"All Good And Evil Consists In Sensation" - Comparison of Translations

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Train yourself to hold that death is nothing to us, because good and evil consist in sensation, and death is the removal of sensation. συνέθιζε δὲ ἐν τῷ νομίζειν μηδὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς εἶναι τὸν θάνατον ἐπεὶ πᾶν ἀγαθὸν καὶ κακὸν ἐν αἰσθήσει· στέρησις [deprivation] δέ ἐστιν αἰσθήσεως ὁ θάνατος.

I see anytime that ἀγαθὸν and κακὸν occur, you should be able to substitute pleasure and pain, respectively. Try that and see how that changes the tenor of the translations.

I always go back to the Tetrapharmakos where ταγαθον t'agathon "the good" is easily obtained and το δεινον to deinon "the terrible" is easily endured. I firmly believe both of those are supposed to denote pleasure and pain, respectively, in those four lines. Those words taken in the context of the Principal Doctrines leads me to believe that good/evil, agathon/kakon (or deinon) refer to pleasure and pain in the Letter and elsewhere. Every pleasure is a good, every pain is an evil.

I've been thinking some more about this. Without any sort of "Platonic" ideal form of "good" or "evil" the only way to judge good or bad is if it elicits pleasure or pain. That is why I believe Epicurus can say pleasure is *the* good. There's no other yardstick - literally, canon - to measure "the good."

Quote from Cassius

So I would expect that there is good reason to translate them as the translators are doing. (Using good and evil).

The translators are just taking the literal route:

αγαθός = good, literally http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?do…:entry=a)gaqo/s

κακός = bad, literally http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?do…ntry%3Dkako%2Fs

Most translators - academically speaking - especially older ones - appear uncomfortable with the word "pleasure" and most likely took the opportunity to translate agathos and kakos literally instead of delving deeper into what Epicurus was trying to convey.

Quote from Don

Without any sort of "Platonic" ideal form of "good" or "evil" the only way to judge good or bad is if it elicits pleasure or pain.

And for this reason indeed there is a general equivalency in our school between the use of ἀγαθὸν as pleasure and κακὸν as pain, even though it seems we cannot press for a total equivalency because of instances such as "oὐδεμία Ἡδονὴ καθ᾽ἑαυτὸ κακόν (KΔ8) no Pleasure by itself is bad" Here we have to admit difficulty taking κακόν as an exact equivalent to pain, as it requires the conceptual framing of "bad/evil." Which takes us to:

Quote from Cassius

In order to explain the point, however, it is necessary to use the terminology of both schools, and refer to platonic good and evil.

I just realized that the good/pleasure and evil/pain equivalency is stated in Cicero's De Finibus with Torquatus speaking:

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Some members of our school however would refine upon this doctrine; these say that it is not enough for the judgment of good and evil to rest with the senses; the facts that pleasure is in and for itself desirable and pain in and for itself to be avoided can also be grasped by the intellect and the reason.

That seems to me to underscore what I've contended here. We judge good and evil in light of the reaction of pleasure and pain, respectively.