Aristotle on pleasure and virtue

Abstract

This article aims to investigate the relationship established by Aristotle between pleasure and virtue in order to understand the following Aristotelian thesis: the virtuous does not act because of pleasure, but necessarily with pleasure. This thesis will be better understood with the exposition of the Aristotelian conception of pleasure presented by the philosopher in the second pleasure treatise of his Nicomachean Ethics. As we will see, the definition of pleasure as a phenomenon whose existence and nature depend entirely on the existence and nature of the activity to which it belongs enables us to infer that the judgment of the value of the activity is the criterion of moral evaluation of pleasure, not the conversely. This means that the virtuous judges what would be the best activity to be done and not what activity will give him pleasure. Indeed, we will see that the virtuous desires to do certain activity because it is good and not because it is pleasurable, i.e., although the pleasure is not the reason for the action, it will be its inevitable consequence.