Przyjemność i radość. Recenzja: Magdalena Płotka, Tomasz z Akwinu. O przyjemności, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UKSW, Warszawa 2021, ss. 193

Magdalena Płotka, known for numerous publications regarding the philosophical thought of the medieval ages, this time analyses the matter of pleasure in the texts of Aquinas. The book is an extensive study of this topic and the Author herself attempts to show the referred matter in an organised way, with a coherent language, quoting a various bibliography of the subject (for the most part in English-language). The discussed book consists of: the introduction, particular chapters which are seven in numbers, the ending and practical appendices such as the index of abbreviations, bibliography and the index of names. The first chapter titled Przyjemność i jej postacie (Pleasure and Its Shapes), contains the preliminary statements which are further developed in details in the following chapters. At first, the Latin terms which are employed by Aquinas when he speaks of pleasure are enumerated. In the second chapter Magdalena Płotka analyses the topic of pleasure as feeling. Above all she speaks of feelings of the appetitive faculty and then she turns to the comparative study of pleasure and joy. The purpose of this comparison is to answer the question whether we may classify them – pleasure and joy – as feelings. Next, the third chapter, titled: Formalno-materialna struktura przyjemności (Formal-material structure of pleasure) is dedicated to a comparative study between pleasure spiritual and corporeal. In the fourth chapter we find issues regarding the reason and purpose (aim) of pleasure. The fifth chapter offers study on the moral context of pleasure. In this chapter there are included such topics as eutrapelia and sexual pleasure. In the sixth chapter the Author speaks of issues regarding the aesthetic dimension of pleasure. It poses a question whether beauty can be a source of pleasure and in what way. The last, seventh chapter, concerns the topic of pleasure which is the participation of the saved. Thereby the entire domain of responses of human appetitive faculty has been explained, encompassing also the whole human compositum including human condition after death.