Relation to oneself· Body and life
Celebration
Axis: Bodily pleasures — Should we distrust the pleasures of the body, or celebrate them?
The body and its pleasures are not obstacles but an essential part of a fully human life. Eating, loving, sensing, delighting: knowing how to savor these joys with gratitude and intensity is a form of wisdom, and contempt for them often conceals a resentment against life.
Philosophers 6
Camusexplicit
Far from any asceticism, Camus celebrates the sensual happiness of the body, close to a of the present moment: the warmth of the sun, the salt of the sea, the embrace of the Algerian earth are lived as a nuptial union with the world. Carnal pleasure is no weakness to be corrected but a tangible truth, the only one offered to man with no beyond.
Nuptials (1939) · Summer (1954)
Nietzscheexplicit
The third essay of the 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"
Michel de Montaigneexplicit
Against a Christian asceticism that sets soul over body, Montaigne rehabilitates natural pleasures and refuses to "dissociate" himself from the body he was given. There are not two wisdoms, one for the mind and one despising the flesh: "it is an absolute and almost divine perfection to know how to enjoy one's being loyally". To eat, sleep and make love are not concessions to nature but occasions of presence, provided one is wholly in them. Measure tempers this celebration, since excess spoils enjoyment itself; but the tone, joyful and earthbound, places him squarely on the side of nature, where would hail a free spirit.
Essays, III, 13, "Of Experience"
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Benthaminferable
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)
Beauvoirinferable
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
Spinozainferable
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)
Characters 2
Calliclesexplicit
Extending his praise of desire, he takes bodily pleasures to be the very stuff of happiness: the strong man has the right to procure them amply; asceticism is only a morality of impotence dressed up as wisdom.
Plato, Gorgias, 491e-492c
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Odysseusinferable
Odysseus is nothing of an : 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)