Pleasure is commonly conceptualized as a positive experience, happiness, entertainment, enjoyment, ecstasy, and euphoria. However, it is a difficult concept to define as the experience of pleasure differs from individual to individual.
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Pleasure is commonly conceptualized as a positive experience, happiness, entertainment, enjoyment, ecstasy, and euphoria. However, it is a difficult concept to define as the experience of pleasure differs from individual to individual.
People commonly experience this phenomenon through eating, exercise, sexuality, music, usage of drugs, writing, accomplishment, recognition, service, indeed through any imaginable activity, even receiving pain or suffering (the medical term for deriving pleasure from receiving pain is masochism) and inflicting pain or suffering (sadism). It also refers to "enjoyment" related to certain physical, sensual, emotional or mental experiences.
Pleasure
In the purely physical sense, pleasure is seen generally as an independent feeling of happiness, while defined in mental terms it is often seen as a sensation that creates the illusion of sexual experience.
Pleasure may also be defined, at least in some contexts, as being the reduction or absence of suffering. Epicurus and his followers defined the highest pleasure as the absence of suffering,The Forty Principal Doctrines, Number III. and pleasure itself as "freedom from pain in the body and freedom from turmoil in the soul".Letter to Menoeceus, Section 131-2. According to Cicero (or rather his character Torquatus), he also believed that pleasure was the chief good (and, conversely, that pain was the chief evil).About the Ends of Goods and Evils, Book I, From Section IX, Torquatus sets out his understanding of Epicurus's philosophy .
The 19th Century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer understood pleasure as a negative sensation, as it negates the usual existential condition, that of suffering.Counsels and Maxims, Chapter 1, General Rules Section 1.
Philosophies of Pleasure
Utilitarianism and Hedonism are philosophies that attempt to increase to the maximum the amount of pleasure and minimize the amount of suffering. An example of such philosophies are some of Sigmund Freud's theories of human motivation that have been called psychological hedonism; his "life instinct" is essentially the observation that people will pursue pleasure.
Neurology
The pleasure center is the set of brain structures, predominantly the nucleus accumbens, theorized to produce great pleasure when stimulated electrically. Some references state that the septum pellucidium is generally considered to be the pleasure center, while others mention the hypothalamus when referring to the pleasure center for intracranial stimulation. Certain chemicals are known to stimulate the pleasure centers of the brain. These include dopamine and various endorphins.
