Pleasure and Virtue Aren't Enemies

Science Has the Proof

In 2006, researchers at the National Institutes of Health led by Jorge Moll decided to try something different. For decades, standard psychology studies had studied the stimulus and response mechanisms in the brain using typical pleasure triggers. Subjects were put in an fMRI and shown images of attractive faces, appetizing food, and so forth. Such studies yielded predictable results, mapping the brain's reward circuitry through these basic stimuli. 

Moll’s study worked differently. Researchers gave participants $128 and watched what happened in their brains as they made choices about donating to real charities.The researchers expected to see a battle in the brain - pleasure centers activating when keeping money, and perhaps regions associated with moral reasoning lighting up when giving it away. 

What they found instead was revolutionary: when participants chose to donate, their brains' reward centers - the very same regions that respond to food, sex, and money - became powerfully active. Even more surprisingly, these pleasure responses were often stronger when giving than when keeping money for themselves.

This wasn't just another data point in neuroscience. As participants lay in that fMRI machine, their brains were quietly demolishing a false dichotomy that has shaped moral philosophy since the Middle Ages.

Ancient Wisdom: The Unity of Pleasure and Virtue

The ancient Greeks would have found our modern opposition between pleasure and virtue peculiar. For Aristotle, eudaimonia (usually translated as "happiness" or "flourishing") necessarily involved both virtue and pleasure – not as competing forces but as natural companions. When we act virtuously, he argued, pleasure naturally follows, not as a reward but as an intrinsic part of the activity itself.

In the Nicomachean Ethics, he argues that "pleasure completes the activity... like the bloom of youth." Aristotle understood that just as beauty naturally accompanies the peak of physical development, pleasure naturally accompanies virtuous action. "The life of virtuous activity," he writes, "has pleasures of its own."

Epicurus, often misunderstood as a mere hedonist, went even further. He argued that the most reliable path to pleasure was through virtue. Not because virtue would be rewarded with pleasure, but because virtuous living – cultivating friendships, living moderately, acting justly – was itself the most pleasant way to live.

Writing in his "Letter to Menoeceus," Epicurus declared: "It is impossible to live pleasantly without living wisely, honorably, and justly; and it is impossible to live wisely, honorably, and justly without living pleasantly." His Garden school taught that virtue was not merely instrumental to pleasure but intrinsically pleasant itself.

The Great Divorce: How Pleasure and Virtue Became Enemies

The unity of pleasure and virtue faced its first major challenge with the rise of Christian asceticism. Medieval theologians, influenced by Augustine's struggles with temporal pleasures, began to view pleasure with deep suspicion. The body and its desires were seen as impediments to spiritual virtue rather than natural companions to it.

Augustine's own journey from hedonistic youth to Christian bishop became a template for understanding pleasure and virtue as antagonists. In his "Confessions," he portrayed physical and spiritual pleasures as locked in perpetual combat: "The two wills, one old, one new, one carnal, the other spiritual, contended with each other and in their conflict wasted my soul." This internal war between flesh and spirit became a central metaphor in Christian theology.

This centuries-long religious tradition found its philosophical apex in Kant's moral philosophy. In his "Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals," Kant argued that actions only have moral worth when done from duty alone, explicitly excluding inclination or pleasure as valid moral motivations. "The necessity of my action from pure respect for the practical law," he wrote, "is what constitutes duty, before which every inclination must give way."

Kant's position wasn't simply philosophical innovation – it was the systematic articulation of assumptions that had developed through centuries of Christian asceticism. His sharp distinction between duty and inclination gave philosophical rigor to the old religious division between spirit and flesh. When he argued that an action done from pleasure or inclination had no moral worth, he was translating into philosophical terms the ascetic suspicion that worldly pleasures tainted spiritual purity.

The Modern Inheritance: Duty vs. Pleasure in Contemporary Life

Kant's strict separation of duty and pleasure, built upon centuries of Christian asceticism, didn't remain confined to philosophical treatises. It seeped into the groundwater of modern culture, emerging in ways both subtle and profound. Today, this artificial division shapes how we think about everything from work and education to personal relationships and moral choices.

Consider how we talk about difficult decisions: "I don't want to, but I should." "Do the right thing, not the easy thing." "No pain, no gain." These common phrases reflect an inherited assumption that if something feels good, it's probably not virtuous, and if something is virtuous, it probably won't feel good. Our language itself betrays this deep-seated dualism.

This division appears everywhere in contemporary life. Corporate culture celebrates the "grind" and valorizes working through exhaustion as morally superior to finding pleasure in one's work. Educational systems often present learning as something that must be endured rather than enjoyed. Even in relationships, we're sometimes suspicious of those who find too much pleasure in their good deeds – the volunteer who enjoys their service too much, the parent who finds too much satisfaction in caregiving.

Self-help literature, despite its focus on personal fulfillment, often reinforces this divide. Books and motivational speakers frequently frame personal development as a battle between what we want to do (associated with pleasure and weakness) and what we should do (associated with duty and strength). Social media influencers build entire brands around the idea that success requires sacrificing pleasure for discipline, unknowingly echoing both Augustine's spiritual battles and Kant's rigid duty.

Even secular ethical movements sometimes maintain this split. Environmental advocates often frame ecological responsibility as requiring the sacrifice of pleasure for duty. Social justice movements can present moral action as necessarily opposed to personal comfort or enjoyment. The assumption remains: if it feels good, it's probably not what we ought to be doing.

Modern Research: Reuniting What Never Should Have Been Divided

But something interesting happens when we actually study human behavior and biology: this supposed opposition between pleasure and virtue starts to dissolve. Modern research in neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics tells a very different story about the relationship between doing good and feeling good.

- A 2007 study in Science by Harbaugh et al. showed that mandatory tax-like transfers to charity activated reward regions in the brain, but voluntary giving produced even stronger responses

- Research by Dunn, Aknin, and Norton (2008) in Science demonstrated that spending money on others produces greater happiness than spending on oneself

- A meta-analysis by Jenkinson et al. (2013) found that volunteering is consistently associated with reduced depression, increased life satisfaction, and lower mortality rates

- Studies of meditation by Klimecki et al. (2012) showed that compassion training increases both prosocial behavior and subjective wellbeing

Beyond the Dichotomy: Implications for Living Well

The convergence of ancient wisdom and modern science reveals that the opposition between pleasure and virtue is artificial. This understanding revolutionizes how we might approach human flourishing, suggesting that personal happiness and ethical behavior are mutually reinforcing rather than competing goals.

The neuroscience lab at the National Institutes of Health inadvertently validated what Epicurus taught in his Garden: pleasure and virtue are natural allies in the pursuit of human flourishing. 

Our challenge isn't to choose between them but to understand their fundamental unity and to structure our lives and institutions accordingly. In doing so, we might rediscover what the ancients knew: that the most reliable path to pleasure runs through virtue, and the surest way to virtue is to recognize its inherent pleasures.

Ειρήνη και Ασφάλεια

Peace and Safety