Pleasure

Pleasure is a feeling or positive mental state that a person desires to maintain or return to. It contrasts with pain and sorrow. Pleasure can arise from physical sources such as food, drink, sleep and touch, as well as from mental or social sources such as music, stories, social connection, or completing a task.

Psychology and biology regard pleasure as part of the body's reward system: a good feeling can be recognized as a signal that an action taken has relevance to survival or reproduction. Not all pleasure is beneficial, however, since some things can trigger this system without providing any real advantage.

Physical dimension

When the body experiences pleasure, certain parts of the brain involved in reward are activated. Chemicals such as dopamine and natural opioids (endorphins) play a role. Dopamine is generally associated with desire and seeking, while opioids are linked to the feeling of "warmth" of pleasure itself. The distinction between these two—wanting and liking—is important in contemporary neuroscience.

Philosophy

Early philosophy posed major questions about pleasure's place in a good life. The view known as hedonism made pleasure its highest goal. Epicurus, a Greek philosopher, argued that the highest pleasure is the absence of pain and anxiety, not excessive food and drink. The Stoics, by contrast, held that pleasure and pain should not be used as measures of good, placing reason and virtue above them instead.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill developed utilitarian thought, which evaluates actions by how much pleasure they produce and how much pain they reduce. Mill added a distinction between "higher" pleasures (intellectual and artistic) and "lower" ones (physical).

Religion and society

Religion and social custom typically regulate which kinds of pleasure are acceptable and when. Islam, for example, encourages moderation and uses fasting as a means of self-discipline. Other cultures have restrictions related to food, drink, and sexual relations. Pleasure is thus not only a personal matter but also one of law and custom.

Pleasure and contentment

Modern psychology generally distinguishes pleasure—a brief, immediate feeling—from life satisfaction, a broader evaluation a person makes of their life overall. A person can experience much pleasure while having low life satisfaction, or vice versa. It is also known that the feeling of pleasure diminishes quickly with repeated exposure to the same stimulus, a phenomenon called habituation.