The Management of Pleasure

Abstract

Classical political economy never produced a theory of leisure and travel. However, it never tired of gnawing away at the question of pleasure. Both Hobbes (1651) in the Leviathan and Locke (1689) in the Essay on Human Understanding operated with a homo duplex model of desire. Man was presented as riven between the desire to gain pleasure and to avoid pain. In positing this as the State of Nature, both writers recognized that conflict is inevitable in human affairs. Both appealed to Reason to raise Man up from this low state of affairs. Hobbes argued that Reason should be used to check and oppose Nature by creating a sovereign state vested with powers of regulation and punishment. Locke, in a seminal contribution to English individualism, held that Reason must be employed to hammer out social contracts to obey the word of God and defend private property.¹