Hedonism

Hedonism is the ethical view that pleasure is a central or primary good. Ethical hedonists differ over which pleasures matter and whether pleasure is the only intrinsic good.

Pleasure: A positively valued experience or state, often contrasted with pain. Hedonism treats pleasure as a central good, though theories define it differently.
Desire-satisfaction theory: A theory of well-being that identifies a person's welfare with the fulfillment of their desires. It makes fulfilled desire, not pleasure, the basis of well-being.
Utilitarianism: A family of consequentialist ethical theories that assesses actions or institutions by their effects on overall welfare. Classical forms commonly measure welfare through pleasure and pain.
Aristippus of Cyrene: A Greek philosopher traditionally regarded as the founder of the Cyrenaic school. Cyrenaic teachings associated him with pleasure as the aim of life.
Experience machine: A thought experiment about a device that can simulate any desired experience while concealing the simulation. Robert Nozick used it to challenge the idea that pleasurable experience is all that matters.
Intrinsic value: The value something has for its own sake, rather than as a means to something else. Ethical hedonism asks whether pleasure alone has intrinsic value.
Objective list theory: A theory of well-being that identifies several goods, such as knowledge, relationships, and achievement. It holds that some goods benefit people even when they bring no pleasure.
Hedonic calculus: Jeremy Bentham's proposed method for comparing pleasures and pains by features such as intensity and duration. It turns hedonistic evaluation into a systematic comparison of consequences.
Cyrenaic school: An ancient Greek philosophical school that treated immediate bodily pleasures as the highest goods. It offers an early, direct form of ethical hedonism.
Nozick's utility monster: A thought experiment about a being that gains far more utility from each resource than anyone else. It tests whether maximizing pleasure could justify sacrificing nearly everything to one person.

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