hedonism

In everyday English hedonism is often a judgement rather than a neutral description. Calling someone's lifestyle hedonism usually suggests that they live for pleasure and give little thought to tomorrow. The word can also be used lightly, even with self-irony, as when someone calls a long breakfast on Sunday their small act of hedonism. Adjectives decide the tone: shallow or reckless hedonism is a reproach, while everyday or harmless hedonism is closer to an admission of simple pleasures.

The noun often appears with verbs such as indulge in, embrace and be accused of, and with adjectives such as consumer, ethical and psychological. Someone who lives this way is called a hedonist. The adjective hedonistic is at least as common as the noun, in phrases like a hedonistic lifestyle or a hedonistic culture, and the adverb hedonistically also exists. In psychology and economics the related adjective hedonic describes things to do with pleasant and unpleasant feelings.

Hedonism has a long history in philosophy. The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1910 traces it to Aristippus of Cyrene, whose followers were called the Cyrenaics. Epicurus and his school ranked the pleasures of the mind and of friendship above those of the senses. Later the English utilitarians Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill took up pleasure as the measure of good. The 1913 Webster gives two senses: the doctrine of the Hedonic sect, and the ethical theory which finds the explanation and authority of duty in its tendency to give pleasure.

Hedonism should be kept apart from egoism and from consumerism. An egoist puts their own interest before other people's, but need not be chasing pleasure at all. Consumerism is the habit of buying ever more things, which can be one form of hedonism, although a hedonist may just as well value conversation, music or a long walk. The usual opposite of hedonism is asceticism, the deliberate denial of pleasure, together with self-restraint and self-discipline in everyday speech.