pleasure and the state

as Bentham posits and Tocqueville develops, one fall-out from a pleasure-based idea of leisure is that it softens the individual will and lessens the desire and ability to reckon with the difficulties and annoyances of existence.  this in turn creates a society ripe for virtual enslavement--not only literally, as we have seen increasingly in our country, but ideologically and practically speaking, as well.  a society without an awareness of others, lacking in a firm telos, has no protection from the power-hungry.  pieper writes exceeding much on this principle, that the only way to fight the enervating consequences of a pleasure-based people is to have a proper understanding of beauty and of leisure: that we exist for feasting, and that feasting is an incarnation of the divine into our daily lives.
Chrisus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat.

On Pleasure

In most people, then, the things that are pleasant to them are in conflict with one another, since they are not pleasant by nature, but the things that are pleasant to those who are passionately devoted to what is beautiful are the things that are pleasant by nature, and of this sort are actions in accordance with virtue . . . So the life these people lead has no additional need of pleasure as a sort of appendage, but has its pleasure in itself. -Aristotle


I love that bit about pleasure not being an appendage, that it should belong to the things that one pursues. We often think of virtue as a struggle, which it is, but this does not preclude it being beautiful, as well. And I do think that we appreciate things more when we have to struggle for them--not that a struggle makes things beautiful, but that it helps us to recognize their beauty.
'til next time . . .