Taking its name from the Greek word for 'delight', which school of philosophy believes that pleasure is the only intrinsic good?
"philosophers often distinguish the experience, which they call an intrinsic good, from the things that seem to cause the experience, which they call ""inherent"" goods. Failing to distinguish the two leads to a subject–object problem in which it is not clear who is evaluating what object. Some theories describe no higher collective value than that of maximizing ""pleasure"" for individual(s). Some even define goodness and intrinsic value as the experience of pleasure, and bad as the experience of pain. This view is called hedonism, a ""monistic theory of value"". It has two main varieties: simple, and Epicurean. ""Simple hedonism"" is"
"supreme good in life, especially physical pleasure, which they thought more intense and more desirable than mental pleasures. Pleasure is the only good in life and pain is the only evil. Socrates had held that virtue was the only human good, but he had also accepted a limited role for its utilitarian side, allowing pleasure to be a secondary goal of moral action. Aristippus and his followers seized upon this, and made pleasure the sole final goal of life, denying that virtue had any intrinsic value. The Cyrenaics were known for their skeptical theory of knowledge. They reduced logic to"
"In the words of Epictetus, this sage would be ""sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy,"" The Stoics therefore spent their time trying to attain virtue. This would only be achieved if one was to dedicate their life studying Stoic logic, Stoic physics, and Stoic ethics. The Cyrenaics were a school of philosophy established by Aristippus of Cyrene (c. 435 – c. 356 BCE). The school asserted that the only good is positive pleasure, and pain is the only evil. They posit that all feeling is"
"earliest Socratic schools. The Cyrenaics taught that the only intrinsic good is pleasure, which meant not just the absence of pain, but positively enjoyable momentary sensations. Of these, physical ones are stronger than those of anticipation or memory. They did, however, recognize the value of social obligation, and that pleasure could be gained from altruism. Theodorus the Atheist was a latter exponent of hedonism who was a disciple of younger Aristippus, while becoming well known for expounding atheism. The school died out within a century, and was replaced by Epicureanism. The Cyrenaics were known for their skeptical theory of knowledge."
"Stoicism Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium in Athens in the early 3rd century BC. While Stoic physics are largely drawn from the teachings of the philosopher Heraclitus, they are heavily influenced by certain teachings of Socrates. Stoicism is predominantly a philosophy of personal ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world. According to its teachings, as social beings, the path to happiness for humans is found in accepting the moment as it presents itself, by not allowing oneself to be controlled by the desire for pleasure or"
"the earliest philosopher on record to have categorically embraced a hedonistic philosophy; he called the supreme goal of life ""contentment"" or ""cheerfulness"", claiming that ""joy and sorrow are the distinguishing mark of things beneficial and harmful"" (DK 68 B 188). The Cyrenaics were an ultra-hedonist Greek school of philosophy founded in the 4th century BC, supposedly by Aristippus of Cyrene, although many of the principles of the school are believed to have been formalized by his grandson of the same name, Aristippus the Younger. The school was so called after Cyrene, the birthplace of Aristippus. It was one of the"
"Hedonism Hedonism is a school of thought that argues that the pursuit of pleasure and intrinsic goods are the primary or most important goals of human life. A hedonist strives to maximize net pleasure (pleasure minus pain). However upon finally gaining said pleasure, happiness may remain stationary. Ethical hedonism is the idea that all people have the right to do everything in their power to achieve the greatest amount of pleasure possible to them. It is also the idea that every person's pleasure should far surpass their amount of pain. Ethical hedonism is said to have been started by Aristippus"
"the conventional. As reasoning creatures, people could achieve happiness via rigorous training, by living in a way natural to human beings. The world equally belongs to everyone, so suffering is caused by false judgments of what is valuable and what is worthless per the customs and conventions of society. Aristippus of Cyrene, a pupil of Socrates, founded an early Socratic school that emphasized only one side of Socrates's teachings—that happiness is one of the ends of moral action and that pleasure is the supreme good; thus a hedonistic world view, wherein bodily gratification is more intense than mental pleasure. Cyrenaics"
"prefer immediate gratification to the long-term gain of delayed gratification; denial is unpleasant unhappiness. Epicurus, a pupil of the Platonist Pamphilus of Samos, taught that the greatest good is in seeking modest pleasures, to attain tranquility and freedom from fear (ataraxia) via knowledge, friendship, and virtuous, temperate living; bodily pain (aponia) is absent through one's knowledge of the workings of the world and of the limits of one's desires. Combined, freedom from pain and freedom from fear are happiness in its highest form. Epicurus' lauded enjoyment of simple pleasures is quasi-ascetic ""abstention"" from sex and the appetites: ""When we say"
"in the form of a state of tranquility and freedom from fear (ataraxia) and absence of bodily pain (aponia) through knowledge of the workings of the world and the limits of our desires. The combination of these two states is supposed to constitute happiness in its highest form. Although Epicureanism is a form of hedonism, insofar as it declares pleasure as the sole intrinsic good, its conception of absence of pain as the greatest pleasure and its advocacy of a simple life make it different from ""hedonism"" as it is commonly understood. In the Epicurean view, the highest pleasure (tranquility"
"Cynicism (philosophy) Cynicism () is a school of thought of ancient Greek philosophy as practiced by the Cynics (, ). For the Cynics, the purpose of life is to live in virtue, in agreement with nature. As reasoning creatures, people can gain happiness by rigorous training and by living in a way which is natural for themselves, rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, sex, and fame. Instead, they were to lead a simple life free from all possessions. The first philosopher to outline these themes was Antisthenes, who had been a pupil of Socrates in the late 5th century"
"Epicureans believed in the guidance of the senses, and identified the supreme goal of life to be happiness, or the absence of pain. Stoicism was founded by Zeno of Citium, who taught that virtue was the supreme good, creating a new sense of ethical urgency. The Perpatetics were followers of Aristotle, guided by his science and philosophy. The Academy was founded by Plato and was based on the Sceptic Pyro's idea that real knowledge could be acquired. The Academy also presented criticisms of the Epicurean and Stoic schools of philosophy. The genre of satire was traditionally regarded as a Roman"
"that pleasure was the supreme good, especially immediate gratifications; and that people could only know their own experiences, beyond that truth was unknowable. Platonism is the name given to the philosophy of Plato, which was maintained and developed by his followers. The central concept was the theory of forms: the transcendent, perfect archetypes, of which objects in the everyday world are imperfect copies. The highest form was the Form of the Good, the source of being, which could be known by reason. In the 3rd century BC, Arcesilaus adopted skepticism, which became a central tenet of the school until 90"
"Zimmerman's words that pleasure “just is”. This has led to some, like Monroe Beardsley, to say that only extrinsic values, in the final analysis, exist. Different kinds of extrinsic value in this model derive from the different underlying categories of relation, the example given being those of beauty, utility and meaning, each of which is supervenient on one of Kant's three categories of relation, namely disjunction, causality and inherence respectively. Deontology, on the other hand, (from the Greek ""Deon"" meaning “duty”) is the branch of ethics that bases value on moral principles which in turn form a guide to knowing"
"reduced to a desire for happiness or pleasure. Immanuel Kant, too, has been described as a monist in saying that the only good in itself lies in possessing a good will. Regarding those holding pluralist views, Zimmerman in his book ""The Nature of Intrinsic Value"" (2012) gives some examples of more recent philosophers with lists of the kinds of thing that they thought had value: Brentano (1889): Pleasure, Happiness, Love, Knowledge, Beauty, Proportion, Intention, Exercise, Virtue Moore (1908) - Aesthetics, Affection, Knowledge, Consciousness, Pleasure, Virtue Ross (1936) - Virtue, Pleasure, Knowledge, Artistic activity In particular, Zimmerman singles out the work"
"and freedom from fear as well as an absence of bodily pain (""aponia""). The combination of these two states constitutes happiness in its highest form. Although Epicureanism is a form of hedonism insofar as it declares pleasure to be its sole intrinsic goal, the concept that the absence of pain and fear constitutes the greatest pleasure, and its advocacy of a simple life, make it very different from ""hedonism"" as colloquially understood. Epicureanism was originally a challenge to Platonism, though later it became the main opponent of Stoicism. Epicurus and his followers shunned politics. After the death of Epicurus, his"
"entirely individual, and can in no way be described as being of the world objectively. Feeling, therefore, is the only possible criterion of knowledge and of conduct. Our ways of being affected are alone knowable. Thus the sole aim for everyone should be pleasure. Cyrenaicism deduces a single, universal aim for all people which is pleasure. Furthermore, all feeling is momentary and homogeneous. It follows that past and future pleasure have no real existence for us, and that among present pleasures there is no distinction of kind. Socrates had spoken of the higher pleasures of the intellect; the Cyrenaics denied"
"will be their happiness."" Aristotle's view that the best life would be a purely contemplative (intellectual) one was disputed by the Stoics and others, such as the Epicureans, who saw speculation as inferior to practical ethics. Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism considered contemplation superior and saw as its goal the knowledge of God or union with him, so that a ""contemplative life"" was a life devoted to God rather than to any kind of activity. In the ""Enneads"" of Plotinus, a founder of Neoplatonism, everything is contemplation (""theoria"") and everything is derived from contemplation. The first hypostasis, the One, is contemplation"
"of the painful sensation."" Other current words that have a definition with some similarity to ""suffering"" include ""distress, unhappiness, misery, affliction, woe, ill, discomfort, displeasure, disagreeableness"". Hedonism, as an ethical theory, claims that good and bad consist ultimately in pleasure and pain. Many hedonists, in accordance with Epicurus and contrarily to popular perception of his doctrine, advocate that we should first seek to avoid suffering and that the greatest pleasure lies in a robust state of profound tranquility (ataraxia) that is free from the worrisome pursuit or the unwelcome consequences of ephemeral pleasures. For Stoicism, the greatest good lies in"
"In sum, Plato argues that philosophical pleasure is the only true pleasure since other pleasures experienced by others are simply a neutral state free of pain. Socrates points out the human tendency to be corrupted by power leads down the road to timocracy, oligarchy, democracy and tyranny. From this, he concludes that ruling should be left to philosophers, who are the most just and therefore least susceptible to corruption. This ""good city"" is depicted as being governed by philosopher-kings; disinterested persons who rule not for their personal enjoyment but for the good of the city-state (polis). The paradigmatic society which"
"suddenly stop using its greatest, most authentic capacity just because of the body’s discomfort in the physical realm. “…The Proficient’s will is set always and only inward.” (Enneads I.4.11) Overall, happiness for Plotinus is ""...a flight from this world's ways and things."" (Theaet. 176) and a focus on the highest, i.e. Forms and the One. Henosis is the word for mystical ""oneness"", ""union"", or ""unity"" in classical Greek. In Platonism, and especially Neoplatonism, the goal of henosis is union with what is fundamental in reality: the One (Τὸ Ἕν), the Source, or Monad. As is specified in the writings of"
"as a doctrine that advocates the partaking in fleeting pleasures such as sexual excess and decadent food. This is not the case. Epicurus regarded ""ataraxia"" (tranquility, freedom from fear) and ""aponia"" (absence of pain) as the height of happiness. He also considered prudence an important virtue and perceived excess and overindulgence to be contrary to the attainment of ataraxia and aponia. Instead, Epicurus preferred ""the good"", and ""even wisdom and culture"" to the ""pleasure of the stomach"". While some twentieth-century commentary has sought to diminish this and related quotations, the consistency with Epicurean philosophy overall has more recently been explained."
"as Diogenes of Sinope rejected all material possessions and social conventions (""nomos"") as unnatural and useless. The Cyrenaics, meanwhile, embraced hedonism, arguing that pleasure was the only true good. Stoicism, founded by Zeno of Citium, taught that virtue was sufficient for eudaimonia as it would allow one to live in accordance with Nature or Logos. Zeno became extremely popular; the Athenians set up a gold statue of him, and Antigonus II Gonatas invited him to the Macedonian court. The philosophical schools of Aristotle (the Peripatetics of the Lyceum) and Plato (Platonism at the Academy) also remained influential. The academy would"
"the quiet enjoyment of pleasures, especially mental pleasure, free of fear and anxiety. The Stoics thought the greatest good not pleasure but reason and everything in accord with reason, even if painful. Hence they praised the life of reason lived in accordance with nature. A theme of Ancient Greek ethics then is the role of the virtuous life in achieving eudaimonia, or the good life; and Aristotle, Epicurus and the Stoics all argued that virtue was necessary for happiness, albeit in different ways and with different conceptions of those terms. A passage of the Torah, ""Love your neighbour as yourself"""
"is usually because the intellectual pleasures are thought to have circumstantial advantages, i.e. ""greater permanency, safety, uncostliness, &c."" Instead, Mill will argue that some pleasures are intrinsically better than others. The accusation that hedonism is ""doctrine worthy only of swine"" has a long history. In Nicomachean Ethics (Book 1 Chapter 5), Aristotle says that identifying the good with pleasure is to prefer a life suitable for beasts. The theological utilitarians had the option of grounding their pursuit of happiness in the will of God; the hedonistic utilitarians needed a different defence. Mill's approach is to argue that the pleasures of"
"are entirely individual and can in no way be described as constituting absolute objective knowledge. Feeling, therefore, is the only possible criterion of knowledge and of conduct. Our ways of being affected are alone knowable. Thus the sole aim for everyone should be pleasure. Cyrenaicism deduces a single, universal aim for all people which is pleasure. Furthermore, all feeling is momentary and homogeneous. It follows that past and future pleasure have no real existence for us, and that among present pleasures there is no distinction of kind. Socrates had spoken of the higher pleasures of the intellect; the Cyrenaics denied"
"fear of pain, by using one's mind to understand the world and to do one's part in nature's plan, and by working together and treating others fairly and justly. The Stoics are especially known for teaching that ""virtue is the only good"" for human beings, and that external things—such as health, wealth, and pleasure—are not good or bad in themselves, but have value as ""material for virtue to act upon"". Alongside Aristotelian ethics, the Stoic tradition forms one of the major founding approaches to Western virtue ethics. The Stoics also held that certain destructive emotions resulted from errors of judgment,"
"means to achieve happiness. His theory is eudaimonist in that he holds that virtue is indispensable to happiness; but virtue is not a constituent of a eudaimon life, and being virtuous is not (external goods aside) identical with being eudaimon. Rather, according to Epicurus, virtue is only instrumentally related to happiness. So whereas Aristotle would not say that one ought to aim for virtue in order to attain pleasure, Epicurus would endorse this claim. Stoic philosophy begins with Zeno of Citium c.300 BC, and was developed by Cleanthes (331–232 BC) and Chrysippus (c.280–c.206 BC) into a formidable systematic unity. Zeno"
"Academy An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary education, higher learning, research, or honorary membership. The term academia refers to the worldwide human group composed of professors and researchers at institutes of higher learning. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 385 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the goddess of wisdom and skill, north of Athens, Greece. The word comes from the ""Academy"" in ancient Greece, which derives from the Athenian hero, ""Akademos"". Outside the city walls of Athens, the gymnasium was made famous by Plato as a"
"with Zeno's teaching, because virtue produces a spiritual pleasure, that is better than bodily pleasure. Regarding Aristotle's opinion that happiness depends on the goods of fortune, Descartes does not deny that these goods contribute to happiness, but remarks that they are in great proportion outside one's own control, whereas one's mind is under one's complete control. Immanuel Kant, in his ""Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime"", expresses true virtue as different from what commonly is known about this moral trait. In Kant's view, to be goodhearted, benevolent and sympathetic is not regarded as true virtue. The only"
"some other good, and all other ""goods"" desirable for its sake. This involves achieving ""eudaemonia"", usually translated as ""happiness"", ""well-being"", ""flourishing"", and ""excellence"". Antisthenes, a pupil of Socrates, first outlined the themes of Cynicism, stating that the purpose of life is living a life of Virtue which agrees with Nature. Happiness depends upon being self-sufficient and master of one's mental attitude; suffering is the consequence of false judgments of value, which cause negative emotions and a concomitant vicious character. The Cynical life rejects conventional desires for wealth, power, health, and fame, by being free of the possessions acquired in pursuing"
"controversial claim that a life of pleasure and absence of pain is what eudaimonia consists in. One important difference between Epicurus' eudaimonism and that of Plato and Aristotle is that for the latter virtue is a constituent of eudaimonia, whereas Epicurus makes virtue a means to happiness. To this difference, consider Aristotle's theory. Aristotle maintains that eudaimonia is what everyone wants (and Epicurus would agree). He also thinks that eudaimonia is best achieved by a life of virtuous activity in accordance with reason. The virtuous person takes pleasure in doing the right thing as a result of a proper training"
"from those advocating self-gratification regardless of the pain and expense to others, to those stating that the most ethical pursuit maximizes pleasure and happiness for the most people. Founded by Aristippus of Cyrene, Cyrenaics supported immediate gratification or pleasure. ""Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die."" Even fleeting desires should be indulged, for fear the opportunity should be forever lost. There was little to no concern with the future, the present dominating in the pursuit of immediate pleasure. Cyrenaic hedonism encouraged the pursuit of enjoyment and indulgence without hesitation, believing pleasure to be the only good. Epicurean ethics"