False pleasure may be a pleasure based on a false belief, or a pleasure compared with more real, or greater pleasures.

Lacan Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, , ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, and ...

maintained that philosophers should seek to "discern not true pleasures from false, for such a distinction is impossible to make, but the true and false goods that pleasure points to". When one is said to have experienced a false pleasure, it is distinct from feeling actual pleasure. Pleasure can be described as being false or true based on the content of where the pleasure comes from. When being faced with a situation where one holds a false belief that in turn makes them feel pleasure, this would be categorized as false pleasure. An example of this could be if someone gets pleasure from being in a happy relationship, yet they are unaware that the other person is cheating. Their pleasure then comes from a false belief.

Classical philosophy

Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...

devoted much attention to the belief that "no pleasure save that of the wise is quite true and pure - all others are shadows only" - both in The Republic and in his late dialogue Philebus.

Augustine Augustine of Hippo ( , ; la, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North A ...

saw false pleasure as focused on the body, as well as pervading the dramatic and rhetorical entertainments of his time. When Plato describes false pleasure he defines it in two different ways. The first way is sometimes called the propositional sense of falsity. In this way of looking at falsity of pleasure the

truth value In logic and mathematics, a truth value, sometimes called a logical value, is a value indicating the relation of a proposition to truth, which in classical logic has only two possible values ('' true'' or '' false''). Computing In some pro ...

of the statement does not affect the fact that the statement is still a statement. The other way Plato uses falsity when looking at pleasure is in the alienans sense. When looking at falsity in this way we are explaining something as being "fake". In this use of the term falsity the thing we are talking about is in question of

existence Existence is the ability of an entity to interact with reality. In philosophy, it refers to the ontological property of being. Etymology The term ''existence'' comes from Old French ''existence'', from Medieval Latin ''existentia/exsistentia' ...

Asceticism

Buddhaghosa considered that "sense-pleasures are impermanent, deceptive, trivial...unstable, unreal, hollow, and uncertain" - a view echoed in most of what Max Weber termed "world-rejecting asceticism".

Vain pleasure

A specific false pleasure often denounced in Western thought is the pleasure of

vanity Vanity is the excessive belief in one's own abilities or attractiveness to others. Prior to the 14th century it did not have such narcissistic undertones, and merely meant ''futility''. The related term vainglory is now often seen as an archaic ...

Voltaire François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778) was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his ''nom de plume'' M. de Voltaire (; also ; ), he was famous for his wit, and his criticism of Christianity—es ...

for example pillorying the character "corrupted by vanity...He breathed in nothing but false glory and false pleasures". Similarly

John Ruskin John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English writer, philosopher, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and pol ...

contrasted the adult's pursuit of the false pleasure of vanity with the way the child does not seek false pleasures; its pleasures are true, simple, and instinctive". False pleasure is not to be confused with vain pleasure. The difference is that vain pleasure is when someone feels pleasure from something that others would find

morally Morality () is the differentiation of intentions, decisions and actions between those that are distinguished as proper (right) and those that are improper (wrong). Morality can be a body of standards or principles derived from a code of cond ...

wrong for them to get pleasure from. Mean while false pleasure is just based on false beliefs regardless of the moral outlook on the source of pleasure. An example of a vain pleasure would be if a person found pleasure in finding out that someone they hate was tortured. This would only count as a false pleasure if the person was not indeed tortured.

Sex

Sexual intercourse is sometimes seen as a true pleasure (or false one), contrasted with the less real pleasures of the past, as with Donne's "countrey pleasures, childishly". In the wake of

Reich ''Reich'' (; ) is a German noun whose meaning is analogous to the meaning of the English word "realm"; this is not to be confused with the German adjective "reich" which means "rich". The terms ' (literally the "realm of an emperor") and ' (lit ...

, a distinction was sometimes made between reactive and genuine sexuality - analysis supposedly allowing people to "realize the enormous difference between what they once believed sexual pleasure to be and what they now experience".

Mass media

Popular culture Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as, popular art or mass art) and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a ...

has been a central arena for latter-day disputes over true and false pleasures.

Modernism Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

saw attacks on the false pleasures of consumerism from the right, as well as from the left, with Herbert Marcuse denouncing the false pleasures of happy consciousness of "those whose life is the hell of the affluent society". From another angle,

Richard Hoggart Herbert Richard Hoggart (24 September 1918 – 10 April 2014) was a British academic whose career covered the fields of sociology, English literature and cultural studies, with emphasis on British popular culture. Early life Hoggart was bor ...

contrasted the immediate, real pleasures of the working-class from the increasingly

ersatz An ersatz good () is a substitute good, especially one that is considered inferior to the good it replaces. It has particular connotations of wartime usage. Etymology ''Ersatz'' is a German word literally meaning ''substitute'' or ''replaceme ...

diet fed them by the media. As the 20th Century wore on, however - while concern for the contrast of false and authentic pleasures, fragmented or integrated experiences, certainly remained - the mass media increasingly became less of a scapegoat for the prevalence of false pleasure, figures like

Frederic Jameson Fredric Jameson (born April 14, 1934) is an American literary critic, philosopher and Marxist political theorist. He is best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends, particularly his analysis of postmodernity and capitalism. James ...

for example insisting instead on "the false problem of value" in a world where "reification or materialization is a key structural feature of both modernism and mass culture".

Žižek

Slavoj Žižek had added a further twist to the debate for the 21st century, arguing that in a postmodern age dominated by what he calls "the superego injunction to enjoy that permeates our discourse", the quest for pleasure has become more of a duty than a pleasure: for Žižek, "

psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...

is the only discipline in which you are allowed ''not'' to enjoy" !Slavoj Žižek, ''The Parallax View'' (2006) p. 299 and 304

References

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External links

True and false pleasures
Hedonism Concepts in ethics Pleasure Belief