Featured Mathew Wenham - On Cicero's Interpretation of Katastematic Pleasure In Epicurus

The standard interpretation of the concept of katastematic pleasure in Epicurus .... leads to fundamental contradictions in his theory. I claim that it is not Epicurus, but the standard interpretation that generates these errors...

The standard interpretation of the concept of katastematic pleasure in Epicurus hasit referring to “static” states from which feeling is absent. We owe the prevalence of this interpretation to Cicero’s account of Epicureanism in his De Finibus Bonorum Et Malorum. Cicero’s account, in turn, is based on the Platonic theory of pleasure. The standard interpretation, when applied to principles of Epicurean hedonism, leads to

fundamental contradictions in his theory. I claim that it is not Epicurus, but the standard interpretation that generates these errors because the latter construes pleasure in Epicurus according to an attitudinal theoretical framework, whilst the account of pleasure that emerges from Epicurean epistemology sees it as experiential.