Hedonism: What Defines A Good Life?

1. The idea behind Hedonism is that the primary human value is to achieve pleasure and avoid pain at all costs. People who follow this ideological way of life define pain and pleasure as the only two things with intrinsic value, meaning that they can identify what’s is “good” or “bad”, if they produce pain or pleasure, making pleasure the ultimate good, and pain “bad”. Continuously pleasure or happiness can be achieved by indulging on physical indulgences, like drinking, eating and sex, now all of this can only give you physical pleasure and usually doesn’t last for a long time, and to achieve more of it, you keep chasing after it until it doesn’t have same effect or pleasure like it once did.

Aristippus and Epicurus who were different philosophers

It only revolves around pleasure and the absence of pain.

2. Nozick’s thought out experiment starts by asking the question: what defines a good life? (Nozick) An answer could be the ideology of Hedonism, to produce pleasure and avoid pain. Continuously Robert asks as to imagine a machine that can realistic imitate a desirable feeling forever, would you plug yourself in the machine? If our human value is to achieve pleasure then we should plug in but Robert Nozick’s disagrees contradicting Hedonism, that experiencing pleasure is not as important than feeling some other components of life.

Robert believed that nobody will want to plug themselves in such machine, as happiness from physical pleasures is short and meaningless, and by being in constant happiness we can reach to a frustrating non-ending cycle of emptiness as it won’t provide us with the same intensity of pleasure like doing something for the first time, example like reading your favorite for the first time, or the feeling of the adrenaline rush when riding a roller coaster. We will try to seek pleasure in a higher level, but failing to do

Utilitarianism is a moral theory that focuses in the result or consequences of a certain action, disregarding the intentions overall. Making good consequences is equal to good actions (morally correct). Furthermore, utilitarianism comes with the idea of doing good for a greater number, so it’s not an egocentric ideology but one that is more thoughtful to others, like sacrificing a night out to help your family members, or deciding to go for Italian food even though you don’t like it but the rest of your family does. We choose the action that will produce the most happiness, for a greater number of people (principle of