What´s Hedonism - 555 Words

Throughout history, pleasure has been the main goal that drives society. Pleasure can be described as an accomplishment or satisfaction of physical, intellectual, or spiritual desires. Hedonism, which is the view that sees pleasure as the only thing worth pursuing for its own sake, and that everything else is worth pursuing as long as it leads to pleasure. This view appears to be accurate since; everything that a person could ever want is for some thing to fulfill their desires. A philosopher named Robert Nozick came up with a scenario named â€Å"The Experience Machine†. In the future, a super duper machine created by neuropsychologists that was foolproof and could give an individual any experience they desired. Also the individual would never know that they were in the machine (pp. 32). Some people may choose to enter this machine, but there are others who do not. Nozick then argues that since there are people who do not enter the machine, there is something else worth p ursuing for its own sake other than pleasure itself. Nozick puts up a strong case against Hedonism, and provides support for his reasons why people would choose not to plug into the machine. First, Nozick suggests that people want to do certain things and not just to have the experience of doing those activities (pp. 33). Most of these activities that lead to pleasure are twofold desires, which requires a person to fulfill both the first and second desire. For example, to write an excellent paper one mustShow MoreRelatedThe Intellectual Movement Of Ancient Greece1624 Words   |  7 Pagesfulfilled and happy life: the philosophies of Epicureanism and Hedonism. These philosophies, however, didn’t offer the conventional ideas like love or religion as the key components of a happy life. 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With this in mind it becomes clear that one way to evaluate how philosophers argued if a tranquil life was the most pleasant life would be to compare the two. Three aspects that can be evaluated are the fact that