New Review of Emily Austin's "Living For Pleasure" - This Time By An Objectivist

Living for Pleasure: An Epicurean Guide to Life by Emily A. Austin - The Objective Standard

Living for Pleasure offers a thorough presentation of Epicurean morality in a readable, entertaining style.

theobjectivestandard.com

I think most of us here will find this largely positive review to be something we can mostly agree with, while at the same time it will help us to dive further into the differences between Rand and Aristotle and Epicurus.

The reviewer wishes that LFP had gone further into these differences, which is a perspective I can share without calling it a criticism. The thing I like about LFP is that it goes as far as it does in presenting a positive view of Epicurus that active and healthy people can embrace. When the reviewer talks about JFK's speech on the reasons for going to the moon, he doesn't so much point out a flaw in the book or in Epicurus but in the current orthodox understanding that Epicurus would hesitate to go himself if he had the chance.

The main failure I would point out in turn as to the review is that the writer does not acknowledge that Rand placed "selfishness" and "reason" at the heart of her philosophy, rather than the feeling of pleasure and the rejection of logical rationalism. But to explore that would open too many wounds for most Objectivists, who have a long way to go before they begin to realize that their own sin of rationalism - which many of them admit - is built in to Rand's' neo-Stoic and neo-Platonic worship of "reason" rather than the feeling of pleasure as the ultimate standard of a proper way to live.

Rather than continue my own comments I'll just post the link and we can discuss further to the extent people are interested.

Thank you Peter. I don't have nearly the reading background (or processing power)in Rand that you have, but I see that your article is largely based on the widely held premise that Epicurus values katastematic pleasures higher than kinetic ones. If I thought that was correct I would have a major problem with Epicurus, and I would probably have dropped him long ago. I perceive this to be similar to why Nietzsche ultimately backed away.

But for me, this problem is overcome by arguments stated at length by Boris Nikolsky and Gosling and Taylor, who allege that this widely held premise is not correct, and that Epicurus did not hold katatastemic as higher than kinetic, or place "tranquility" at the center of his philosophy rather than pleasure, as is attributed to him.

I doubt this thread is the place to elaborate on that for the moment, but I wanted to note that I think there is a lot to be gained in comparing and contrasting Rand with Epicurus, just as we do the Stoics and the others. It has been so long since I read those Shelton articles that I hardly remember them, but tracing out the reasons why Rand does not ultimately land on "pleasure" but on some version of "reason" (at least in common perception) is to me a fascinating subject.

Quote from Don

That doesn't make them "better" just more readily available.

Yes, and having a type of pleasure that is "readily available" is essential to Epicurus being able to maintain that the wise man who pursues pleasure can always find it and thus be able to say that he is happy.

You're welcome. Nikolsky himself credits Gosling and Taylor in their "Greeks on Pleasure" for his inspiration, and I see that Emily Austin in "Living for Pleasure" footnotes that she sides with Gosling and Taylor as well. So other than DeWitt, who mentions the issue but does so mostly in passing, credit probably goes to Gosling and Taylor for blazing the modern trail on this.

G&T marshal the evidence for why the Ciceronian / modern interpretation that elevates katastematic pleasure / tranquility as the true end is wrong, and Nikolsky advances the case of how the problem got accentuated due to the editing choices of Diogenes Laertius in organizing his comments along the division of Carneades (if I recall correctly).

If there's a way to summarize how you think they erred on Aristotle that would be interesting too.