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WHATEVER WOULD P.G. WODEHOUSE HAVE SAID?

Anthony Gottlieb, who wrote on hedonism in this month's Intelligent Life magazine, enjoys an obituary but wonders whether "Wodehouseian" is quite the word for an English aristocrat who lived neither wisely nor well ...

From our arts blog, MOREOVER

THE justly famous obituaries published in Britain’s Daily Telegraph--of which there are several anthologies, including volumes devoted to “Rogues”, “Eccentric Lives” and “Heroes and Adventurers”--regularly celebrate the lives of those who seem to have inhabited worlds that vanished long before they vanished themselves. Last week’s tribute, if that is the word, to Lord Michael Pratt, described him as “one of the last Wodehouseian figures to inhabit London's clubland”, and noted that “he will also be remembered as an unabashed snob and social interloper on a grand scale.”

The epithet “Wodehousian” is raising eyebrows, in this online newsgroup and perhaps in the more literary corners of clubland itself. The Telegraph reported that the late Lord Michael was ejected from a London club (ironically, it is called “Pratt’s”) following “a spectacular altercation with a waitress.” Do the sunny novels of P.G. Wodehouse--home to Jeeves, Bertie Wooster, the gentle Lord Emsworth and his prize pig--really have room for such an unpleasant character? Actually, yes.
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THE PURSUIT OF PLEASURE IS A COMPLICATED BUSINESS

The Greek philosopher Epicurus has been a victim of muck-raking and slander for more than two thousand years. Anthony Gottlieb sets the record straight, and resurrects some ancient advice on the good life ...

From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, September 2007

WHERE IS is a hedonist to look for his heroes? Not to the religious traditions of the East, to be sure: they lack enthusiasm for the illusory pleasures of this world. The Buddha may have rejected the stony path of asceticism, but he was keener on eliminating desires than on satisfying them. Islam and Christianity are not much help either. They are more interested in pleasing God than in pleasing man. Judaism has managed a happier compromise with the ways of the world. Yet it too, like the other monotheisms, keeps a wary eye open for recriminations from above.

None of the greatest Western philosophers has produced a paean to pleasure that can serve as much of a guide for today’s enlightened hedonist. Philosophers tend to be ruminative, cerebral and cautious. To expect to find a hedonist at work in the groves of academe is rather like expecting to find a vegetarian at work in a slaughter-house.

Thus Kant preached a stern gospel of dutifulness, and Plato’s pleasures were unstintingly abstract and intellectual. A good Platonist would rather contemplate the perfect meal than eat it.
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