Samo Tomsic: The Measure of Pleasure? Aristotle, Smith, Freud

Ever since Aristotle, political philosophy was tormented by the question, whether pleasure, and more generally libidinal economy, allows the construction of just political-economic orders and stable social relations.

In modernity this problem at first seemed to be solved. Economic liberalism argued that egoistic private interests and social justice were inseparably intertwined and that capitalism unified libidinal and political economy in the best possible manner. But the political-economic panorama soon turned out significantly more complex and contradictory; an insight to which Marx?s critique of political economy and Freud?s psychoanalysis significantly contributed. They pointed out a crucial problem, which concerns the contradictory nature of systemic force that they both called ?drive? (Trieb). >From this viewpoint, all social and subjective reality seems to be structured around a fundamental non-relation, which is impossible to overcome - an insight that classical political thought desperately wanted to disavow. After examining the paradigmatic shift in theories of pleasure between pre-modernity and modernity, the presentation will turn toward the problem of un-measure and non-relation that libidinal and social economy inevitably contain, and which obtains the most disastrous expression in the moments of economic crisis.