Perspectives On "Proving" That Pleasure is "The Good"

    Quote from Don

    But there are schools and people who say pleasure can lead you astray from a happy, fulfilling life, therefore it must be repressed, avoided, or rejected outright. Establishing it as the goal - that to which all else points - short circuits that argument.

    Here is where I think you have to go back to the physics; you can't just jump into an ethical argument with people who don't accept your premises.


    What ELSE besides pleasure do these people propose? (rhetorical question) Does that thing even exist in nature, apart from causing pleasure and pain for humans?

    PD03. The limit of quantity in pleasures is the removal of all that is painful.


    An analogy would be that this folding yardstick pictured below is the feeling of "pleasure," a tool by which we measure how long , or how desirable, something is. The "limit of pleasure" would be a reference to this tool, straightened out to its maximum extent, at which it measures the largest quantity of pleasure that is possible to measure. At that point, there is no more crookedness ("pain") left in the tool, the pain is totally gone.


    This analogy helps us draw many important conclusions in intellectual debates, but tells us exactly nothing about what we are using the yardstick to measure. The tools of precision tell us nothing about the type or purpose of the wall we are building. What we are measuring is the way we spend our time while we are alive, and that is going to vary for each of us according to our individual circumstances.


    We don't obsess over yardsticks, and we should not obsess over the "limits" of pleasure as a measurement. We simply use the yardstick of pleasure to construct the most pleasant life that is possible to us given our individual circumstances.


    Oh, crap. Now pleasure is a yardstick! =O

    Quote from Todd

    What ELSE besides pleasure do these people propose? (rhetorical question) Does that thing even exist in nature, apart from causing pleasure and pain for humans?

    Virtue, piety, reason, contemplation... There are a few propositions. Their argument is that pleasure can't be trusted as the goal because it's shared with the "lower" animals and is part of our "animal" nature, not our "higher/better" *human* nature. Reason or virtue are truly "the good" because it is the fullest expression of our humanity.

    But is it The Yardstick? Or only a yardstick?


    ^^

    Quote from Todd

    But is it The Yardstick? Or only a yardstick?

    I think Epicurus would say it (the feelings, pleasure and pain) is the only yardstick given us by nature for what to choose and what to avoid, which would take us back to those earlier issues as to whether human mental attempts to replace them and formulate other yardsticks are corruptions. :)


    And of course my interpretation of Epicurus, and my personal answer to that is "Yes, the suggested replacements are corruptions."

    Quote from Cassius

    And of course my interpretation of Epicurus, and my personal answer to that is "Yes, the suggested replacements are corruptions."

    Which may be why some later Epicureans felt it necessary to demonstrate why those replacements were corruptions using formal arguments.

    Quote from Don

    Which may be why some later Epicureans felt it necessary to demonstrate why those replacements were corruptions using formal arguments.

    Yes, but not because Epicurus was wrong to the extent he did not spend all his time working on formal arguments, but because different people in different schools and societies have been indoctrinated in different perspectives, and those who have been convinced to think that abstract logical proofs are the ultimate standard are helped by placing things in logical terms. The Stoics and their allies had been blabbering for 200 more years by the time of Cicero, and ow they have had an additional 2000 years to continue on the same path, especially after they merged with Judeo-Christianity.


    I think Epicurus would say that you can draw those tickmarks on the yardstick using whatever language or number system or scheme of categorization you care to use, but in the end you call a spade a spade and this is the main thing people need to know: the yardstick handed to us by nature for how to live is understandable by everyone and known to them as feeling/pleasure/pain.

    Quote from Cassius

    you call a spade a spade

    Fascinating quick digression (fascinating to me, at least)

    How ‘to call a spade a spade’ originated in a mistranslation.
    originated in the mistranslation by Erasmus of Greek ‘skáphē’ (meaning anything hollowed out) as a word denoting a digging tool
    wordhistories.net


    τὰ σῦκα σῦκα, τὴν σκάφην σκάφην λέγων"

    Call figs, figs; and tubs, tubs.

    The mistranslation coming to you thanks to Erasmus (for whom we also have to "thank" for Pandora's "box" which should be a "jar" and not even possibly Pandora's).

    This has been a Public Linguistics Announcement. We now return you to your previous thread, already in progress.

    Quote from Don

    I think you have to establish pleasure as "the good" before you start to use it as your criteria. Otherwise, it's just an assertion. By establishing pleasure as that to which all else points, you've set an end point - a goal - on which one should stay focused

    Quote from Todd

    I disagree on this, but it's a comparatively minor point. I don't assert that pleasure is "the good"; I reject the need for such a concept as "the good". Pleasure just is. Attaching other labels to it doesn't make it more impressive.

    I think I want to take an even stronger position.


    People were doing things for thousands of years. They were using some criteria (deliberately plural). They didn't have to stand around and ponder "the good" (or if there was one good, or many goods, or any good at all) before they could do anything.


    It was only later that philosophers (and rulers?) came along and said, "Wait! You can't just do what you want (i.e., what gives you pleasure)! You need to do what is Good (i.e, what we tell you)."


    I think the idea of "the good" was probably a tool for manipulating people from the very beginning. Certainly it has been used that way in more recent history.

    Quote from Todd

    I think the idea of "the good" was probably a tool for manipulating people from the very beginning.

    Finding circumstantial evidence for this in the paper Don linked to earlier.

    Quote


    In Homer’s epics, a unique value system is founded on convictions about the superiority of people of good birth, whose task was basically to take part in war


    Solon, in his poetic works, indicates the necessity of subordinating the value system to political activity


    Theorizing about Good began with the emergence of Pythagorean philosophy....There are three aspects of this first philosophy school that can be discussed.7 First of all, it worked as a religious-cult association, which had its origins in Orphic religion. Secondly, it was a school with a political character

    Also, these Sophists sound interesting. They have the right enemies. And in a striking similarity to Epicurus, their name has become synonymous with false reasoning.

    Curious how we seem to end up with "only fragments and other pieces of evidence" for philosophic schools that have serious disagreements with Plato!

    Quote

    Plato sought to distinguish sophists from philosophers, arguing that a sophist was a person who made his living through deception, whereas a philosopher was a lover of wisdom who sought the truth.

    LOL!


    Student: Master Plato, how can one distinguish a philosopher from a sophist?

    Plato: a philosopher is a person who loves wisdom and truth, such as myself. A sophist is a lying liar who lies.


    That's from the Wikipedia entry for Sophist, BTW - not from the paper Don linked to.

    Quote from Todd

    Curious how we seem to end up with "only fragments and other pieces of evidence" for philosophic schools that have serious disagreements with Plato!

    I've read that we have about 1% of all texts from the Classical period. It's amazing that we have anything! But, yeah, it's even more amazing that we have anything the Christians didn't approve of or what they couldn't co-opt into their dogma.

    Quote from Todd

    I think the idea of "the good" was probably a tool for manipulating people from the very beginning. Certainly it has been used that way in more recent history

    I absolutely agree with that and I think it's very important. No doubt there is also a non manipulative reason to develop generic words for different uses, but we should not overlook this as a critical issue, and also see it as an explanation why the schools warred so vigorously in the ancient world. The willingness and even desire to blue these lines that many people have today strikes me as a major problem. Good God, people, no one expects you to be "right" all the time, but at least have the self respect to take the ideas seriously and see where the lead if you are not careful.

    Quote from Cassius

    No doubt there is also a non manipulative reason to develop generic words for different uses

    Right. To be clear, I am not saying anyone who wants to discuss good or the good is being manipulative. Certainly among Epicureans it would be quite the opposite.

    Regardless of the origin of the debate over the telos/goal/good, it was a debate that had been raging, if we go back to Protagoras, for around 200 years by the time Epicurus was formalizing his philosophy.

    I maintain that Epicurus was more than happy to put on his gloves and box in that arena. He wasn't intimidated, because he felt he had seen the knockout punch (to continue the metaphor). He didn't try to dodge their punches or claim the fight was illegitimate. He loudly declared that pleasure was The Good, and everyone else's choice was simply in service to pleasure. He used the terminology of the debate throughout his writing, using variations but hitting home that he had the answer to this centuries-old debate.

    Quote from Todd

    Maybe the transition to Latin was where it all started to go wrong.

    This would be interesting to pursue, maybe in another thread. I don't have the Greek or Latin chops to pursue it, but if anyone else wants to I'll follow it with interest :) Meanwhile, this paper that Don linked to sounds fruitful!

    Quote

    People were doing things for thousands of years. They were using some criteria (deliberately plural). They didn't have to stand around and ponder "the good" (or if there was one good, or many goods, or any good at all) before they could do anything.

    I'm aware of the danger of erring too far the other way, but I take an alternative view of the history of this question. My sense is that the general conditions which predated Greek thought--and whatever non-Greek influences it may have had, say, in Phonoecia--were those of varying degrees of monarchy.


    In Egypt, the rule of the Pharoahs had been replaced by the Persian occupation under the Achaemenid Empire; in Phonoecia itself, as well as Carthage, Etruria, and Macedonia, the monarchy was not yet in full decline. In all of these cases, the value of the individual was in his capacity as a subject. What does it mean in these circumstances to speak of a purpose in life, when the purpose is so manifestly servitude? Prosperity is a product of piety, and famine, war, destruction, conquest, and exile are, as punishments, the outward signs of a sinful and guilty people. We have, in a word, entered the world of the Hebrew Testament. It is the book not of one people, but of a whole barbaric age.


    Individuality has no place in that world. The ruler is the father of a tribe--reveals himself to a tribe--makes a covenant with the tribe--and with no small degree of relish, he punishes the tribe. If they are very lucky, a scapegoat is punished on their behalf, but the motivating sin is always public, and always mutual, and always on display.


    The Greek polis was, for the space of a few centuries, something new. Power was not so centralized as it had once been; the individual was governed not by an absolute monarch, but by a body of his fellow citizens. An appreciation for skill, talent, genius, and many-sidedness began to take shape, here as in the Renaissance and elsewhere always a sign of increasing liberty.


    In Miletus, probably, or at least somewhere in Ionia, in the seventh or sixth century B.C. some individuals began asking a series of daring questions: what is nature? What is it made of, how does it operate, where did it come from, when does it change, and above all why? Who are we, and how should we live? What is the nature of our mind and consciousness? What happens to it when we die?


    What are we here for?


    These are not the kinds of questions entertained by those grasping for power and control. The Book of Job makes that plain: Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth?


    The only question fit for an all-powerful God is a rhetorical one. He has all the answers--and that is the meaning of control. Pay no attention to the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil behind the curtain. 😇

    That is an excellent point, Joshua.


    In my comment that you quoted, I was actually thinking of way further back - the neolithic and earlier, the arrival of empire with Sumer (possibly), etc.


    But the point you make about ancient Greece is a good one, and I fully agree. (And you put it so eloquently!)


    I would add only 2 things:


    1) There were competing influences too: power-seekers looking to use new ideologies (or old ones) to secure or expand their power. I thought the observation in the paper about Solon was particularly interesting/damning/incriminating. Probably the competition was a major factor in making Greek civilization so fertile.


    2) Also, remember the Greek city-states were built on a slave economy (like most other ancient civilizations, so not a unique failing of the Greeks). They accomplished great things, no doubt, and deserve credit for that. But slavery was a huge fly in the ointment. Slavery could also have been an ideological factor - as in, "we can't let all those slaves start getting any crazy ideas."