Pleasure in Renaissance Philosophy

Abstract

In Renaissance thought, we can observe a growing interest in and to a certain extent a rehabilitation of the notion of pleasure. This new interest can be understood as an expression of a general trait of Renaissance culture that showed a greater openness towards worldly pleasures than previous times, but it was also inspired by newly rediscovered texts containing Epicurean philosophy. In the course of the fifteenth century, new sources became available, such as Lucretius’ De rerum natura and Diogenes Laertius’ De vita et moribus philosophorum, which supported the growing engagement with Epicurean philosophy and a rehabilitation of his concept of pleasure. Humanists used different routes to rehabilitate the Epicurean notion of pleasure. One strategy was to reinterpret Epicurus’s position and to level the differences with other schools of thought. Another one was to use the Epicurean notion of pleasure in order to counter rigid Stoic moral philosophy and reinterpret Christian morality, as can be seen most prominently in the works of Lorenzo Valla and Erasmus of Rotterdam. Although Renaissance authors contributed to the recognition of Epicurean pleasure, it still took some time before Epicurus and the notion of pleasure became fully accepted in Western philosophical thought.