The utilitarian philosopher Henry Sidgwick was first to note in The Methods of Ethics that the paradox of hedonism is that pleasure cannot be acquired directly.
[2]Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself.The more a man tries to demonstrate his sexual potency or a woman her ability to experience orgasm, the less they are able to succeed.
Pleasure is, and must remain, a side-effect or by-product, and is destroyed and spoiled to the degree to which it is made a goal in itself.
Henry Sidgwick comments on such frustration after a discussion of self-love in the above-mentioned work: I should not, however, infer from this that the pursuit of pleasure is necessarily self-defeating and futile; but merely that the principle of Egoistic Hedonism, when applied with a due knowledge of the laws of human nature, is practically self-limiting; i.e., that a rational method of attaining the end at which it aims requires that we should to some extent put it out of sight and not directly aim at it.
Evolutionary theory explains that humans evolved through natural selection and follow genetic imperatives that seek to maximize reproduction,[13] not happiness.
[citation needed] David Pearce argues in his treatise The Hedonistic Imperative that humans might be able to use genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and neuroscience to eliminate suffering in all human life and allow for peak levels of happiness and pleasure that are currently unimaginable.
[citation needed] Competing philosophies seek to balance hedonism with good acts and intentions, thus "earning" the pleasure.