Pleasure. It is so welcome, so immediate, so tangible, so motivating: it is its own reward. If you put sophisticated and refined pleasures on the menu of life, such as fulfilling relationships and stretching ambitions, as well as those small pleasures akin to eating chocolates, then it appears to be a no-brainer to conclude that the maximization of quality pleasure should be the central goal of wellbeing. At the very least, it just seems counterintuitive to suggest that a good life has little to do with good feeling. The assertion would seem so easy to knock down.

That is certainly what many have taken as gospel since the Enlightenment. Happiness finds its greatest delight and stimulation when enlivened by pleasure, explained Abbé Pestré, in his entry on the matter for Diderot and d'Alembert's famous eighteenth-century Encyclopédie. Or to put it another way, he championed the notion that perfect happiness would be a state of perpetual, quality pleasure uninterrupted by pain. He continues: