All right, great question from a listener to freedomain. Freedomain.com slash donate shop.fredombedom.com to get your shaggymer. Now, isn't the end goal of philosophy being happiness the same as hedonism? What a great question. You know, one thing I love about philosophy is that I've been doing it for 44 years,

and the most blindingly obvious and brilliant questions still emerge from you, the great listeners,

a very obvious challenge, a very obvious problem.

I wouldn't say that it ever particularly crossed my mind before, which, you know, could be

because I'm pretty.

All right.

So it's a great question.

So what is the difference between philosophical happiness and hedonism.

So clearly, I'm going to pretend like I'm explaining this to my daughter,

clearly, honey, clearly and obviously philosophical happiness is the things that I like.

Heedonism is all the things that other people like,

unless they happen to be the same things that I like,

in which case I will grant them the nomenclature of philosophical happiness. And then she will headbut me.

And, you know, who can blame her? Not I. Not I. It's the most grating thing in the family is we call him smuggins.

Oh, it's a magnificent. Oh my gosh. So it's a great question.

So first of all, we have to define what hedonism is. So hedonism is the pursuit of animal pleasures

or pursuit of pleasures that cost far more later on than they provide in the

present, which also be kind of addiction, right? Addiction is something that you have that has a

negative impact on your life that you don't stop doing, significant negative impact on your

life that you don't stop doing, and so on. Now, the animal

pleasures is having sex is pleasurable. And if a man or a woman pursues merely the physical

act of sex with no other considerations, that would be hedonistic. Heedonistic is disrespectful to our capacities as human beings.

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