Welcome Thomas Karion!

    Thanks, Cassius. I’ve found the answer to my question. If I don’t feel pleasure, it’s indeed because I’m experiencing suffering, however slight it may be. I don’t have any other questions for now, but I won’t hesitate to post here as soon as I do. I think that’s actually one of the key points of Epicurus’s philosophy. Many people think they’re in a neutral state when in fact they’re experiencing suffering without realizing it, however slight it may be. But that’s another topic we may have the chance to discuss. In any case, I’ve found the answer to my question, and I thank you for your comment 🙂

    Quote from Thomas Karion

    If I don’t feel pleasure, it’s indeed because I’m experiencing suffering, however slight it may be.

    I think that's true. Whether this is clear to people will probably depend on how they view the meaning of "pleasure," and someone new to the philosophy not realize that there is a question as to the meaning of the word.

    Quote from Thomas Karion

    If I don’t feel pleasure, it’s indeed because I’m experiencing suffering, however slight it may be.

    It's important to be clear about what you mean by "suffering". It could be referring to physical pain or to mental pain.

    For physical pain we see that there is this Principal Doctrine:

    PD04 - "Continuous pain does not last long in the flesh; on the contrary, pain, if extreme, is present a very short time, and even that degree of pain which barely outweighs pleasure in the flesh does not last for many days together. Illnesses of long duration even permit of an excess of pleasure over pain in the flesh." (Hicks translation)

    For mental pain, PD01 and PD02 deal with fear of the gods and fear of death. Then various other PD's deal with other issues, such as fear of natural phenomena (PD12), and other issues, etc. It could make an interesting list to see which PD's help with which mental pains.

    A person can feel both pleasure and pain at the same time. But to arrive at a state of unalloyed pleasure requires removing the mental pains caused by the incorrect understanding of things.

    Hello Cassius,

    I just read your text, which I found very interesting.

    1. My Own Situation

    To start with my own situation, I think I don’t feel pleasure because I feel a bit of boredom, however slight it may be.

    Consequently, I’m not in a neutral state but in a state of slight unease that prevents me from feeling pleasure. I feel like something is missing. It’s true that I’m currently reevaluating how I manage my own desires and learning to moderate them. And I think this is starting to pay off, even though I believe I can still do a little better.

    2. The Concepts of “Consciousness” and “Attention” in Epicurean Philosophy

    You talk a lot about the concepts of “consciousness” and “attention.”

    You write: “If you are conscious and there is no pain or suffering, you experience pleasure.”

    And also: “We generally pay little attention to easy breathing as long as it remains steady. We barely notice a stomach that is functioning normally until nausea sets in. We pay little attention to our ability to sit, walk, see, think, or converse as long as any of these functions do not become painful or impaired. (…) Attention and contrast have changed; the body’s condition remains pleasant and unimpeded.

    Or: “There is also a difference between having an experience and paying reflective attention to it.”

    Or: “At this very moment, you may not be paying attention to the comfort of your breathing (…). Your attention may be focused on the abstract question: ‘Am I experiencing pleasure?’”

    Could you provide me with some sources from Epicurean philosophy that address these concepts of “consciousness” and “attention”? Because I get the impression that, from your perspective, pleasure lies in the awareness of being in good health rather than: pleasure lies directly in the fact of being in good health.

    3. Is it possible to feel pleasure and pain at the same time?

    Second point: you write, “It is entirely possible to experience both pleasure and pain, and to do so in different ways. ”

    Isn’t this incompatible with KD3, which states: “Wherever there is that which feels pleasure, as long as it exists, there is not that which is suffering, afflicted, or both”?

    Epicurus writes: “I am writing these words to you on this happy day, which is also the last of my life. […] All my suffering is offset by the joy I find in the memory of our past conversations. ”

    To me, this means that Epicurus feels pleasure rather than pain at the same time. I’m not denying that the pain is present, but I mean that the memory of those past conversations brings him pleasure and therefore prevents him from feeling the pain.

    Do you have any Epicurean sources that could shed light on this topic for me?

    Thank you very much in advance, Cassius!

    Have a great day!!

    Great questions and will take some time to address them in detail. But first I want to be sure you have seen the book recommendation to Norman DeWitt's "Epicurus and His Philosophy" which is in my view the best general reference that addresses these issues in the most detailed way. As to your specific points I can start with this below:

    As to the role of consciousness we have this from Torquatus:

    Quote

    "Epicurus consequently maintained that there 'is no such thing as a neutral state of feeling' intermediate between pleasure and pain; for the state supposed by some thinkers to be neutral, being characterized as it is by entire absence of pain, is itself, he held, a pleasure, and, what is more, a pleasure of the highest order. A man who is conscious of his condition at all must necessarily feel either pleasure or pain." (Cicero, On Ends I.38, tr. Rackham)

    Just before this: "When we are released from pain, the mere sensation of complete emancipation and relief from uneasiness is in itself a source of gratification. But everything that causes gratification is a pleasure ... when hunger and thirst are banished by food and drink, the mere fact of getting rid of uneasiness brings a resultant pleasure in its train" (I.37).

    So it's neither "awareness of health" as a judgment nor "health" as an unfelt condition, but health as it is felt by a conscious being. The condition "conscious of his condition at all" does not require that we stop and think "I am now experiencing pleasure." It requires only that he be awake and feeling because pleasure exists directly in the felt condition of being alive and well.

    As to attention directly, Cicero records this:

    Quote

    "He makes the alleviation of grief depend on two things, a ceasing to think on evil, and a turning to the contemplation of pleasure. For he thinks that the mind may possibly be under the power of reason, and follow her directions; he forbids us, therefore, to mind trouble, and calls us off from sorrowful reflections." (Cicero, Tusculan Disputations III.15, tr. Yonge)

    And as you referenced in Epicurus' dying period:

    Quote

    "On this truly happy day of my life, as I am at the point of death, I write this to you. The disease in my bladder and stomach are pursuing their course, lacking nothing of their natural severity: but against all this is the joy in my heart at the recollection of my conversations with you." (DL X.22)

    I read this as not denying pain but turning attention to a pleasure, and this sets that pleasure against the pain.

    As to experiencing pleasure and pain at the same time not being a contradiction, we are talking about different parts of our experience:

    Quote

    "Pain does not last continuously in the flesh, but the acutest pain is there for a very short time, and even that which just exceeds the pleasure in the flesh does not continue for many days at once. But chronic illnesses permit a predominance of pleasure over pain in the flesh." (Principal Doctrine 4, tr. Bailey)

    A "predominance of pleasure over pain" only makes sense if both are present in different parts of one's experience at the same time. Pain that "just exceeds the pleasure in the flesh" also presupposes that both are there to be compared.

    Epicurus's last letter do not say that the joy of memory stopped him from feeling his illness. They say the reverse: the disease was "pursuing [its] course, lacking nothing of [its] natural severity: but against all this is the joy in my heart" (DL X.22). I read that as pleasure and pain felt at the same time but in different places, with the pleasure of the mind outweighing the pain of the body.

    Also, Diogenes Laertius records that it is possible to be tortured yet feel happiness at the same time:

    Quote

    "And even if the wise man be put on the rack, he is happy. ... Yet when he is on the rack, then he will cry out and lament." (DL X.118)

    He cries out, so the pain is real and felt. Even so he can be happy because the pleasures of his life, of memory, of understanding and of friendship can be judged to outweigh it if we turn our attention to it.


    As to boredom:

    Quote

    "The right understanding of these facts enables us to refer all choice and avoidance to the health of the body and (the soul's) freedom from disturbance, since this is the aim of the life of blessedness. For it is to obtain this end that we always act, namely, to avoid pain and fear. And when this is once secured for us, all the tempest of the soul is dispersed, since the living creature has not to wander as though in search of something that is missing, and to look for some other thing by which he can fulfill the good of the soul and the good of the body." (Letter to Menoeceus, DL X.128)

    "Wandering as though in search of something that is missing" is very close to what you are describing as boredom and an indication that some natural desire is not being met. Epicurus does not say to extinguish that desire but to satisfy it wisely in a way that produces more pleasure than pain. A feeling that something is missing likely points to a natural desire that has gone unmet and which Epicurus would say you should act to meet.

    Also remember that Epicurus does not limit pleasure to "absence of disturbance." Diogenes Laertius records that "Epicurus admits both kinds" of pleasure, the pleasure of motion as well as the pleasure of rest, "both in the soul and in the body" (DL X.136). Active pleasures are pleasures too, and most experiences in life are active, even if described in terms of conversation, study, or friendship. A life arranged so that it is merely free from trouble, with nothing to do and no one to enjoy it with will not be a life of happiness based on pleasure but a life of pain.

    Thanks for your insightful message, Cassius.

    1/ As for boredom, I’m not feeling it right now, so it’ll be hard for me to talk about it at length. But I imagine I must have been “unconsciously” troubled by something.

    2/ Regarding health as experienced by a conscious being, I understand better what you mean.

    3/ Regarding the fact that you “interpret (…) pleasure and pain as being felt simultaneously, but in different places, with the pleasure of the mind outweighing the pain of the body.” I understand that, too. But as you so aptly put it through Torquatus’s words: “A man conscious of his condition necessarily experiences either pleasure or pain.” So to me, it’s clear that a conscious man experiences either pleasure or pain, but not both at the same time. What do you think, Cassius?

    4/ As for chronic pain, I think that’s a different subject. KD4 simply states that the pain of certain illnesses is inevitable but still bearable.

    I look forward to hearing from you!

    Quote from Thomas Karion

    “A man conscious of his condition necessarily experiences either pleasure or pain.” So to me, it’s clear that a conscious man experiences either pleasure or pain, but not both at the same time. What do you think, Cassius?

    i think this is a subset of how we have to deal with concepts as well as particulars simultaneously. As I read Epicurus, he acknowedges the reality of BOTH (1) atoms and void and (2) things that are made of atoms and void. Epicurus is not a radical reductionists who ththeinks that atoms and void are the only reality. Pleasure and pain as concepts are considered to be neither atoms nor void, but they do not exist as concepts apart from the individual examples of their existence. If you were to try to subtract all of the specific pleasures of life from the concept you would not succeed any more than you could still have a "heap" after you subtracted all grains of sand or wheat.

    So when Epicurus is talking about feeling either pleasure or pain he is not abstracting away from reality. Reality is that you and your feelings are an accumulation of atoms and void through which your mind and body generate feelings and concepts in tremendous numbers at all times. We choose to categorize our feelings into pleasure and pain for purposes of communicating about them, but that does not mean that there is "pleasure" or "pain" floating the air.

    I think part of the issue behind your question is something that is a big hurdle to a lot of people - they think that by identifying "pleasure" as the goal that Epicurus was talking about a particular experience or type of pleasure. And then they combine that error with the discussion of by pleasure we mean the absence of pain and problem explodes into Buddhism or Asceticism. Pleasure as a concept includes all that is felt to be desirable, but it is also important to see that it is nothing else. If it's not desirable it's not pleasure, so any inference that Buddhist-like thinkers want to draw (Ah he's talking about nirvana or nothingness!) is out of court because Epicurean physics previously establishes that absence of sensation is nothing to us so we're not going to entertain imaginative suggestions of anything other than that which is part of our material universe.

    So you're right to be asking about how many things you can actually "focus" on at a particular moment. The nature of the way we use "focus" may imply that we can only "focus" on one thing at a time - if we define it that way. But in reality higher animals are in practice aware of many different things at once. I am aware mentally of the many things that I enjoy even when I have a hangnail or a toothache. And there are many citations in Epicurean texts where Epicurus is obviously doing exactly that, weighing and balancing desirable things against undesirable things simultaneously.