I remember that we discussed trying to plot things out in the past, and see this is mentioned in this thread / post from 2019,
In that discussion we were talking plotting out duration of life in relation to pleasure predominating over pain, if I recall correctly
It's probably still worth experimenting with various scenarios by actual plotting of diagrams at some point.
This "On The Happy Life" is one of the first and major sources used to turn Epicurus into a devout ascetic:
Yet Seneca's defenders find a way to defend his hypocrisy.
Seneca’s fortune made possible a life style that was lavish by Roman or, for that matter, Hollywood standards. According to Dio, at one point the Stoic ordered “five hundred tables of citrus wood with legs of ivory, all identically alike, and he served banquets on them.” In an essay entitled “On the Happy Life,” composed around 59 A.D., Seneca addresses the strains between his philosophical commitments and his conspicuous consumption.
“Why do you drink wine that is older than you are?” he demands of himself. “Why does your wife wear in her ears the price of a rich man’s house?” Seneca’s answer, if it can be counted as such, is metaphorical: “The wise man would not despise himself, even if he were a midget; but he would rather be tall.” Around the time that Seneca composed “On the Happy Life,” a former consul named Publius Suillius had the temerity to accuse him in public of hypocrisy and of sucking the provinces dry. Shortly thereafter, Suillius found himself exiled.
One way to sort out the contradictions of Seneca’s life is not even to try. The art critic Robert Hughes labelled Seneca “a hypocrite almost without equal in the ancient world,” and left it at that. Romm and Wilson—and the new wave of Seneca scholars more generally—resist such reductive judgments. It is possible, in their view, to see Seneca as a hypocrite and as a force of moral restraint. In the most generous account, Seneca might even be regarded as a kind of Stoic martyr: to prevent worse from happening to Rome, he stayed on with Nero and, by doing so, sacrificed his good name.
This reading of the plays makes sense but, as Wilson acknowledges, runs the risk of “circularity”: Seneca’s dramas must reflect a hidden moral anguish, because nowhere else in his writings is this moral anguish expressed. Another way to approach the plays is as genre pieces trafficking in the outré—the Roman equivalent of “Reservoir Dogs” or “Django Unchained.” In this reading, what the tragedies reveal is how lightly Seneca took his writings. Plays, treatises, speeches—all were to him just clever phrases strung together, so many “words, words, words.”
Seneca’s own tragic end came in 65 A.D., when he was implicated in a plot to assassinate Nero and install in his place a good-looking nobleman named Gaius Piso. (By some accounts, there was within this conspiracy a sub-conspiracy to kill Piso, too, and make Seneca emperor.) The plotters bungled things, and Nero cut them down one after another. To the end, Seneca maintained his innocence, and he may even have been telling the truth. But, as no one knew better than he, truth was not the issue. He was ordered to commit suicide. He cut his wrists, and when that didn’t work he tried the veins behind his knees. Supposedly, as he died, he called in his secretary, so he could dictate one last speech. ♦
Here's a middle-of-the road article on Seneca well worth reading, and it starts with this stark example of Seneca's willingness to deceive. Thanks to Kalosyni for this very humorous article -- Highly Recommended!:
Such a Stoic
By Elizabeth Kolbert
January 26, 2015
New Yorker
Sometime in the spring of the year 59, the emperor Nero decided to murder his mother. As you can imagine, the two were not on good terms. In a gesture designed to appear conciliatory, Nero invited his mother, Agrippina, to join him at a festival in Baiae, a resort town near present-day Naples. During the festivities, he treated her with great affection. Then, when it was time for her to leave, he presented her with a gift—a beautifully appointed boat to ferry her up the coast.
The gift was supposed to be a death trap. But just about everything that should have gone wrong didn’t. The deck of the ship fell in, yet, rather than killing Agrippina, it crushed one of her attendants. The hull, too, had been crafted to break apart; in all the confusion, though, it failed to do so. The rowers tried to overturn the ship. Once again, the effort fell short. Agrippina and a second attendant, Acerronia, swam free. Acerronia—“rather unwisely,” as Tacitus puts it—kept screaming that she was Agrippina and needed help. The rowers rushed over and bashed her on the head with their oars. The real Agrippina slipped away. She was picked up by a fishing boat and deposited safely onshore. When Nero learned that his mother had survived, he sent his minions to stab her.
This series of unfortunate events put the emperor in a pickle. The whole point of the affectionate display and the gift of the boat had been to make Agrippina’s death look like an accident. (Even in imperial Rome, matricide was, apparently, bad P.R.) Now this was impossible. And so Nero turned to the man he had always relied on, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, better known as Seneca the Younger, or just plain Seneca.
If poets and philosophers dream of influencing those in power, Seneca was uniquely positioned to do so. He was a celebrated rhetorician, a satirist, the author of several books of natural history, and a playwright. He was also what today might be called an ethicist. Among his many works of moral philosophy are “De Ira” (“On Anger”), “De Providentia” (“On Providence”), and “De Brevitate Vitae” (“On the Shortness of Life”). Seneca had been Nero’s tutor since the younger man was twelve or thirteen, and he remained one of his closest advisers.
After the botched boating accident, Seneca set to work. Writing in the voice of the emperor, he composed a letter to the Senate explaining what had happened. Hungry for power, Agrippina had been planning a coup. Once the plot was revealed, she’d taken her own life. As for the shipwreck, that was a sign that the gods themselves had tried to intervene on the emperor’s behalf.
At least in public, the response of Rome’s élite to the letter was jubilation. Tacitus reports that there was “a marvelous rivalry” among the senators in celebrating Nero’s narrow escape; they held games, made offerings at shrines, and proposed that “Agrippina’s birthday should be classed among the inauspicious days.”
Most of the letter comes down to us in paraphrase, but one line has survived verbatim. It is considered an example of Latin rhetoric at its finest, though clearly it loses something in translation. “That I am safe, neither, as yet, do I believe, nor do I rejoice,” Seneca had the newly orphaned Nero declare.
All writers’ reputations have their ups and downs. In the case of Seneca, the highs have been very high and the lows pretty low. Early Christians so revered him that they faked an exchange of edifying letters between him and St. Paul. During the Reformation, both Calvin and Zwingli turned to his writings for inspiration. Montaigne wrote a “defense” of Seneca, Diderot an essay on his life.
Then Seneca fell out of favor. Among the Romantics, he was regarded as a poor philosopher and a worse playwright. Even his brilliant epigrammatic style was ridiculed; the British historian Thomas Macaulay once observed—epigrammatically—that reading Seneca was “like dining on nothing but anchovy sauce.”
These days, Seneca is again on the upswing. In the past year, two new biographies have appeared: “Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero” (Knopf), by James Romm, a classicist at Bard College, and “The Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca” (Oxford), by Emily Wilson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. The two volumes are admiring of Seneca’s talents and, to varying degrees, sympathetic to his pedagogical predicament. Romm and Wilson, both teachers themselves, suggest that Nero was, from the start, a lost cause. But they also acknowledge that this leaves a tricky question unresolved. The letter “explaining” Agrippina’s murder is just one of the ways Seneca propped up Nero’s regime—a regime that the average Julius, let alone the author of “De Ira,” surely realized was thoroughly corrupt. How to explain the philosopher-tutor’s sticking by his monstrous pupil?
Also, and this is a cute turn of phrase:
When Seneca was in his thirties, his writing against “chattels, property, and high office” began to attract admiring notice from those with lots of chattels, property, and high office. Among his rich and powerful friends was Julia Livilla, a sister of the emperor Caligula.
In 41 A.D., Caligula was assassinated and replaced by his uncle Claudius. The new emperor accused Julia Livilla of adultery with Seneca. Whether the two were actually lovers or whether they were just unlucky is not known. (Claudius was, all evidence suggests, less benign than Robert Graves makes him out to be.) Julia Livilla was exiled to an island—probably Ventotene, off Naples—where she died within a few years. Seneca was sent to Corsica.
So it was AGRIPPINA who had Seneca recalled for him to end up as Nero's tutor -- hard to imagine a more disreputable sponsor:
Seneca ended up spending the better part of a decade in exile, and he would have spent even longer were it not for one of those episodic mate swaps which make the imperial family tree such a thicket. In 48 A.D., Claudius had his third wife killed and took as his fourth bride Agrippina—Caligula and Julia Livilla’s sister, and Claudius’ niece. It was she who persuaded Claudius to bring Seneca home.
The scheming wife is a fixture of Roman history. As bad as the men are, the women are worse—ruthless, cunning, and often sex-crazed. Many of the stories that come down to us are difficult to credit; for example, before Claudius had his third wife, Messalina, whacked, she was reported to have held a twenty-four-hour sex competition with a hooker. (According to Pliny, she won.)
The dishonorable acts of Seneca keep coming:
Agrippina had Seneca recalled nominally so that he could educate the adolescent Nero. (At the back of her mind may have been the model of Aristotle and Alexander the Great.) But she also found other uses for his talents. In 53 A.D., Agrippina arranged for Nero to marry one of Claudius’ daughters. A year after that, the story goes, she had Claudius murdered, using a poisoned mushroom. (Tacitus reports that Claudius recovered from the initial poisoning after his bowels “were relieved.” The quick-thinking Agrippina then had him poisoned again, using a feather that was stuck down his throat, ostensibly as an emetic.) Within hours of Claudius’ death, Nero claimed power in a speech to the Praetorian Guard. The speech, which promised the loyal soldiers a huge bonus, was written for him by Seneca.
And get worse and worse:
Claudius’ murder set off a round of bloody housekeeping. Anyone whom the new regime perceived as a threat was polished off. Britannicus met his end within six months of his father. This time, the poison was delivered in a pitcher of water. When the boy dropped dead at the dinner table, Nero told the other guests that he was having a fit and they should just keep eating. According to Tacitus, most did.
Britannicus’ murder prompted one of Seneca’s most famous moral treatises, “On Mercy.” The work is addressed to Nero, who is also its subject. Seneca’s conceit is that the philosopher has nothing to teach the emperor about clemency; the essay is merely a “mirror” to show the young ruler his own virtues. He is beneficent and kindhearted, and can honestly say that he has “spilt not a drop of human blood in the whole world.”
Romm and Wilson acknowledge that the juxtaposition of the adulation and the murder looks pretty bad. “On Mercy,” Wilson observes, can be read as a sign that Seneca was “willing to praise this violent, dangerous, and terrifyingly powerful young ruler even to the extent of absolutely denying the reality of his behavior.”
And what looks even worse is that Seneca grew rich from Nero’s crimes. Following Britannicus’ murder, the boy’s wealth was divvied up, and Seneca, it seems, got a piece. By the end of the decade, the philosopher owned property not just in Rome but also in Egypt, Spain, and southern Italy. And he had so much cash on hand that he loaned forty million sesterces to Rome’s newest subjects, the British. (The annual salary of a Roman soldier at that time was around nine hundred sesterces.) The recall of the loans purportedly prompted the British to revolt.
Can you do an actual diagram Steve ?
Are you saying both the X and Y axis are labeled pleasure?
I was expecting pain to be on there somewhere so it would help to visualize this more precisely.
Good question Titus and good answer Martin.
Could we also speak of Scientism here? Where do we draw the dividing line? Is the main difference that scientist-scientists use science as a rhetorical tool to realise their goals, as it has become common in debates to underpin everything ‘scientifically’ with research and statistics?
Titus --
My first response would be to point out the reason that you are asking the question -- No one really has a clear definition of what "Scientism" means, any more than anyone can give a precise answer to what "Humanism" means.
Unlike with Epicurus, which we can trace back more or less accurately to the writings of a single group of people, "Scientism" is an attitude that has no clear definition. If someone suggestions that a particular doctrine is or ought to be considered a part of Epicurean philosophy, they can compare that assertion to the preserved doctrines of Epicurus and make their own determination of whether Epicurus would have agreed.
But the Epicureans did not call their philosophy "hedonism" or "pleasure-ism," not did they call it "canonicsism" or "empiricism." They were aware that they were teaching an entire world-view of which adherence to the authority of the senses is critical, and which deduces that pleasure is the ultimate goal of life, and in which "virtue" is important, but they likewise denounced "placing the cart before the horse" and elevating virtue or reason or any other "tool" above the ultimate conclusions of the philosophic approach.
So from that point of view I would assert that we need to apply all of the cautions that Epicurus applied to "virtue," and even to the feeling of pleasure in that we do not always choose what is immediately pleasurable, to emphasize the point that every time we elevate a tool -- even such important tools as pleasure and friendship" into the place of the ultimate conclusions, then we are ignoring the thrust of Epicurean philosophy. To elevate "science" as an end in itself would be as wrong as elevating "reason" or "logic" or "friendship" or "wisdom" as ends in themselves, which Epicurus clearly warned against doing.
And to the extent it is possible to make any sense of the words "Scientism" or "Humanism," that's exactly what those terms are doing -- setting up a standard which Epicurean philosophy would clearly hold to be false.
I think this is dealing with the idea of excess, as with intoxication by alcohol
You may be thinking that because you are thinking correctly about things you knew before you ever saw them in Seneca.
What Seneca is doing is dangerous however in repurposing Epicurean words for his own uses. Donald Robertson summarizes the issue well in this sentence:
"Indeed, Seneca is implicitly criticising Epicurus by pointing out that what is good in Epicureanism is not unique, and what is unique in it is not good."
And he has useful examples of this in his article here:
For example all of the following is from that article:
He [Seneca] says several times that the quotes he draws from Epicurus typically articulate very commonplace ideas found in the writings of many earlier philosophers, poets, and playwrights. There are many ideas expressed by the Stoic school which we should not be surprised to find echoed elsewhere. However, that does not mean that the Stoics or Seneca agree with everything, or even the main things, said by these other authors. Indeed, Seneca is implicitly criticising Epicurus by pointing out that what is good in Epicureanism is not unique, and what is unique in it is not good.
By the ninth letter, Seneca is openly criticising Epicureanism, however. He rejects the Epicurean doctrine that the wise man needs friends to achieve the goal of living a truly pleasant life, free from fear and pain. The Stoic position is that the wise man is self-sufficient but that he prefers to have friends, fate permitting. Seneca quotes a letter of Epicurus as saying that the wise man needs friends for the reason:
That there may be someone to sit by him when he is ill, to help him when he is in prison or in want.
Seneca, like other Stoics, criticises Epicurus for teaching his followers to develop what we call today “fairweather friendships”. Friends are valued by the Epicureans only as a means to the end of protecting their own peace of mind, comfort, and tranquillity. This is something Seneca, like other Stoics, sees as morally reprehensible. Seneca writes:
He who regards himself only [i.e., his own self-interest], and enters upon friendships for this reason, reckons wrongly. The end will be like the beginning: he has made friends with one who might assist him out of bondage; at the first rattle of the chains such a friend will desert him. These are the so-called “fair-weather” friendships; one who is chosen for the sake of utility will be satisfactory only so long as he is useful. […] He who begins to be your friend because it pays will also cease because it pays. (Letter,
Apparently in reference to the motto above the door to the Garden (“Stranger, here you will do well to tarry; here our highest good is pleasure.”) Seneca writes:
Choose, then, some honorable superscription for your school, some writing which shall in itself arouse the mind: that which at present stands over your door has been invented by the vices.
Then the question arises, given the need to be suspicious of Seneca's Stoic-disposed formulations, whether being 'full" is necessarily the same thing as being satisfied?"
I can see a strong possibility of categorizing "satisfaction" as very subjective, while being 'full" implies a much more objective standard. And I can see danger in accepting "being satisfied" at a stage of pleasure that is a lot less than being "full" -- a danger in accepting something that should *not* be accepted when more is in fact possible under the circumstances for that person.
"This garden," he [the caretaker of the Garden] says, "does not whet your appetite; it quenches it. Nor does it make you more thirsty with every drink; it slakes the thirst by a natural cure, – a cure that demands no fee.
There is a very Buddhist ring to that formulation that looks like a red flag to me.
My life is all too short as it is -- I am not interested in destroying my appetite for pleasure, I am interested in experiencing pleasure continuously, and doing so by understanding how there are different types of pleasure, not by "quenching" pleasure or "curing" pleasure. Those verbs of "quencing" and "curing" are not appropriate as general attitudes toward pleasure. Toward pain, yes, but not pleasure, and not "appetite" or "desire." Prudence is used to steer desire toward its legitimate purpose, not to end desire or stamp it out.
I am coming around to the position that Seneca is a much more dangerous enemy of Epicurus than Cicero ever dreamed of being. Cicero was an honest and straightforward enemy - Seneca is an enemy who seeks to win by twisting Epicurus' words into something very different from their intended meaning.
So I would differ here:
Pleasure = a feeling of satisfaction and a state of being satisfied.
Pleasure certainly does not EQUAL a feeling of satisfaction.
A feeling of satisfaction may in fact be pleasurable, and ought to be if the circumstances ares such that you should feel satisfied. But a decision to embrace a feeling of acceptance or "satisfaction" when you have accepted less than you could and should have (if you are truly looking to maximize pleasure and minimize pain) is not in the best interest of a life of pleasure, and should not be viewed positively at all. That's a sell-out and a betrayal, not a positive accomplishment in which to take pleasure.
Just to answer the original question myself, here is my current thought:
I am open to the possibility that Epicurus WOULD say that "Infinite Time contains no more pain than limited time when the limit of pain is measured by reason," and here is why I am thinking that is possible:
As I see it, heart of the doctrine is that "full cannot be made more full no matter how long the time frame." If that is correct, then the analogy of it being impossible to make a full vessel being made "more full" over time applies no matter what is placed inside it.
The doctrine as written refers to "pleasure," but it would be just as true if it said "pleasures" or if it referred to any specific type of pleasure. The point being made is a "logical" point unrelated to the specifics of pleasure or pain. You could equally say the limit of quantity of "happiness" or "sadness" or any other human emotion or attribute, because the point is simply that "full means full" and it can never be made "more full" when you have a limited vessel.
So while it's likely that the "Limit of pain" is less interesting to discuss than the "limit of pleasure," I am open to the possibility, and at the moment tend toward the conclusion, that the same reasoning that must be used to gain a proper interpretation of the doctrine as written would apply even if the word "pain" were substituted.
I think probably why Twentier and I are for the moment reaching different conclusions is that Twentier is introducing into the hypothetical the question of death. I am thinking that the heart of the doctrine is the meaning of being "full." If that is the case, then the question of death is not truly relevant to the hypothetical. Yes the reason "limited time" is in fact limited is "death," but introducing death as the reason for the limitation brings into play something that doesn't affect the reason why the quantity of something in limited time is the same as in unlimited time.
"No more pain" is not the same as "continuous pleasure" because "no more pain" also includes "death", and that's no good. This is where we dodge the Cyrenaics accusation that our goal in life is that of a corpse.
Now if "full of pain" were to mean "instant automatic death" then I can see that making a difference to the reasoning, but my first thought is that I doubt that Epicurus would have gone in that direction. Because I think the key point of the hypothetical is "you can't get more full than full," and not "total pain means instant death." It's interesting to consider whether going in that direction would lead to a correct conclusion, but I would see that as a separate issue.
At least the way I am looking at this right now.....
michelepinto has let me know that the 2024 Epicurean Festival is now complete, and there are a series of videos now on youtube memorializing the presentations, including one by Christos Yapijakis.
Unfortunately for us English-speakers, it's all in Italian, but if you understand the language, you'll find the videos entertaining.
Congratulations on another successful festival Michele!
But one warning: you'll find that since the time Michele posted his avatar, he's had a haircut! 
Also Michele, if there is any special music or artwork in any of the videos, as you have had in the past, please point that out to us so we can highlight it. Thanks!
Introduzione di Michele Pinto
https://michelepinto.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=…3b&e=770890dc32
Commemorazione di David Konstan di Jürgen Hammerstaedt
https://michelepinto.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=…00&e=770890dc32
Amicizia e comunità filosofica: la prospettiva epicurea dal IV al I secolo AC di Federica Dolcemascolo
https://michelepinto.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=…a2&e=770890dc32
Ricerca della felicità, diritto dell'Uomo: un concetto epicureo di Christos Yapijakis
https://michelepinto.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=…75&e=770890dc32
Il giardino epicureo, un'oasi per fermare la desertificazione ambientale, sociale e culturale di Massimiliano Capalbo
https://michelepinto.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=…c7&e=770890dc32
Epicuro pop up, l'insegnamento di Epicuro ci rende felici oggi, anche senza conoscerlo di Gianluca Esposito
https://michelepinto.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=…c3&e=770890dc32
Presentazione dell'Opera "Trasparenze Epicuree" di Massimo Nesti
https://michelepinto.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=…58&e=770890dc32
Lucrezio tra saggezza e uragano di Milo De Angelis, letture di Viviana Nicodemo - introduzione di Andrea Maranini
https://michelepinto.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=…f2&e=770890dc32
Edonismo e presa bene di Pippo Ricciardi
https://michelepinto.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=…8e&e=770890dc32
Vedere l'Invisibile
Scienza e meraviglia in Lucrezio: un rapporto conflittuale di Leonardo Galli
Il premio Netoip di Jürgen Hammerstaedt
https://michelepinto.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=…80&e=770890dc32
Raro come la fenice o comune come un maiale? Le caratteristiche del
sapiente epicureo nell'Etica di Filodemo di Wim Nijs
https://michelepinto.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=…15&e=770890dc32
Dalla filosofia epicurea al compito dello studioso di Gianluca del Mastro
https://michelepinto.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=…cc&e=770890dc32
Una sfida nel tempo: lo svolgimento e la lettura dei Papiri Ercolanesi prima della rivoluzione digitale di Claudio Vergara
https://michelepinto.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=…fe&e=770890dc32
Vedere ricostruendo: rimettere insieme ciò che il fuoco e il tempo hanno provato a distruggere di Marzia D'Angelo
https://michelepinto.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=…8d&e=770890dc32
L'invisibile svelato: la Vesuvio Challenge e la lettura dei papiri non aperti di Federica Nicolardi
https://michelepinto.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=…05&e=770890dc32
Check the videos here:
by Giulia Ariti | 2024-07-17
A journey among the papyrus to understand the work of papyrologists, "seeing the invisible" through the finds, in the undertaking of reconstructing Epicurus' thought. A journey through images, trying to understand the diffusion and popularity of Epicurean thought. With a passionate exposition, Gianluca Del Mastro, papyrologist from the University of Campania, spoke on the second day of the Epicurean Festival of Senigallia, on the theme " Seeing the Invisible: from Epicurean philosophy to the task of the scholar ".
“The title Seeing the invisible starts from what papyrologists do every day – this is how he introduces the theme – we see the texts that are there, but whose black ink is confused with the charred background of the papyrus. Epicurus' philosophy is a complex philosophy, but several pieces are missing. Of Epicurus we have primarily Diogenes Laertius, who does nothing but collect information from philosophers, who dedicates the tenth book of the Lives of the Philosophers, giving us three letters and maximum capitals. Then we have the indirect tradition, made up of hundreds and hundreds of fragments. We have Lucretius with De Rerum Natura, which takes up the thirty-seven books of Epicurus' "On Nature". We also have the Vatican manuscripts, which make us understand that Epicurus' philosophy was known in its maxims in the Middle Ages. However, we know that Epicurus wrote a lot, but we have nothing of it. So we try to see the invisible."
The journey started from the oldest witness of Epicureanism, found in the Villa dei Papiri, which dates back to the 3rd century BC, contemporary with Epicurus, and then passed through ancient papyri which derive from Egypt, dating back to the 2nd century BC; “This makes us understand that Epicureanism was also widespread in Egypt and not only in Alexandria, but almost 200 kilometers away”, comments Del Mastro.
Testimonies from the 1st century AD, in which someone promised to send papyri of Epicurus and Metrodorus to someone else, but also Epicurean mosaics found in France. Epicurus therefore traversed time and space, finding formulations in fragmented papyri of late Epicureans, manuscripts bearing fragments. That of taking up and citing Epicurus and the Epicureans, however, is a tendency which, over time, diminishes, probably due to the preponderance of Neoplatonic and Aristotelian philosophy, leaving a serious knowledge gap for contemporaries - aggravated by the conditions of illegibility of the papyri of Herculaneum.
“We give a large part of our lives every day to read the Epicurean message more, every day more to see the invisible,” concludes Del Mastro.
And Twentier are you responding to the thread topic question, as to substituting "pain" in the place of "pleasure," or are you just making an independent point about the meaning of PD19 as written?
The latter is fine, but if you could also comment on whether it works to substitute pain, that would be good too.
I'm continuing on a tangent away from the main purpose of the thread, so eventually we need to get back to that. However one more thing on the "vessel" picture. In my mind maybe the thing that makes this analogy most useful is this, and pardon my french but I need to be emphatic:
The vessel visualization makes clear how to refute one of the most damnably perverse readings that many people give to an important passage in the letter to Menoeceus, translated by Bailey as: "[128] 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. For it is then that we have need of pleasure, when we feel pain owing to the absence of pleasure; (but when we do not feel pain), we no longer need pleasure.
The damnably perverse Stoic/Buddhist interpretation of the underlined section is that what we are really after is "getting rid of pain" and nothing matters - nothing else is important - except that. So they read that as "when we don't have pain we don't need pleasure."
The part they leave out purposely is that when you are alive and not feeling pain you ARE feeling pleasure whatever you are doing!
Epicurus is not describing a point at which you "don't need pleasure," he's describing a point at which you "don't need MORE pleasure," and the reason you don't need MORE pleasure is that you already have all the pleasure you can handle!
I'm not singling out Stoics or Buddhist as intrinsically bad people, but to the extent Stoicism and Buddhism stand for this proposition - that we don't need and shouldn't want pleasure - then I am singling out any such doctrines/philosophies/religions as intrinsically "bad" from the point of view of a philosophy based on nature like Epicurus promoted.
Another point raised last night is that this discussion has something to do with infinity, at least in practical terms. For out into infinity - or at least as long into the future as supernatural religions dominate the world, people who read the Letter to Menoeceus are going to come across that same passage, and they are going to be bewildered at how to fit the pieces together.
The supernatural religionists/Buddhists/Stoics/Humanists are always going to try to pull that statement out of its context and use it to argue that "Pleasure" is not the real goal of Epicurus. It's in their nature - those groups are in fact enemies of pleasure and this world, as Nietszsche might say, and they are going to use every argument they can to dissuade people from pursuing pleasure.
The unfortunate truth is that most readers of normal upbringing are not going to be able to see through the deception unless they are given an explanation. They will need the vessel analogy, or the explanation that the hand when not in pain is in pleasure, or the comparison of the host pouring wine for the thirsty guest, or other analogies yet to be invented.
When you are talking with someone who does not understand this view of Epicurus - and that's what most generalist articles and books are doing, they are talking to people who don't already understand - simply stating that "pleasure is the absence of pain" is not sufficient, standing alone. It's necessary to go further to to explain Epicurus' complete way of looking at "pleasure" as the single word that describes the ultimate goal. Epicurus didn't write "pleasure is the absence of pain" in the letter to Menoeceus and then stop - he provided a much broader picture in the rest of the letter. He didn't stop there, and we shouldn't either, so picking that phrase and isolating it as if it is self-evident out of context is not promoting Epicurean philosophy, it's perverting it.
Yes, definitely -- the top jar needs to be larger, or in some way indicating that the pouring could go on forever - maybe no "top jar" at all, just a stream of liquid from a source that is off camera. As it is, you have to imagine the hand constantly moving to fill the top jar with more water, and then pouring it into the main jar.
So the graphic would have greater effect if it were an animated gif, with the liquid pouring in real time, and the excess above the rim spilling over the sides. But I don't know how to get together such an animated gif - that's a project for the future. But such a graphic would be desirable to have, because the action would continue forever as long as you look at the graphic.
Here's the part of Lucretius Book 6 that sanctions this specific allusion, connecting filling a jar with the issue of limits:
[09] For when he saw that mortals had by now attained well-nigh all things which their needs crave for subsistence, and that, as far as they could, their life was established in safety, that men abounded in power through wealth and honours and renown, and were haughty in the good name of their children, and yet not one of them for all that had at home a heart less anguished, but with torture of mind lived a fretful life without any respite, and was constrained to rage with savage complaining, he then did understand that it was the vessel itself which wrought the disease, and that by its disease all things were corrupted within, whatsoever came into it gathered from without, yea even blessings; in part because he saw that it was leaking and full of holes, so that by no means could it ever be filled; in part because he perceived that it tainted as with a foul savor all things within it, which it had taken in.
And so with his discourse of truthful words he purged the heart and set a limit to its desire and fear, and set forth what is the highest good, towards which we all strive, and pointed out the path, whereby along a narrow track we may strain on towards it in a straight course; he showed what there is of ill in the affairs of mortals everywhere, coming to being and flying abroad in diverse forms, be it by the chance or the force of nature, because nature had so brought it to pass; he showed from what gates it is meet to sally out against each ill, and he proved that ’tis in vain for the most part that the race of men set tossing in their hearts the gloomy billows of care. For even as children tremble and fear everything in blinding darkness, so we sometimes dread in the light things that are no whit more to be feared than what children shudder at in the dark and imagine will come to pass. This terror then, this darkness of the mind, must needs be scattered not by the rays and the gleaming shafts of day, but by the outer view and the inner law of nature. Wherefore I will hasten the more to weave the thread of my task in my discourse.
Joshua came up with the question in the title of this thread in part because Kalosyni asked for an explanation of PD19.
One way of attacking that original question is to visualize water, symbolic of pleasure, being poured in to a jar, which symbolizes a human life.
Keep pouring pleasure into the jar for a minute, or a year, or for an infinite time, and you can never fill the jar more than full. The amount of water (pleasure) in the jar (your life) will be no greater after an infinity of time than after the first minute. The drops of water in the vase will have varied due to the continuous pouring, but the total amount of pleasure contained in the jar will never be greater despite the increase in time of pouring.
(This would make a better graphic as an animated GIF with the water continuously running and spilling over the sides of the jar, but that's beyond my ability at the moment.)
Such an illustration might work for pleasure. Does it also work for pain? I think it probably does, but my mind is not made up and we had some disagreement on that in our discussion.
Joshua brought up the question in the thread title tonight in our Twentieth Zoom, and I think it's a great question.
Whichever way one wants to answer, Yes or No, the discussion should bring greater clarity to the meaning of - PD19. "Infinite time contains no greater pleasure than limited time, if one measures, by reason, the limits of pleasure."
What do you think. Would Epicurus endorse this variation of PD19, and if so how would he answer it, and with what kind of explanation?
Here are the Lacus Curtius Links to the Senecan period as recorded by Tacitus:
| Claudius is emperor. In Rome, Suillius prosecutes many. Turmoil in Armenia. | |
| Corbulo settles a Frisian revolt. Senatorial rights extended to the provinces. Debaucheries and execution of Messalina. | |
| Claudius remarries. Adjustments with Parthia. Nero adopted. The pomerium enlarged. War in Britain against Caratacus. | |
| The young Nero groomed to succeed Claudius. Disorders in Armenia. Extravagant inauguration of the draining of Lake Fucinus, which turned out a massive failure. Death of Claudius, maybe by poison. | |
| Nero becomes emperor and starts his slide into lust and cruelty; the murder of Britannicus. Continued trouble with Parthia over Armenia. | |
| Disaster to Roman arms in Armenia, partly saved by Corbulo. Revolts and wars among the Germans. | |
| Nero murders his mother Agrippina. Nero exhibits himself as a charioteer. Institution of the Neronia. Corbulo composes Armenian difficulties in favor of Rome, at least for the time being. | |
| In Britain, the Icenian revolt under Boudicca. | |
| Criminal trials and political purges in Rome. Murder of Rubellius Plautus and of the 20‑year‑old Octavia. | |
| Roman defeat in Armenia, although "spun" as a victory; followed, however, by a further adjustment with Parthia in which the Parthian king Tiridates travels to Rome to become a nominal vassal of Rome. | |
| Nero exhibits himself as a singer and a harpist. The Great Fire of Rome; Christians are executed as scapegoats. | |
| Piso's conspiracy: it fails. | |
| Nero seeks to destroy the Stoic opposition: murder of Paetus and Soranus. |
So both Tacitus and Cassius Dio record significant information about Seneca's personal activities. Looking for links to research these, I see that the Cassius Dio material can be found at LacusCurtius starting here. I've linked to 60 to be sure to capture the period leading up to Nero - apparently the heart of the Seneca material is in 62:
Seneca encouraging Nero to kill Nero's mother:
12 Sabina on learning of this persuaded Nero to get p63 rid of his mother, alleging that she was plotting against him. He was incited likewise by Seneca (or so many trustworthy men have stated), whether from a desire to hush the complaint against his own name, or from his willingness to lead Nero on to a career of unholy bloodguiltiness that should bring about most speedily his destruction by gods and men alike.
Seneca leading on the false flatterers of Nero:
20 As a fitting climax to these performances, Nero himself made his appearance in the theatre, being announced under his own name by Gallio. So there stood this Caesar on the stage wearing the garb of lyre-player. This emperor uttered the words: "My lords, of your kindness give me ear," 2 and this Augustus sang to the lyre some piece called "Attis" or "The Bacchantes,"5 while many soldiers stood by and all the people that the seats would hold sat watching. Yet he had, according to report, but a slight and indistinct voice, so that he moved his whole audience to laughter and tears at once. 3 Beside him stood Burrus and Seneca, like teachers, prompting him; and they would wave their arms and togas at every utterance of his and lead others p81 to do the same.
Seneca the loan-shark:
2 An excuse for the war was found in the confiscation of the sums of money that Claudius had given to the foremost Britons; for these sums, as Decianus Catus, the procurator of the island, maintained, were to be paid back. This was one reason for the uprising; another was found in the fact that Seneca, in the hope of receiving a good rate of interest, had lent to the islanders 40,000,000 sesterces that they did not want,7 and had afterwards called in this loan all at once and had resorted to severe measures in exacting it.
The Death of Seneca, committing suicide after claiming to be ill but nevertheless leaving his entire property to the same Nero who had ordered him to die:
25 1 It would be no small task to speak of all the others that perished, but the fate of Seneca calls for a few words. It was his wish to end the life of his wife Paulina at the same time with his own, for he declared that he had taught her both to despise death and to desire to leave the world in company with him. So he opened her veins as well as his own. 2 But as he died hard, his end was hastened by the soldiers; and she was still alive when he passed away, and thus survived. He did not lay hands upon himself, however, until he had revised the book which he was writing15 and had deposited his other books with some friends, fearing that they would otherwise fall into Nero's hands and be destroyed. 3 Thus died Seneca, notwithstanding that he had on the pretext of illness abandoned the society of the emperor and had bestowed upon him his entire property, ostensibly to help to pay for the buildings he was constructing. His brothers, too, perished after him.
Seneca was extremely wealthy to have been a promoter of asceticism:
In AD 58 the senator Publius Suillius Rufus made a series of public attacks on Seneca.[28] These attacks, reported by Tacitus and Cassius Dio,[29] included charges that, in a mere four years of service to Nero, Seneca had acquired a vast personal fortune of three hundred million sestertii by charging high interest on loans throughout Italy and the provinces.[30] Suillius' attacks included claims of sexual corruption, with a suggestion that Seneca had slept with Agrippina.[31] Tacitus, though, reports that Suillius was highly prejudiced: he had been a favorite of Claudius,[28] and had been an embezzler and informant.[30] In response, Seneca brought a series of prosecutions for corruption against Suillius: half of his estate was confiscated and he was sent into exile.[32] However, the attacks reflect a criticism of Seneca that was made at the time and continued through later ages.[28] Seneca was undoubtedly extremely rich: he had properties at Baiae and Nomentum, an Alban villa, and Egyptian estates.[28] Cassius Dio even reports that the Boudica uprising in Britannia was caused by Seneca forcing large loans on the indigenous British aristocracy in the aftermath of Claudius's conquest of Britain, and then calling them in suddenly and aggressively.[28] Seneca was sensitive to such accusations: his De Vita Beata ("On the Happy Life") dates from around this time and includes a defense of wealth along Stoic lines, arguing that properly gaining and spending wealth is appropriate behavior for a philosopher.[30]
It appears Seneca learned his eclecticism very early. Wikipedia has this information on Seneca's early teachers, who were of the eclectic school known as the "School of the Sextii":
The School of the Sextii was an eclectic Ancient Roman school of philosophy founded around 50 BC by Quintus Sextius the Elder and continued by his son, Sextius Niger, however it went extinct shortly after in 19 AD due to the ban on foreign cults.[1] The school blended elements of Pythagorean, Platonic, Cynic, and Stoic philosophy together[2] with a belief in an elusive incorporeal power pervades the body in order to emphasize asceticism, honesty, and moral training through nightly examinations of conscience as a means of achieving eudaimonia.[3] The primary sources of information on the school are Seneca the Younger, who was taught by one of its members named Sotion, and the 5th century writer Claudianus Mamertus.[3] Other members of the school included Papirius Fabianus, Crassicius Pasicles, Celsus.[3] While Seneca the Younger often conflates the school with Stoicism, the Sextians were not as inclined to rigorous logical exercises or any abstruse abstract thinking, and unlike the Stoics, advocated avoidance of politics, engaging in the correspondence between words and life, and vegetarianism.[4]
Although this book is written from a Stoic perspective, it is so representative of the dominant Stoic-infused modern view of Epicurus that we may want to review it at least briefly next on the podcast, after we complete "On The Nature of the Gods." It contains a lot of commentary on Epicurean philosophy in the form of referencing "pleasure," which we can productively use to unravel where Seneca might be accurate from the larger sections where is is probably inaccurate in his characterization of Epicurus.
I plan to make some notes as I review this and wanted to start with two explicit mentions of Epicurus. I am underlining the parts I would challenge. The quote below from from the Gutenberg edition, translated by Sir Roger L'Estrange.
In this first excerpt from Chapter XV, I submit we see illustrated a strong example of Seneca turning Epicurus into a Stoic. There are no known examples of actual Epicureans construing pleasure in real life following this ascetic model (eating only for hunger, drinking only when thirsty, seeking the end of eating and drinking as "satiety," or categorizing all non-ascetic pleasures as "an evil cause" or lumping them into terms like "sloth, gluttony, and lust." Nor would I submit that the ancient Epicureans would ever have admitted that a proper interpretation of Epicurus makes him appear to be "in womanish dress."
225 - "Happy is that man that eats only for hunger, and drinks only for thirst; that stands upon his own legs, and lives by reason, not by example; and provides for use and necessity, not for ostentation and pomp! Let us curb our appetites, encourage virtue, and rather be beholden to ourselves for riches than to Fortune, who when a man draws himself into a narrow compass, has the least mark at him. Let my bed be plain and clean, and my clothes so too: my meat without much expense, or many waiters, and neither a burden to my purse nor to my body, not to go out the same way it came in. That which is too little for luxury, is abundantly enough for nature. The end of eating and drinking is satiety; now, what matters it though one eats and drinks more, and another less, so long as the one is not a-hungry, nor the other athirst? Epicurus, who limits pleasure to nature, as the Stoics do virtue, is undoubtedly in the right; and those that cite him to authorize their voluptuousness do exceedingly mistake him, and only seek a good authority for an evil cause: for their pleasures of sloth, gluttony, and lust, have no affinity at all with his precepts or meaning. It is true, that at first sight his philosophy seems effeminate; but he that looks nearer him will find him to be a very brave man only in a womanish dress."
In this second excerpt specifically mentioning Epicurus, from Chapter XVI, the underlined par (at least as translated "the wise man will bear all injuries) sounds like an almost Jesus-like "turn the other cheek" directive. Instead, it's much more likely to be a reference to PDO4, which is not an excuse for "bearing" all injuries and doing nothing about them, but a statement that pain is short if intense, manageable if long, and always ultimately escapable if truly intolerable. Most of this is Seneca just being a normal Stoic and posturing that virtue allows someone to rise above whatever may happen to him, but his reference to Epicurus obscures what it is that Epicurus is talking about.
Epicurus will have it, that a wise man will bear all injuries; but the Stoics will not allow those things to be injuries which Epicurus calls so. Now, betwixt these two, there is the same difference that we find betwixt two gladiators; the one receives wounds, but yet maintains his ground, the other tells the people, when he is in blood, that it is but a scratch, and will not suffer anybody to part them. An injury cannot be received, but it must be done; but it may be done and yet not received; as a man may be in the water, and not swim, but if he swims, it is presumed that he is in the water. Or if a blow or a shot be levelled at us, it may so happen that a man may miss his aim, or some accident interpose that may divert the mischief. That which is hurt is passive, and inferior to that which hurts it. But you will say, that Socrates was condemned and put to death, and so received an injury; but I answer, that the tyrants did him an injury, and yet he received none. He 236 that steals anything from me and hides it in my own house, though I have not lost it, yet he has stolen it. He that lies with his own wife, and takes her for another woman, though the woman be honest, the man is an adulterer. Suppose a man gives me a draught of poison and it proves not strong enough to kill me, his guilt is nevertheless for the disappointment. He that makes a pass at me is as much a murderer, though I put it by, as if he had struck me to the heart. It is the intention, not the effect, that makes the wickedness. He is a thief that has the will of killing and slaying, before his hand is dipt in blood; as it is sacrilege, the very intention of laying violent hands upon holy things. If a philosopher be exposed to torments, the ax over his head, his body wounded, his guts in his hands, I will allow him to groan; for virtue itself cannot divest him of the nature of a man; but if his mind stand firm, he has discharged his part. A great mind enables a man to maintain his station with honor; so that he only makes use of what he meets in his way, as a pilgrim that would fain be at his journey’s end.
Again, these are just a couple of instances where Epicurus is mentioned directly. There's a lot more to say about this book and how it contributes to making Epicurean philosophy almost unrecognizable, and how Seneca's version of Epicurus is unfortunately what prevails today.
