PD 25 meaning? by Woolf (2004)

I've only caught up reading part way but I'll wade in here.

I really don't care whether we talk about psychological hedonism or hedonism or whatever.

What I come back to is that Epicurus said living creatures pursue pleasure and flee from pain. Stop.

That's why pleasure is the telos. It is the thing to which all our actions and decisions terminate. Ask enough questions, drill deep enough, and everyone should/has to admit that the reason they did something was it thought it would make them feel good, it would bring pleasure. One can obfuscate, use fancy virtue-laden rhetoric, lie to oneself and others consciously or subconsciously. The result is the same. Epicurus calls us to pursue pleasure consciously and deliberately and to question our decisions in light of this guide that Nature has provided. Culture and society provide innumerable avenues that claim to provide us with pleasure or dictate what we "should" do. Epicurus calls us to question our culture's "that's the way things are done."

Quote from Cassius

Can even mental pain be totally eliminated / extinguished? What texts might you cite for that position that the mental pain of loss for a loved one (for instance) can be fully extinguished. I think of that example in part because I see wbernys earlier quoted Frances Wright (which I just now saw) and this always reminds me of her paragraph here from chapter 10:

This discussion is very interesting to me since it goes to the practicality of living in a reality of what you can sense, what you have experienced in the past, and our feelings of pleasure and pain. What challenges me, and perhaps all of us is the short term and the long term of living one's life. Taking the latter first, the long term might be measured by comparing all the pleasures we've luckily experienced vs. all the pains we've experienced and deciding retrospectively: "I have lived a satisfying, happy life." That exercise can give pleasure even as we engage in it.

It's the short term that is more challenging, though. The knowledge that my intimate partner may die before me, or my friendship must endure even though my friend is terminally ill are mental issues that dwell in our conscious thoughts and short term memories (and frightfully might endure there for a long time, if not forever).

I think solace can be found in persisting in the Epicurean pursuits, along with what modern science ishowing how our plastic brains can be "managed" if you will. By conscious decisions to associate bad times that come to mind with the good times we've also had with a person, or a place, we can return to the pleasure of that relationship.

Quote from DaveT

What challenges me, and perhaps all of us is the short term and the long term of living one's life.

I think I know what you mean and i agree. However i personally try to avoid focusing the greater than / lesser than analysis purely in terms of "time," even in comparing the short term to the long term. It's probable that it's better to find a way to juxtapose "some of the consequences" against "all of the consequences" so that we don't run afoul of the idea that "longer" is always "better." Sometimes a pleasure that lasts for a shorter period of time can be more important to us than a longer period of time. And for that I would cite the letter to Menoeceus:

Quote

[126] But the many at one moment shun death as the greatest of evils, at another (yearn for it) as a respite from the (evils) in life. (But the wise man neither seeks to escape life) nor fears the cessation of life, for neither does life offend him nor does the absence of life seem to be any evil. And just as with food he does not seek simply the larger share and nothing else, but rather the most pleasant, so he seeks to enjoy not the longest period of time, but the most pleasant.

I constantly have to remind myself of this because it is very easy to fall into the idea of taking things in isolation and thinking longer is always better, but even in terms of lifespan that isn't necessarily so. There are many factors to consider, and Godfrey has planted in my mind that PDO9 points us not only to "duration" but also to "intensity" and "part of the body(presumably including mind) affected."

Cassius I see your point. Certainly thinking about the longer scale of times past does little good for living in the present. You know, there is no really "better or worse" in this context. And focusing "purely in terms of time", I agree, makes no sense at all. The longer term view I presented first, was in light of the temptation I've seen among older people to suffer when bad old memories, the negatives, and the painfulness of past experiences arise. At 78 years of age, I spend little time looking back over the long term but the temptations do arise from time to time. At younger ages I spent almost no time on it at all!

Quote from wbernys

Quote from Cassius

And yet on the last day of his life Epicurus considered himself happy / and/or considered it to be among his happiest days despite his excruciating pain.

How would you reconcile that?

He never says it is among the happiest days of his life, he simply says it's a blissful/happy day and that he sets gladness of the mind towards past conversations, this allows him to have more pleasure than pain with the mind offsetting the pains of the flesh.

Exactly. Τὴν μακαρίαν... καὶ ἅμα τελευταίαν ἡμέραν τοῦ βίου "The blissful land at the same time last day of my life"

Don, I agree with you that is the correct interpretation. It seems the confusion comes from the the superlative as translated by Seneca in Letters to Lucilius, 92.25, which uses "beātissimum"

^{atquī haec Vōx in ipsā officīnā voluptātis audīta est "beātissimum" inquit "hunc et: hunc diem Agō" Epicūrus – cum Illum hinc ūrīnae Difficultās torquēret, hinc īnsānābilis exulcerātī Dolor ventris}

and yet this statement was heard in the very workshop of pleasure "most blessed" Epicurus said "is this indeed: this day I am living" – even while on one side difficulty of urination was tormenting him, and on the other side the incurable Pain of an ulcerated stomach

But I have not seen this in Greek, so I think the superlative can be ignored as just rhetorical from Seneca.

Thanks for that clarification. Presuming that it is possible for one day to be happier than another, and that "happy" here doesn't imply a superlative state, then I sure would be happier without kidney disease than with it!

But back to the more basic and at the same time more urgent point to be clear about: Happiness, which is what Epicurus says we do everything to obtain, does not require complete absence of pain.

Are we agreed on that?

Quote from Cassius

But back to the more basic and at the same time more urgent point to be clear about: Happiness, which is what Epicurus says we do everything to obtain, does not require complete absence of pain.

Are we agreed on that?

Agreed, because as mortal beings we can never be completely free from every pain, mental or physical.

The discussion about mental and physical pain brings us right back around to ataraxia and aponia all over again.

As time has gone on, I have come to a (semi-firm) belief that ataraxia is not about rooting out every single disturbing fear and anxiety of every variety. To me, ataraxia is about rooting out the existential dread of fear of the gods, of death, of post-death punishment, and similar unfounded fears and anxieties. Ripping out these fears and anxieties leaves behind a rock solid foundation of calm tranquility when it comes to the big questions of life, and once that foundation is laid, it is permanent -- IF you've truly internalized it! If it's merely an intellectual acknowledgement like "yeah yeah no need to fear gods. Death is nothing. We all get that. Okay, got it" it could come back in times of stress and hardship. You have to KNOW IT, in your bones, when waking and sleeping.

It's a similar case for aponia, but I'm still working out the details of that. I don't think it means what we usually think it means. But I'll get back to you on the specifics.

Quote from wbernys

we in fact are completely free from pain quite often,

LOL I know that I'm never completely free from pain. Maybe I'm overgeneralizing though. There's always a twinge, ache, etc, somewhere in my body or mind. Now, if I try, I can ignore them for a bit. If I'm engrossed in a task or engaged in an activity that keeps my attention focused, I suppose I can feel like I'm pain free.... and is that the same of "completely free from pain" if I'm not consciously aware of any pain? I suppose, may be.

I need to check -- and if someone has the citations, please share -- does Epicurus use "freedom from pain" or rather "complete freedom from pain"? I honestly can't remember.