Hedonism...

Hedonism is the philosophy that pleasure is the most important pursuit of mankind, and the only thing that is good for an individual. Hedonists, therefore, strive to maximize their total pleasure (the net of any pleasure less any pain or suffering). They believe that pleasure is the only good in life, and pain is the only evil, and our life's goal should be to maximize pleasure and minimize pain.

Psychological Hedonism is the view that humans are psychologically constructed in such a way that we exclusively desire pleasure. Ethical Hedonism, on the other hand, is the view that our fundamental moral obligation is to maximize pleasure or happiness. It is the normative claim that we should always act so as to produce our own pleasure.

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Hedonism

First published Tue Apr 20, 2004; substantive revision Thu Oct 17, 2013

The word ‘hedonism’ comes from the ancient Greek for ‘pleasure’. Psychological or motivational hedonism claims that only pleasure or pain motivates us. Ethical or evaluative hedonism claims that only pleasure has worth or value and only pain or displeasure has disvalue or the opposite of worth. Jeremy Bentham asserted both psychological and ethical hedonism with the first two sentences of his book An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation: “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain, and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do”. Debate about hedonism was a feature too of many centuries before Bentham, and this has also continued after him. Other key contributors to debate over hedonism include Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Aquinas, Butler, Hume, Mill, Nietzsche, Brentano, Sidgwick, Moore, Ross, Broad, Ryle and Chisholm.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hedonism/