The Pleasure of Abstinence

In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle makes the claim that virtue is contingent upon the derivation of pleasure from committing virtuous acts. Specifically, he states that “[Statement one] A man who abstains from bodily pleasures and enjoys doing so is self-controlled; if he finds abstinence troublesome, he is self-indulgent; a man who endures danger with joy… is courageous; if he endures it with pain, he is a coward. … [Statement two] It is pleasure that makes us do base actions and pain that prevents us from doing noble actions (Aristotle, 37).” This argument is faulty for three reasons. Statement two makes an assumption that is entirely unfounded. Because statement one hinges on this assumption, it too is proven wrong. In addition, even if the assumption in two were granted, there remains an argument that turns statement one entirely on its head, which involves the virtue of pain. The third flaw in Aristotle’s claims derives from the ultimate selfishness human nature, a widely contested point which I hope to defend and utilize later in this paper. For these reasons both statement two and especially statement one are incorrect.

The most simplistic argument against statement one is that statement one is true if and only if statement two is true. Statement two is false, therefore statement one is false. The reason statement two is false is simply because it deals in absolutes. It implies that all pleasurable actions are base, and all painful actions are virtuous. This is obviously untrue due to the subjective nature of pleasure and pain. What one person might consider pleasurable and therefore base, another person might find painful and therefore virtuous. Even if we were to concede some universal sense of pleasure and pain, there remain obvious examples of universally pleasant actions that are not base. For example, eating an apple is pleasurable, but no one would claim that it is somehow ignoble. The claim that all painful actions are virtuous is more defensible (because of selfishness, as will be seen later), but still wrong when taken in terms of difficult choices or catch twenty-twos. For example, if one must choose to kill one’s best friend in order to save the population of a city, one will derive both pain and pleasure from losing the friend and saving a city respectively. While this alone does not outright disprove Aristotle’s statement two, it muddles it, and in conjunction with the more easily available examples of virtuous pleasure, it is sufficient to discount statement two. So, because pleasure can be both virtuous and base, statement one is thrown into question. Statement one implies the argument that if pleasure is base (statement two) then abstaining from pleasure is virtuous. Statement one then expands on that, by adding the additional requirement of deriving pleasure from abstaining from pleasure. There is an obvious contradiction in this reasoning, in that if one enjoys abstaining from pleasure of one sort, then no abstinence has taken place. The original pleasure has simply been replaced by the pleasure of abstinence. Aristotle’s probable response to this critique would be to say that the pleasure of abstinence must be learned and is therefore more virtuous that baser pleasures. This argument would be sound if it weren’t defending a claim that has a foundation in a contradiction to this argument. To clarify, the original argument goes thusly: given that all pleasurable actions are base (I have proven this false, but will concede it for the sake of proving the argument even more fundamentally wrong), abstaining from pleasure is virtuous. Building on this, one must also enjoy abstaining from pleasure in order to be virtuous. Here I object that to enjoy abstinence is another sort of pleasure and therefore not virtuous. Aristotle then tries to separate learned pleasure from base pleasure. In doing so however, he disproves his original assumption that all pleasurable actions are base, thus Aristotle disproves the argument’s foundation as he defends its precipice.

The previous paragraph uses Aristotle’s own logic to prove him wrong. This next section is less complicated because it disproves Aristotle's claims individually instead of as a whole. This section simply disagrees with the claim that enjoying abstinence is more virtuous that finding abstinence troublesome. We will look at the same contradiction about enjoying abstinence as the previous paragraph, but will continue that argument to its simple conclusion. Simply put, if pleasure is bad, as Aristotle maintains, then abstaining from pleasure is good. Makes sense so far. Also, if pleasure is bad then pain is good (a logical leap I admit, but Aristotle makes it so I will follow). Because pleasure is bad and pain is good, one who avoids pleasures is good and one who endures pain is good. It also then stands to reason that a person who abstains from pleasure