Strong sensations, energetic actions: the idea of pain as a violent motion from the Cyrenaics to Diderot

Abstract

This article discusses the history of the idea of pain understood as violent motion. The Cyrenaics seem to have been the first to propose pleasure as a smooth motion and pain as rough motion. Still in Antiquity, this notion is developed with the corpuscular physics of Epicurus. In the 17th century, Epicurean atomism will be reconsidered by Gassendi, and it will be popular in the 18th century, especially in the work of materialist authors such as Diderot and d'Holbach. This question seems better developed in Diderot's work, but we find a more systematic basis in both d'Holbach and Buffon. The aim of this article is to examine the relationship between rough motion and strong sensations, which culminate, in the 18th century, in an apology of great passions as the only ones capable of leading to energetic actions, that is, to great actions.