_That which pleases the senses in sensation is_ PLEASANT. Here the
opportunity presents itself of censuring a very common confusion of
the double sense which the word sensation can have, and of calling
attention to it. All satisfaction (it is said or thought) is itself
sensation (of a pleasure). Consequently everything that pleases is
pleasant because it pleases (and according to its different degrees
or its relations to other pleasant sensations it is _agreeable_,
_lovely_, _delightful_, _enjoyable_, etc.). But if this be admitted,
then impressions of Sense which determine the inclination, fundamental
propositions of Reason which determine the Will, mere reflective forms
of intuition which determine the Judgement, are quite the same, as
regards the effect upon the feeling of pleasure. For this would be
pleasantness in the sensation of one’s state, and since in the end all
the operations of our faculties must issue in the practical and unite
in it as their goal, we could suppose no other way of estimating things
and their worth than that which consists in the gratification that
they promise. It is of no consequence at all how this is attained, and
since then the choice of means alone could make a difference, men could
indeed blame one another for stupidity and indiscretion, but never for
baseness and wickedness. For all, each according to his own way of
seeing things, seek one goal, that is, gratification.
If a determination of the feeling of pleasure or pain is called
sensation, this expression signifies something quite different from
what I mean when I call the representation of a thing (by sense, as a
receptivity belonging to the cognitive faculty) sensation. For in the
latter case the representation is referred to the Object, in the former
simply to the subject, and is available for no cognition whatever, not
even for that by which the subject _cognises_ itself.
In the above elucidation we understand by the word sensation,
an objective representation of sense; and in order to avoid
misinterpretation, we shall call that, which must always remain merely
subjective and can constitute absolutely no representation of an
object, by the ordinary term “feeling.” The green colour of the meadows
belongs to _objective_ sensation, as a perception of an object of
sense; the pleasantness of this belongs to _subjective_ sensation by
which no object is represented, _i.e._ to feeling, by which the object
is considered as an Object of satisfaction (which does not furnish a
cognition of it).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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