“Pleasure is what makes us human,” or so a bold new TV advert tells us. Well, then, AI doesn’t make the cut. Isn’t Fido, though, still a candidate? Not so. While the dog may be man’s best friend, anyone whose best friend is a dog needs help, and from a real human being.

Still, pleasure is worth pondering. John Stuart Mill, for example, thinks highly of it. In his Utilitarianism he opines that “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” Then, to clarify this principle, he specifies that “by happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure.” That said, he notes that not all pleasures are equal. Indeed, “it is better to be a human being dissatisfied, than a pig satisfied.”

Human beings, unlike pigs, raise questions. Sometimes the questions are difficult, and their answers are elusive. When this happens, we can be dissatisfied. Still, when the going gets tough, resolute minds (like Socrates) keep asking their questions. So, Socrates might well ask just what it is about something or someone that gives rise to pleasure. What causes pleasure?

As it stands, though, that question is too broad. Better to ask what causes pleasure for whom. After all, what causes pleasure for the Marquis de Sade is one thing, while what causes pleasure for Mother Teresa is quite another. The pleasure of the sadist comes with the experience of evil; the pleasure of the saint comes with the experience of the good. These experiences are strikingly different. So, too, are their pleasures.

Given the heterogeneity of pleasure, we might venture to say that from their pleasures we can come to know the persons who seek them. Here’s a test case. Does Mr. Smith take pleasure in wine, women, and song—curated with Epicurean care? Does he take keen pleasure in the approval of his neighbors, his upward mobility, and in being an all-around decent fellow? Is “feeling comfortable (or not)” the chief gauge of his sensibility? If he answers “yes” to such questions, then Mr. Smith is thoroughly bourgeois!

In his defense, Mr. Smith might argue, with some force, that it’s his own business and no one else’s that he lives his life as he does. He’s not imposing his lifestyle on anyone else. He’s not an extremist, whether of the left or the right. He’s not a religious zealot. Rather, he’s a liberal in the best sense: his motto is “live and let live.” Plus, he’s a reliable consumer, the very sort that makes the economy work.

But Smith’s self-approval wouldn’t count for much with Jacques Maritain. In his The Person and the Common Good, Maritain charges that the “bourgeois individualism” which aims “to ground everything in the unchecked initiative of the individual, conceived as a little God, and the absolute liberty of property, business and pleasure, inevitably ends in statism.” In its destruction of community, individualism invites totalitarianism.

Nor does bourgeois individualism favor religious freedom. At best, as Maritain sees it, the bourgeois mind instrumentalizes religion “as a police force to watch over property, or as a bank where anyone could be insured, while making money here below, against the undiscovered risks of the hereafter—after all, one never knows!”

Simone Weil, another implacable foe of tyranny, would also reject Smith’s brand of self-approval. She would instead charge him and his ilk with self-delusion, with living in a hedonist’s bubble. In her Notebooks she comments, “A test of what is real is that it is hard and tough. Joys are found in it and not pleasure.”

In following the crucified Christ, the Christian seeks joy. But it’s not, we know, to be found in the pursuit of pleasure or in the comfort of self-approval. The Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) illustrates the pitiable pleasure of sin and the surpassing joy of forgiveness, both bestowed and received. Remember that the son, having wasted his inheritance, “longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.” He resolved to return home to confess “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” This he did, “but while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.” With such joy there comes a duty of delight. So “the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate.”

The good news is that we, too, have such a Father.