Further, it is one of our necessary tasks to consider them; for not
only did we lay it down that moral virtue and vice are concerned
with pains and pleasures, but most people say that happiness
involves pleasure; this is why the blessed man is called by a name
derived from a word meaning enjoyment.
Now (1) some people think that no pleasure is a good, either in
itself or incidentally, since the good and pleasure are not the
same; (2) others think that some pleasures are good but that most
are bad. (3) Again there is a third view, that even if all pleasures
are good, yet the best thing in the world cannot be pleasure. (1)
The reasons given for the view that pleasure is not a good at all
are (a) that every pleasure is a perceptible process to a natural
state, and that no process is of the same kind as its end, e.g. no
process of building of the same kind as a house. (b) A temperate man
avoids pleasures. (c) A man of practical wisdom pursues what is free
from pain, not what is pleasant. (d) The pleasures are a hindrance
to thought, and the more so the more one delights in them, e.g. in
sexual pleasure; for no one could think of anything while absorbed
in this. (e) There is no art of pleasure; but every good is the
product of some art. (f) Children and the brutes pursue pleasures.
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