To Love
Is to Have Pleasure
Pleasure Doesn't Mean Sin, Decadence or Evil
Pleasure is frequently associated with sin. In the case of
love, pleasure is mixed with sexual love, often seen as a
path to evil, decadence, and value disruption. Nevertheless
pleasure exists in all the forms of love, regulating our
existence and behaviours.
Our loves might sometimes demand sacrifices, generosity,
compassion, donation, but even at the core of these loves
and acts there is pleasure. At the bottom of love to our
consorts, fathers, sons, lovers there is joy, appeasement,
feelings of harmony, or, in other words, feelings of
pleasure.
If we love God, we can’t help feeling pleasure,
satisfaction. If we love power, or poetry or other forms of
art, we do it because we have pleasure in it. Love is
inextricably joined to pleasure. Our loves can’t last or be
intense without the pleasure we associate with them.
That’s unavoidable. Our lives are built to function by
principles and rules of pleasure and pain. Our behaviours
and minds are ruled by these principles. We look for the
pleasure (through love, or other ways) and we run away from
pain. We search for the pleasure of food, of poetry, of
music, of power. And we try to escape from the spectre of
death, from our multiple fears, from all that causes pain.
In this view, love is only a means of obtaining pleasure,
joy – certainly the most important, the truer, the one
without which human life looses its meaning.
Books, Films,
Cultural Stuff on these and
other related issues? See
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