Pleasure is commonly conceptualized as a positive experience, happiness, entertainment, enjoyment, ecstasy, and euphoria, but is hard to define as it may be different depending upon the individual in question.

People commonly feel this phenomenon through eating, exercise, sexuality, music, usage of drugs, writing, accomplishment, recognition, service, and any other imaginable activity and even pain (known by its medical terminology masochism). It also refers to "enjoyment" related to certain physical, sensual, emotional or mental experience.

Pleasure

In the purely psychical sense, pleasure is seen generally as an independent feeling of happiness, while defined in mental terms is a sensation that causes one to try to achieve the sensation.

Pleasure may also be defined, at least in some contexts, as being the reduction or absence of pain. Epicurus and his followers defined pleasure as the absence of pain. Fact: date=November 2007

The 19th Century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer understood pleasure as a negative sensation, as it negates the usual existential condition, that of suffering. Fact: date=November 2007

Utilitarianism and New Hedonism philosophies both attempt to increase to the maximum the amount of pleasure and minimize the amount of pain. Fact: date=February 2008

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 pleasure center for intracranial stimulation.. Certain chemicals are known to stimulate the pleasure centers of the brain. These include dopamine and various endorphins.

See also

• Felicific calculus, an attempt to calculate pleasure
• Sexual pleasure
• Flow (psychology)
• Paradox of hedonism
• Gratification
• Pleasure principle