Cuddling before, after, or during sleeping is probably one of the most enjoyable things that not just humans, but all animals can do. Co-sleeping is a source of bonding because it requires us to trust another at a time of great vulnerability: when we sleep, we are mostly unconscious, defenseless. That’s why sharing a bed for sleeping still signals an important stage in a loving relationship, even in a relatively sexually promiscuous era like ours. Sleeping together is also, like our bedtime routines, replete with delicate joyful pleasures: we feel another person’s soft contours against our bodies; we smell their scent; we hear their breathing, becoming increasingly regular as they fall asleep. (Surely, co-sleeping is not always pleasant if our loved one snores! But that a valuable activity doesn’t always go perfectly doesn’t detract from its value when it goes well.) Even when we sleep alone or when we don’t have a complex bedtime routine, though, there may be pleasure in sleeping itself. Sleeping is not just complete unconsciousness. In the moments just before falling asleep, we experience a fascinating phenomenology of evanescent images and transient sounds, fragments of thoughts, memories, and emotions—an epilogue to the day, and a prelude to dreaming, which can be a source
of self-knowledge even when it's not pleasant. Waking up, we can not only experience, once again, peculiar joys, such as the warmth under the covers, the fragrance of brewed coffee, birds welcoming the new day with their songs, but we are also able to start anew. No matter what happened yesterday, a new day gives us a chance to do better, to be better. The natural world is full of such transitions, of beginnings and endings: there is a beauty that stems from this diversity, from the passage of seasons, from the alternation of day and night. There are some who seek to eliminate the need for sleep, and who believe humans should transcend their biological, natural limitations. But I, with many other philosophers, think our physical and emotional vulnerability shapes our values. Human goodness stems from the fact that it’s fragile. Beauty and love are so precious in our world because they are unavoidably ephemeral. Sleeping connects us with this truth, with the inescapability of the reality that we are not machines, which can be kept plugged in and constantly running. We are animals, and like all animals we need to sleep. As we do so, we live within the rhythms of the planet that we inhabit, we accept our vulnerability and share it with others, and we embrace vital pleasures, never-ending tiny joys.
Portrait
S ara Protasi is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Puget Sound. She completed her postgraduate studies at Yale University and the University of Bologna, and received her BA from La Sapienza University in Rome. Her work focuses mainly on moral psychology and the philosophy of emotions, with research interests in aesthetics, disability philosophy and pedagogy. At Puget Sound, she teaches a wide variety of courses, some of which lie outside her research field, including ancient Greek philosophy and the philosophy of cinema; she has received the university’s President’s Excellence in Teaching Award and a Bartanen Faculty Research Award. In addition to several articles, she is the author of The Philosophy of Envy (Cambridge, 2021), which won the American Philosophical Association’s Joseph B Gittler Award, and the editor of The Moral Psychology of Envy (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022). She is currently working on two book projects, one on the value of sleep and the other on courage.
Sara likes to address a wide audience; she has been interviewed for radio programmes, podcasts, magazines and journals, and has published popular science essays in Aeon, The Institute of Art and Ideas and The Prindle Post. She attaches great importance to mentoring and the flourishing of a just and benevolent philosophical community. She co-parents two remarkable children. In her free time, she is a passionate dancer with a solid background and stage experience in classical, modern and contemporary dance.
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ELITENESS 2026 | Focus
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