Chapter Thirteen - Pleasure, a supervenient end

Summary

The Nicomachean Ethics contains two treatises on what might be called pleasure, enjoyment, or delight. Both treatises present and respond to opinions about the goodness or badness of pleasure and argue that pleasure is not movement or change or process. The first treatise says that pleasure is an unimpeded action of a habit according to nature. The second treatise says that pleasure perfects or completes action, as a supervenient end, as beauty supervenes on the young. Aristotle discusses pleasure and pain in general; he discusses bodily pleasures in particular. Aquinas explains how it is that, although spiritual pleasure is greater than bodily pleasure, the latter is more intensely felt by us. The author has twice compared a passage in Aquinas's Ethics commentary and an article of the Summa theologiae. On the subject of pleasure, Aquinas the Aristotelian is finally inseparable from Aquinas the Augustinian.