Chapter VIII: "Tanto Gusto"

"Nothing is Bad JUST because you feel well doing it"... I really find this quote very telling of what is discussed in this chapter, and I think it is like that... I mean, many times we find people saying that something is bad or that we cannot do this or that just because it's "badly" seen by other people...Now, the question is: Is something bad just because someone else says so? What a question! With all this we are going an step further since we are talking about what is Good or Bad (ethically speaking)... Well, I think that the only way to answer this question is to see if what we want to do is something that will help us to live the Human Life we want to live or if is goes against ourselves or someone else... and if it does go against one of the keys of a human life we can say that it is something bad... There is nothing bad in doing something for pleasure... the only problem or the only reason why we tend to reject anything that gives us pleasure is because of what Savater calls the oldest fear of the human being: Our Fear of Pleasure...the fact is that we don't have to be afraid of it but to be aware that as well as it happens with everything else we have to be very careful in order to avoid going into extremes...As long as it doesn't go against ourselves, our lives or someone else's life any pleasure will be (ethically) bad...The idea is that if you are hurting someone else or making him/her feeling like they are not humans your pleasure will automatically stop being something good (at least from the ethical point of view). We don't have to forget that the only thing we can get from any pleasure is joy...and if we happen to lose it as a consequence of some pleasure we have we may be doing wrong and not acting according to what we really want... Do you remember? Yes, the difference between what I think I want and what I really want... So, don't lie to ourselves! If we stop being happy by doing something we believe gives us pleasure, we will have to realise that that is not actually a pleasure simply because for it to be so it has to make us feel well, happy, joyful...
So, now, our job will be to be able to put pleasure to the service of joy and happiness, something that won't be an easy task at all but it is not impossible either...