Episode 299 - TD27 - Was Epicurus Right That There Are Only Two Feelings - Pleasure And Pain?

Quote from Adrastus

The pleasurability brought about by clearing the mind and setting the Epicurean student on the reasonable approach to life using the Doctrine and other sources of Epicurean philosophy, ought to be, philosophically and teleologically, a distinct state of affairs from the myriad of ideas one could bring to the table about Pleasure and Pain and pathos in general.

Now there is a statement that deserves more comment, because I place that framing squarely within the "heap" / sorities framing. Like grains of sand, there are myriad experiences that can be described as pleasure, and yet "happiness" or "the best life" or "the highest pleasure" is not found in any one of them, any more than "heapness" is found in any particular grain of sand.

It is surely legitimate to talk about heaps as real, and likewise talk about happiness or "the greatest pleasure" as real, and yet the latter (happiness, the highest pleasure) are not found in any one single experience, or set of experiences.

And that's why it is necessary to be clear to people that "heap" is a concept rather than a particular "thing," just like happiness and the highest pleasure are not particular "things."

From our zoom discussion last night, here is another way of asking the question:

The average person likely presumes that "the highest pleasure," is what we might call "ecstasy," and Epicurus says something not far from that in U423 (from Plutarch) where Epicurus says that the meaning of good is the near escape from some disaster, which I think most people would consider to name a condition of jubilation at having been delivered from a calamity.

If ecstasy / jubilation is what most people - and even Epicurus - seem to identify as a specific condition of extreme pleasure, then why isn't that also "the highest pleasure?"

That's the normal approach that Cicero and Plutarch think the world will agree with, and they are probably right.

Why should that line of thinking be considered to be incorrect? Why is "Ecstasy" not the highest / greatest pleasure?

Quote from Don

Some may object to my saying mortals can never be free from all pain and say something like What's the use of Epicurus' philosophy then.

At least as to me I don't object to it, and I think most everyone here (where we generally have a realistic view of things) will agree. Total absence of pain is pretty obviously a theoretical goal more rather than established fact for any human being at any time. And it's confusion about that which is causing most of the debate and division on what Epicurus was talking about. (And that's most likely why you're concerned that "some may object to [your] saying that" because we can all observe that most of the world is talking as if Epicurus were in fact describing some real condition of total separation from pain.)

Last night in our zoom, Tau Phi offered the analogy that it is understandable that we are always feeling something because we are made up of atoms moving through the void, and the atoms never stop moving, and our sensations as emergent properties of these motions is going to naturally be always responding to internal and external motions so long as we are together and alive.

Similarly, I would expect there is another "physics" analogy on why we should not look to "ecstasy" as the best definition of the highest pleasure.

We talked last night about the "impossibility" of constant ecstasy, and I think we can also analogize that to physics terms. At least theoretically, the "gods" might be able to remain in constant ecstacy, if they so choose, because it's a characteristic of the intermundia (from Lucretius) that it supplies their every need and it is a totally friendly and supportive environment.

Our world, however, is not so constantly supportive. We're constantly buffeted by external and internal motions that would tear us apart literally and figuratively if we did not act to respond to them. A constant state of ecstasy in response to outside influences would not provide a mechanism for us to repair and sustain ourselves in the face of this buffeting. We can't constantly eat fish and drink wine and have sex because given the nature of our world that will lead to dissolution from any number of factors. We *must* take time away from being stimulated so as to exert our own actions to keep us as nearly as possible in constant pleasure, keeping in mind that there are many kinds of pleasures and that some are more productive of repair and regrowth than are others.

While we all recognize the benefits of ecstasy, we also have to keep in mind that we need to pursue other pleasures, and even at times pains, so as to keep our own atoms of body and mind in healthy condition and peak performance.