aphrodisia

quotes from the use of pleasure: the history of sexuality by michel foucault

"the aphrodisia are the acts, gestures, and contacts that produce a certain form of pleasure."

"when aristotle in his nicomachean ethics wants to determine exactly which people deserve to be called 'self-indulgent,' his definition is cautiously restrictive: self-indulgence - akolasia - relates only to the pleasures of the body, and among these, the pleasures of sight, hearing, and smell must be excluded.  it is not self-indulgent to 'delight in' colors, shapes, or paintings, nor in theater or music; one can, without self-indulgence, delight in the scent of fruit, roses, or incense; and. . . anyone who would become so intensely absorbed in looking at a statue or in listening to a song as to lose his appetite or taste for lovemaking could not be reproached for self-indulgence"

"for there is pleasure that is liable to akolasia only where there is touch and contact: contact with the mouth, the tongue, and the throat (for the pleasures of food and drink), or contact with other parts of the body (for the pleasures of sex)."

"one should, however, note the importance attributed by many greek texts to the gaze and to the eyes in the genesis of desire or love, but it is not that the pleasure of the gaze is self-indulgent; rather, it is thought to make an opening through which the soul is reached. . . as for the kiss, it was very highly valued as a physical pleasure and a communication of souls despite the danger it carried.  as a matter of fact, an entire historical study could be undertaken on the 'pleasure body' and its transformations."

"in the teaching and the exercise of moderation, it is recommended to be wary of sounds, images, and scents; but this is not because attachment to them would be only the masked form of a desire whose essence is sexual: it is because there are musical forms capable of weakening the soul with their rhythms, and because there are sights capable of affecting the soul like a venom, and because a particular scent, a particular image, is apt to call up the 'memory of the thing desired.'"

"in the experience of the aphrodisia. . . act, desire, and pleasure formed an ensemble whose elements were distinguishable certainly, but closely bound to one another."

"nature intended. . . that the performance of the act be associated with a pleasure, and it was this pleasure that gave rise to epithumia, to desire, in a movement that was naturally directed toward what 'gives pleasure', according to a principle that aristotle cites: desire is always 'desire for the agreeable thing'. . .for the greeks there could not be desire without privation, without the want of the thing desired and without a certain amount of suffering mixed in; but the appetite, plato explains in the philebus, can be aroused only by the representation, the image or the memory of the thing that gives pleasure."  


"what seems in fact to have formed the object of moral reflection for the greeks in matters of sexual conduct was not exactly the act itself (considered in its different modalities), or desire (viewed from the standpoint of its origin or its aim), or even pleasure (evaluated according to the different objects or practices that can cause it); it was more the dynamics that joined all three in a circular fashion (the desire that leads to the act, the act that is linked to pleasure, and the pleasure that occasions desire).  the ethical question that was raised was not: which desires?  which acts?  which pleasures?  but rather with what force is one transported 'by the pleasures and desires'?  . . .it was an ontology of a force that linked together acts, pleasures, and desires.  it was this dynamic relationship that constituted what might be called the texture of the ethical experience of the aphrodisia." 

"the second major variable that engaged moral valuation, in addition to the 'quantity of activity' criterion, was the question of remaining in one's role or abandoning it, being the subject of the activity or its object, joining those who underwent it - even if one was a man - or remaining with those who actively performed it.  for a man, excess and passivity were the two main forms of immorality in the practice of the aphrodisia."

"while it was all right to 'use' pleasures, one had to be careful not to be carried away by them - the reason was not that sexual activity was a vice, nor that it might deviate from a canonical model; it was because sexual activity was associated with a force, an energeia, that was itself liable to be excessive."

"when he speaks in the symposium, the doctor eryximachus claims for his art the prerogrative of advising on the  manner in which one must make use of the pleasures of the bed and the table; according to him, it is doctors who ought to say how to enjoy rich food without making oneself sick; it also rests with them to prescribe, to those who practice physical love - eros pandemos - how to have an orgasm without any resulting ill effects.  it would be interesting, surely, to trace the long history of the connections between alimentary ethics and sexual ethics, as manifested in doctrines, but also in religious rituals and dietary rules; one would need to discover how, over a long period of time, the play of alimentary prescriptions became uncoupled from that of sexual morals, by following the evolution of their respective importance (with the rather belated moment, no doubt, when the problem of sexual conduct became more worrisome that that of alimentary behaviors) and the gradual differentiation of their specific structure (the moment when sexual desire began to be questioned in terms other than alimentary appetite)."

"they all raised the same question: how could one, how must one 'make use' of this dynamics of pleasures, desires, and acts?  a question of right use."