Talk:Hedonism

Changes to the article

I'm thinking about implementing changes to this article with the hope of moving it in the direction of GA status. It currently has six unreferenced paragraphs and one maintenance tag "Over-quotation".

I believe the sections "History" and "Contemporary approaches" need some work. Besides the issue of unreferenced paragraphs, they currently lack information on various important theorists and critics, such as Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Sidgwick, Moore, and Nozick. It might also be worth mentioning Butler, Freud, Parfit, Singer, Feldman, and possibly Yang Zhu to include Chinese philosophy. At the same time, these sections go into too much detail on certain topics. For example, overview sources on hedonism, like [1], [2], and [3], typically don't mention Michel Onfray, David Pearce, and Victor Argonov, so dedicating a full subsection to each of them violates WP:PROPORTION. There is probably also excessive information on the Cyrenaics, like a full paragraph on Cyrenaic epistemology, which is not particularly relevant here. I think these sections need to be rewritten to better align with WP:SUMMARYSTYLE: they should be comprehensive by mentioning all the main positions but only give a concise characterization of each, leaving the details to child articles. It would probably be best to have a single section covering everything from ancient to contemporary instead of splitting the contemporary part into a separate main section.

Various smaller adjustments are needed but they can be addressed later since the ones mentioned so far will already involve a lot of work to implement. I was hoping to get some feedback on these ideas and possibly other suggestions. Phlsph7 (talk) 08:34, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I implemented the suggestions above. The remaining sections are in a better state but they would also benefit from some changes. There is redundancy since criticisms are discussed both within the sections on the different types of hedonism and in the later section "Criticism", like Moore's thought experiment about the beautiful world. Since each criticism usually targets one specific type, it makes more sense to discuss the criticisms in the section of the corresponding type rather than in a separate section.

Aesthetic hedonism is not as important as the other 3 main types, so its prominence should probably be reduced, maybe by shortening it to one paragraph without a separate main section. There are a few other minor types that should get one paragraph, like reflective hedonism, prudential hedonism, and the folk conception of hedonism.

The article has a section on pleasure as one of the basic concepts of hedonism. There are various other basic concepts that would deserve more attention like happiness, well-being, and eudaimonia, the hedonistic calculus, the paradox of hedonism, and asceticism/anti-hedonism. This could be addressed by having a main section "Basic concepts" and short subsections for each one. It would probably be best to start the article with a discussion of the types as the main topic and move the discussion of basic concepts after that.

Hedonism is related to various fields that could be mentioned towards the end of the article, like hedonics and hedonic psychology, religion, animal ethics, art and literature, and culture like consumerism, capitalism, and the sexual revolution. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:19, 18 October 2024 (UTC)