Higher and Lower Pleasures

John Stuart Mill tried to rescue hedonism by arguing that pleasures differ in quality, not just quantity. The pleasure of reading philosophy is qualitatively different from the pleasure of eating cake — and Mill claimed anyone who has experienced both would choose the intellectual pleasure.

Mill's famous line: "It is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied." But critics point out that ranking pleasures by quality smuggles in a non-hedonistic value judgment. If you need something beyond pleasure to rank pleasures, then pleasure alone is not doing the work.