Pleasure

Summary

Dominique Pagani refuses to say anything against pleasure: happiness cannot be reduced to it, but it does not exist without it1. He describes pleasure as intense, sometimes infinitely so, but fleeting. Enjoyment vanishes almost as soon as it appears, and it is all the more intense when the path to it has been long. Wanting it to last already means being for happiness, which is one more demand and not puritanism23. He connects the question of pleasure to that of class: for a long time pleasure was reserved for an elite, and libertinism was the prerogative of the feudal lords. Rousseau is not against pleasure but against pleasure as a class privilege4. The Republic grants the right to obtain any pleasure that harms no one, and the right to enjoyment is a first step toward the right to happiness56. He adds that exclusive pleasures are the death of pleasure. Finally, aesthetic pleasure, which is disinterested, keeps art alive and brings back to the surface the ends of our desires.

1. 1#5 Happiness versus the death drive in music11 Dec 2020 · 1:03:36
2. 2#8 Happiness and unhappiness in music11 Jan 2021 · 54:53
3. 3#14 Mozart once more7 Feb 2021 · 1:12:44
4. 4I for Island23 Dec 2014 · 9:01
5. 5Worldliness in Clouscard, or “the dominant ideology”26 Apr 2023 · 38:27
6. 6Worldliness in Clouscard, or “the dominant ideology”26 Apr 2023 · 1:01:38

Summary produced automatically from 17 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.