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That's consistent with my current understanding that the real problem here got launched by the Stoics, which is a point that Cicero seems to me in On Ends, where his treatment of Stoicism is pretty slashing.
Aristotle's problem doesn't seem to be so much an overfocus on virtue but his supernatural prime mover orientation and evasion of pleasure as the basis of happiness.
About 17 hours from now we will be recording our "Virtue" extravaganza episode. We'll be talking live so there's no telling what topics the final episode will cover, but I've further refined the "talking points" I'd like to see us cover at the link below. If anyone has any last minute quotations to submit or suggestions for topics, there's still time to let us know in this thread.
Virtue Is Not Absolute Or An End In Itself Because All Good And Evil Consists In Sensation
Good to hear from you Titus. Yes it is amazing how AI can talk! It can provide options, but as to judgement or the wisdom of doing such a thing I suspect it will always fall short.
If people hear 'pleasure' and think 'bodily pleasure', I do not regard that as a problem - mainly because I think those people are probably motivated to this misinterpretation by religion or politics or culture or upbringing, and they would reject Epicureanism no matter how thoroughly it was explained to them.
Yep -- they are not completely wrong at all -- they are just only partly right.
And what I read you to be saying is that we have to realize that this issue is not just difference of opinion as to words. In fact, those who try to water down Epicurus to please his enemies may well be making the much worse mistake.
If you were ever to succeed in making people who are suspicious of pleasure really understand what Epicurus was saying, you should not expect them to say "Oh, I get it, that's neat - let's go have a party!"
They are more likely to say "Now I see what you're doing! What you're doing would totally replace [insert name of preferred God or Virtue here]! Now that I understand you, I see that there's no coming to an agreement with you. Get out of my life and my city -- It's time for war,heathen!
And unfortunately a lot of ancient Epicureans probably experienced exactly that result. Had Plutarch and the earliest church fathers had the power to eliminate the Epicureans by force, rather than just writing books against them, they might well have done that. And at least one of the religious holidays that exists today (I'm thinking Hanukkah) celebrates something very close to that (see the section Epicureanism and the Judeans).
So just like the Epicurean mentioned in Alexander the Oracle monger, we need to be careful in deciding who is open to discussion and how to talk with them.
As I have said, Alexander was much afraid of Epicurus, and the solvent action of his logic on imposture.
On one occasion, indeed, an Epicurean got himself into great trouble by daring to expose him before a great gathering. He came up and addressed him in a loud voice.
'Alexander, it was you who induced So-and-so the Paphlagonian to bring his slaves before the governor of Galatia, charged with the murder of his son who was being educated in Alexandria. Well, the young man is alive, and has come back, to find that the slaves had been cast to the beasts by your machinations.’
What had happened was this. The lad had sailed up the Nile, gone on to a Red Sea port, found a vessel starting for India, and been persuaded to make the voyage. He being long overdue, the unfortunate slaves supposed that he had either perished in the Nile or fallen a victim to some of the pirates who infested it at that time; so they came home to report his disappearance. Then followed the oracle, the sentence, and finally the young man's return with the story of his absence.
All this the Epicurean recounted. Alexander was much annoyed by the exposure, and could not stomach so well deserved an affront. He directed the company to stone the man, on pain of being involved in his impiety and called Epicureans. However, when they set to work, a distinguished Pontic called Demostratus, who was staying there, rescued him by interposing his own body. The man had the narrowest possible escape from being stoned to death—as he richly deserved to be; what business had he to be the only sane man in a crowd of madmen, and needlessly make himself the butt of Paphlagonian infatuation?
One aspect of the metaphor is that a lighthouse is clearly man-made, and the guidance we're looking to is something completely natural, more like a "north star" maybe. But metaphors are always approximate. Pointing out deficiencies in them is half the fun.
Austin on this site I've tried to provide links to the major texts here:
However I still refer at times to my older set of links here, and I may not have transferred them all over to the new format:
Many of the people here have links to other material that I haven't incorporated, so if you're looking for something in particular please let us know.
Glad to have you Austin!
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"Epicurus and His Philosophy" by Norman DeWitt
The Biography of Epicurus by Diogenes Laertius. This includes the surviving letters of Epicurus, including those to Herodotus, Pythocles, and Menoeceus.
"On The Nature of Things" - by Lucretius (a poetic abridgement of Epicurus' "On Nature"
"Epicurus on Pleasure" - By Boris Nikolsky
The chapters on Epicurus in Gosling and Taylor's "The Greeks On Pleasure."
Cicero's "On Ends" - Torquatus Section
Cicero's "On The Nature of the Gods" - Velleius Section
The Inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda - Martin Ferguson Smith translation
A Few Days In Athens" - Frances Wright
Lucian Core Texts on Epicurus: (1) Alexander the Oracle-Monger, (2) Hermotimus
Philodemus "On Methods of Inference" (De Lacy version, including his appendix on relationship of Epicurean canon to Aristotle and other Greeks)
"The Greeks on Pleasure" -Gosling & Taylor Sections on Epicurus, especially the section on katastematic and kinetic pleasure which explains why ultimately this distinction was not of great significance to Epicurus.
It is by no means essential or required that you have read these texts before participating in the forum, but your understanding of Epicurus will be much enhanced the more of these you have read. Feel free to join in on one or more of our conversation threads under various topics found throughout the forum, where you can to ask questions or to add in any of your insights as you study the Epicurean philosophy.
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Welcome to the forum!
fit into this metaphor
Good question but I bet Don can do it.
Yes it is an interesting take, and well written, focused more on the military aspect of Rome than you usually see. He's more negative on the military aspect than I would be, but those issues are certainly debatable. Someone is going to feel a lot differently about Rome's military depending on whether they are Roman or Carthaginian.
I suspect that going too far in trying to take social positions ends up being more of a debate about Greco Roman politics than about philosophy. That's one reason I hesitate to weigh in on the dispute between Julius Caesar and Cassius Longinus. There seem to have been Epicureans on both sides of the civil war, and I am not sure which side I would take personally - probably that's another example of how contextual so many issues are. There seem to be Epicurean texts saying kingship can be ok and democracy not so ok.
It's all well and good to focus on local community welfare when you have a stable society, but when the Persians are on the march to Greece, or some Ghengis Khan or fundamentalist religion tries to conquer your society by force, then it's nice to have a viable military.
Good food for thought about the contextual nature of Virtue.
PS. I'm thinking some of this is a matter of perspective and not just linguistic trickery.
I think this is what people are wrestling with mostly unsuccessfully. If you take the position that pleasure has to be stimulative (which means you accept Cicero's and Plato's and the other major philosophers' perspective) then you are going to think Epicurus is engaged in linguistic trickery.
If you take Epicurus' perspective that the purpose of life is not to fulfill some divine plan, but simply to live your life as happily as you can, then you can more easily see that being healthy and alive at all deserves to be considered pleasure, and you don't feel tricked by the fact that Epicurus doesn't promise you constant physical stimulation. A lot of people seem to think that Epicurus is saying that he's going to deliver them paradise through some kind of trick that the Stoics and Buddhists haven't thought of. (Hmmmm yeees - now I feel it - absence of pain really IS a great stimulant - feels kind of like marijuana - give me some more!!!)
Epicurus' viewpoint is a lot closer to choosing to see the glass of life as half-full, rather than half-empty, than it is to any kind of Buddhist of Stoic mind games.
In fact, I am not sure I should say it's "close" to that. It's exactly what it is -- learning through philosophy to see that life is pleasurable in all its aspects unless you are specifically experiencing some specific pain in some part of your experience. If you are experiencing some specific pains, then to the extent you can, you should try to minimize that pain, but not at the expense of giving up the majority of pleasures that you've successfully won and which continue to be available to you at reasonable cost.
"The wise man always has more reason for joy than for vexation." --->
For this is the way in which Epicurus represents the wise man as continually happy; he keeps his passions within bounds; about death he is indifferent; he holds true views concerning the eternal gods apart from all dread; he has no hesitation in crossing the boundary of life, if that be the better course. Furnished with these advantages he is continually in a state of pleasure, and there is in truth no moment at which he does not experience more pleasures than pains. For he remembers the past with thankfulness, and the present is so much his own that he is aware of its importance and its agreeableness, nor is he in dependence on the future, but awaits it while enjoying the present; he is also very far removed from those defects of character which I quoted a little time ago, and when he compares the fool’s life with his own, he feels great pleasure. And pains, if any befall him, have never power enough to prevent the wise man from finding more reasons for joy than for vexation.
Episode 266 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is now available. Today's episode is a greatly-extended version of the presentation originally given on 1/19/25 entitled "The Epicurean Paradigm Shift."
For a slideshow version of this talk, click the "Featured Videos" link on our home page.
Over the next several weeks or months I am going to turn this presentation into my "standard speech" and devote the time that I would otherwise spend on reinventing wheels to refining this presentation.
Later today I will release the podcast version, and a slide-show video version, of a much expanded edit of the presentation originally released on January 19.
The current version is over twice the length of the original, and contains lots more citations, plus a new approach to generative the slides that should work much better, and allow for easier revisions.
For the time being, here is the Youtube Video version, and "Discussion Outline" reference material. I'll update this post with the Podcast link shortly:
Text and Discussion Outline: https://handbook.epicureanfriends.com/notes/EpicureanParadigmShift.html
In the same line as you're thinking, Bryan, if I were a Pythagorean or a Platonist I doubt I could think of a better paperweight for us when reading rolled-up scrolls than a couple of those brass duodecahedrons.
I firmly believe that Epicurean philosophy should be easily explained without having to re-define a common word.
And you're on exactly the same page as Cicero, and you'll want to do more reading from Torquatus and decide whether Cicero's position or Torquatus' makes the most sense! 
This is Cicero speaking to Torquatus in Book 2 of On Ends:
In the right context that's not a bad idea, but the end I don't see a way around explaining what Pleasure means in full, which is more than just sensual stimulation.
Referencing "pleasant experiences" may take some of the edge off for people who are suspicious of the word pleasure, but that may not be a good idea. In most cases we probably shouldn't be trying to accomodate people with wrong ideas, we should be trying to educate them as to why they are wrong and that there is a better way of understanding pleasure.
Works great -- thanks ----
Also, we crossposted so please note my comment about Oinoanda.
Another general comment --
in discussing "virtue" as a collective noun vs "the virtues" as particular virtues, I am afraid we are back in the territory of the relationship between "the one" and "the many" in terms of what is it that all virtues share that makes them virtuous.
There's way too much to cover in one episode but in terms of what virtue is, I suppose that's one way of getting at the question: what is it that all "the virtues" share that makes them "virtue"?
Don -- I guess we don't have the Greek to compare to this, but whatever the ambiguity of the word virtue is, it looks like the dispute crystallized, maybe after Epicurus himself was dead, into what Diogenes of Oinoanda is discussing at Fragment 32. I note that the word is used in the plural in this translation. I am thinking that this aspect (which is the means and which is the end) is what people most want us to discuss. Also, I've never been entirely sure whether these European quote marks << >> are supposed to indicate quotes within the text, or missing data which Martin Ferguson Smith has reconstructed. In this case I don't gather that its reconstructed, but rather intended to set off certain sections of text as being referenced rather than being the words of Diogenes himself, but I'm just not sure.
Fr. 32
... [the latter] being as malicious as the former.
I shall discuss folly shortly, the virtues and pleasure now.
If, gentlemen, the point at issue between these people and us involved inquiry into «what is the means of happiness?» and they wanted to say «the virtues» (which would actually be true), it would be unnecessary to take any other step than to agree with them about this, without more ado. But since, as I say, the issue is not «what is the means of happiness?» but «what is happiness and what is the ultimate goal of our nature?», I say both now and always, shouting out loudly to all Greeks and non-Greeks, that pleasure is the end of the best mode of life, while the virtues, which are inopportunely messed about by these people (being transferred from the place of the means to that of the end), are in no way an end, but the means to the end.
Let us therefore now state that this is true, making it our starting-point.
Suppose, then, someone were to ask someone, though it is a naive question, «who is it whom these virtues benefit?», obviously the answer will be «man.» The virtues certainly do not make provision for these birds flying past, enabling them to fly well, or for each of the other animals: they do not desert the nature with which they live and by which they have been engendered; rather it is for the sake of this nature that the virtues do everything and exist.Each (virtue?) therefore ............... means of (?) ... just as if a mother for whatever reasons sees that the possessing nature has been summoned there, it then being necessary to allow the court to asked what each (virtue?) is doing and for whom .................................... [We must show] both which of the desires are natural and which are not; and in general all things that [are included] in the [former category are easily attained] .....
Thanks Don --- the second link worked fine but not the first -- looks like there's maybe an error in "entry=a)reth" in that link?
Yes - just constantly referring to lists like this one does not answer the question or tell us what we need to know.
And remember, about half of what we need to address is what Epicurus said about it, but maybe more than half of what we need to do is cut through the image of virtue that most people think of today given the Stoic/Religious perspective.
The four classic cardinal virtues are:[4]
also termed courage, forbearance, strength, endurance, and the ability to confront fear, uncertainty, and intimidation. also known as restraint, the practice of self-control, abstention, discretion, and moderation tempering the appetition. Plato considered sōphrosynē, which may also be translated as sound-mindedness, to be the most important virtue. also considered as fairness;[5] the Greek word also having the meaning of righteousness.This enumeration is traced to Greek philosophy and was listed by Plato who also added piety (ὁσιότης, hosiotēs) and replaced prudence with wisdom.[6] Some scholars consider either of the above four virtue combinations as mutually reducible and therefore not cardinal.[7]
