonistic?" The story is apocryphal, but the doubt is perfectly legitimate. Already in the middle of the 18th century people were wondering, and often confused, about what that is, hedonism. Even today it is still the case, and it is easy to see the term being applied easily and lightly, sometimes out of ignorance, sometimes out of laziness. What is certain is that hedonism has a broad back, and just because it is a trend that defends what any human being will agree that, yes sirs, this is what is essential to life, it is often confused with other things, other trends, or even other debaucheries, as Casanova this time hypothetically suspected. The confusion is easy to explain: this is a subject that comes from way back, from the ancient Greeks. And we already know what the ancient Greeks were like. Unoccupied - the citizens, of course, because slaves were usually busy - they lay down to think, to wonder, to question the world. They would sit under a tree and philosophize. If any “José Manuel” was lucky enough to think that life only made sense if we sought what gave us pleasure, giving up the rest, “ze-manelism” was founded. If an “Antonio José”, sitting in the shade next door, happened to argue that, yes, that's right, but only if we're talking about moderate pleasures, the pillars of “Tozesism” were built. And so on, from opinion to opinion, from “pedromiguelism” to “joãocarlism”, the more contributors there were to the conversation, the more philosophical currents there were about what really matters in life. But let's concentrate on the current that brings us here.

Hedonism

"Wait a minute, Leopold! Aren't you being ascetic?" It was with these words that Leopold von Sacher-Masoch hesitated and almost interrupted a role-playing session with Baroness Fanny, his Venus of the Furs, who responded, " Oh love, aren't you being a little hedonistic instead?" Doubt was planted by way of paradox: resort to pain to achieve pleasure? What is that then? The role of slave Gregor (the character Masoch played for the baroness during her games of pleasure and pain) hung by a thread, but Leopold pulled himself together and continued the game. Years later, the psychiatrist Krafft-Ebing would clarify the disturbing situation of Sacher-Masoch, baptizing, without his knowledge, a pathology inspired by his perverse behavior and lack of suffering and pain. For the first time, in Psychopathia Sexualis, the word "masochism" could be found. This cartoonish anecdote serves only to determine the limits of asceticism, preventing the refusal of pleasure and the elevation of the spirit through suffering from being confused with masochism. It is not at all the same thing, because masochism is also a form of pleasure-seeking, albeit in a more creative, perhaps unexpected, way. And asceticism is brought into this conversation to serve as a counterpoint and contrast - one of the possible ones, at least - to hedonism.

The biggest problem with hedonism is, as so often and in so many cases, people. It is people who distort its meaning, its essence, its existence and definition. They take a part, a branch, a detail, an aspect, and extrapolate, make it general, dilute, blur it. People say, "Hedonism is the pursuit of pleasure" - well, yes, that's one way of putting it. But hedonism is much more than that. Hedonists aren't exactly a bunch of existential onanists in search of self-satisfaction using rudimentary ways of existing and easy-to-practice functions. To think that hedonism is just this so-called "pleasure-seeking" is to completely skew the concept, which is much more noble, sophisticated, profound, and certainly decent than what many imagine. When we talk about hedonists, we are not talking about people partying 24 hours a day, having orgies watered by cool white wine and seasoned with substances that are also white, but in powder form. Hedonism - the name comes from the Greek word hedonê, meaning pleasure or desire - is a complex philosophical movement that goes far beyond doing only what one likes and seeking pleasure every second of life in every square inch of the world. Hedonism, although it is popularly seen as a negative (well, is it really negative?) and morally decadent, or at least as a frivolous, futile, and light-hearted way of being in life, focusing more on the weaknesses of the flesh than on the benefits of the spirit, is much more concerned with the ethics and aesthetics of each individual than with worldly appetites and their respective satisfactions. Arising in ancient Greece and having as its greatest representative the thinker Aristippus of Cyrene (435 B.C. - 356 B.C.) - he is said to have been a disciple of Socrates, but so much is said about Socrates that it is hard to know what is true or false - hedonism was based on a reasonably simple assumption: the well-being of the human being as an individual results from the relationship between two poles. And these two poles are, not surprisingly, pain and pleasure, broadly speaking. A warning for the most depraved minds: pleasure reveals itself in many ways.

The Hedonisms

There are a number of technical considerations to take into account in order to, on the one hand, define pleasure and, on the other hand, understand how it plays a role and has a certain weight in the decisions we make and in what we choose to do. In a very succinct and layman's way, we can consider pleasure to be that which makes us feel good, as opposed to pain and towards what we tend to consider happiness (another very abstract and difficult to define and define term). Pleasure does not have to be a physical or sensory satisfaction. The pleasure of contemplation, for example - and here the word is used in the sense of reflection or meditation; in the sense of observation, we would enter the realm of sensory delight, which would also undoubtedly be a form of pleasure, but not the one intended to illustrate - depends on nothing other than thought and concentration. Intellectual pleasure - which one feels when reading a story, for example; or when completing a puzzle or solving a riddle - is another mode independent of the senses. And there are other ways that, being connected to the sensory realm of perceiving and experiencing the world, are not necessarily and immediately derived from the reflex of sensations, but rather from the processing we do of them and of a whole context, with messages and various levels of information (for example, when we feel pleasure watching a movie or listening to a song - a pleasure that goes far beyond having the sensation that it's beautiful or that it's horrible, but rather that it presents itself as a complex scheme of interpretations that leads us to that point where we feel pleasure). Obviously, physical and sensory pleasures are also contemplated in hedonism, but fundamentally these are not what the current derives from nor is it directed at.

There are various forms - perhaps better called applications - of hedonism within the philosophical stream: the psychological, the ethical, the axiological, and the aesthetic. Each of these strands will interfere differently with what one seeks in life. Hedonism claims that pleasure is the most valuable thing in life. But this pleasure is not found here, there or everywhere just like that. We have to know what we are looking for so that we know what to choose according to this philosophical pleasure with a view to existential well-being. Psychological hedonism is perhaps the most complex among the strands. According to this theory, the human being moves in a mostly selfish search, pursuing pleasure - it cannot be said enough: in broad terms - in a practically instinctive way. This hedonistic impulse, which does not take into account the consequences of actions and choices, can result (and often does) in the opposite of pleasure. An ultimate failure, however, does not remove the gesture, act, or choice from its hedonistic character. They call it a hedonistic paradox, but this theory explains and justifies it: motivation is always hedonistic. There is something naive, practically innocent, about human beings, and it is this characteristic that, in discarding calculating, they surrender to the irrational search for the act or gesture of their preference. On the other hand, there may be a satisfaction of pleasure in the altruistic act, for example, which ultimately turns it into a selfish, hedonistic choice.

Aesthetic hedonism is substantially simpler than psychological hedonism. In the former, pleasure results from the observation or perception of beauty. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), many centuries after Aristippus of Cyrene, would, to a certain extent, take up this theory in The Origin of Tragedy to defend the pursuit of pleasure and the contemplation of beauty as the fundamental reason for human existence. Is this a bourgeois idea? It is possible that it is. But it is not devoid of meaning. Other philosophers throughout history, from Thomas Aquinas to Immanuel Kant, have tried to define and contextualize this relationship between man and beauty, from which pleasure results. Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274) even considered that beauty was in itself beautiful and that the individual's pleasure resulted not from observation or observation, but rather from apprehension, that is: pleasure was given through an epiphany of beauty. Already Plato, through the voice of Socrates, raises a pertinent question: do we like something because it is beautiful, or is it beautiful because we like it? It is a good dilemma, although it complicates a bit when it comes to making decisions. Axiological hedonism and ethical hedonism are inseparable. According to the former, only pleasure has intrinsic value - there it is, the existential surplus value we talked about earlier; ethical hedonism considers that we should determine what to do taking into account what increases pleasure (and decreases pain - but that's complicating things, so let's just accept the increase in pleasure).

Everything is Hedonism

Since it is not easy to explain, concretely, what hedonism is today - dictionaries give it two meanings, one from the realm of philosophy ("a doctrine which defines the good as that which provides pleasure and which advocates that the satisfaction of desires is the purpose of human life and the foundation of the moral life") and the other from that of psychology ("the tendency to act in such a way as to avoid what is unpleasant and seek only what is pleasurable") -, thanks in good part to the erosion that his school has suffered in the hands and mouths of the people, one can, to make the task easier, think about what hedonism definitely is not. It is certainly not asceticism, that this current seeks spiritual ascent and development through austerity and renunciation of worldly pleasures. Even more on the antipodes of hedonism is Stoicism, founded and advocated by Zeno of Citium in the 3rd century BC. The Stoics sought eudaimonia, that is, the cultivation of a good, positive spirit. Stoicism, unlike hedonism, seeks virtue, a life based on logic and impeccable, unassailable ethics. The Stoic seeks harmony with nature and with his surroundings, good and positive thinking, and it is in these attunements, guided by the cardinal virtues (Justice, Courage, Prudence and Temperance, which centuries later would be appropriated by the Catholic Church), that the Stoic will find ethics, the ideal way to be in life. Now, it is important to remember the moment when the Stoic philosopher from Citium, one day in search of justice and temperance while strolling in the garden with one hand behind his back and the other scratching his beard, thought, "Wait a minute, Zeno... aren't you seeking virtue because you take pleasure in this pursuit?" There is no going back, hedonism will always win.

Originally translated from Vogue Portugal's The Pleasure Issue, published may 2023.Full stories and credits on the print issue.