Short History of Pleasure

Human beings, at least in the West, are pleasure seekers. Almost everything we do that is not directly connected to survival is connected to pleasure: virtually all of the food we eat, the television we watch, the music we listen to, the sex we have, the alcohol we drink, the songs we sing and the drugs we take are intended, in some way, for our own gratification. Yet the idea of what pleasure is, and what is pleasurable to do, is not fixed. This title looks at those moments in history when attitudes have changed, new types of pleasure have emerged and when the idea of what pleasure actually is has been revised. It looks at pleasure in the ancient world and in our own age; the unending conflict between duty and pleasure; the pleasures of guilt and excess, the appearance of the Seven Deadly Sins and pleasures of perversion.