Active pleasure can also be called ‘the pleasures of an active life’. It is the pleasure which a man derives from doing things which he is keen on doing enjoys doing or likes to do. The second form of pleasure I shall call by contrast active pleasure. It seems to me that this sub-form of passive pleasure is largely regarded as the prototype of all pleasure whatsoever and that this one-sided view has been much to the detriment of the philosophic discussion of these topics. Pleasantness as an attribute of sensations can also be spoken of as ‘the pleasures of the senses’ or as ‘sensuous pleasure’. It is the pleasure or better: the pleasantness which we attribute primarily to sensations and other so-called states of consciousness and secondarily also to their causes in the physical world. I think it is useful at least for purposes of a first approximation to distinguish three main forms-as I shall call them-of pleasure. My own feeling is that I am only scratching a surface under which important problems lie hidden. Our discussion here of the concept of pleasure can claim neither to be deep-searching nor even very systematic. 3 Since then there is noticeable a new interest in the concept for its own sake-and not merely as an item in the ethicists’ discussions of moral value. Some of the orthodox views of pleasure were challenged by Professor Gilbert Ryle in an important essay a few years ago. Moore Broad and the non-naturalists in general take it for granted that pleasantness is a ‘naturalistic’ attribute of things and states and not an axiological term. 1 Most writers in the past regard pleasure as either some kind of sensation or as something between sensation and emotion. Neither Hume nor the British utilitarians nor Moore and the critics of ethical naturalism in this century seem to have been aware of the problematic character of this key-notion of their own writings. The words ‘pleasant’ and ‘unpleasant’ in English would most naturally be translated by ‘angenehm’ and ‘unangenehm’ in German.Ĭonsidering the important rôle which the concept of pleasure has played in ethics all through the history of the subject it is surprising how little this concept has been made the object of special investigation. But this correspondence too is not perfect. The German pair of substantives ‘Lust-Unlust’ answers in meaning more closely to the English pair of adjectives ‘pleasant-unpleasant’ than to the substantive-pair ‘pleasure-pain’. But the German word for ‘pain’ is not ‘Unlust’. In German for example the nearest parallel to the pair ‘pleasure-pain’ in ordinary parlance is ‘Lust-Unlust’. In other languages this contrast is not so clearly marked. In English one is used to speaking of pleasure and pain as a pair of contraries or opposites.
To realize the heterogeneity of the conceptual field in which we are moving in this chapter some observations on language may be helpful. But as we shall soon see this ground is very heterogeneous and the use of one word to cover it may produce an appearance of conceptual homogeneity by which we must not let ourselves become deluded. Our term ‘hedonic goodness’ is supposed to cover roughly the same ground as the word ‘pleasure’ in ordinary language. to a further form of goodness which is here called the hedonic good. This in its turn was found to be related to the notions of pain and pleasure i.e. OUR discussion in Chapter III brought us into touch with the notion of the good of a being.
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