Why pursue unnecessary desires?

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If the limit of pleasure is the absence of pain (ie. 100% pleasure 0% pain), aren’t unnecessary desires merely variation?

I agree with this, but I would put a different connotation on it. Satisfying unnecessary desires can be enriching. For example, I would prefer to live in a city with better museums; I don't actually need them, but I do enjoy them.

The limit of the quantity of pixels on a given screen is x, and even a black and white film will employ every pixel - but will the quality of the experience be better in full color? I think it probably will be.

Great question.

My first response would be that all desires are pleasurable, and that only those desires that bring more pain than pleasure in net total are clearly out of reasonable bounds.

Yes you can live your life in a cave on bread and water and sustain yourself, and since life in the absence of pain is pleasure, and if you succeed in living without pain, then you have reached "pure pleasure" in an abstract general sense. There is no absolute arbiter that says "you are not living pleasurably enough" and you should make another choice and pursue other sorts of pleasures.

But given the way the universe operates, it is possible for most people to obtain much more pleasure than that. Most people will realize what they are passing up, and they will regret not obtaining what they could have obtained with reasonable cost in pain, and so they will of their own accord feel regret and therefore pain and not be content with their minimalist choice. In most circumstances they will also find that they are not immune to the impact of outside pressures which virtually always occur, whether it be disease or criminals or invasion or whatever. And living strictly minimally is generally not going to prepare you for those hazards.

That's not to say that some will not be content with total minimalism, but there's no absolute rule other than that pleasure is desirable and pain is undesirable, and no one has the natural right to say "this is all anyone needs" and enforce that view on anyone else. They can do that under civil law, but that's not the same as saying that they have a natural philosophical moral right to do so.

So I think everyone has to ask themselves that question: "I can get by on a lot less than I have now, and I can feed and drink and live minimally. Should that be good enough for me?"

I don't think Epicurus would say that everyone should live like that, nor did he live like that himself. Look at the property that he accumulated and disbursed in his will. I would argue that there is no evidence that Epicurus or any other Epicurean ever lived such a "minimaliist" lifestyle. Statements that all one needs is water and bread and cheese have in my view all the markings of "philosophical extreme" statements, meant to prove the point, but by which no one actually lived -- because it's not necessary to live that way, and choosing to do so is generally an abdication of the experience of many other pleasures that are possible in life.

No other animal or infant of any species lives that way - pushing away any pleasure above what it needs to actually "survive" - and neither should we.

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That's one way of making the argument.

In addition to that, I think Torquatus gives us additional valuable information about what is going on with the natural and necessary distinction. As Torquatus explains, "the principle of classification being that the necessary desires are gratified with little trouble or expense; the natural desires also require but little, since nature's own riches, which suffice to content her, are both easily procured and limited in amount; but for the imaginary desires no bound or limit can be discovered."

I interpret that to mean that what Epicurus was doing was pointing out a way of analyzing desires so that we can predict their consequences and THEN factor those consequences into our choices. Obviously we need a method of predicting how much pain any given set of choices might bring, and this classification makes perfect sense -- the more extravagant the goal, the more likely it is going to cost a lot in pain to pursue it. That's not saying "don't ever pursue it" - it's saying that this is the way to analyze what to expect. Epicurus does a lot of that, as about sex and marriage for instance. He points out the ways to analyze the advantages and disadvantages, but he doesn't say that there's a flat rule of nature against something.

In the end everyone has to make these decisions for themselves realizing that there's no absolue right or wrong answer or supernatural god to reward or punish you for your choice.

But in the end, for my own analysis, it comes down to: In an eternity of time i am only alive for a very short period, and restricting the amount of pleasure I pursue to only what is necessary to keep me alive is about as foolish a thing as one could possibly do.

Quote from Joshua

The limit of the quantity of pixels on a given screen is x, and even a black and white film will employ every pixel - but will the quality of the experience be better in full color? I think it probably will be.

And an unstated premise of Joshua's analogy is that no general photographer in is right mind would even think to choose black and white over color unless the photographer were specifically wanting the black and white effect. The additional richness or even just information conveyed by the color is much greater.

So someone can be completely justified in picking black and white if they have a particular reason to do so, just as we often have reason to cut back and live more minimally when circumstances require, but in general it makes no sense to pass over any desire that is attainable for a reasonable next of pleasure over pain.

All of this sounds very generic or even juvenile in referring to "pleasure" and "pain," but of course the point is that everything in life that you find desirable falls under pleasure, so no matter whether your preference is art or literature or poetry or civil society or any other plain or exotic experience, that's what we're talking about.

And most importantly, mental pleasures are frequently much more significant to us than physical pains, and that's an important point to keep in mind to refute the nay-sayers.

Another answer:

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If the limit of pleasure is the absence of pain (ie. 100% pleasure 0% pain), aren’t unnecessary desires merely variation?

Yes the limit of pleasure is the absence of pain, and yes unnecessary desires (just like any other) are variation past the point of 100%.

But it's a key issue to remember that variation is pleasure too, and Epicurus is not saying "and variation is not desirable."

My view is that you have to keep in mind that Epicurus is making a very specific point in defining "the limit of quantity of pleasure." It is not a good idea to presume that this statement carries over to mean that "when you've reached the limit you're finished once and for all" or that "the limit of pleasure" is a description of a particular pleasure. That would be as wrong as taking "all sensations are true" to mean that every thought you have at any particular moment based on a single fleeting sight or sound is totally correct. The senses are never "true" in the sense of being "true opinions." The senses are true in being "reported honestly without their own opinions."

We have a lot of past discussion here that relates the limit issue to a challenge by Plato and others that pleasure has no limit, and that's in my view the main context in which this statement has the clearest meaning.

"Variation" an also mean that you just live another day to experience new pleasures, and life is desirable as Epicurus says.

Your question arises in everyone who thinks about these issues and only if a person gets past this to understanding how it makes sense does the person stay with Epicurean philosophy.

For those who are convinced that these apparent contradictions have no plausible explanation I would advise them to stop studying Epicurus and go read other philosophers for a while, rather than conclude that they should in fact adopt a goal of minimalism as a generic lifestyle. I'd say that's a tragic misunderstanding of what Epicurus is saying, but we unfortunately we see it happen all the time, especially among general audience writers who think they are brilliantly explaining Epicurus in their "one-off" philosophy article.

These are good questions so keep them coming.

Quote from Rolf

Does this not fall into the fallacy of there being a “hierarchy” of pleasures? I understood it as all pleasure being equally, well, pleasurable - no “fancy pleasures”, as Elayne put it.

That's a very reasonable question and this is my answer. All pleasure is pleasure because we find it desirable, so in that sense all pleasure is a pleasurable feeling. (Check DeWitt's section on "The Unity of Pleasure" for this.) When there are only two options, there is no basis for saying that there is a "Fancy pleasure" which is better than "pleasure."

But all pleasurable feelings are not identical, as the vary in intensity, duration, and parts of the body affected (this list is from PD09).

So while there is no hierarchy in which a particular pleasure is "best" and at the top of the pyramid, there are differences among pleasures, and we have to decide which will be most pleasurable to us under differing circumstances. Not all people find ice cream equally pleasing, nor do we ourselves find the same ice cream equally pleasing all the time.

I think the key issue here is that pleasure is a feeling given to us by nature and we don't get to 100% control what we find pleasurable. Certainly we have some influence over that, but in the end pleasure is a feeling and a feeling is not an opinion - it just is what it is, like what our eyes or other senses give to us. What's the alternative? Well, gods could tell us what is pleasing, or there could be ideal forms of pleasure. Epicurean physics rejects those, so we are left with moment-by-moment processing of senses and feelings as prolepses as our ultimate contact with reality.

Quote from Rolf

What I’m confused about is this classification. Am I understanding correctly that the “necessary” in “necessary and natural desires” refers to being necessary for human well-being and happiness, and “unnecessary” to being unnecessary (but still pleasurable)? If that’s the case, why is it not enough for us to simply pursue and fulfil the necessary desires in order to reach this ideal (and largely hypothetical) state of 100% pleasure 0% pain? I understand in a practical sense that a minimal and ascetic life like this would be rather dull (and thus painful), but then I don’t understand the “necessary” and “unnecessary” terminology.

There is the different category of necessary for survival vs necessary for happiness, but I don't think that is what you are asking.

As for why it is not enough to do what you are suggesting, I think Epicurus would tell you that you have to decide that for yourself. Maybe it is enough, and it does get you to 100% pleasure. But that 100% pleasure does not tell you what mix of pleasures that you are engaged in, and I think this is where you are mixing the concepts of "the greatest pleasure" with "What should I be doing right now?"

It is conceptually clear that 100% pleasure is the best way to express the general goal. It is not conceptually clear - in fact the opposite - that everyone will be doing exactly the same thing when they are at 100% pleasure. As you said as to yourself, you would regret not pursuing what pleasures are possible to you. In the same way the combination of pleasures that a minimalist might say is 100% pleasure and totally satisfactory for him might be 80% pain and totally unsatisfactory for me. What is necessary for one person to reach 100% pleasure is likely to be totally inadequate for someone else.

100% pleasure represents the conceptual goal that we put together through analysis, but Nature never tells us "Well done my good and faithful servant - now you can stop because you are at 100% pleasure."

I think you're well on your way to seeing that the decision to classify all of experience into either pleasure or pain is at the heart of Epicureanism - it is "philosophy." And that is why there's probably no more significant analysis in Dewitt better than:

Quote from “Epicurus And His Philosophy” page 240 - Norman DeWitt (emphasis added)

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“The extension of the name of pleasure to this normal state of being was the major innovation of the new hedonism. It was in the negative form, freedom from pain of body and distress of mind, that it drew the most persistent and vigorous condemnation from adversaries. The contention was that the application of the name of pleasure to this state was unjustified on the ground that two different things were thereby being denominated by one name. Cicero made a great to-do over this argument, but it is really superficial and captious. The fact that the name of pleasure was not customarily applied to the normal or static state did not alter the fact that the name ought to be applied to it; nor that reason justified the application; nor that human beings would be the happier for so reasoning and believing.

Epicurean philosophy isn't magic. Epicurus extended the definition of pleasure to include all that is not painful as a way of refuting the arguments of the other schools that it makes no sense to set "Pleasure" as the ultimate goal because "pleasure" is insatiable and can never be satisfied. If he had not done so, he would never have been able to say that Pleasure can be satisfied, and that it is indeed possible to reach the best life.

It's a choice to see and understand things in a way that rejects the supernatural and makes sense of the evidence and the faculties that we have as a basis for how to live one's best life. The best life comes down to a life of pleasure because there are no supernatural gods or ideal forms that command us to live other than as nature has provided through pleasure and pain.

And the best way to reduce that best life into a single goal (which all philosophers want to do, and everyone else wants to do so they have an understandable goal) is to identify that single goal as "Pleasure." At that point it's up to you to go out an apply it and live your life.

I agree with that analysis and I think that's probably why there's the separate reference to desires necessary for life and necessary for happiness.

Further, I agree with you that the natural and necessary analysis is not as clear in our texts as it should be, and it's not something I focus on. I think Torquatus gives a reasonable explanation as to why it exists, as a tool of analysis, but it strikes me as rather obvious and so not something I find that important. The getting to 100% and then the rest being variation is important for logical reasons, but to me this natural / necessary division is not as much philosophical as it is practical advice. It's good practical advice too - if you need need help to see that the harder pleasures to obtain come at higher cost.

I don't think you're missing something obvious however. This analysis is a prime tool used by the Stoics to argue that Epicurus was a minimalist, so it's a major thing to fight over. Yes it can be read to mean "you should be satisfied when you have just enough to keep you alive." But was it interpreted by Epicurus himself that way? No, so it's either not meant in that way, or Epicurus was a hypocrite. I don't think he was a hypocrite, so I think it was meant in the practical way of meaning "Watch out if you go for the more difficult pleasures in life, because that may cause more pain that it's worth. There's a lot of pleasure available in things that are easier to get, but jt's up to you to decide what's best for you. And he of all people - driven as he was - would have known that if you forgo something that you really want to do then that regret can be among the most painful.

So part of the problem also is that we don't have much elaboration on this point in the texts, but in my view we have more than enough to know how *not* to interpret this passage.

Something else:

In discussing DeWitt's analysis of extending the meaning of pleasure to all that is not painful, I think DeWitt drives the ball right up to the goal line, but I am not sure he scores the touchdown.

Likewise, I think that Cicero allows Torquatus to explain the point of absence of pain in a relatively complete way, and we'd be much worse off if we didn't have this, but he still doesn't let Torquatus drive the point home with force. He never lets Torquatus give a fully adequate closing argument on why men who say they are without pain are at the height of pleasure, or why the host pouring wine is at an equal state of pleasure as the guest drinking it.

My view of the situation is that in order to drive the point home forcefully, you have to vigorously argue the "why" of the Epicurean perspective, and that goes back to the main fight - with supernatural religion.

DeWitt could explain Epicurus' position and say that men would be better off if they thought this way, but in his time and place as a college professor he could launch the kind of frontal attack against religion that Frances Wright did in the final chapter of "A Few Days In Athens."

And Cicero wasn't going to do Epicureans the favor of preserving their full arguments in his own work. You have to piece it together from "On the Nature of the Gods" and "On Ends" and others.

Some people who come to the realization that Epicurus was simply extending the name of pleasure to all life that is not painful are going to think that Epicurus was "cheating" or "playing word games" and they are going to walk away disappointed.

I think that's why so many people also find Lucretius disappointing - they want more ethics and less atoms.

But I think the truth is that Lucretius' presentation IS Epicurean philosophy at its core, because when you try to talk someone who is not an Epicurean into being an Epicurean, you don't start off with pleasure and pain. You start off with explaining that the universe is not supernatural, and that there are no absolute truths, and THEN you go on to show that pleasure and pain are all that nature gives us to decide how to live.

The point I am trying to make is that Epicurus did what he did for a very good reason - because the world then and now is populated by charlatan priests and philosophers who are trying to use their supposed privileged knowledge to manipulate other people. And the proper response to that is to go right back at them, as did the Epicurean in Lucian's essay who stood up to Alexander the Oracle Monger, And equally or more bad are the Academic Skeptics who say that no knowledge is possible in the first place and we have to just drift through life never being confident of anything except that the person who stands up for himself is a danger to skepticism.

So in the end I see "natural and necessary desire analysis" as a good suggestion for living pleasurably, but surely most people of any background religious or otherwise can understand that point, so, as I see it, it's not uniquely Epicurean or central to the philosophy.

But you are right to struggle with it because you need to be comfortable that you have an explanation for where it fits in.

Otherwise, just like "pleasure is the absence of pain," you'll end up with an absolutely harmful construction of Epicurean philosophy that I would advise you to run from as fast as you can. Because buried in the "always be satisfied with only what you need to stay alive, and never try for anything more" viewpoint is Buddhism and Stoicism and JudeoChristianity and worse.

Quote from Rolf

at the end of the day Epicurean ethics comes down to using prudence to maximise the ratio of pleasure to pain, with much of the rest being tools to help one do this. Would you agree with this evaluation (oversimplified as it may be)?

Yes I would agree that that is good summary of the situation. The conclusion is that it's not supernatural gods/ideas that tell us the best way to live, but the faculty of pleasure, and the rest is either the leadup to the conclusion (through study of nature / atomism) or the way to pursue pleasure practically. That's what all the virtue stuff is - virtue is the necessary tool for living plesurably, but it's a "tool" not a set of absolute standards.

Quote from Rolf

On that note, I’d probably say to such as a stoic that it is important to remember that boredom and regret, too, are pains. They must be factored in when deciding on which pleasures to pursue.

Yes boredom and regret are pains. But given that the Stoics don't consider pain to be important and that only virtue is important, I don't know that any argument on pleasure ever makes much headway with them.

The following lines were first to be meant as a commentary on one of Cassius' statements in our last Sunday Zoom Meeting, but they perfectly fit into this discussion!

"Developing one's best potential" or something similar was a statement of Cassius at the end of our Zoom meeting. Perhaps it's an American perspective to seek for the highest, the best, the ultimate and has to be seen in its cultural context. Or I just don't get him right.

But I'm critical of this phrase as it appears to my ears. According to my understanding, Epicureanism isn't about living a frugal life and achieving tranquility under a state of painlessness. Furthermore, it's searching for pleasure, trusting one's senses, feelings, conceptions of the world. Bringing them together to "dance", as Cassius wrote in his poem "Thus Purred Catius' Cat". According to my understanding, pleasure is both epistemological (a canonical term) and teleological. It's based on our very conditions as human beings and defines also the aims of our life. It is the beginning and the end of the happy life.

In a world where every sensation that isn't painful is pleasant, we just have to open our senses and to see how many pleasurable experiences are at our hands. It enables us to enjoy and enrich ourselves with all that tiny little good influences around us. Good food (especially food!), a nice breeze under a blue sky, a vibrant talk with a friend while walking a thriving urban landscape or a magnificent peace of nature. There are so many good things around all the while, hence I'm not seeking for more, for the better, for the Everest. I am just satisfied and happy. I don't need to be a dollar millionaire, although everybody around me will tell me otherwise. Instead of living a life based on the very foundations of the human nature - as Epicurus emphasizes over and over again in the fragments that are available to us - they worry about abstract things which have no connection to happiness in the first place but are grounded in empty desire. I know, there is this relativism going on, teaching a broad definition of pleasure that is so common that there is ultimately no need for any philosophical insight anymore. I'm not talking about the little obsessions that people are striving for but e.g. about people in their 60s who worry as wealthy persons more about money as they did when they were young and had no money. They think wealth will give them security (and finally immortality!), all the while they should pursue their fundamentals: Learning philosophy, understanding the good life. They end up fighting with their relatives for the bigger share of the inheritance of their parents, ironically they are themselves already in cognitive decline. Otherwise they would recognize they give up precious relationships which build up a cornerstone of happiness. This isn't an extraordinary example but an usual experience you will find all over the place. 10 or 20 years later they end up in a nursing home, money and power then doesn't matter anymore but "moral" strength would, the capacity to stand firm, having a philosophy that guides them through the last mile. Diogenes of Oinoanda, having reached old age is the extraordinary man who reflects his past life, rejoices in the pleasures and the superior understanding of the universe he has achieved. He is at the top, having reached the heights where no snow falls and pure light is shining. This is the man I would like to be!

I like Epicurus' categorisation of desires. According to my understanding, a common misunderstanding is to assume that unnecessary desires are just something that is unnecessary and can be pursued whenever it seems they do not harm. The problem ist, I suggest, that the just natural but unnecessary category already covers what most of us think of as "unnecessary": Something that is related to our natural basis and because of that it is able to give us joy, but it's nothing that is necessary for survival. I am totally okay with that.

The neither natural nor necessary category is there because it relates to events and experiences in life that just nurish abstract ideas and notions about the world. The example of some senior citizens, seduced by greed for money and hunger for endless life, instead of recognizing their limits is something that has a very strong impression on me.

I know Cassius' is fighting the image of the minimalist frugal Epicurean who lives on bread and water but I would like to see more sensitivity as to why there is a category of"unnecessary desires" in the first place.

Let me give my take on "Why not the best?" and why I don't see it as distinctly American:

I am reading Greek philosophy as engaged in just that search: "What is the best way of life?" because why would someone want other than the best that is available to him? If there is in fact a god, or life after death, I certainly want to conform to that god and live forever in bliss. I think most people of any nationality would see things that way, though I concede there may be some who don't.

But then the question is "What IS the best way of life, and that is where the debate about gods and life after death and ideal forms and the rest comes in.

Epicurus says that the best is "a life of pleasure." and so we go from there learning how best to pursue the life of pleasure.

But the starting point is identifying the goal before talking about how to achieve it, and most of the philosphical warfare is over "what is the goal?"

Not sure if this is helpful but, for me, natural/unnecessary desires are the "sweet spot" of living as an Epicurean.

At some point a person has reasoned through what is unnatural for them and ruled those things out for themself as something to pursue. Similarly, at some point a person has (hopefully) secured their natural and necessary desires for the foreseeable future. The natural/unnecessary desires, then, are everything that's left, and these are the desires that we work with every day. Do I want to do something extravagant, just for the fun of it? This is a practical opportunity to examine my desire and evaluate how it might affect me in terms of pleasure/pain. Am I embarking on a large project? Say, perhaps, a home remodel. How can I maximize my pleasure in this instance, both in terms of the experience and the outcome. Am I deciding between two jobs? Do I want wine with dinner? Paper or plastic?

As Epicureans (or Epicurists) we don't just set up our lives and proceed on autopilot. And working with natural/unnecessary desires is one way to intentionally live day to day with the philosophy to consistently and responsibly maximize our pleasure.

I would say that both Titus and Godfrey are working well within the "practical" paradigm that makes sense.

The danger is (and this is the way that I read Rolf's question) is that it is easy to take the discussion and arrive at Rolf's question: "Why should I seek more than bread and water and a cave?"

That's where a strict and over-literal interpretation of the texts could lead someone to answer "You wouldn't."

And the starting point of discussing the philosophy is getting past those foundational issues. Neither Godfrey nor Titus have for a moment (as far as I know) entertained the idea of living in cave. Both are highly accomplished people who would not trade their past lives for life in a cave.

But for those who ask the logical philosophical question (and I think everyone should, as would any child being taught Epicurean philosophy) there needs to be a logical answer, and that answer most generally is "You would pursue more than the life in the cave because X, Y, and Z., as exemplified by Epicurus himself, who certainly did not stay in a cave all his life."

We talked about this part but not sure we ever quoted it:

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[127] ....We must consider that of desires some are natural, others vain, and of the natural some are necessary and others merely natural; and of the necessary some are necessary for happiness, others for the repose of the body, and others for very life.

Quote from Cassius

Neither Godfrey nor Titus have for a moment (as far as I know) entertained the idea of living in cave.

Well I do have a man cave, but I'd prefer not to live in it....