Glossary - What is the Epicurean Definition of "Pleasure?"

"For now, the main point for philosophical discussion is that pleasure is a feeling, and happiness would be desirable because it is a type of pleasurable feeling, otherwise happiness would not be desirable."

To extend this further, it clearly incorrect to say "happiness is not a subset of pleasure, but happiness is desirable in and of itself," because that would create the logical dilemma of there being something other than pleasure which is desirable. That conclusion cannot be true because it is ruled out by the foundational premise that Nature gives us only two feelings by which to choose and avoid, pleasure and pain, of which only the feeling of pleasure is desirable in and of itself.

To say that happiness is not pleasure but is desirable in and of itself would be no different than making that claim about wisdom or friendship or courage or prudence or anything else. All of those are desirable only because (and if) they bring pleasure.

There is no doubt here but that we are working with logical constructions, and that we have to deal with all the hazards that that entails. Some might say that we are playing word games. But that is where DeWitt's observation that Epicurus is the ultimate anti-Platonist comes into play. We can choose to ignore the Platonist logicians and tell them just to go jump in a lake, or we can beat them at their own game and show them that logic can be used to identify accurately the goal of life (as opposed to gods, or virtue, ideals, or rationality itself). It seems to me that since he was teacher in Athens surrounded by logicians of all stripes, Epicurus felt it prudent to equip his students with logical arguments with which to fight off the Platonists. And that reasoning seems to me to be compelling today, since so many people find so many reasons to shrink back from the word "pleasure."

So this appears to be the path in which Epicurus used logic to establish that the feeling of pleasure, rather than an abstraction such as Aristotle tried to do with "happiness/eudaimonia," is the correct answer and antidote to gods/virtue/idealism/rationalism.

Hiram made the comment earlier today that it might be hard to explain to someone in the Phillipines facing a volcano that pleasure should be their concern.

How much harder would it be to explain to someone that they needed to lead an armed charge into an enemy line, or to order their own child to be killed for disobeying orders in that fight, all for the sake of pleasure? But that is exactly what Torquatus the Epicurean gave us as our example, and he is not ultimately arguing for absence of pain, but for pleasure, obtained by temporarily choosing to endure pain:

This being the theory I hold, why need I be afraid of not being able to reconcile it with the case of the Torquati my ancestors? Your references to them just now were historically correct, and also showed your kind and friendly feeling towards myself; but the same I am not to be bribed by your flattery of my family, and you will not find me a less resolute opponent. Tell me, pray, what explanation do you put upon their actions? Do you really believe that they charged an armed enemy, or treated their children, their own flesh and blood, so cruelly, without a thought for their own interest or advantage? Why, even wild animals do not act in that way; they do not run amok so blindly that we cannot discern any purpose in their movements and their onslaughts.

Can you then suppose that those heroic men performed their famous deeds without any motive at all? What their motive was, I will consider later on: for the present I will confidently assert, that if they had a motive for those undoubtedly glorious exploits, that motive was not a love of virtue in and for itself.—He wrested the necklet from his foe.—Yes, and saved himself from death. But he braved great danger.—Yes, before the eyes of an army.—What did he get by it?—Honor and esteem, the strongest guarantees of security in life.—He sentenced his own son to death.—If from no motive, I am sorry to be the descendant of anyone so savage and inhuman; but if his purpose was by inflicting pain upon himself to establish his authority as a commander, and to tighten the reins of discipline during a very serious war by holding over his army the fear of punishment, then his action aimed at ensuring the safety of his fellow citizens, upon which he knew his own depended.

And this is a principle of wide application. People of your school, and especially yourself, who are so diligent a student of history, have found a favourite field for the display of your eloquence in recalling the stories of brave and famous men of old, and in praising their actions, not on utilitarian grounds, but on account of the splendor of abstract moral worth. But all of this falls to the ground if the principle of selection that I have just mentioned be established,—the principle of forgoing pleasures for the purpose of getting greater pleasures, and enduring, pains for the sake of escaping greater pains.

Quote from Oscar

I don't know that we have only two feelings, there's also a feeling of indifference -- unless one thinks indifference as not being a feeling at all?

I think that that is one of the basic premises of Epicurean analysis, established in both the letter to Herodotus and in Diogenes Laertius, and that if this principle is not accepted then we're outside the bounds of Epicurean argument. That is an argument that needs to be addressed but I will personally have to postpone it until later. Suffice it to say for the moment that I think it is reasonable to state that any feeling which we can experience, if we experience it, is either going to be felt as desirable or undesirable, and that that is what is meant by pleasure and pain.

"Pleasure is how we EXPERIENCE the good. Pain is how we EXPERIENCE evil."

Does that formulation not imply that good and evil exist even if we do not experience it? I think that is likely untenable in Epicurean theory.

Elli correct me if I am wrong but you are discussing the general Greek background meaning of the word correct? In specific philosophies my observation is that eudaemonia as a term is most frequently associated today with Aristotle rather than Epicurus, and the Aristotelian definition is generally considered to be that stated in the graphic below.

I note that in the opening of that video the lecturer says that the argument against pleasure (he says bodily pleasure) is that it is not "peculiarly associated with human beings" and that a life of pleasure is fit only for "cattle."

That's the Ciceronian argument cited above - as if that were a reason to deny pleasure the guideship of life, simply because that's what all other living things do!

and so then of course what separates us from other animals according the video/Aristotle? REASON!

Thus pleasure is displaced as the goal to be replaced with "reason."

And thus we have the ambiguity and the dispute about the meaning of the word "happiness" which means one thing to an Aristotelian and something entirely different to an Epicurean:

Comments on other slides from the Aristotle / Eudaemonia presentation:

(1) (1:50 in the presentation) I think this one is significant because the implication, which is pretty much express, is that "first principles" are a source of knowledge. The lecturer is implying that E=mc2 is a "first principle" which is an independent source of knowledge separate and apart from observation. I believe that Epicurus would dispute this, and contend that E=mc2 is derived from observation, and is not itself an independent source of knowledge. The contention that "first principles" which are implied to be arising from logic alone, or from god, or from nature through reason alone, is something that Epicurus rejected and presumably for that reason removed "reason" from the canon of truth, leaving only the senses, anticipations, and feelings, which are direct contacts with reality and thus the ultimate source of everything that we believe to be true.

(2) This "middle ground" / golden mean wordplay by Aristotle is so superficial as to hardly need discussion. There is no basis for this categorization whatsoever other than Aristotle's personal assertions.

(3) For Aristotle, eudaemonia has nothing to do with pleasure, but is the sum of intellectual virtues + virtue of character. WHY, Aristotle, WHY would we care about these if they did not bring pleasure?????

(4) More groundless "moderation" wordplay, allegedly tied to "reason," by which we are to recognize "good" and "bad" behavior! All totally groundless. Why would be concerned about any of this gymnastics if it did not bring pleasure?

In sum: Epicurus would say that good and bad, right and wrong, are contentless abstractions that are meaningless apart from a particular context, and that context does not come through REASON, but through the feelings of pleasure and pain, which alone tell us what to choose and to avoid so as to make life worth living. It is as ridiculous to say that life gains meaning through reason as it would be to say that life gains meaning through "the English language' or "through the German language" or "the Spanish language" or through hammers or screwdrivers or yardsticks - or "friendship." All of those are nothing more than tools for the achievement of pleasure.

I agree with Elli and will go further. There was never any need, nor is there any need now, to use the word "eudaimonia" in English discussion of philosophy, whether Aristotelian, Epicurean or any other kind, because the word is just the original Greek word for "good spirits," as stated in wikipedia:

Etymologically, it consists of the words "eu" ("good") and "daimōn" ("spirit"). It is a central concept in Aristotelian ethics and political philosophy, along with the terms "aretē", most often translated as "virtue" or "excellence", and "phronesis", often translated as "practical or ethical wisdom"

Extending the prior recent comments about there being no bright line distinctions between men and other higher animals, there are no bright-line distinctions between Greeks and other humans. No matter how high a regard I may hold for Epicurus, he was a human being just like us, and he spoke an ordinary language just like all of us do, and unless and until he (or Aristotle or some other philosopher) specifically designated a technical term as having a technical meaning, we should presume that a word he used had the ordinary meaning and significance that it had to ordinary people. And so far as I am aware they did not - it is just a "catch-all" term that euphemistically describes what people regard as a good life, but that statement in itself "a good life" tells us nothing whatsoever.

To leave the word untranslated and focus on it as something mysteriously untranslatable - as in this video cited above- is just more woo-woo by philosophy teachers designed to hide the ball and imply that they themselves have access to some kind of esoteric wisdom that normal people who don't speak Greek do not.

And I would say the same about ataraxia and aponia - I would assert that "absence of disturbance" and "absence of pain" contain all the precision that those words have ever meant to convey.

Quote from elli

for the purpose to give us with clarity what was the classic greek world that inspired the classic roman world.

Yes clarity is the issue! "Eudaemonia" spoken and used by Elli in explaining the benefits of the wisdom of Epicurus is a wonderful and clarifying thing. "Eudaemonia" or "ataraxia" or "aponia" spoken and written by a philosophy professor in a manner used to imply that the concept of the best life can only be understood by a Greek - or more precisely, only understood by a Doctor of Philosophy with a degree from a University -- is a very bad and misleading thing.

A professor who insists that only the original word form is acceptable the modern equivalent of Plato saying "Let no one ignorant of Geometry enter here!"

So I would contend that one need not know a word of Greek to understand Epicurus, or a word of German to understand Nietzsche, or a word of French to understand Gassendi, or a word of English to understand Jefferson. It certainly helps, though, to make sure that we aren't being misled by the translators and commentators!

But of course, I will definitely admit that if we never learn Greek we will never be able to speak with the gods, even if we could reach them in the intermundia!

Ha! And that reminds me that a common language is no guarantee of understanding anything either, with the well known joke that America and England are two nations divided by a common language!

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Note: interesting history of that quote: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/04/03/common/

Great post Mike.

"Besides, Epicurus is not big on definitions or essences of things."

I think there is a deep point here. Clearly he was not "big on definitions" in the sense of wordy and elaborate logical constructions, but it seems to me, especially in reading Lucretius, that Epicurus was focusing on definition by examples. It strikes me regularly that in Lucretius and I think Epicurus letters too that Epicurus uses the device of giving a lineup of examples each time he wants to identify something, such as when Lucretius first references atoms and immediately says he will call them by different names. Seems to me that this is a conscious form of "definition by example" which would be consistent with the premises of the philosophy being grounded in the senses.

Watch for that especially in Lucretius and I think it begins to jump out at you. They were teaching by pointing to real world examples rather than by setting up word-play definitions.