Episode 175 - "Epicurus And His Philosophy" Part 27 - Chapter 12 - The New Hedonism 04

    Welcome to Episode 175 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the only complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts, and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where you will find a discussion thread for each of our podcast episodes and many other topics.

    We are now in the process of a series of podcasts intended to provide a general overview of Epicurean philosophy based on the organizational structure employed by Norman DeWitt in his book "Epicurus and His Philosophy."

    This week we continue our discussion of Chapter 12, entitled "The New Hedonism."


    • The True Nature of Pleasure
      • Pleasure, he declares, is cognate and connate with us, and by this he means not only that the inter- connection between life and pleasure manifests itself simultaneously with birth and by actions that precede the capacity to choose and understand; he means also that pleasure is of one nature with normal life, an ingredient or component of it. and not an appendage that may be attached and detached; it is a normal accompaniment of life in the same sense that pain and disease are abnormal.
    • The Dualistic Good
    • The Natural Ceilings Of Pleasure
    • Pleasure Not Increased By Immortality
    • The Fullness of Pleasure
    • The Unity of Pleasure
    • The Root of All Good
    • Pleasure Can Be Continuous
    • Continuous Pain Impossible
    • The Relation of Pleasure To Virtue

    We mentioned the circumplex in today's episode. Here are some resources:

    Russell’s (1980) Circumplex Models – Psychology of Human Emotion: An Open Access Textbook

    The circumplex model of affect: An integrative approach to affective neuroscience, cognitive development, and psychopathology
    The circumplex model of affect proposes that all affective states arise from cognitive interpretations of core neural sensations that are the product of two…
    www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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    PS: From my perspective, Epicurus included *everything* to the right of the vertical axis in his definition of pleasure. The Cyrenaics, for example, only included the upper right quadrant.

    We mentioned Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett on the episode. I maintain that the research that Dr. Barrett and researchers like her are doing is directly relevant to a modern understanding of Epicurus's concentration on the feelings and prolepseis. This is a pretty good introduction to her work:

    123 | Lisa Feldman Barrett on Emotions, Actions, and the Brain – Sean Carroll

    PS. I thought this from Dr. Barrett strengthens Epicurus's broad definition of pleasure (and pain):

    Quote from Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett

    You never have an affectless moment in your life, so you can never be without feeling unless you have a non-neurotypical brain or something is terribly wrong, and so rational moments, moments of rational decision are not moments without feeling, that’s just not possible based on the anatomy of how our brains are structured.

    PPS. At around 36:23 on that podcast with Sean Carroll, Dr Barrett starts talking about "categories" and "concepts" (specific scientific terminology, not the common meaning.. just listen) and, to me, those ideas sound a LOT like how prolepseis function, at least insofar as I understand prolepseis.. including how Dr Glidden described them. I find this intersection of Epicurean philosophy and neuroscience absolutely fascinating!