Brylea Hollinshead
Central European University
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle controversially contends that the virtuous person must take pleasure, and cannot take pain, in virtuous activity. In this paper, I argue against this claim, which I term the “pleasure thesis”. An intuitive reading of the pleasure thesis has been widely dismissed as untenable on the grounds that it is too psychologically demanding, and that sometimes feeling painful emotions and lacking pleasure whilst performing virtuous actions is not only permissible but morally required. However, several scholars have defended the pleasure thesis by arguing that the virtuous person must feel a kind of “meta-pleasure” towards the fact that they are acting virtuously. This claim appears prima facie plausible. However, I reject it for three reasons: (1) a lack of such pleasure does not always indicate a lack of virtue, but only a lack of reflection on the fact of one’s virtuous actions, (2) the meta-pleasure requirement would exclude intuitive cases of habitual and “unthinking” virtue, and (3) sometimes experiencing meta-pleasure is actually indicative of vice because it indicates that one is focussing on the wrong values in the circumstances or neglecting salient features of the moral landscape. Thus, I ultimately suggest a much more qualified version of the original pleasure thesis: the virtuous person must be disposed to experience meta-pleasure if they were to reflect on the fact of their virtuous action. Actual feelings of pleasure (meta or otherwise) are not required for virtuous activity.
Chair: Maciej Jarzębski
Time: September 8th, 14:00-14:30
Location: SR 1.005
SOPhiA 2026 