Actual Freedom – Definitions

Hedonic:

anhedonically as contrasted to hedonically:

• [Dictionary Definition]: ‘hedonic: of, pertaining to, or involving pleasurable or painful sensations or feelings, considered as affects [emotions, moods]’. (Oxford Dictionary).

Hedonism:

Hedonic Tone:

An instinctual and thus affective hedonic attraction/ aversion discrimination underpins each and every feeling-thought-action which all feeling-beings manifest whenever ‘being’ itself (‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being) is present-to-itself as an affective/ psychic ‘presence’ within.

Viz.:

Put succinctly: every feeling-being’s experience or state of being – including that feeling-being’s emotions, passions, moods, sentiments and, thus, affectively-tinged and/or emotionally-driven thoughts – has hedonic tone (a degree of affective pleasantness or unpleasantness/ a degree of affective pleasure or displeasure).

For instance:

• [Prof. George Stout]: ‘When we wish to say that pleasure or displeasure belongs to this or that mental process, we may say that the process is pleasantly or unpleasantly toned. Hedonic-tone is a generic term for pleasure and the reverse, considered as belonging to this or that mental process. [...].

‘The hedonic tone of perception is determined by varying conditions. We may distinguish broadly the pleasure or displeasure which is directly due in the first instance to the perceptual process at the time of its occurrence, and that which arises from preformed associations. Whatever obstructs or disables perceptual process at the time of its occurrence is disagreeable; whatever favours or furthers it is agreeable. [...].

‘It is difficult to bring emotions, such as anger and fear, and sentiments, such as love and hate, completely under any other head [besides pleasure and displeasure]. Certainly, an emotion, like anger, involves some kind of cognition; but it cannot be said that the specific experience of being angry directly qualifies the nature of the presented object; in other words, this experience is not a presentation. So, too, anger has hedonic-tone, mostly of an unpleasant kind’.~ (from ‘A Manual of Psychology’ by Professor George Stout, first published 1899 by W. B. Clive, The University Tutorial Press, London).

As a matter of historical interest: the earliest record on the topic of hedonic-tone, which predates the above 1899 publication by millennia, is none other than what is known in the buddhavacana (as per the Theravādan Pali Canon) as ‘vedanā’ (approx. pron.: vay-duh-nar) or ‘vedanā-khandha’. According to Prof. James Baldwin (‘Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology’, 1905) it was Prof. Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) who first coined the term hedonic-tone (translated from German, ‘Gefühlston’; approx. pron.: gar-fools-torn).

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