Professor Verity Harte (2025-2026 George Eastman Visiting Professor): 'Outside In: Theorizing Pleasure'
The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception
Abstract: The treatment of pleasure by philosophers of Classical Greek Antiquity has got a bad rap. Anscombe thought them “baffled by” pleasure (Intention §40). Platonic and Aristotelian discussions of pleasure do raise several puzzles. However, rather than being a sign of ancient confusion, these puzzles reflect the fact that Plato, Aristotle, and the hedonists with whom they engage, approach pleasure from an unexpected direction. Rather than theorize pleasure from the inside, whether as sensation, feeling, or attitude, they do so, as my title has it, from the outside in. The project of my lecture will be to explain this suggestion and their outside-in approach to pleasure, and to argue that it is worth taking seriously.
