Opening Discussion of Kelly Arenson's "Health And Hedonism In Plato And Epicurus"

Amazon description: This book links Plato and Epicurus, two of the most prominent ethicists in the history of philosophy, exploring how Platonic material lays the conceptual groundwork for Epicurean hedonism. It argues that, despite their significant philosophical differences, Plato and Epicurus both conceptualize pleasure in terms of the health and harmony of the human body and soul. It turns to two crucial but underexplored sources for understanding Epicurean pleasure: Plato's treatment of psychological health and pleasure in the Republic, and his physiological account of bodily harmony, pleasure, and pain in the Philebus.

Kelly Arenson shows first that, by means of his mildly hedonistic and sometimes overtly anti-hedonist approaches, Plato sets the agenda for future discussions in antiquity of the nature of pleasure and its role in the good life. She then sets Epicurus' hedonism against the backdrop of Plato's ontological and ethical assessments of pleasure, revealing a trend in antiquity to understand pleasure and pain in terms of the replenishment and maintenance of an organism's healthy functioning.

I am still in the process of reading this book but I have added it to the "recommended" section along with the DeWitt and Austin books for several reasons:

1. Generally, she takes a modified "Gosling & Taylor" approach and does not read "kinetic pleasure" out off the goal of Epicurean philosophy.

2. More specifically, these two paragraphs quoted below are a compelling argument against anyone who wants to argue that the Epicurean goal is "health" rather than pleasure. This is an excellent point and observation - I'd put it on par in terms of insight with Emily Austin's suggestion in Chapter 22 of Living For Pleasure that Lucretius likely intended to end Book Six of his poem with additional material from Thucydides. In what I am about to quote Arenson raises a point that is of even greater practical importance.

I have added the underlines to emphasize the issue.

Quote from Kelly Arenson - Health and Hedonism In Plato And Epicurus - p 161

Given that the Epicureans stress how important health and the awareness of it is to happiness, one lingering question is why they do not identify health rather than pleasure as our highest and innate good. Why factor hedonism into the equation at all? It seems they could have gone the route of Plato’s Republic and claimed that although the best life is pleasant, our aim should be the internal harmony that engenders the pleasure rather than the pleasure itself. Perhaps this is just a version of Cicero’s objection that the Epicureans seem to propose two distinct goals: pleasure and the absence of pain. If the Epicureans understand the absence of pain in terms of health, then why not say that the end is health rather than pleasure? Perhaps the Epicureans do not stop at health because they are interested in describing the telos in terms of human feelings: that is, even if health were ontologically or epistemologically the best condition for humans, Epicureans would not be interested unless health also felt the best. We get the sense that in Plato’s eyes the just life will still be the best even if it is not the most pleasant: a just soul is always ontologically better than an unjust one. But the goal of Epicureanism is to help people feel better—to lessen their anxiety, help them avoid frustrated desires, and enable them to enjoy their lives. To say that health itself is the goal, divorced from our perceptions of how health feels, would be nonsensical to Epicureans, who would argue that health is worth talking about at all only because of its connection to the feeling of pleasure.

I think this point is related to Epicurus’ rejection of philosophy as an end in itself. For the most part, Epicurus advises us to concern ourselves with philosophy insofar as it will lead to pleasure. Th is position is expressed in an Epicurean work of unknown origin, reported by Porphyry: “Empty is that philosopher’s reasoning by which no human affliction is cured. For just as there is no benefit in the medical art if it does not cure the diseases of bodies, so there is no benefit in philosophy if it does not drive affliction out of the soul.” According to Epicureans, we should learn the truth about the gods, the limits of pain, and our abilities to get what we desire because having this knowledge enables us to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. We will have no use for philosophy if it should fail to bring about painless mental and physical experiences, and we will have no use for health if it should fail to do the same. Th is is not to say that Epicureans envision a contingent connection between health and pleasure; they argue, as I have tried to show in this study, that our experience of health—either in the process toward achieving it or in the condition itself—is intrinsically related to pleasure. Nevertheless, Epicureans would say that were health not linked to pleasure in this way, there would be no reason to care about health’s ontological credentials.

This is very perceptive. It's devastating to the argument that the true goal isn't Pleasure, and to arguments that state or imply that we don't need pleasure - "all we need is health of mind and body." Why did they talk so much about pleasure if all they wanted was "health"???

Note -- Godfrey posted that this "Health Hedonism" book by Erica Oberg is relevant to the "health" aspect of the Arenson book.

Quote from Matteng

I would decide against it precisely because one loses one's freedom and connection to the real world; returning is difficult to impossible, and one sacrifices everything.

It is very interesting to see how individual people either deal with or refuse to deal with hypotheticals. It's certainly very important to evaluate whether the hypothetical is possible in reality or not.

But the purpose of a logical possibility is to exactly test the premise by abstracting out what are current realities. "But it's not possible" is essential to real life and it's why we choose real life over fantasy --- but some people are going to say that it is avoiding the question, and I do not think that they should be faulted to say that.

In this case the part I quoted above does not grapple with the question at hand.

Because in logical terms the answer to what is quoted above is clear --- why would you care about "freedom" or "connection to the real world" unless they bring pleasure?

That's why Kally Arenson made the statement she did -- NOTHING -- even "reality" or "being human" or anything else -- is desirable in itself unless it brings pleasure. Exempting ANYTHING from that test -- does it bring pleasure? -- is not good logic from the standpoint of logic alone.

If one chooses to play logic games, then rather than step outside of the philosophic position that pleasure is the supreme good, it would probably be better to say more like:

Logic is not truly useful unless its premises are grounded in reality, Your hypothetical is not grounded in realty, so I refuse to waste my time with it, just like Epicurus refused to entertain a hypothetical about necessity as to whether Hermarchus must be alive or dead tomorrow.

I have spent the morning listening to the first two chapters of the Arenson book, which is focused on what is said about Pleasure in the Republic and Philebus.

The whole structure of holding being to be better than becoming and the need to discuss "limits" is deeply disturbing to me in listening to this.

So much of this discussion of being vs becoming and limited vs unlimited is just unadulterated trash - it is very similar to religious discussion of angels dancing on pinheads.

This is likely to radicalize me further: Thomas Jefferson was far too lenient in his conclusions about Plato and other Greeks like the Stoics. These word games are as deceptive and manipulative as any religion ever invented.

Epicurus was right to point out their logical fallacies, but lingering too long in disputing them plays into their hands by distracting from a common sense understanding of pleasure and pain.

Probably the smartest this Torquatus said was at the beginning when he said that Epicurus refused to admit any need for argument or discussion to prove that pleasure is desirable and pain is to be avoided.

I am beginning to see this as very close to the argument as go religion. Yes it is good to point out that the religious view of the nature of divinity is flawed, but it makes no sense to spend your life debating priests about the supernatural.

And yes it makes sense to point out that the logic of the anti-pleasure arguments is wrong, but it makes no sense to argue forever about logical definitions of how to slice and dice pleasure into logical but meaningless categories.

It's as big a mistake to speculate endlessly about categories of pleasures as it is to speculate whether gods speak Greek or Latin.

If our goal is to better the lives of real people rather than pinheads, it's far better to stick to basic points and then work to apply them in real life, not just debate about words and definitions.

To clarify - this is an excellent book for those who want to understand how we got to where we are. Unfortunately those who need it most are probably the least likely to read it.

Quote from Don

I'm getting it via interlibrary loan soon.

OMG.

Don, you and I and Joshua and many others here have done a creditable job and I'm not going to apologize for what we've done, because I think we're on the right track.

But what little we've done to comment on Philebus and Plato has been woefully incomplete.

I don't know where Arenson ends up yet (other than skimming the conclusion) so I can't say that we'll agree with all of her conclusions, but she's done in this book what we've needed to do for a long time -- go over in detail the arguments against pleasure not only in the Philebus but also in the Republic, and then go through Aristotle's tentative pushback.

Aristotle long before Epicurus had rejected this stupid and woefully insufficient "replenishment" theory of pleasure, which is tied to that cursed "process" and becoming vs being" argument which Aristotle also rejected. We've been talking around Epicurus' rejection of the same thing without getting the full picture in view of how central this "becoming is inferior to being" argument, and the citations she's collected will help us get much closer to where we need to be.

I think I can safely predict that neither you nor most of us here are going to find this to be an "enjoyable" book - at least in the sense of Emily Austin's "Living For Pleasure" because it's highly technical. But the background she provides is going to - I hesitate to say "revolutionize" but something on the same order - how we need to be discussing these issues.

A major difficulty is that she's doing what all academics do - presenting the various arguments without taking strong and immediate positions on which are correct. And many of us aren't going to be able to wade through it.

She covers much of the same ground as Gosling and Taylor, but they were even more frustatingly non-committal as they wade through it. Arenson is being considerably more clear in the implications of what's going on. And Socrates and Plato are just abominations who deserve to be exposed for the folly or maliciousness of their arguments, not simply viewed as being "clever" -- which itself appears to be a key word.

All this denunciation of pleasure as not the true good because it is a "process" rather than an "end" is definitely "clever" - but it's cleverness in the employment of something very much to be rejected.

I have a long way to go before finishing, and this is definitely not going to be a book for "everyone." But it's exactly the resource that those of us who are really trying to work through this need.

It is highly irritating to me that this has been out for over five years without me spending more time on it long ago.

That's a large part of why all this has to be a team effort.

I have another analogy that I think applies.

Today a friend sent me the linked video because he was so impressed how it went through the Bible and asked a series of questions that calls the Bible into question. 109 Questions For God

I think the video is good, and there was a time when I really would have been impressed by it. And a video like that probably has a lot of good uses for those people who are really worried about whether the Bible is true.

But the entire approach of the video is to "play on the other team's turf." It accepts many of the premises of the Bible and simply tries to use its own logic against it.

That's useful to a point, but when do you move on and stop granting them their premises in the first place.

Arenson's book really shines the spotlight on these stupid platnic arguments that the goal is "being" not 'becoming" and so our goal ought to be "heath" rather than the pleasures that plato acknowledges that some people find to be good.

When you accept the premise that only the "complete" or the "perfect" or "things that have a limit" are good, then you're playing on Platonic turf.

As Arenson says even Aristotle was smart enough to reject that "processes are inferior to goals" argument.

It looks to me like Epicurus included the discussion, such as contained in PDO3, because Plato was fixated on arguing that there is a middle ground between pleasure and pain and that that middle ground - absence of pain - is not pleasure at all.

Epicurus refutes that by arguing that there are only two feelings, that if you don't feel any pain what you feel is pleasure, and at that point that's actually the most "complete" pleasure because there's no pain involved at all.

That wins the logical point and is something that is important for people immersed in Platonism (like almost everyone was in 300 BC) to know.

But by even granting the premise that the state of "absence of pain" is important to talk about, you set the stage that Cicero walked into when he pointed out that "if you're concerned about pleasure you shouldn't care about absence of pain at all." That produced the argument that Epicurus really should have said he was a value dualist (a term we've seen here recently) and admitted that pleasure and pain are two separate goals and not the same thing.

Torquatus adamantly refused to admit that and for good reason - there's only pleasure and pain and so when we have no pain what is left is the most "complete" pleasure possible.

But is "complete pleasure" the most intense? Is it the longest in duration? Does it involve the most parts of the body? No necessarily on any of those three counts, except on purely "logical" terms. No one can credibly argue that "feeling no pain" tells you anything about the specific mental or bodily experience of a particular moment.

So while the point is important for refuting Plato's anti-pleasure logic, and needs to be discussed with anyone who is concerned about "being vs becoming" - it's a point that makes little sense outside that context. Arenson spends a lot of time talking about whether Cicero knew what he was talking about, and how much we should believe his descriptions about what Epicurus taught, but what is beyond dispute is that Cicero has succeeded in perpetuating this "war" between "pleasure as a process" vs. "the goal as some fixed and definite thing." And every anti-Epicurean of every religious stripe or ascetic position has used that as an invitation to say that that "fixed and definite thing" is not pleasure at all, but something entirely different.

So to be clear I am not criticizing Epicurus at all - he had to make the point to refute Plato on pleasure just like he refuted Aristotle on atomism. But we have to understand the specific history of the argument and the context in which it lives, because outside its context the terminology is easy to twist into the opposite of what Epicurus intended.

And that's the same reason most of us don't spend a lot of time on logical arguments about the flora and fauna of the garden of Eden -- we reject the whole paradigm, and it doesn't bother us.

The whole paradigm of "being vs becoming" and "pleasure as a process" and "pleasure as restricted to replenishment" are similar artifacts of a specific ancient argument that few people recognize or care about anyome - and for good reason - it was nonsense from the time Socrates and Plato et all started spinning it.

Quote from Matteng

Pleasure/Pain guide to what ?

They are the guide to the best life, because pleasure is the word we choose to use to describe all that is intrinsically desirable.

Yes this is a word game, and if you want to argue that the goal should be set as "virtue" or "being like god" you can argue that too. In the end all these things are just words.

But some words can be tied to real experiences. In the case of Pleasure as the goal, that is tied to the feelings of pleasure and pain which our experiences reveal to us directly. Other goals are not so directly establishable - they are just words that float around forever in ambiguous and unprovable assertions about things like "gods" or "virtue" that can never be pinned down because they are just abstractions for which there is no direct sensory experience of them.

We have often mentioned in the past the cliche about the perfect not being the enemy of the good.

A variation of that is probably easier to see in this context is that the goal is not the enemy of the process, or the destination is not the enemy of the journey.

Embedded in the Platonic analysis seems to be the idea that "the good" should be viewed as the result of actions, but that the actions themselves are not good. It appears that the example that is cited is ships and shipbuilding -- that "ships" are "the good" of shipbuilding.

If you use that approach then ships are good, but shipbuilding is not good. Now the defenders of Platonism may say that that's not what they mean, but nevertheless that is what the ordinary person is going to gather from the statement. That shipbuilding is inferior to ships - that shipbulding is at best a necessary evil, and that what you really want is ships with the implication that you can dispense with shipbuilding.

That's also implied in the quoted statement - Pleasure/Pain guide to what ? As if all you need to know is what the goal is, and that once you know the goal you can dispense with pleasure and pain.

This attitude perspective is a big part of the issue with the way people are reading Menoeceus 128:

The right understanding of these facts enables us to refer all choice and avoidance to the health of the body and (the soul's) freedom from disturbance, since this is the aim of the life of blessedness. For it is to obtain this end that we always act, namely, to avoid pain and fear. And when this is once secured for us, all the tempest of the soul is dispersed, since the living creature has not to wander as though in search of something that is missing, and to look for some other thing by which he can fulfill the good of the soul and the good of the body. For it is then that we have need of pleasure, when we feel pain owing to the absence of pleasure; (but when we do not feel pain), we no longer need pleasure.

Yes you no longer need ADDITIONAL pleasure, but that's because what you have is made from all the normal pleasures of life. Would someone in the business of ships properly say "Now that I have a ship I no longer have need of nails, fabric, wooden beams, ropes, tar, or the rest?"

That would be ludicrous -- the only way to make sense of that is to understand you don't need MORE of them but ONLY because you already have them in the completed ship that you're going to sail on.

Would it be proper for a doctor to say - You have your health, so you no longer need skin, bones, food, water, air, shelter, or clothing. (?)

Of course not - that would be ludicrous - you have "health" ONLY because you have the things that make up health.

Epicurus is talking in Platonic terms to someone who would have understood that this relationship between the perfect and the good, between the goal and the process was a major concern of the time because Plato had preached it and Aristotle had wrestled with it without making the proper perspective clear.

And we're obviously still wrestling with it today, because CLEVER people have us convinced that "the good" is what we should be concerned about rather than what that term means.

And so we have people obsessed with 'a healthy mind in a healthy body" without any concern whatsoever for what "health" is all about - in fact allowing or even demanding that health be divorced from pleasure, even though it is absolutely ludicrous to do so.

We talk as if we are so superior to the rubes who believe in supernatural gods and punishments or rewards after death, when in truth much of the discussion about Epicurus today is trapped in an illusion that is far worse than those mistakes. As Epicurus said, at least those who follow religion have the hope of happiness by cozying up to the gods. Those who are mesmerized by "tranquility" and "health" and "happiness" and 'the good" and even "absence of pain" while looking down on pleasure are trapped in something far worse. They have created a divide that can never be healed because they think that "being" (the goal) is all that matters and that "becoming" (the required process) is beneath them.

Note: This analysis would also apply to the relationship between virtue to prudence, honor, and justice in PD05. Don't preach to me about "happiness" if you don't understand that happiness is inseparable from the actions that produce it (we call those actions virtues). It's the same point: Don't talk to me about "ships" if you don't understand that ships are inseparable from the wood and nails and cloth and rope from which a "ship" is made. Don't talk to me about "absence of pain" unless you understand that "absence of pain" is inseparable from the regular bodily and mental pleasures from which "absence of pain" is made.

I am posting this link to a new "blog" post I have just completed because it deals directly with the issues raised by Arenson in her book.

Blog Article

The 'Academic Questions' Behind Evaluation Of Pleasure And Happiness

"Academic Questions" sounds like exactly what a modern reader expects from ancient philosophy: a dry, technical argument about definitions, conducted by men with nothing better to do, over a question no one outside a classics department has any reason to care about. That impression is wrong. The argument Cicero stages between Lucullus and himself -- whether the senses can ever deliver real knowledge, or whether we are stuck with mere probability -- is not a side issue in ancient philosophy. It…

Cassius

August 1, 2026 at 3:15 PM