Is All "Ataraxia" Equal?

A new participant in the forum posted a graphic today that reminds us of that the word "Ataraxia" is associated with Epicurus. We've discussed that word from many perspectives, but I would like to further the discussion:

Let's resolve to be as obstinate as Torquatus was, and let's say that "absence of pain" *IS* "pleasure." If all absence of pain is pleasure, then the number and types of experiences of human life that fall within the term pleasure are dramatically expanded. That perspective would imply that *every* experience of human life that is not painful is pleasurable. No middle ground; no neutral; no third position. Let's take that perspective as agreed for the moment and consider two examples Torquatus gave.

The hand in its normal condition and not feeling any pain is not only in a state of pleasure, but in the greatest pleasure. What do we presume about this "normal conditon?" Does not the "normal condition" of the hand include not only those hands that are motionless, but also hands being in regular use doing the things hands normally do, from drumming fingernails on a desktop to holding things and squeezing things and on and on and on? I would say that the hand can and does innumerable things in its normal pain-free condition. If so, then the hand is at the height of pleasure whether motionless or whether being massaged by a professional masseuse. In each case the hand is at the height of pleasure. Does that mean it is no concern to me whether the hand is motionless, or is being massaged by a masseuse? Should the hand (if it could think) be equally satisfied in either case and take no notice of the difference?

Another example from Torquatus is this one: A host at a party is pouring wine for a thirsty guest who is drinking it. Both are stipulated to have no pain: the host because he had no pain to begin with, and the guest because his only pain (thirst) is alleviated by the drinking. Both therefore have no pain, and are therefore considered to be at the height of pleasure. Does that mean that it should be of no concern whether we are the host or the guest? Should we view both the experience of pouring and the experience of drinking as exactly the same and never express a preference between the two?

I think Epicurus might answer those questions in this way:

"First of all, both the motionless hand and the massaged hand, and both the pouring host and the drinking guest, are at the height of pleasure because we have stated that they have no pain in their experience. Someone whose life is "full" of pleasure cannot have his quantity of pleasure experienced, because he is already full. But of course the two sets of experiences are not the same in every respect. Only a dolt would say that being massaged is the same as being motionless, or that pouring wine is the same experience as drinking it. I am not a dolt, and you are not a dolt, and you should not think that I am saying that all ways of experiencing pleasure, or "absence of pain," are the same and equally to be chosen. Some experiences of pleasure are to be chosen over other experiences of pleasure, and some ways of experiencing absence of pain are to be preferred over other ways of experiencing absence of pain. No person's life is identical to another person's experience, and you have to decide which way to pursue the goal of absence of pain for yourself. As I told Menoeceus, the wise man chooses not the pleasure that is the longest but that which is most pleasant, and by that you should understand that I know the difference between drinking water and drinking wine - and you should too!"

Would you agree with what I am suggesting Epicurus would say?

After thinking about that, let me ask the question Eoghan asked about "absence pain" in another recent thread. Consider how you would articulate an answer to someone who asks you this question:

"You have said Ataraxia is desirable. Is all Ataraxia the same?" How should I consider any differences in the experience of ataraxia in determining how I am going to live my life? Does the pleasantness of my experiences while I am not disturbed have anything to do with it? Am I supposed to consider the location, duration, and intensity of pleasures, or are all pleasures of equal significance to me so long as I am not disturbed?

How would you articulate the answer to that question to someone?

I think we have made a lot of progress in seeing how "absence of pain" *is* pleasure. Now we need to go back and integrate whether all pleasures are identical, or some are to be chosen over others, and how. Does the choice between pleasures hang only on whether a pleasure might bring some disturbance, or can one pleasure be so much more pleasing than another that it is worth choosing, even if choosing that greater pleasure brings some degree of disturbance?

My opening post was far too wordy but that quick take makes it easier to focus. My comments in red:

Here's my quick take:

1. Pleasure feels good. That's what makes it pleasure and not pain. Comment:  No controversy there.
2. Choiceworthiness is determined by consequences, both to oneself and how one is perceived by one's community and friends. Comment:  Not much controversy there, though I would say that "how one is perceived by one's community and friends" ultimately resolves to being significant because it will lead to a consequence to oneself.
3. "Does the choice between pleasures hang only on whether a pleasure might bring some disturbance." Yes. Comment: This is where I think more explanation is required, and my question may not be worded in an optimum way. The "some" was intended to be a reference to measure. The question might be better stated as "Does the choice between pleasures hang only on whether choosing one pleasure might produce one unit of pain, while another pleasure might produce zero units of pain?" The real point of the question is whether "any amount of pain" is sufficient to make one choose one pleasure over another, or whether you have to quantify BOTH the amount of pleasure and the amount of pain in order to make a decision.
4. "Can one pleasure be so much more pleasing than another that it is worth choosing?" That's just another way of asking "What are the consequences of this pleasure vs that pleasure?" Comment: Yes I agree that's another way of asking the same question, the answer which I think is "Yes." Agreed?
5. I continue to soapbox that we can have more confidence in accessing some pleasures than others (the infamous katastematic vs "kinetic" discussion). Comment: In this context I will say that "availability of access" is probably not a key factor in dealing with this issue. Yes accessing some pleasures will be easier (involve less pain) than others. But I don't think "involving less pain to access" is the full answer to the question of which pleasures to pursue. If it were, then the rest of the discussion would be resolved in favor of a rule that "Pursue first and foremost those pleasures which are easiest to access" and that would be fairly interpretable, standing alone, as "live in a cave on bread and water."

Yep now we are getting to the reasons why this needs to be discussed.

Quote from Don

. Once your start down pain and pleasure "units" - dolors and hedons - you've left Epicurean philosophy and are talking Utilitarian philosophy. Which is one reason I'm reluctant to wholeheartedly endorse Godfrey 's location, intensity, duration formulation.

I think you're correctly connecting the issues, and I don't like "the greatest good for the greatest number," but I am not ready to throw out efforts to quantify pleasure as inherently inappropriate. Yes that seems to be with what the Benthamites were struggling with, but i don't know enough of their texts to say whether they got it wrong or not.

This issue of choosing among pleasures has to be articulated in some way other than saying "more pleasant" or "less pleasant" if we are to communicate to people what we are talking about. Because I can't conceive that anyone would say that "all pleasures are equal in every respect." If they are not equal in *every* respect, then do we not need to explore and articulate the differences?

Quote from Don

Regardless of the possible bread and water interpretation, I think this *is* what Epicurus taught. Know - at a gut level - what you absolutely need to live a self-sufficient, pleasurable life of well-being. Then you *know* if everything else was tragically taken from you, IF all other sources of (kinetic) pleasure were removed from you, you would still be able to lead a life of pleasure without pain on that. BUT he also taught to ENJOY the varieties of pleasure available to us here and now.

I think this is where France Wright was correct in framing the argument between Zeno and Epicurus, and Cicero was showing his intelligence by picking out the same issue: the question is "Does Epicurean philosophy leave the door wide open to *whatever* interpretation of pleasure one desires to make?"

Would indeed Epicurean philosophy have nothing to say between Lucretius at a young age (1) deciding to spend his life shepherding sheep on a hillside vs (2) deciding to become an epic poet and spending his life composing "On The Nature of Things?"

We can pose the question pretty easily: Lucretius as a lifelong shepherd living without pain would be at the exact same height of pleasure as Lucretius the Epic Poet living without pain. We can say that easily because our definitions of the hypothetical make them both "without pain" and therefore "at the height of pleasure."

What in Epicurean philosophy provides the guidance to the young Lucretius to tell him to pursue the life of the epic poet vs the life of the shepherd.

(I have nothing against shepherds -- just using them as a convenient paradigm example.)

I would say that even if we say that both lives are "without pain" and therefore the height of pleasure, we could say that one choice or the other would be "more pleasurable" in the specific case of Lucretius. If we can say that, we ought to be able to explain how, and why that choice would be appropriate for him, even though any pains involved in the life of an epic poet would be quite different from the pains confronting a shepherd.

If we simply say 'one option is more pleasurable and you simply have to figure it out for yourself" - that might be a viable answer. I am asking "Is that the best we can do to explain the choice?"

Quote from Don

Those feelings are going to be either pleasurable or painful (positive or negative).

But within "pleasurable" and "painful" are there not obviously degrees or pleasurable or painful? And are we not going to choose those pleasures which we find to be more pleasurable than others?

Saying that 100% pleasure is the height of pleasure is one thing, but is "height" the same for everyone in all circumstances? 100% is, yes, but what if two vessels that are 100% full are different sizes? Are the different sizes and therefore quantities and qualities of pleasures they contain of no relevance?

Quote from Pacatus

I forgot this, and just wanted to say that, although Utilitarianism influenced neoclassical economics (efficient choice based on “marginal utility”), the notion of cardinal utility (“utils”) was dropped. Constrained choice, based on relative preference, became the model. And in no way am I advocating for that former utilitarian position.

I haven't read far enough into this to know the history, and I am not sure that I have the time to go there. But you're not stating why the notion of "cardinal utility" was dropped, and I suspect I am in agreement that "cardinal utility" is indeed something worthy of discussion that should not be dropped. If "relative preference" is a reference to how "other people" view pleasure and that leads to "the greatest good for the greatest number," then I would say that is the erroneous track, and the right track is to indeed analyze what "for you" brings you the greatest pleasure.

I think we're still on the same initial question. Some pleasures are more pleasing to me/you/everyone than others, correct, and should we not discuss the reasoning as to why that is the case?

I think it could be fruitful to look at the words being translated as "intensity" to see if they might perhaps be more related to issues of quantity or limit rather than what we might term "sharpness" or "depth of feeling."

I see, for example, that one of the phrases currently on the top of the forum uses the word intensity:

On Ends Book 2, III - Rackham / Loeb

Cicero: Still, granting that there is nothing better (that point I waive for the moment), surely it does not therefore follow that what I may call the negation of pain is the same thing as pleasure?" Torquatus: "Absolutely the same, indeed the negation of pain is a very intense pleasure, the most intense pleasure possible."

But according to the Rackham Loeb edition, the Latin word there is "maxima" .....

... and given our discussions lately I think we need to be careful about how we are interpreting what "maximum pleasure" refers to.

It seems to me that it is easy to understand that if we are talking about "all our awareness" then if 100% of our awareness is engaged in feeling pleasure, then that would be the limit of pleasure.

However (and this of course the point we are discussing now) if there are various types of pleasure, and we aren't specifying whether 100% of our awareness is occupied with fingernail clipping or joy of mind in conversing with our friends, then we need to be aware that there might be varying types of maximum pleasure.

Again this is easy to see I think in regard to thinking about the example that Epicurus on his last day was experiencing both pleasure (of mind) and pain (of body) and offsetting one against the other. We're constantly in day to day life offsetting pleasures against pain. There is no 'salvation' or "sum of it all" moment in which everything gets added up to a "final" tally. it seems to me that there is no "Total absence of pain" except as a thought construction that doesn't happen unless you sit around thinking about your life in summary, and doesn't exist except in your conceptualization of it.

So if Epicurus was equating "absence of pain" with "pleasure" he was likely referring at least as much to everyday discrete experiences as he was to some theoretical summary of a person's life (if indeed he ever thought in those terms at all).

If all or a significant part of this reasoning is true, then I think that when we do choose to talk about 100% pleasure = total absence of pain we should be talking about discrete "slices of life," and that would mean that "absence of pain," even though described as 100% and therefore at a maximum of quantity, is saying nothing regarding the quality of what I think most of us mean when we use the word "intensity."

At the hazard of this being a tangent I am reminded of color controls on a televison (at least old style CRT TVs I grew up with). Televisions have controls for Color/Hue, Saturation and Brightness. Is there a possible analogy that "pure pleasure" is like "pure yellow" in that it is 100% yellow? The yellow control may be set at 100% yellow, yet the various settings of "saturation" and "brightness" of the yellow make the different settings readily distinguishable. So my question to throw out there would be:

When PD09 refers to "intensity," location, and duration, are we talking about how pleasures differ from one another and how saying "absence of pain = 100% pleasure" does not tell us all we need to know about which pleasure to choose?

PD09. If every pleasure could be intensified so that it lasted, and influenced the whole organism or the most essential parts of our nature, pleasures would never differ from one another. [3]

Edit: I am saying several things in this post so let me separate them:

(1) I am doubting that "intensity" is the best word for us to use in saying that "the total absence of pain is the most intense pleasure." Most people don't translate PD03 as saying "the most intense pleasure is the absence of pain," they say "limit of quantity of pleasure." Seems to me that the more likely analogy is that "the total absence of pain is the "purest" pleasure, and whether we perceive it to be the most "intense feeling " needs to be a subject of discussion over what "intense" really means. I doubt most people consider "intense" feeling to be the same as the most "pure" feeling.

(2) The related point is that when the Epicureans were making statements to the effect that "the highest pleasure is the total absence of pain" that word "highest" is not meant to imply that there is an absolute scale of pleasure that everyone experiences in the same way. What is highest for one person may be totally different for another person, and whether we are talking about "ataraxia" or "the highest pleasure" status for even a single person may be different for that same person at different times and circumstances (and therefore we should act accordingly to distinguish and pursue the type we feel to be most pleasurable to us).

Maybe this all resolves down to the question: "Is 'the limit of pleasure' the same experience for everyone?" Maybe the answer to that is clearly no, and I am simply feeling the need to make the issue clear because I am under the continuing influence of the religious and romantic and egalitarian idea that everyone has access to the same type of "salvation experience" basking in the presence of god." At this point in my efforts to apply Epicurus' views consistently, I cannot imagine that he held that to be the case, but the issue seems so important that this conclusion should not be left to implication.