Picture a hedonist and you probably imagine a wild party and reckless short-term thrills, what philosophers call folk hedonism. But across ancient Greek and Indian texts, evolutionary biology, behavioral economics, and positive psychology, hedonism is a comprehensive framework for understanding human motivation, value, and the biological machinery driving our behavior. This episode strips away the Vegas-weekend stereotype to explore one of philosophy's most misunderstood ideas.

We walk through the three major branches: psychological hedonism, with Hobbes, Freud's pleasure and reality principles, and the Darwinian dopamine pathway; axiological hedonism, from Bentham's felicific calculus to Mill's higher and lower pleasures, challenged by G.E. Moore's two worlds and Robert Nozick's experience machine; and ethical hedonism, split between the e ...