"The theory of pleasure" has its unspoken starting point in Shakespeare's problematic Hamlet. The enormous problem that the Italian poet and philosopher deals with is the one posed by the Shakespearean hero: "to be or not to be?" A problem that he himself reformulates as follows: since life is an evil, why should anyone live? However, the question is not rhetorical, it is not an answer to Hamlet's question, in the sense of choosing suicide. The driving force of man and every living organism is self-love, therefore the pursuit of absolute, eternal and infinite happiness, which consists of pleasure, enjoyment, and joy. However, man cannot experience eternal and infinite enjoyment, hence his unhappiness, the tragic character of life, which cannot have what it primarily desires, what constitutes its ultimate purpose. Leopardi seeks absolute, eternal and infinite enjoyment and happiness on earth, not in the Christian heaven. His pessimism is not methodical but substantial and absolute. The so-called enjoyment on earth is negative, it is simply the temporary cessation of pain, which stems from the absence of absolute happiness...

H.P. Nikoloudis