The dynamics of pleasure and pain figure prominently in Aristotle’s model of character, virtue and vice. We will now examine the following aspects of Aristotle’s conceptualization of the dynamics of pleasure and pain: (a.) how pleasure and pain accompanies all emotions and behavior; (b.) how pleasure and pain are involved in the generation of approach and avoidance behaviors; (c.) the characterological dimensions of pleasure or pain; and, (d.) how the pleasure and pain that accompanies actions experiences reveals the state or condition of his/her character.
According to Aristotle, the dynamics of pleasure and pain are involved in all emotion and behavior, for according to Aristotle (1984), “…every passion and every action is accompanied by pleasure and pain” (p. 1744). In Aristotle’s model of psychology, what one comes to associate pain and pleasure to is an important constitutive element of character because the pleasure and/or pain that an individual feels in relation to different activities or objects determines the resulting approach or avoidance behaviors. It is the pleasure or pain that an individual experiences in relation to various objects or activities that provides the emotional or felt impetus for action.
The capacity to feel pleasure and pain is, according to Aristotle, common to all animals including humans. In fact, according to Aristotle, movement is the differentia that differentiates animal life from plant life and movement is generated by the felt impetus to action that is provided by either pleasure or pain. According to Aristotle, animals possess the sensitive soul. Aristotle’s understanding of movement as being central to the concept of animal is embedded in the English words animal and animate, along which both share the Latin root of Anima which means soul.
According to his model of psychology, both pleasure and pain are involved in generating behavior toward or away from objects. According to Aristotle (1962), “…all beasts and all men pursue pleasure…” (p. 209). However, “…since no single nature and no single characteristic condition is, or is regarded, as the best [for all], people do not all pursue the same pleasure, yet all pursue pleasure” (Aristotle, 1962, p. 209). In other words, different people find different things to be pleasurable, but all people still seek that which they find to be pleasurable. According to Aristotle, pleasure-seeking is involved in approach behaviors. Aristotle believed that pleasure-seeking plays an essential role in the generation of behavior even when an individual is unaware of the role that pleasure-seeking plays in his/her motivation. He wrote, “Perhaps they do not even pursue the pleasure which they think or would say they pursue, but they all pursue the same [thing], pleasure” (Aristotle, 1962, p. 209). Aristotle (1984) is also clear that pain is involved in the generation of avoidant behavior when he wrote, “We therefore choose the pleasant as a good, and avoid pain as an evil” (p. 1758).
Pleasure & Pain: The Importance of Childhood
According to Aristotle’s model of psychology and conceptualization of character, what one comes to experience pain and pleasure to, from infancy onward, is of no small significance. He believed that, from infancy onward, what one comes to associate to pleasure and pain is character creating. Aristotle described a developmental process that creates a characterological template of habituated pleasure and pain associations or reactions. In other words, we come to experience different degrees of pleasure (e.g., delight or joy) or pain (e.g., sorrow) to different objects or activities. These habituated associations of pleasure and pain form an automatic template of pain and pleasure responses that are triggered by different objects or activities. These habituated pain and pleasure responses shape the felt experience (pain or pleasure) of an individual in an automatic and characterological manner. These habituated responses of pain and pleasure shape the subjective felt experience of the individual, which in turn elicits characteristic behaviors.
What one comes to associate pain and pleasure to is, according to Aristotle, a significant issue. According to Aristotle, what we link pain and pleasure to shapes what we do and what we avoid. Once these associations to pain and pleasure are established, they are difficult to change and tend to be self-perpetuating. In Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle (1984) wrote:
Again, it [pleasure] has grown up with us all from our infancy; this is why it is difficult to rub off this passion, engrained as it is in our life. And we measure even our actions, some of us more and others less, by pleasure and pain. For this reason, then, our whole inquiry [regarding character, virtue, and vice] must be about these [pleasure and pain]; for to feel delight and pain rightly or wrongly has no small effect on our actions. (p. 1745)
For Aristotle, a virtuous character is one in which the habituated associations of pleasure and pain are formed in a manner that is congruent with virtuous action. For, “…every study both of virtue and of politics must deal with pleasures and pains, for if man has the right attitude toward them, he will be good; if the wrong attitude he will be bad” (Aristotle, 1962, p. 38). According to Aristotle, the virtuous individual feels delight in acting virtuously and pain in failing to act virtuously or acting in a base manner. In other words, virtue represents a condition of character in which emotion, thinking, and behavior are in congruence with each other.
Individuals who follow through on good actions and/or succeed in avoiding base actions only after overcoming their own emotional struggles are considered by Aristotle to be morally strong. The following quote from Aristotle (1962) illustrates several important aspects of his dynamic conceptualization of the roles of pleasure and pain:
An index to our characteristics is provided by the pleasure or pain which follows upon the tasks we have achieved. A man who abstains from bodily pleasures and enjoys doing so is self-controlled; a man who endures danger with joy, or at least without pain, is courageous; if he endures it with pain he is a coward. For moral excellence is concerned with pleasure and pain; it is pleasure that makes us do base actions and pain that prevents us from doing noble actions. For that reason, as Plato says, men must be brought up from childhood to feel pleasure and pain at the proper things; for this is correct education. (pp. 36-37)
The first important point that Aristotle makes is that the pain and/or pleasure that accompanies various actions reveals the condition of one’s character. Secondly, pleasure is identified as the reason why people tend to do base acts and pain is identified as a reason why people avoid doing noble deeds. The third point that Aristotle (1962) made in the above citation is that it is important to educate children how to, “feel pleasure and pain at the proper things” (p. 37). It is important to note that Aristotle believed that some pleasures and pains are intrinsic to our natures (e.g., thirst due to dehydration) and that some are learned or habituated. It is the learned or habituated pleasures and pains that are able to be educated or habituated.
Pleasure and Pain: The Physiological Dimension
Aristotle believed that there is a physiological dimension of character, virtue, and vice. According to Aristotle, the physiological dimension of character also operated according to the dynamics of pleasure and pain. Aristotle’s conceptualization of character includes both the natural (unlearned) and habituated or unnatural (learned) pleasure and pain responses that individuals experience in relation to various objects and activities. Natural pleasure and pain refers to the pleasure and pain that is rooted in one’s physiology, while unnatural pleasures and pains are the result of the habituation process. For example, according to Aristotle’s conceptualization of character, the influence of one’s temperament can significantly influence an individual’s use of pleasurable activities to modulate one’s mood, which in turn shapes the individual’s character. Aristotle (1984) wrote, "…people of excitable nature always need relief; for even their body is ever in torment owing to its special composition, and they are always under the influence of violent desire; but pain is driven out both by the contrary pleasure, and by any chance pleasure if it be strong; and for these reasons they become self-indulgent…" (p. 1824).
There are a few important points that Aristotle illustrates in the immediately preceding quotation that warrant additional examination. First of all, he points out how an individual’s temperament, which he conceptualizes as being physiological in nature, can cause them to experience torment (which is a degree of pain) and violent desires for which they seek relief in pleasures. Aristotle (1984) indicated that these tormented individuals may seek relief, “…by any chance pleasure if it be strong; and for these reasons they become self-indulgent” (p. 1824). What Aristotle is describing here is the interaction between one’s physiologically-based temperament, environmental factors (chance pleasures), the dynamics of pleasure and pain (pleasure drives out pain), and the character trait (self-indulgent) that emerges from the confluence of these factors. Using psychological terminology, what Aristotle has provided here is an example of his multi-factorial understanding of the etiology of character. He described the interaction of biologically-based temperament the use of a mood-regulation strategy that gives rise to the character trait of being self-indulgent.
The physiological sources of pleasure and pain correspond to the pleasures and pains that arise out of the natural appetite; however, according to Aristotle’s model of psychology, disease, deformity, and/or insanity can cause an individual to experience unnatural pleasures and pains.
Pleasure & Pain: Points of Congruence with Behavioral Perspectives
There are certain aspects of the habituation of pleasure and pain that can be thought of as being similar to what behavioral psychology refers to as conditioned emotional responses. Aristotle’s description of the dynamics of pleasure and pain has several similarities with behavioral perspectives and what could be thought of as the emotional or felt dynamics of reinforcement (e.g., Skinner, 1986). In fact, in Aristotle’s model of psychology, learned behavior is generated, shaped, and perpetuated by the dynamics of pleasure and pain. In Aristotle’s model of psychology, the pleasure and/or pain that an individual experiences is both an effect of behavior that has been engaged in previously and a cause of behavior. In both, Aristotle’s model and in behaviorism, pleasure can be thought of as being both a cause and an effect of behavior and can serve as a primary factor in reinforcement (Skinner, 1986). According to Sherman (1989):
On Aristotle’s view, practice is neither necessary nor sufficient for acquiring states and abilities if it did not yield derivative pleasures. For it is the pleasure proper to a particular activity that impels us to perform that activity the next time with greater discrimination and precision: ‘For the pleasure proper to an activity increases that activity. For those who perform their activities with pleasure judge better and discern with greater precision each thing, e.g., those finding pleasure in geometry become geometers, and understand the subject-matter better; and similarly also, lovers of music, lovers of building and so on, make progress in their appropriate function when they enjoy it.’ (p. 184)
From the preceding quotation it is clear, pleasure can be a reinforcer in a process similar to what behaviorism describes as positive reinforcement. Aristotle also described pain as being a source of avoidant behavior in a manner that is consistent with how behaviorism describes as negative reinforcement.
Pleasure and Pain: Points of Congruence with Cognitive Models
Aristotle, like many modern theorists, emphasized the importance of society and culture in the shaping of a person’s character. He taught that culture has a significant impact on character development and advocated taking steps to create the social conditions (e.g., laws) that foster or facilitate the development of healthy character, by helping individuals come to associate pain and pleasure to the right things from their youth. Right education, for Aristotle, involves the training or conditioning of both one’s affective faculties and one’s intellectual faculties (e.g., practical reason, deliberative ability), so that one’s affective responses and cognitive processes are in line with what right reason would dictate.
The dynamics of pleasure and pain underlie or form the basis of an individual’s subjective appraisal of an object being an apparent good or an apparent evil. Apparent goods are associated with pleasure, and apparent evils are associated with pain. For as Aristotle wrote, “…pleasure and pain are the principal end in respect of which we say that this is an evil, and that a good…" (as cited in Aquinas, 1915, p. 1435).
Aristotle (1984) identified several ways that an individual’s character can be adversely impacted by an association of pleasure and/or pain that does not conform with right reason and objective reality:
…every state of soul has a nature relative to and concerned with the kind of things by which it tends to be made worse or better; but it is by reason of pleasures and pains that men become bad, by pursuing and avoiding these--either the pleasures and pains they ought not or when they ought not or as they ought not, or by going wrong in one of the other similar ways that reason can distinguish. (p. 1745)
In the above quotation, we see Aristotle’s basic understanding of the role of pleasure/pain and approach/avoidance. He identified three ways that one can go wrong in regards to pain and pleasure: (a) an individual can pursue or avoid pleasures or pains that he or she should not pursue [e.g., pedophilia] or avoid [e.g., exercise]; (b) an individual may pursue or avoid pains or pleasures when they should not [e.g., while on duty]; and (c) an individual may pursue or avoid pleasure or pain in a manner that they ought not [e.g., shoplifting]. This was not an exhaustive list of ways that pleasure and pain can lead one astray, and Aristotle makes a point of stating that reason can distinguish similar ways that man can go wrong in regards to pleasures and pains.
Aristotle formulated a dynamic understanding of the relationship between pain and pleasure. Aristotle (1962) wrote:
…pleasure drives out pain. When men experience an excess of pain, they pursue excessive pleasure and bodily pleasure in general, in the belief that it will remedy the pain. These remedial (pleasures) become very intense—and it is the very reason why they are pursued—because they are experienced in contrast with their opposite. (pp. 210-211)
This understanding of how engaging in pleasurable activities can be a form of mood regulation or self-medication has similarities aspects of behaviorism such as negative reinforcement and secondary gain (Delprato & Midgley, 1992). The use of pleasure to remove unpleasant or painful emotional states also points of congruence with some modern explanations for substance abuse and overeating.
For Aristotle, characterological health or virtue involves the congruence of affective experience (pleasure and pain), right reason, action, and objective truth. Incongruence or conflict between or among one’s emotion, cognition, or behavior is considered to be opposed to virtue and hence, opposed to characterological health. In the virtuously ordered character, one’s emotional dynamics, rooted as they are in pleasure and pain, habitually provide the emotional impetus for virtuous behavior and against vice. In fact, character itself refers both the emotional and behavioral life of man. According to Aristotle, all behavior is initiated by emotion, consequently, character, which shapes and regulates the affective experience of man, and is also responsible for initiating, constituting, and regulating behavior. Regarding the unity of emotion, behavior, and reason that is characteristic of virtue, Aristotle (1984) wrote:
…just acts are pleasant to the lover of justice and in general excellent acts to the lover of excellence. Now for most men their pleasures are in conflict with one another because these are not by nature pleasant, but the lovers of what is noble find pleasant the things that are by nature pleasant; and excellent actions are such, so that these are pleasant for such men as well as in their own nature. Their life, therefore, has no further need of pleasure as a sort of adventitious charm, but has its pleasure in itself. For, besides what we have said, the man who does not rejoice in noble actions is not even good; since no one would call a man just who did not enjoy acting justly, nor any man liberal who did not enjoy liberal actions; and similarly in all other cases.
If this is so, excellent actions must be in themselves pleasant. But they are also good and noble, and have each of these attributes in the highest degree, since the good man judges well about these attributes and he judges in the way we have described. (p. 1737)