natural, that is, in any obvious way). Broadly speaking, we are talking
about things that‘please us’, which is not the same as giving us a parti-
cular bodily sensation. Indeed, some activities in which we take pleasure
might be thought to be precisely the opposite of natural, bodily plea-
sure–i.e. they might be harmful, even painful.
This brings us to entertainment, which, I suggest, has two features.
First, an entertainment is something the specific and primary purpose of
which is to bring pleasure to those involved (usually in the second sense,
above). One might take pleasure (in the second sense) in all sorts of
things that have some completely different purpose. If I enjoy my walk to
work, the walk is a pleasure but not an entertainment. Note, however,
that an entertainment need not (and probably doesn’t) bring pleasure to
all concerned: people who organise or perform at‘entertainments’may
find them unpleasant and tiresome, and may just do so for the money; a
sporting event may be pleasurable for the crowd, but that’s probably not
how the players on the losing team would describe it. Second, an enter-
tainment is something that has been organised, planned or structured; it
has something non-spontaneous about it. So although the unplanned,
unprompted stroll after dinner might have pleasure as its object, it isn’t
an entertainment; but the organised walking-tour is. Theatre looks plea-
surable in the second sense, but not thefirst; therefore, when I speak of
‘pleasure’, I mean this second sense of pleasure, unless otherwise stated.
(Of course, not everybodyfinds theatre pleasurable and, sadly, not every
performance is pleasurable.) And it looks very much like an entertainment,
as defined.
In fact, Rousseau’s argument is against theatre as entertainment, but
not as pleasure. He notes that humans have a short life span and therefore
that our time is precious. In the context of such a brief life, we must
make use of those moments that we have:‘every useless amusement is an
evil.’^7 To this, Rousseau adds that going to the theatre must necessarily
replace some other activity; he considers the duties of‘a father, a son, a
husband, a citizen’more natural and therefore more fulfilling than the
artificial pleasures of the theatre. Man’s natural pleasures‘are born of his
labours, his relations, and his needs’.^8 Theatre is bad, because unnatural–
that is, presumably, unrelated to man’s labours, relations and needs.
Looking back to our distinction between pleasure as sensation and pleasure
in general, it’s clear that Rousseau doesn’t object to pleasure as a sensation,
nor to taking pleasure in certain things. Rousseau is not therefore object-
ing to pleasure as such, but rather to entertainment as such. Pleasure can
and should accompany duty; so, when there’s duty to be done, why create
useless amusements and diversions?
Actually, Rousseau’s attack on theatre (as entertainment) is a little more
complicated than that: a pleasurable but inherently useless entertainment
A school of morals? 103