File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2002/lyotard.0202, message 32


From: "fuller" <fuller-AT-bekkers.com.au>
Subject: Re: The Pleasure Principle
Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2002 12:06:29 +0800


Eric,

> Not to nitpick, but I want to point out that Epicurus always attempted to
> distinguish himself from hedonism plain and simple (and as history has
> shown, not very successfully.)
> His argument was that although all pleasure is a good, all pleasures
should
> not be chosen for the simple reason that they may lead to a greater pain
in
> the long run. (As in the case, I suppose, of someone shooting up heroin in
> a very fast car.)
> The kind of pleasure Epicurus advocated was a modified pleasure because
the
> pleasure Epicurus advocates arises only after the pain is removed. Think
of
> the different pleasures involved - kinetic and katakesmatic, as being
> somewhat like the variations of beauty and the sublime respectively.

Were the Epicurians that safe? So you wouldn't agree that the growing
'Extreme Sports' genre of pop culture is a manifestation of this modified
pleasure? (Deaths and serious injuries occur all the time, even when people
are being 'dangerous'.)
I am not sure if it is at all possible to remove the possibility of pain
from any situation, even by doing 'nothing', the world is going on around
you, and, anyway, nothing is never the absence of something. That is why I
used the words 'less safe', where I could've used 'more dangerous' it just
depends on which side of the line you are standing on.
Also, what definition of pain are you using?

> However, I certainly recognize the pleasures of speed as a pleasure in its
> own right.  There is a kind of innate beauty to speed. The velocity and
> tempo I find at various times in Pound, Joyce and Nabokov makes the
process
> of reading them a little like riding in a very fast car through a
> constantly shifting landscape.  You sense that things are longer in your
> control and you are definitely moving faster than you can take it all in.
A
> hot rod dream in prose, as it were.

I am also writing a novel, similar themes to my thesis, the rhythm of the
text follows the state of tune of the car of one of the central characters.
I had been contemplating constructing my thesis very similarly to how you
would build a modified car. Rather difficult though for a theoretical piece.

Glen.


   

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