Pleasure from the Perspective of Jeremy Bentham and its Critique with an Emphasis on the Verses of the Holy Qur’an

Pleasure motivates humans in pleasant and unpleasant behaviors. Numerous ethical schools have discussed pleasure. Some schools have embraced hedonism. One of these schools is utilitarianism. In the Holy Qur’an, many verses about pleasure are mentioned. These verses are discussed in the form of resurrection, social reform, food and clothing, etc. Since Jeremy Bentham's principles of hedonism have had a great impact on philosophers, thinkers, social laws, and the culture and lifestyle of people, the present article is an explanation of pleasure from Jeremy Bentham's viewpoint and compares it with verses of the Qur’an.

The library data collection and information processing method is descriptive-analytical critical. A finding of this article is to explain the similarities and differences of Jeremy Bentham's view compared to the verses of the Holy Qur’an.

After the studies, we concluded that in both perspective hedonism and its excitatory aspect in humans with psychological hedonism, there are also points of disagreement: In the verses of the Qur’an, unlike Bentham, the pleasures of the hereafter and its preference over the pleasures of this world have been emphasized and the other that in the Qur’an, hedonism is not accepted in an absolute. Also, some of the blessings of the hereafter are mentioned in the Qur’an