How to get your ethically sourced pleasure

Pleasure is a dirty word.
I mean this in two ways. First are the connotations or associations of the word. If a colleague asked you, “How much pleasure have you had this morning?” you might fire off an email to HR. If you saw the title “Learning to find pleasure,” or “Enjoy more pleasure,” you’d probably expect it to be in the roped-off section of the bookshop. Pleasure is frequently associated with the erotic. But second, pleasure is a dirty word because, across a variety of religious traditions and over several millennia of philosophical thought, “pleasure” has often been seen as base: vulgar, crude, and animalistic. Those who seek pleasure are no better than pigs rutting and scoffing in the mud.
In this week’s Mini Philosophy interview, I spoke with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek, who has literally written the book on pleasure: The Philosophy of Pleasure: An Introduction. De Lazari-Radek is a hedonist, which means she thinks that the only good in life is pleasure and