Bodily pleasures

Although pleasure is the good, Epicurus advocates a measured sobriety: the highest pleasure is not the abundance of enjoyments but the absence of pain, which a little bread and water suffices to procure. When we say that pleasure is the end, we do not mean the pleasures of the dissolute but the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul. The value leans slightly toward asceticism, out of frugality rather than contempt for the body.

Letter to Menoeceus, 130-132 (the praise of frugality) · Principal Doctrines, XV (the wealth required by nature is easily obtained)

Renunciation (saṃnyāsa) of the world and its enjoyments is held to be the condition most favorable to liberating knowledge: Śaṅkara's ideal sage is the wandering ascetic, detached from bodily pleasures as from every worldly good. Sensible pleasures bind one to the body-mind compound that the path invites one precisely to transcend. It is a pronounced asceticism, which does not hold the body to be evil in itself but subordinates it entirely to the quest for liberation.

Upadeśasāhasrī · Commentary on the Bhagavad Gītā

Platonic asceticism rests on the image of the body as the tomb of the soul (sōma/sēma) and on distrust of sensible pleasures, which chain the soul to becoming and hamper its ascent toward the intelligible. Purification consists in detaching oneself from the body as far as possible.

Plato, Phaedo, 64c-67b, purification · Plato, Gorgias, 493a, the body as tomb

The soul-body dualism calls for detachment from bodily pleasures, which "rivet" the soul to the sensible and hinder knowledge: the philosopher reduces them as far as possible. The stance stays measured, for the Philebus grants a place to pure, true pleasures within a well-ordered mixed life.

Phaedo, 64c-67b, 82e-83d · Philebus, 63e-64a

The body and pleasure are indifferents: one should use external goods with measure, attach to them only as one uses a passing inn, and defer pleasure to make sure one remains its master. A moderate asceticism, with no absolute condemnation of pleasure.

Enchiridion, §11 and §34 · Enchiridion, §33

To break the objects of desire into their parts dissolves their prestige: this dish is only an animal's carcass, this wine grape juice, the union of bodies a mere rubbing. Pleasure being an indifferent, one should use it soberly and without enslavement to it, a measured asceticism rather than mortification.

Meditations, VI, 13 · Meditations, III, 2

Bodily pleasure is a mere indifferent: neither good nor evil, it warrants neither pursuit nor cult. Without condemning the body, the Stoics commend a disciplined sobriety and training in doing without the superfluous, so that nothing external holds the soul in its power. The tendency is ascetic, but moderate.

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 18 · Epictetus, Enchiridion, §33

"The five flavors dull the palate, racing and hunting madden the heart": sensory excess wears and misleads, and the sage prefers sobriety, "the belly rather than the eye." This is not an asceticism of mortification but a frugality attuned to the natural, which trims excess without condemning simple pleasure.

Dao De Jing, ch. 12 · Dao De Jing, ch. 9 and 67

The sermon at Benares sets aside two extremes, the pursuit of sensual pleasures and self-mortification, in favor of the Middle Way. Without condemning the body, Buddhism treats sensory pleasures as attachments that feed craving, and commends measured sobriety: the tendency is ascetic, but moderate and free of harsh rigor.

Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (the sermon at Benares)

Against the caricature of debauchery, Epicurus advocates a sober life: the pleasure sought is chiefly katastematic, the stable pleasure of satisfied need, rather than the kinetic pleasure of enjoyment. The position thus leans slightly toward frugality, without condemning the body.

Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus, 130-131 · Epicurus, Vatican Sayings, 33

Indifferent to luxury, going barefoot and wearing the same cloak in every season, Socrates does not for all that condemn pleasure: he feasts at the Symposium and can drink all night without drunkenness. His sobriety is not the asceticism that takes the body for an enemy, but a temperance that uses everything without being its slave.

Plato, Symposium, 220a and 223c-d · Xenophon, Memorabilia, I, 3, 5-15

Pleasure is neither the good nor an evil: it completes the activity as the bloom of youth crowns the young. The virtue of temperance is the mean between intemperance and insensibility, the latter defect being itself a vice, hence a position just past the balance point, on the side of a measured celebration.

Nicomachean Ethics, X.4 (1174b); III.11

Aristotelianism rejects both asceticism and intemperance: pleasure is not the good, but it completes activity as beauty completes youth. Bodily pleasures are legitimate so long as they keep to the mean set by temperance, yielding a very moderate position, barely on the accepting side.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, X, 4-5 · Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, III, 10-11

Against the contempt for the body found in certain traditions, Thomas holds bodily pleasures to be good in themselves, willed by God and necessary to life: pleasure completes the natural operation. But the virtue of temperance submits them to reason and to the final end, neither condemning nor exalting them. Hence a position of balance, equidistant from asceticism and celebration, faithful to the mean.

Summa Theologiae, Ia-IIae, q. 34 (the goodness of pleasures)

Zhuangzi neither mortifies the body as a prison of the soul nor erects pleasure into an end: he takes it for a moment of the flux to be welcomed with ease, without greed or disgust. "Caring for the vital principle" is neither asceticism nor debauchery but the care not to wear out one's life by exhausting it in desires or fears. The position is properly median, a playful temperance that follows the natural of the body without making it either an enemy or an idol.

Zhuangzi, ch. 3 (The Secret of Caring for Life)

The third essay of the Genealogy dismantles the ascetic ideal as a symptom of declining life, and Zarathustra rehabilitates the body, the "great reason", against the despisers of the body. Nietzschean celebration, however, aims at health and strength more than enjoyment.

On the Genealogy of Morality, III · Thus Spoke Zarathustra, "On the Despisers of the Body"

No pleasure is bad in itself: the pleasures of sense appear on the same footing as the rest in Bentham's catalogue, and only their quantitative effect on the overall balance matters. Far from any asceticism, which he ranks among the mistaken principles, he celebrates on principle every pleasure, bodily ones included, so long as it breeds no more pain than it yields enjoyment.

An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. V (the catalogue of pleasures and pains) · An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. II (against the principle of asceticism)

Far from any asceticism, Beauvoir reclaims the body and sexuality as full dimensions of existence, to be lived freely and not under the weight of shame or of taboos imposed on women. Liberation includes the reappropriation of desire and pleasure as an assumed part of embodied freedom.

The Second Sex (1949), vol. I, on sexual initiation and female sexuality

Joy is good in itself, for it marks the passage to a greater perfection and increases the power to act; to make moderate use of pleasures befits the wise. Spinoza mocks the savage and sad superstition that forbids pleasure: nothing warrants thinking a god delights in our privation. The moderation comes only from reason's task of regulating these pleasures.

Ethics, IV, prop. 45, scholium (against the sad superstition that forbids pleasure) · Ethics, III, definitions of the affects (joy, the passage to a greater perfection)

Odysseus is nothing of an ascetic: he savors the good meal, wine, sleep, the bed of a goddess as of his wife; bodily pleasures have their full and guiltless place with him. He tends not to abandon himself to them to the point of forgetting his end, as a man who means to stay master of his course; yet the Odyssey also shows him lingering, a whole year with Circe, forgetful of his return for a time, proof that this mastery is by no means infallible.

Odyssey, VIII-X (the feasts with Alcinous and Circe) · Odyssey, V, X (Calypso and Circe)