Seneca, On the Happy Life 22: Measure the Value of Pleasure

. . . All these vices are dissipated by virtue, which plucks a man by the ear, and measures the value of pleasures before she permits them to be used; nor does she set much store by those which she allows to pass through, for she merely allows their use, and her cheerfulness is not due to her use of them, but to her moderation in using them.

"Yet when moderation lessens pleasure, it impairs the highest good."

You devote yourself to pleasures, I check them; you indulge in pleasure, I use it; you think that it is the highest good, I do not even think it to be good: for the sake of pleasure I do nothing, you do everything.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 10 (tr Stewart)

When considered as the measure of happiness, pleasure itself will lead us only into the pursuit of selfish desire. Even if I have acted with the appearance of justice in order to increase my own power, or acted with the appearance of courage in order to bolster my reputation, or acted with the appearance of temperance at one moment for the sake greater satisfaction at another, I have still reduced right and wrong to the whims of my passions.

Nature does not revolve around how I feel, and I must consider my feelings by how my choices and deeds exist within the harmony of the whole. Virtue, action ordered by the knowledge of what is good and bad in things themselves, is the great arbiter and mediator, the guide that shows me how I should relate to all of the circumstances that accompany me in my life.

Sometimes the world may give me wealth, and sometimes it may give me poverty. Sometimes others will love me, and sometimes I will be despised. Perhaps most importantly, sometimes I will feel pleasure, and sometimes I will feel pain.

I must not take any of these things as good or bad in and of themselves, but I must rather ask myself how I should make use of them, and how I should manage and direct them, in order to live well. That is the measure of wisdom and virtue, the greatest good within my own nature, that informs me about what I should seek and what I should avoid.

I once gave up the offer of a much more pleasant job because I had already signed another contract, and later I once weaseled my way out of a different job because of the lure of a much better one. The first choice was less convenient, but it was the right one. The second choice was very convenient, but it was the wrong one. Everything will bring with it different degrees of pleasure and pain, but the only path to peace and contentment is resting in the knowledge that, whatever the circumstances, I have treated both others and myself with right respect. I still don’t regret the first decision at all, though I regret the second one all of the time.

Not all of my decisions will be useful or pleasant to my position in the world, but they should always be beneficial to the content of my character. This is what I owe to myself, and this is what I owe to others.

My own attempts at the practice of Stoicism have only gradually come to a point where I no longer look first to pleasure, wealth, power, or reputation as the standards by which I think, decide, or act. I no longer seek to pursue pleasure without condition, or to avoid pain without condition.

I seek to measure the value of pleasure and pain, to filter their effect upon me, through the constant of virtue. I should hardly be surprised anymore when a change in the quality of my estimation leads to real change in the quality of my living. 

Written in 11/2004

Image: Annibale Carracci, The Choice of Hercules (1596)