Welcome Max Duboff

Quote from Cassius

Here's another example I just noted from the signature line used by Elli, one of our members from Greece:

Should we tell her that that's not accurate, and that she should change it to:

Beauty and virtue and such are worthy of honor, if they bring tranquility, but if not then bid them farewell.

Hmm, no, I think there's still a misunderstanding. All pleasure is good, full stop.

When we deliberate (which happens quite frequently, of course), we need to figure out which pleasures to prioritize, and we do so based on the pleasure that makes for the best life. That's ataraxia (and aponia). Sometimes when Epicurus says "pleasure" he has in mind all pleasure; sometimes he's most interested in the highest pleasure.

Quote from wbernys

Quote from Cassius

with one side incorporating joy and delight along with tranquility into the wider concept of pleasure as all that is desirable,

This is a great summarization of my views, along with what I believe Epicurus believed.

Someone feeling perpetual joy or delight is not in any way inferior or superior to feeling constant Serenity or Tranquility. Both are equally Pleaseant. Kinetic and Katastematic pleasures are variations of pleasure. Pretty sure this is Austin's view and Gosling and Taylor's as well. They are variations of the same condition, Epicurus recognized this variation (Dissgreeing with Kolosky) but didn't consider it a huge deal.

This is why Tranquility is not the absolute goal, but any continuous Pleaseant state, whethe it be either constant Tranquility/Serenity or Joy/Delight.

Although I think practically Epicurus more so focused on what prevents tranquility when we rest (our fears and vices). But as he says in PD 10, if one removes these fears and vices by constant debauchery or joy, it's equally valid.

Do you agree Max DuBoff?

Display More

Ahh, no, I disagree, for a pretty simple reason: feeling perpetual joy or delight is quite consistent with having lots of fear and pain. So the pleasure isn't pure/unmixed. (The uses of this term are a little unclear, but it does seem to play a role.)

If, for the sake of argument, someone could just have kinetic pleasure all the time, it's a good question whether that'd be desirable; I think yes (based on KD 10). But that's not the world we live in, because as a matter of fact kinetic pleasures do bring fears and pains. So maybe this is a theoretical/actual world dispute.

Quote from Cassius

... there being no mystery to setting out total absence of pain / perfect pleasure as the theoretical goal, as that conclusion is clearly and logically compelled by the two feelings doctrine, in the same way that the observation that everything in the universe is ultimately composed of bodies and space rules out the presence of supernatural gods.

Ahh, but Epicurus seems to be saying that a blessed life is attainable, and a blessed life is marked by the absence of pain. He's not merely saying that the absence of pain is a goal that we'll never reach (Men. 135 seems pretty clear on this). So we need to explain how, whatever his understanding of the absence of pain/blessed life is, real people can reach it.

Quote from Godfrey

Regarding pantelēs: I'm quite ignorant of the nuances of Greek (not just the nuances, most of it) but I see from Nate Bartman's compilation of PD translations that translations of PD21 are fairly evenly divided by translating it as perfect and as complete. In my mind there's a significant difference between these two words, at least in English. "Perfect" seems to have platonic connotations of an ideal state, a state that doesn't empirically exist. "Complete," on the other hand, implies something that one can judge for oneself. I'm curious what the thoughts of those with knowledge of the Greek make of this....

Yes, both "perfect" and "complete" are good translations. Neither is better supported by the Greek. The reason I use "perfect" is because David Sedley understands "complete" in a temporal sense, i.e., as a complete temporally extended life. I think (agreeing with Rosenbaum and Mitsis) that Epicurean blessedness is complete at every moment.

As to your other points, a couple notes:

DL 10.136 indicates that there are mental katastematic, mental kinetic, bodily katastematic, and bodily kinetic pleasures. DL 10.137 indicates that the mental ones are better (within each category).

I don't think there's any way for katastematic pleasure to have intensity, because if so it couldn't be perfect at every moment (we could always imagine that it could be a bit more intense).

Quote from Don

Agreed. I like your approach. I may ramble here, but I'll try and respond to your points and see where we may differ and where it may end up we have the same interpretation but different words. Possibly?

Yes, it's been a great thread!

Ok, a few responses to your points:

Yes, pleasure for Epicurus is the summum bonum in terms of explaining all actions--everything we do points to pleasure. That part is totally fine, and Cicero is right when he attributes that claim to Epicurus.

The reason to understand "goal of nature" as katastematic pleasure is that otherwise it wouldn't be helpful at all. There are all kinds of pleasures that lead to lots of pain, so someone who looks only to pleasure won't be able to live well. To actually live well, you need to look to pleasure with an eye to minimizing pain--which is seeking katastematic pleasure. Plus, in Men. 131 he quite clearly says "pleasure is the goal" indicates katastematic pleasure, and what really seems to be katastematic pleasure is the "goal of a blessed life" in Men. 128.

Yeah, when I say tranquility or ataraxia I don't mean to exclude aponia. Epicurus clearly thinks they go together (though this creates problems for him). My speculative view is that aponia is a problem for ataraxia because bodily pain creates justified fear about the future, which is painful and thereby interrupts ataraxia. But the relationship between aponia and ataraxia is pretty vexed; a lot depends on your interpretation of KD 18 and of Plutarch, Non Posse 1089d. I have an unpublished paper dealing with some of these issues but not giving a full account of the problem.

The point about ice cream is that, if (this is impossible, but for the sake of argument) ice cream never started causing pain if we ate too much, it'd be good forever, always good to have more of it. And Epicurus thinks that that kind of good can't be the foundation for a blessed life. It's not clear why.

(By the way, unrelatedly, I usually use KD for Key Doctrines/Kuriai Doxai because I like that it's the same acronym in English and Greek; but I was using PD upthread and that's totally cool too. So I might just flit between them.)

Quote from Cassius

Just FYI as to Emily Austin, footnote 8 from Chapter 4 of Living For Pleasure

Ahh, good, thanks! Yeah that's quite different from my view. (I'm also not sure it's exactly Arenson's view, because she thinks any painless non-restorative pleasure is katastematic, e.g., looking at a beautiful sunset. I'm also not sure it's the best guide to G&T's view, because for them kinetic and katastematic pleasure are different ways of describing things, so the painlessness part is what makes it katastematic. But I'd have to look back at them. I generally deemphasize the restoration/variation material; but there's certainly a good argument for foregrounding it, as Arenson does.)

Quote from Cassius

Thanks for the translation comment Don. The PD, on any translation, says that of all the things wisdom prepares or provides toward a blessed life, friendship is by far the greatest. Not a good and useful means among equally-good means — the single greatest one.

Friendship is, by Maxs's account, additive in exactly the way ice cream and a fine view of the sky are additive. More trust, more years, more depth is always better, other things being equal. If additive goods are structurally barred from contributing to a "perfect" or "complete" life, and only katastematic pleasure can clear that bar, I don't see why wisdom would single out an additive good as its single greatest tool for reaching blessedness. Does "additive" really disqualify a good from being central to the blessed life, or doesn't it?

Ahh, interesting, No, I'd say the most important thing about friendship is that it's an insurance policy against hardship, so it allows us not to be afraid about the future. It directly contributes to katastematic pleasure by removing fear for the future. Pleasant experiences with friends are nice in and of themselves, and they contribute to blessedness by providing material for antiparatattesthai (pain management).

Quote from Cassius

Here are several specific questions which as I see it call for addressing in order to see the implications of what Max is advocating:

1. Where is the textual basis for "some goods don't contribute to blessedness"? Is there a passage where Epicurus says a specific pleasure fails to count toward the blessed life merely because it is gradable/additive?
2. As Don has asked, why does the Letter to Menoeceus 128 name "health of the body AND tranquility of the mind" jointly as the goal, if tranquility alone confers blessedness?
3. Does the "additive, therefore excluded from blessedness" rule apply to friendship? PD27 says friendship is the greatest of "all the things which wisdom acquires to produce the blessedness of the complete life." Friendship is not katastematic — more friends, deeper friendship, would seem "additive" by Max's own logic. So: does friendship confer blessedness (per PD27) or not (per Max's exclusion rule)? If friendship only confers blessedness instrumentally, by producing tranquility, why does PD27 say "produces the blessedness," not "protects tranquility"?
4. Would a tranquil person with no friends, no joys, no positive pleasures — just an undisturbed, empty mind — count as having achieved the blessed life in full?
5. What would Max tell someone to do differently if someone were to accept Max's contention and prioritize tranquility over pleasure? In a concrete choice between two options, would "refer each of your actions to the goal of nature" (which Max alleges to be tranquility) ever recommend something different from "weigh total pleasure against total pain under a simple and straightforward ordinary calculation"?

Thanks, Cassius! Great questions:

1) KD 20, where the flesh's understanding of pleasure is deemed incorrect for a good life. Also Men. 128 is good evidence--after describing what must be katastematic pleasure, he says "the animal is not in a position to go after some need nor to seek something else to complete the good of the body and the soul." Plus I think this is clear from KD 3.

2) This was a misunderstanding which I addressed elsewhere--ataraxia and aponia go together, Epicurus thinks. But the evidence on this is conflicted, because DL 10.136 says mental pleasures are better than bodily ones, and KD 18 seems to indicate that bodily katastematic pleasure is necessary but not sufficient for mental katastematic pleasure. (And Non Posse 1089d, which probably quotes Epicurus's On the Goal, seems similar to KD 18 but is pretty unclear.)

3) Friendship contributes to blessedness, but not simply through pleasant experiences (just addressed that in last reply).

4) As I understand Epicurus: Yes in theory, but this could never actually happen. (Purinton addresses this question interestingly in his 1993 paper, as you probably know. Not saying I agree with him, but he raises and answers the question most clearly in the literature.)

5) I don't understand how someone could "weigh total pleasure against total pain under a simple and straightforward ordinary calculation"--because what weight would we assign to katastematic pleasure in relation to kinetic pleasure? It has no numerical value. (Now, you might disagree if you go for a G&T/Nikolsky position; but even if you agree with them, it's not clear how to decide between pleasures that are both kinetic and katastematic and those that are just kinetic; so we still need to prioritize katastematic.)

Quote from Cassius

Quote from Kalosyni

By contrast, ataraxia is a highly active, unshakeable state of mental resilience.

I agree with your contention, but I also think this is exactly what is in dispute. Neither of these terms have readily-understandable meanings in English beyond "calmness" at best.

Definitely appreciate your points a lot, Kalosyni, and I think a lot of what you're saying is just about what connotations there are in English. But Cassius is right: we need to have specialized understandings of words in mind when we're approaching Epicurus (not that they're unrelated to the plain meanings of words--they're not--but the plain meanings don't exhaust what they mean to Epicurus; and he does this quite clearly in Men. 131).

Quote from Don

Quote from Cassius

We're packing a lot into this conversaton already

LOL Ya think so?

We have to be careful and not conflate pleasures with desires. There are not necessary, natural, and empty pleasures. There are necessary, natural, and empty desires.

Anything that brings pleasure is good, but some pleasures are not worthy to be chosen due to the pain they bring in their wake.

100% agree with this, Don.

Also, in response to Pacatus, yes, pleasures/pain (i.e., pathē in the epistemological sense) are closely linked to sense-perceptions (aisthēseis). That has to be true even for katastematic pleasures.

Quote from Max DuBoff

I don't think there's any way for katastematic pleasure to have intensity, because if so it couldn't be perfect at every moment (we could always imagine that it could be a bit more intense

This is an intriguing comment!

A pleasure with no intensity would, to me, describe a neutral state, which of course doesn't exist for Epicurus in the pleasure/pain relationship. This is why I prefer "complete" to "perfect". To my understanding a pleasure or pain requires all three components of intensity, location and duration: if any one of these doesn't apply, how can a pleasure or pain be experienced? Further, to my way of thinking a katastematic pleasure can vary in intensity, say from contentment to joy.

On a related note, I'm not clear as to what constitutes a bodily katastematic pleasure. Or possibly any katastematic pleasure.... It would seem to me to be a matter of duration, of being "lasting". This gets into the squishy question of what is meant by "lasting". Eternal? Being around longer than most pleasures? Persisting regardless of any external circumstances or new information?

Being now a "senior citizen", it's become quite apparent to me that all bodily pleasures and pains come and go. This is the lens through which I view bodily katastematic feelings with suspicion, but of course it may have nothing to do with that I suppose. Does it have to to with a material world in which everything is ultimately physical?