Seneca would not have approved of a vita voluptas, a “life devoted to pleasure”… To the stoic philosopher an impulsive pursuit of pleasure was animalistic and detestable: the life to be lead had to be devoted to the search for tranquility through virtue and reason.
So what about that hedonist streak in me? Well…
Consider the nuances of meaning of terms such as “happiness”, “bliss”, “delight”, “pleasure”, “glee” and “joy” – what exactly is it that complements my vita activa and vita contemplativa to make my life feel whole? I think it is gaudium, joy – joy perhaps in the sense of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” which calls on us to celebrate life as a reality shared by all beings. Or maybe also joy in the sense of Nietzsche’s use of the term as an adjective in his famous book “Fröhliche Wissenschaft”, gaya scienza*: the lived ‘science’ of the artful, joyous celebration of life.
* Nietzsche and his 19th century contemporaries understood gaya scienza not as a label for some new, revolutionary type of scientific practice – it was well known that the term referred to a group of poets established in Toulouse, Provence in the early 14th century. This group had named themselves the Consistori de la Subregaya Companhia del Gai Saber; their declared mission was to revive the tradition of the gay, joyful Troubadours that had been disrupted by the 1209-29 crusades. The dogmatism of past, they believed, could be overcome by revitalizing the poetry of the Troubadours that had not yet been overshadowed by Christian dogma.