Welcome DevinH!

Welcome DevinH !

DevinH tells us:

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My username is: DevinH

I have read and agree to the Community Standards, Rules, and Terms of Use, including the "Not Neo-Epicurean, But Epicurean" statement and the posting policy. I understand the forum is committed to classical Epicurean positions, and I'll participate on that basis.

My background and interest: I'm a scientist ... I work in biotech process development. My footer may read as a lot of ambition. I've left it intact anyway, since I'm joining for frank criticism and it seems wrong to start by hiding things that I might need to examine.

I searched for decades for a philosophical and emotional home. I used to call myself a humanist, but I could never find a core for why it was right. Either it rested on absolute morality, which seemed plainly wrong, or it rested on nothing, and it felt hollow. When I came across Epicureanism five years ago, it felt less like a discovery than a home I had always lived in. It just felt right from the start, and the edges I first resisted mostly turned out, after study and reflection, to be right as well. Grounding the good in pleasure, something I actually feel that has a fully physical basis gave me the foundation I'd been searching for. The physics, and the almost insane degree of accuracy, fit how I already saw the world as a biologist. I now use it as a practical framework for how I work, how I treat the people close to me, and how I weigh my choices. I fail more often than I would like to admit, but I hope the community you have built is a place to explore and have peers challenge one's approach to the philosophy. I also have a strong interest in the Herculaneum papyri and follow the Vesuvius Challenge. Amazing that we get new thought from a richer epicurean past every year!!

Reading so far: Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, which is my foundation for the physics and the way to life that flows from it, and the Principal Doctrines, which I'm using as the spine of my study notes. I haven't yet worked through the letters or Philodemus. Next up is DeWitt's Epicurus and His Philosophy, which I have but haven't started, then the Torquatus section of Cicero's On Ends, as your reading page recommends, and Philodemus' On Death. I'm also working my way through the podcast, lovingly. It's been wonderful and a part of my commute for years.

Why I'm requesting an account: I've been studying and practicing mostly alone, though I talk about it with people a lot. I've come to see that as the biggest gap. In working on my own I've developed some readings that I suspect drift from the classical positions, most notably around PD 19 and 20 and whether more time at the fullness of pleasure adds anything. I'd like to test those against people who know the texts far better than I do, and be corrected where I'm wrong.

I understand and agree that pleasure is the highest good, the beginning and end of the happy life. I can't imagine a higher one. As a biologist, I see us as social primates whom nature built to feel pleasure in friendship and community, so for me, living for pleasure and living among friends turn out to be the same project.

Thanks for running the forum and the podcast.

Best,
Devin

Thank you for registering at EpicureanFriends.com, and for writing to us about your background and interest in Epicurus. We look forward to hearing more from you!

As a reminder, all posts are subject to our Community Standards, Rules, and Terms of Use.

Welcome to EpicureanFriends!

Thanks DevinH for your detailed and very interesting post and the kind words about the podcast and the forum. We look forward to having you and to hearing much more from you!

Again, welcome DevinH - Your background indicates that you have lots to offer the discussions here. Take your time and weigh in on whatever areas interest you first and most.

Your science / technical background gives you expertise that will be particularly useful in our "canonics" discussions on the nature of truth and reality, and how and when we move from the accumulation of evidence to the decision that we have enough information to take a firm position on a topic.

That's what we've been discussing for many weeks on the podcast, but I freely admit that it is a topic that most people aren't immediately familiar with or see the relevancy of.

Also given your orientation I think you will find the DeWitt book the most helpful way you could proceed to dig deeper. You won't agree with all of it by any means, but it is almost alone among the "modern" books that attempts to give you an overview of the entire philosophy and how it fits together. That integrative perspective will color every detail that you read as time goes by, and like most of us you'll probably go through many revisions of how you view the more advanced topics like prolepsis or the nature of "gods."

I'll also particular point toward the academic articles of Dr. David Sedley. If he's written an article on a specific focus you'll likely find his research to be among the most thorough and his reasoning to conclusions to be the soundest.

There's a tremendous amount of information to digest and it's helpful to all of us to talk about it in a friendly and constructive way, among people who are largely (but of course to differing degrees) on board with the full sweep of Epicurean philosophy.

Quote from DevinH

In working on my own I've developed some readings that I suspect drift from the classical positions, most notably around PD 19 and 20 and whether more time at the fullness of pleasure adds anything. I'd like to test those against people who know the texts far better than I do, and be corrected where I'm wrong.

Devin this would be an excellent topic to discuss whenever you are ready. Approach it however you wish here in this thread and we can move it later into a more appropriate forum if/when it gets long enough. Discussions of the meaning of limits of pleasure and how that relates to how to assess length of life are always of key interest.

Quote from DevinH

I'm certainly not a skeptic by any means, since that just leads to paralysis, but I wonder what folks' feelings are on the matter?

This is an area where it is particularly helpful to expose yourself to what the various types of skeptics had (have) to say. I find that people have a hard time accepting that the various leaders (Pyrrho, Carneades) were as extreme as they were. And people today tend to view skepticism in a "loose" way (viewing it as "challenging authority") rather than in the philosophical way of being committed to the view that knowledge is effectively impossible no matter how much evidence one has. So the question really has to be focused on the logical extreme - What does it mean to say that something is known? When we say that something is "known," have we accepted a viewpoint that only an omnipotent and omnipresent god could meet? If we have accepted such a view - and many seem to do that, because anything is possible isn't it? - then we have a big problem. Epicurus didn't accept such a standard as the correct one.

Quote from DevinH

For example, I mentioned PD19/20, and it's an area I struggle with. If I measure a life by the fraction of it spent in pleasure, a short life at 100% equals a long one at 100%, and I can follow PD19/20 that far. But I also personally feel the pull to have more time within my lifetime (so long as life is pleasurable). Lucretius touches on it in book 5 ("Whoever has been born must want to continue in life, so long as fond pleasure shall keep him..."). That's the pull I feel, even if PD19/20 says more time doesn't add anything.

At one and the same time

1. Life is desirable, which means all things being equal (you have the ability to experience more pleasure than pain) a longer life is better, and it is desirable to continue to live.
2. But all things aren't equal. Even in best cases with current technology, humans get old and infirm and sick and even continuing to live becomes painful.
3. And more important than that, we very legitimately do not value all non-painful experiences as holding the same amount of pleasure for us. Most of us are going to instinctively agree that we would rather live X number of years in freedom than X+Y number of years as a slave. (Insert here your preferred example of extremely good vs extremely bad.) So quality of life matters - a lot.
4. Epicurus was well aware of these issues. He wrote in the letter to Menoeceus about the desirability of life and that the time factor (length of life) does not override all other factors. The wise man whether young or old does not make haste to end his life because life is desirable, and the same standard (pleasure) applies at any age. Likewise, a wise man at a banquet chooses not the most food, but the most pleasant food, and so the wise man doesn't seek to live the longest life, but the most pleasant.
5. So we have to consider that while all pleasure is pleasing because it is desirable, all pleasure is not equally pleasing to us (in every respect), so we have to determine what "most pleasant" means, and choose the "most pleasant," not merely the largest quantity. So when Epicurus talks about the "limit of pleasure" we have to think very carefully about what that means. It clearly does not simply mean "that which lasts the longest."

In my view a lot of people have a problem balancing these considerations. They can't keep in mind both that (1) pleasure is a general umbrella concept that (2) cannot be separated from individual real-life instances of pleasure. "Orange" does not exist except when considered as what is common between "things that are orange." This is where discussion of the "sorites" / heap question helps focus the mind on this issue.

So yes "pleasure" as a concept cannot improve past "pure pleasure." 100% pleasure is indeed the limit of pleasure - "nothing can be more true than this" as Torquatus said to Cicero -- because when you categorize all experience into pleasure or pain, then when you have no pain you be definition have the purest pleasure.

But identifying "pure pleasure" as you goal - as helpful as it is philosophically - does not tell you directly what to do when you get out of bed in the morning. You have to apply that viewpoint - which you should hold confidently as a matter of something that you know to be true - to your individual circumstances, many of which you may only have a vague grasp of at any particular moment.

Quote from DevinH

I've used this thought experiment to test this: what happens as our medical technology improves? Let's say my grandchildren can live 500 years. Today I would say a long 90-year lifespan lived in a state of ataraxia would pretty much max out both the % quality and the length criterion, an ideal one might aspire to. However, in this new world, if 90 years is no longer a long, full life, does the assessment change? I honestly don't know, and it's an area I have not been able to really work out on my own in a vacuum.

The only part of that paragraph I'd comment on at this point is that it is very important to be clear what you (anyone) means by "state of ataraxia." What some people think that term means is something that I personally would not want for a day or a year or a lifetime, and I would argue Epicurus wouldn't and didn't want either.

Every conversation has a context and in general I am at the point where use of an untranslated Greek word to describe the goal of life is a red flag to me, Unless I know the context of the discussion very clearly I usually think that the conversation at that point needs to drop back immediately and make very clear what is being discussed.

Even here at EpicureanFriends it is not safe at all to think that any two people have the same mental concept of what "ataraxia" really means. "Absence of disturbance" sounds fine until you remember that many people (especially Stoics) explicitly or implicitly hold the view that pleasure itself is a disturbance. It's less true here than elsewhere, but much writing about Epicurus is so shot-through with Stoicism and Platonism that it's not safe to take this issue for granted.

Eventually a lot of the discussion of ethics can start to sound like a word game. I don't think it is, but what is certainly not a word game is that Epicurus takes a firm position that there are no supernatural gods and that there is no life after death. Within that context no one has the luxury to debate ethical questions endlessly and suspend judgment on every question indefinitely. You have only a set amount of time to live, and you cannot be born again. Unless your goal is "quietude" - which is the problem with some definitions of the word "ataraxia" - then you need to ability to take a confident and firm position about what your real goal is. While being "quiet" or "undisturbed" is sometimes a pleasure, it is certainly not the only pleasure, nor is it always a pleasure. You don't want to be undisturbed while taking a nap on a railroad track in front of an oncoming train. "Pleasure" is the wider term and the most accurate statement of the ultimate goal, not "quietude" or "calmness" or "absence of disturbance."

Epicurus points to "pleasure" as the best umbrella-term-way to look at it. But there are people who will tell you that you should accept their definition of all sorts of other words (piety, logic, virtue, meaningfulness, etc) as what you should do with your life. It's not just a word game when you realize how important it is for you to get the answers to these questions right.