Episode One Hundred Thirty Eight - Letter to Menoeceus 5 - Pleasure Part One

    Quote from reneliza

    Does he ever say anything about thinking ahead to future pleasure as a form of pleasure? (Or anything remotely related)

    I am thinking that the passages about "confident expectation of continuance" might be applicable, and there is also the passage in Diogenes of Oinoanda about the sequence in which pleasure comes. I started to quote that earlier but will add that here in a moment:


    Not really sure this applies directly, because he is talking about cause and effect, but it MIGHT be stretchable to cover the point. Probably better to go to the "Confident expectation" passages.....


    Fr.33


    ... such virtues ... pleasure ... and [of virtues] ... feels [much] pain ... the evil [is] ... [from] all virtues ... apart from tension ... pleasure, but these quibblers admit ... often found not ..., [and Zeno] himself [proposes] the opinion ..........., just as if he means virtue when he has said «pleasure,» and that men run to them. And again elsewhere having forgotten this hunger ([for they did] not [say that] ........) ... of this ... so that ... it ... in no way .... is able, as these people lay it down, like a bait, for all human beings, to draw them, like birds or fish, open-mouthed to the names of the virtues, and sometimes ........ itself ... [illusions (?). And you are] not ashamed, [you] wretched people, [of contradicting both yourselves and] one another: [for indeed, employing puerile] wit, [you reject] pleasure, while cleverly agreeing [with us about sensation], so that you not [prevented from] passing through [an area in safety], when you venture to climb crags.


    Well now, I want to deflect also the error that, along with the feeling of self-love, has you in its grip —an error that, more than any other, further inflates your doctrine as ignorant. The error is this: [not] all causes in things precede their effects, even if the majority do, but some of them precede their effects, others [coincide with] them, and others follow them.


    Examples of causes that precede are cautery and surgery saving life: in these cases extreme pain must be borne, and it is after this that pleasure quickly follows.


    Examples of coincident causes are [solid] and liquid nourishment and, in addition to these, [sexual acts:] we do not eat [food] and experience pleasure afterwards, nor do we drink wine and experience pleasure afterwards, nor do we emit semen and experience pleasure afterwards; rather the action brings about these pleasures for us immediately, without awaiting the future.


    [As for causes that follow, an example is expecting] to win praise after death: although men experience pleasure now because there will be a favourable memory of them after they have gone, nevertheless the cause of the pleasure occurs later.


    Now you, being unable to mark off these distinctions, and being unaware that the virtues have a place among the causes that coincide with their effects (for they are borne along with [pleasure), go completely astray.]

    I can happily agree with all of this if I just swap out the word "desire" for "interest" or "motivation" (although technically motivation is WHY you want to do a thing, not just what you want to do - I think it still works here and is sometimes even more useful to know) but I still get hung up on the one word.

    This is Torquatus rather than Epicurus but might well be relevant. I think there are others.....


    (1) Some have denied that pleasures affecting our friends are in themselves to be desired by us in the same degree as we desire our own pleasures. This doctrine is thought by some critics to undermine the foundations of friendship; however, its supporters defend their position, and in my opinion have no difficulty in making good their ground. They argue that friendship can no more be sundered from pleasure than can the virtues, which we have discussed already. A solitary, friendless life must be beset by secret dangers and alarms. Hence reason itself advises the acquisition of friends; their possession gives confidence, and a firmly rooted hope of winning pleasure. And just as hatred, jealousy, and contempt are hindrances to pleasure, so friendship is the most trustworthy preserver and also creator of pleasure alike for our friends and for ourselves. It affords us enjoyment in the present, and it inspires us with hopes for the near and distant future.

    There is an awful lot of discussion of "confidence" but not all of it would clearly be applicable. This one jumps out at me first as applicable - is this not a current thought of future pleasure?


    VS34. It is not so much our friends' help that helps us, as it is the confidence of their help.

    Quote from reneliza

    I can happily agree with all of this if I just swap out the word "desire" for "interest" or "motivation" (although technically motivation is WHY you want to do a thing, not just what you want to do - I think it still works here and is sometimes even more useful to know) but I still get hung up on the one word.

    Can you explain that a little further? We probably need to focus on using the word "desire" since that is the word with the explosive connotations that people are used to debating about, but I would like to be sure I understand your concern.

    Quote from Cassius

    VS34. It is not so much our friends' help that helps us, as it is the confidence of their help.

    I was expecting elpis "hope" for confidence here but it ends up being pisteōs "trust" (related to "epistemology" ie, study of what you can trust)


    I'm getting hung up on the differences and shades of meaning of:

    Desire

    Anticipation

    Hope

    Want

    and all the similar words both in English and Greek that have to do with looking forward to something pleasurable (or wanting to escape something painful)

    It seems to me at least that there's a distinction that should be important. What does it mean to desire something as opposed to just wanting or anticipating or having confidence in something.

    Desire has such a sexual connotation now in English it's hard to disassociate it from that.

    Anyway, that's where my head is currently.

    Quote from Cassius

    There is an awful lot of discussion of "confidence" but not all of it would clearly be applicable. This one jumps out at me first as applicable - is this not a current thought of future pleasure?


    VS34. It is not so much our friends' help that helps us, as it is the confidence of their help.

    If I understand it properly (that it's not the actual help provided but just the certainty that help WILL BE provided that is helpful), then it's definitely related.


    But to go all Ciceronian, I think that technically since the CONFIDENCE is occurring in the present moment, and that it is the actual source of the pleasure, I'm not sure that it counts as a future pleasure.


    Seriously though, I do think it's the exact type of thing I was looking for - a pleasure gained from the thought of something happening in the future that isn't actually tied to whether it happens or not. It makes a possibility for disappointment, but as long as your confidence is founded, the risk is worth the pleasure to be gained from trusting in your friends' support.


    Quote from Cassius
    Quote from reneliza

    I can happily agree with all of this if I just swap out the word "desire" for "interest" or "motivation" (although technically motivation is WHY you want to do a thing, not just what you want to do - I think it still works here and is sometimes even more useful to know) but I still get hung up on the one word.

    Can you explain that a little further? We probably need to focus on using the word "desire" since that is the word with the explosive connotations that people are used to debating about, but I would like to be sure I understand your concern.

    Really just what I've been saying - that I have no conception of desire that is without any pain. I don't know if it's a difference in language, or experience, or even just personality or neurotype (ie me as a kid in misery waiting for xmas presents) but it's not something I can wrap my head around. Although as you reduce the distance (in time, effort, etc...) between the desire and fulfillment, the pain can certainly be negligible.


    Going to Godfrey's example (which I'm still thinking on!) - at the store yesterday I considered buying a pineapple, but didn't, and him bringing it up - that it's even already prepared! - made me wish I had some pineapple. It's not going to upset the balance of my night (or my dinner) to not have it, but it is a bit of a pain if I dwell on it. The grocery store doesn't close for an hour so I could pack up the kids in the car and go get it and then get home and peel it and core it and slice it, but that's a lot of distance between me and that pineapple, so the pain is minor, but noticeable (if I bother to notice it). If my circumstance was already prepared pineapple in the fridge, I wouldn't even notice the pain, I would just go eat the pineapple. Heck, I might not even eat it. I might just hoard it.


    You may have noticed I'm not very patient (again see: xmas presents), but I also delay gratification for myself so often that I've become known for treats going bad while I wait to enjoy them. This is probably something worth examining! Perhaps the pain of desire as I experience leads me to reduce that distance as much as I can for a variety of possible desires.


    Or possibly I'm a masochist.


    My argument would be that desire is inherently painful but that circumstance can make the pain negligible. But you could just as easily make the claim that desire is not inherently painful but that circumstance can make it so and I don't think there's necessarily a right or wrong. But I DO necessarily think that Epicurus did not mean to refer to something that was inherently painful, as he even specified.

    Quote from reneliza

    I know Epicurus speaks about remembering past pleasures. Does he ever say anything about thinking ahead to future pleasure as a form of pleasure? (Or anything remotely related)

    Regarding future pleasures, I think there's a passage somewhere in which Epicurus says something about the remembering of past pleasures and anticipation of future pleasures and you will live like a god among men... I thought it was in a letter or a fragment, but all I can find is this from Cicero....


    Tusculan Disputations 5.95-96. The upshot of his entire discussion of pleasure is this. He holds that pleasure itself should always be wished for and pursued for its own sake because it is pleasure, and that by the same reasoning pain should always be avoided, just because it is pain; and so the wise man will employ a principle of compensation, and will avoid pleasure if it will produce a greater pain and will endure pain if it produces a greater pleasure; and that all pleasing feelings are to be referred to the mind, although they are actually judged by bodily senses. 96. As a result the body is pleased for only so long as it perceives a present pleasure, while the mind perceives a present pleasure just as much as the body does, but also foresees a pleasure which is coming in the future and does not let a past pleasure slip from its grasp. So the wise man will always have a continuous and interconnected [set of] pleasures, since the expectation of hoped-for pleasures is linked to the memory of pleasures already perceived.

    Excellent quote Godfrey! That is one we do not talk about much but looks very relevant.


    Quote from reneliza

    Really just what I've been saying - that I have no conception of desire that is without any pain

    And maybe that is exactly an artifact of the corruption of the modern monotheistic world and misrepresentaton of Epicurean philosophy - that you and a lot of people DONT have such a conception(?). And for that reason that may be why this point needs to be pounded home in modern Epicurean discussion.


    Were you by chance raised Catholic? :)

    I can understand where reneliza (and Joshua) are coming from with the desire / pain paradigm. I think the perspective issue is an intriguing one: the urge to move toward pleasure vs the urge to move away from pain. They really are two sides of the same coin or mirror images or similar metaphors. The glass really is half full AND half empty at the same time.

    I do want to dig into Aristotle and his emotion feeling classifications to get a handle on Greek thought at the time.

    From the above linked paper "Emotions in Plato and Aristotle", discussing Aristotle: (the author uses "affections" in place of "emotions")


    "The two Ethics introduce pleasure or pain, or pleasure and pain, in order to generalize from lists of affections. Thus we read, ‘By the affections I mean desire (epithumia), anger, fear, confidence, envy, joy, love, hatred, longing, emulation, pity, and in general things that are accompanied by pleasure or pain’ (NE 2.5.1105b21-3); but also, ‘By the affections I mean such things as anger, fear, shame, desire, and in general things that, as such, give rise for the most part to perceptual pleasure and pain (EE 2.2.1220b12-14). Presumably it is not a coincidence that the Eudemian Ethics adds both the qualification ‘for the most part’ and the specification ‘perceptual’: Aristotle must think that a special kind of pleasure or pain attaches to most affections, though not all. The Physics identifies the affections with changes in the soul’s perceptual part (to aisthêtikon morion) that involve bodily pleasures and pains excited by action, memory, or anticipation (7.3.247a3-9). Such pleasures and pains are excited by sensible things through perception or imagination (a9-17). They arise from their location within that part of the soul which Aristotle elsewhere calls ‘the perceptual and desirous’ (EE 2.2.1219b23): they are not merely sensible because conscious, but sensory in that they connect closely with sense-perception and imagination within the affective soul (to pathêtikon morion, Pol. 1.5.1254b8). Many of the affections involve imagination (phantasia) in the service of memory and expectation; this connects them with the pleasures that follow on imagination as a weak form of perception (Rhet. 1.11.1370a27-32)."


    "It is true that there is no explicit mention of belief in the initial definition of anger (2.2.1378a30-2); but belief is implicit in mention of desire (orexis), given that such orexis is equated with ‘aiming at’ (ephiesthai), which is taken to presuppose believing, and not just imagining, that an end is attainable."

    Quote from Godfrey

    the author uses "affections" in place of "emotions"

    Looks like the reason the author uses affections is because Aristotle uses our old friend pathē πάθη there. I double-checked both citations.


    Pathē means "that which one experiences, that which happens to a person, that which affects a person." So it's not affection like "He has an affection for his dog" but affection instead of using feeling (something one feels) since it appears Aristotle is using it to refer to everything that can be contained under pleasure and/or pain. So Epicurus and Aristotle both use pathē to refer to the large categories of pleasure/pain.

    reneliza

    Quote from Cassius

    Were you by chance raised Catholic? :)

    I had second thoughts about that question that as soon as I posted it because sometimes tone doesn't translate well even with emoticons, and sometimes issues are too sensitive to deal with purely philosophically. In my case I have gotten use to Joshua discussing his Catholic background on the podcast and I probably carried that over in this question when others might be less willing to discuss their own backgrounds..


    However rather than remove the comment let me just clarify that I don't mean the question in a negative way other than in the general spirit of tracing down modern attitudes, rather than anything "personal." Of course one of the major themes of Epicurean philosophy is that of the problems caused by religion, and it is sort of stereotypical Catholic in my understanding that "guilt" is something that Catholicism seems to teach to people within that church. It would seem to me that Catholic doctrine might contribute toward seeing "desire" in a negative way, in the same way that various religious backgrounds might lead to various tendencies. In my own case I was raised Baptist and no doubt that influences my thought processes negatively even today, after years of trying to unwind those influences.


    As with all our discussions here there is a limit between what we discuss philosophically and what we discuss from our personal lives, so if that question got close to that limit feel free to ignore it or respond as "abstractly" as you care to. The real question for discussion would be whether religious backgrounds of any sort would impact on our view of desires. I think it very probably can and does, and thus can be useful to talk about, thus the comment.

    Here's a related issue, but I don't have the time to expand it at the moment. I have long had a negative reaction to Martha Nussbaum's book "The Therapy of Desire" https://press.princeton.edu/bo…028/the-therapy-of-desire


    To me that title is off in the same way it would be off to say "The Therapy of the Finger." The default position in normal discussion would be that there is nothing WRONG with a finger in general, and only if a fingerhas a specific unhealthiness or lack of functioning does the finger need therapy.


    So the book implies from its very title that there is something "Wrong" with all Desire in and of itself - which as we are discussing does not seem to be Epicurus' position at all. It's not "Desire" that needs therapy, but "Unhealthy Desires" or "Painful Desires" or "Impossible Desires" or "Unnatural desires" or something similar.


    I have always read the book as a whole, and especially the closing chapters, as expressing some very negative views about Epicurean philosophy, and as taking a pro-Stoic position. But I don't think I have realized before that the very title seems to be taking what appears to me to be an unduly negative view of all desire. I think the title is revealing of something before the cover of the book is evened open. Is all of the rest of non-Epicurean Greek philosophy negative toward all desire? I find that difficult to believe, so is the issue some viewpoint of Nussbaum's herself, or of Greek philosophy.


    As for religious influence in that case, I could be wrong but I think Martha Nussbaum is Jewish rather than Catholic. I am not aware of any specific tendency in Judaism to be negative toward all desire, but again I could be wrong there too. Nussbaum's attitudes toward desire in general, if in fact she has a negative one, may have totally different origins or foundations.

    I need to read Nussbaum's whole book. I have a copy. One of the first I bought and then read the Epicurean parts but it has been several years.

    I always took the title to mean "using desire as therapy." So, obviously I've missed out on her larger context. Add it to my infinitely growing list of "to be read."

    Quote from Don

    So, obviously I've missed out on her larger context

    You may not have missed it at all - it could be me. I know I read the whole thing years ago so my memory could be failing me but that is what I remember coming away with, but it's possible my memory has been warped by concern over this "All desire is bad/painful" issue.


    The excerpts I listed in the past seem mostly concerned with other issues Nussbaum (Martha) - "Therapy of Desire"

    I totally agree - and have no offense since I was raised atheist and materialist (fairly hedonistic, even). I have gone through my own crises of "faith" but was always taught that there's only one life, so the point of it is to live it.


    While it's possible that this is an artifact just from existing in America and absorbing certain ideas, I'm not sure that's it. Because I don't think of people with desires as morally bad or wrong any more than I think that of people dealing with any other kind of pain. I definitely don't think that desires should be suppressed, because that is generally going to end up with some other complications either psychological or physical.


    I think the path to "zero desire" (noting it's not a permanent state since you'll always need to eat again) is to meet all the desires you can and expunge the rest. Of course picking and choosing the ones that will actually bring more pleasure than pain to meet.


    I can conceive of motivators to action that aren't inherently painful (I think I can, anyway) but are only preferences. I suppose this is what the unnecessary desires are meant to be. I just can't conceive of using the word desire there. Maybe my understanding of the word is just too strong?


    In researching some things I also just found a forum where someone described Epicurus as "the first pro-ana" so... this is what we have to work with 😭😭

    Quote from Cassius

    Dare I ask what "first pro-ana" means?

    pro-ana is a position in favor of anorexia (the word itself deriving from the greek word orexis which Epicurus used in some circumstances instead of epithymia - although exactly where he used each was what I was trying to determine)


    The poster said that reading the Letter to Menoeceus (which she described as being about "the absence of desire") in college helped her learn to suppress her desires including actual hunger. She respected Epicurus for living on a restrictive diet of only bread and water - missing the crucial point as Don has brought up before that this was meant to mean ordinary food and not an ascetic or lacking diet - and then binging when invited to a feast.

    Quote from reneliza

    The poster said that reading the Letter to Menoeceus (which she described as being about "the absence of desire") in college helped her learn to suppress her desires including actual hunger. She respected Epicurus for living on a restrictive diet of only bread and water - missing the crucial point as Don has brought up before that this was meant to mean ordinary food and not an ascetic or lacking diet - and then binging when invited to a feast.

    OMG!


    I feel sure if Epicurus were alive he would NOT be happy with how his philosophy is being used! I don't like referring to slaves, and it is not entirely clear how much property Epicurus had (though it appears to be significant) but I think one of the arguments that ought to cause these people to reconsider their positions is to review Epicurus' will and consider whether Epicurus himself was restricting himself to "ordinary food" on all occasions, much less "bread and water. They should also consider exactly how many of multiple pieces of property and how many of multiple slaves are required to live a life of "absence of desire" as they apparently suppose Epicurus to have lived. They would then be confronted with the need to determine whether they really want to take advice from an absolute hypocrite, or whether perhaps their own understanding of his teachings might need adjustment.


    And there are many many other arguments to be made, even if we presume that every Roman Epicurean was a "bad Epicurean" which would also be a very very long stretch to assume.