Q&A: Additional Pleasure
Additional Pleasure
Question
Hello Rabbi,
On the Sabbath a question came up for us in the yeshiva: is there a good deed in adding pleasure to someone’s life?
That is, suppose there is a person who has never in his life felt the pleasantness of a cigarette, and has never even heard that cigarettes add pleasure. And you, out of your great kindness, gave him cigarettes—is that a good deed? (Let us set aside the health consequences of using them.)
The doubt is this: after all, a good deed is meant to fill a lack. But creating an entity is not a good deed (or a bad one), since had you not created it, it would have remained in nonexistence…. So is creating a new pleasure considered an addition to the person, or an actual creation?
The question can also be asked in another sense—for example, if someone was blind from birth, is there a good deed in curing him? (Let us assume he has never heard of people who can see, or of a reality of sight that he could envy.)
Answer
I don’t really understand the question. Clearly it benefits him. True, if he hasn’t heard of it then he doesn’t feel bad without it, but certainly when he has it he will feel better. Benefiting someone is not only preventing a bad feeling, but also adding a good feeling.
Discussion on Answer
Ask him whether it’s worth the suffering of the surgery.
And what if, say, someone is disgusted by food X, and I perform surgery on him so that he’ll enjoy food X?