Value and activity

We can now turn to the difference in value of kinds of pleasure, thus supporting C2 and C3. Aristotle sums up his position as follows:

60 _{If Aristotle bases his argument on observation, it would seem that his argument} can easily be overturned. For it is not true that taking pleasure in one activity always kills another activity. For example, one can observe that builders often listen to music while they are working. The music seems to be something that is pleasant to them. But if listening to music is a pleasure, it will enhance the activity of listening to the music and will push the activity of building out of the way. So, if the activity of building is not destroyed by the pleasure of listening to music, why does not this show that Aristotle’s account of the function of pleasure is mistaken? A closer look at what Aristotle says will bring out why he is not mistaken. Aristotle’s first example (after which the others are modeled) is that of the lover of flute music: if he is engaged in a conversation, he will stop paying attention to the conversation when he hears flute music (X.5.1175b3-6). Of course, when Aristotle speaks of the ‘lover of flute music’ he means that it is someone who will not only take pleasure in flute music when he hears it, but he will take a lot of pleasure in it. The aspect of strength or intensity is important because it can also explain why the builders do not stop building when they are listening to music. We stop one activity on account of the pleasure of another only if the other activity is much more pleasant (X.5.1175b8-10), which explains why we will not be inclined to do anything else when we are engaged in something that is intensely pleasant (X. 5.1175b10-11). The builders we see may not derive intense pleasure from building: if they did, we would observe that they forget about changing the music-tape or restarting the CD. So, since they presumably do not get intense pleasure out of building, they look for pleasure elsewhere (just like those eating titbits in the theatre when the performance is not great, X.5.1175b11-13). They turn to music. However, the pleasure they derive from music is not strong enough to do away with the activity of building. This might be because they are not crazy about music (they just like it), or, perhaps more plausibly, they do not derive intense pleasure from music because music is not “original” in the sense that they are listening to recordings. If their favourite band were to play next to the building site, they might well be too distracted to continue building.

But since activities differ in goodness and worthlessness, and some are desirable while others are to be avoided, and other neither, so it is with pleasures too, since for each activity there is its own pleasure. So the pleasure belonging to a worthwhile activity is good, while that related to a worthless one is bad. (X.5.1175b24-27)

Aristotle here correlates the value of the activity with the value of the pleasure taken in the activity: a good and valuable activity will yield a good and valuable pleasure, whereas a bad and worthless activity will yield a bad and worthless pleasure. Just what Aristotle’s argument is (if there is one) is not clear: for it does not follow automatically that the value (good or bad) simply follows the activity upon which it supervenes, even if pleasure is specific to the activity.61

Interpreters tend to offer as an explanation for why pleasure should mirror the value of the activity on which it supervenes the view that pleasure derives its value from the activity.62

Support for and elucidation of this view might be found in the following text (which continues the one quoted above):

appetites, too, are praiseworthy when they are for fine things, and worthy of censure when they are for shameful things. But the pleasures that are in activities belong to them more closely than the desires for them. For the

61 _{Bostock 2000:147 makes this observation.}

62 _{For example R. Kraut comments on the passage just quoted in his SEP article that} ‘Aristotle's statement implies that in order to determine whether (for example) the pleasure of virtuous activity is more desirable than that of eating, we are not to attend to the pleasures themselves but to the activities with which we are pleased. A pleasure's goodness derives from the goodness of its associated activity.’ Similarly, Bostock holds that pleasure has no ethical value of its own, for its value is simply dependent on that of the associated activity’ (2000:147). S. Broadie in her commentary ad 1175b24 ff., too, maintains that ‘a pleasure derives its worth from that of the activity’ (2002:437). Cf. Gauthier and Jolif 1970:845-46. Perhaps T. Irwin 1999:343 endorses the same point when he explains that ‘pleasure is good if and only if, and because, it is consequent on a good a good activity’.

latter are divided off from the activity both by the time that intervenes and by their nature as desires, whereas the former are close together with them and are so indistinguishable that there is room for dispute whether activity isn’t the same thing as pleasure (X.5.1175b28-33)

Comparing pleasure to desire is helpful because desire, like pleasure, has no value as such. Leading the focus away from pleasure to desire is a dialectically adroit move, because nobody claims that desire is the good, or that all desire is good, or that all desire is bad.63 _{This is,}

of course, different with pleasure: people do say that all pleasure is good or that all pleasure is bad. So, by showing that pleasure is in relevant respects like desire he can show that pleasure qua pleasure is neither good nor bad. In what respect is pleasure like desire?

For the example to be relevant, it must be that pleasure has value in the same way as desire does. By comparing pleasure to desire, Aristotle points to another attitude which is dependent for its value on something else. But what is the nature of this dependence? On one interpretation, the value of a desire depends solely on what the desire is for: the desire is praise-worthy and good when it is for something fine; worthy of censure and bad if it is for something shameful. Given that the value of the desire is not merely instrumental, one could think that the value of what the desire is for simply transmits to the desire. Since the object is incorporated in the desire, it imbues the desire with its value, and is thus the sole source of the value of the attitude.64 _{This point transmits to pleasure not}

63 _{Reasonably close to the thesis that all desire is bad comes Epictetus’ Encheiridion} 2 and 48 - but that is some three centuries after Aristotle. Callicles in the Gorgias

does exhort desire, but his emphasis is on fulfilling as many desires as possible, not merely on having desires (494a-c).

64 _{Making the value of desire instrumental would ruin the analogy to pleasure:} pleasure is surely not merely instrumentally valuable.

because habitually taking pleasure in X tends to give rise to the desire for X, for Aristotle’s point is not that the value of pleasure is reducible to that of the relevant desire. Rather, it transmits because desire belongs very closely to an activity (it helps to bring it about), but pleasure is even more closely related to activity, almost to the point of indistinguishability. So, since desire is so close to the activity that it derives its value solely from the desired activity, then this should be true of pleasure as well. We can thus explain, on this interpretation, why pleasure mirrors the value of the activity: what the pleasure is taken in, the activity, would be the source of the value of pleasure. So, we can sum up the proposal in its generalised form as follows:

[ACTIVITY-SOURCE] (i) Activities differ in value; (ii) attitudes such as pleasure and desire are directed at activities; (iii) such attitudes derive their value solely from what they are about, their objects; therefore (iv) attitudes differ in value.65