The pursuit of pleasure

Abstract

The author identifies some major forms of pleasure - sex, food, drugs, pets, plants, power and more - and explores their variations now and in the past. Pleasure, says Tiger, is not a luxury but an evolutionary entitlement that deserves to be taken seriously. He tackles a variety of complex and larger issues, such as the historic link between religion, public policy and the control of pleasure and the fact that some pleasures reflect our hunter-gatherer pasts - for example, the way we still respond to the warmth, physical and psychological, of a fire. But he also looks at the lighter side of pleasure and what it means, from a taste for barbecue to the sensual enjoyment of a kiss.