The Hedonism of Aquinas

THE HEDONISM OF AQUINAS -" Now of all human pursuits, that of wisdom is the most perfect the most sublime, the most p1·ojitable, the most delightful." 1 -" No one can live without some sensible and bodily pleasure." 2 -" The abundance of pleasure in a wellordered sex-act is not inimical to right reason." 3 T HE MODERN WORLD is sometimes censoriously said to be a pleasure-seeking world. Against such a judgment and its implications many reply just as vehemently with the question: why should it not seek pleasure? has it not a fundamental right to pleasure? is not in fact pleasure the only thing that makes life worth living, and precisely in a world of stress and strain is it not pleasure that gives hope and courage and ultimately brings peace to people and nations? Now, the simple fact is that pleasure and the seeking after it do play a most important role in present-day Western civilization, in Europe and America and all the cultures dependent upon them or influenced by their way of life and living. It is at times maintained that the ancients and the medievals, and in a special way the thinkers, the philosophers , and theologians of ancient and medieval times, had very little notion of man's fundamental right to pleasure. Either they never even examined the nature of such a human right, it is asserted, or they flatly denied its existence. In any event, it is further contended, they certainly looked askance at 1 I Ccmt. Gent., c. 2, no. 8. • Summa Theol., I-II, q. S4, a. 1. 8 Ibid., 11-11, q. 15S, a. 2 ad 2. 257 258 CORNELIUS WILLIAMS pleasure and pleasure-seeking in every form and were at no pains to assign it an honorable place in human life and living. In view of such global assertions it would appear useful to examine the place pleasure took in the teaching (and life) of those who were responsible for the making of Western culturethe ancient Greeks-and in a special way in the moral theological synthesis of Aquinas. It will then be seen that, far from neglecting or even ignoring the phenomenon of pleasure in human life, they offer us a finely nuanced analysis of its structure and, while not holding for a man's right to pleasure, they insist most categorically on its pre-eminent importance in the serious business of human living. It is in that very sense that the Greeks held the ideal man to be the 'aner spoudogeloios - a term that is well-nigh untranslatable but might be rendered by: the lighthearted-earnest man-or the eutrapelos, the man for all seasons and situations, who struck a happy mean between the bomolochos, the jester or buffoon, and the agroikos, the boor devoid of all wit and humor. In a word, the ideal and full human being was he who could relax from his toils (as statesman, as scholar or as peasant) and, whilst taking legitimate satisfaction in his achievement,4 could devote himself to distractions and amusements with his fellows 5 in order the better to be able to contiuue the task begun with re-created 'This idea, as we shall see in the course of the present study, is fundamental to the authentic notion and reality of pleasure. The less it is thought about or consciously sought after the purer and deeper it is. Jean Lacroix puts this very well when he writes: " En quelque sorte il faut gouter au plaisir, sans l'avoir voulu, parce qu'on le trouve sur sa route et sans s'y arreter. La conscience meme qu'on en prend ne va pas sans un gout d'amertume. Le plaisir n'est pur qu'inconscient . Aussi la poursuite consciente du plaisir engendre-t-elle la pire tristesse " (Les sentiments et la vie morale [Paris: PUF, 195fl], p. 42). Or, as A. C. Ewing puts it, " in order to get pleasure we must be interested in other things besides pleasure for their own sake" (Ethics [London, 196fl], p. fl7). 5 This is the authentic Latin notion of "play"-" ludus" in all its forms as a remedy for the fatigue of...