Evolution Course of “Pleasure” in Classical Political Thought

Appreciating human as naturally sociable in the classical political thought, many of human categories considered as in private domain in modern age, have been included in political philosophy discourse category and occupied a prominent position in this domain. Among others, “pleasure” is an important normative matter which Greek philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle and their precedents, have theorized in their political-theological schema and framework of philosophy. However, while Plato in his Philebus, and Aristotle deal with in his Nichomachean Ethics, in two parts, in Hellenistic Roman Empire, ”pleasure gradually has been subsided from its political status, leading towads the private ethics. Epicure is among the persons who considers the pleasure focally, but not like Aristotle as a social activity, but as a category related to self-purification and in fact as an introduction for reduction of outcast pleasure from political perspective toward very divine subject through Christianity emergence and instead of imagining a position in designing the prosperous society, it turns into an subject in the framework of god-human relationships and as a result it is no more the issue of normative political and social understanding but it is considered as the category concerning obedience of divine subject. This issue is stabilized through Augustine’s convention and pleasure in its evolution course evolves as political subject to religious suject that in following provides the possibility of modern pleasurism (hendoism) free from social ethics priciples. In order to understand the changing process of the position of “pleasure” category from the political matter in Greek ethics philosophy to the individual subject in modern political philosophy, this paper investigates the evolution process of “pleasure” from the normal subject to the mere religious category in classic era.