Posts by Cassius

I have to repeat how much I agree with this chart from Don's post above, and I'm going to post it at the Epicurean facebook group with this comment:

A friend has pointed me to the graphic I am posting below. It comes from an article against the dangers of AI. The article has a small amount of political content that is against our group rules to highlight, and I deliberately omit referring to that here. But the majority of the article is non-political, and it describes the real--world effects of "collapse of confidence in reality" which AI has the potential to encourage

The reason I am posting this is not to comment on AI, but that I don't think this chart is limited to describing problems with AI. I'd say this chart is exactly what has happened to the West as a whole since about 100 AD and the wide suppression of the growing Epicurean movement. It's just this series of disasters described in the chart that Epicurean philosophy was developed to oppose. The big issue is that we shouldn't see this as a modern phenomena that began or got worse with AI. These disastrous attitudes are inherent in every form of skeptical / mystical / absolutist philosophy such as what Epicurus revolted against. And these problems are inherent in post-Epicurean western civilization for the last two thousand years.

THESE PROBLEMS are the enemy that Epicurus fought against with his physics and canonics, and it's why we need to emphasize all aspects of his philosophy. If we understand Epicurean physics and canonics we'll end up with a sound understanding of Epicurean ethics. If we don't understand the physics and canonics, Epicurean ethics is arbitrary and can be twisted into something far worse than worthless, as it has become in the writing of many commentators.

Over on Facebook someone posted this. There are certainly people here who are much more familiar with Hobbes than am I. Anyone want to propose some comments in answer:

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In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes seems to follow a materialistic philosophy that aligns with Epicurean thought. Since he was writing in a Christian context, he couldn’t be completely open about it, often couching his materialism in scriptural language. His reduction of spirit to matter and denial of incorporeal entities was viewed by his contemporaries as dangerously close to atheism. Would you say Hobbes’ philosophy is in harmony with Epicurean philosophy?”

I'd say Epicurus identifies some very important situations where there are only two choices, so all binaries are not false:

- atoms and void

- pleasure and pain

Welcome to Episode 296 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world.

Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts, and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes.

Once again this week Joshua is away, and in the absence of our other podcasters today I want to use the time we have to take a look at some of the extensive comment and discussion we've had as a result of last week's episode.

The topic we'll focus on this week is primarily Plutarch's allegations in Section 7 and 8 of his essay "That Living According to Epicurus is Not Possible. In those sections Plutarch alleged that even the animals pursue joy and delight when they have satisfied their essential needs of life such as for food and water, but that Epicurus - according to Plutarch - would deny his followers those same pleasures, on the grounds that the Epicurean goal is "absence of pain" rather than pleasure in the sense of joy and delight.

We had many good comments from our forum members since the release of that podcast, and we'll discuss a number of them here today.

In responding to the same allegations made by Plutarch, we'll also consult a reference that professor Norman Dewitt. In his book "Epicurus and His Philosopher," DeWitt cited an allegation by P.E. More, an academic authority who wrote in his 1923 book: "What, in a word, is to be said of a philosophy that begins with regarding pleasure as the only positive good and ends by emptying pleasure of all positive content?"

The full passage will examine is quoted in last week's discussion here:

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RE: Episode 295 - Plutarch's Absurd Interpretation of Epicurean Absence of Pain

This is a long quote but think the forum software will provide a collapsible box so it doesn't break the flow of the thread. The analysis is perverse just as DeWitt describes it, but it's well worth reading in full as an expansive interpretation in modern language of Plutarch's criticism. This is a position that is widespread and if you're a fan of Epicurus you need to understand the argument and have a position on why it is wrong. Rolfe who is asking the question and Don who read Plutarch…

Cassius

August 22, 2025 at 8:38 AM

In the absence of Joshua and Don I'll probably provide more questions than answers, but we can discuss these issues on the forum and in future podcasts when Joshua and Don return. Even if we don't provide any brilliant new insights today, the material we'll discuss present questions that have stark and conflicting possible answers, and every student of Epicurus has to answer these for themselves if they really want to understand what's at the heart of Epicurean philosophy.

One way to frame the question (and rehabilitate Horace's statement) might be:

It's clear that Epicurus held the term "pleasure" to include many more experiences in life than what most people include when they think of pleasure. Is it also true that Epicurus held the term "pain" to include many fewer experiences in life than what most people include when they think of pain?

Quote from Don

Now, if you want to compare it to taking pleasure in a sunset that was unplanned and due to random fluctuations in the atmosphere... okay? In relation to that AI poem, you - the reader - are imbuing that poem with meaning. The "author" of the poem is NOT trying to communicate their feeling to you. The AI poem is a Rorschach Test. A random inkblot that you can look at and say "that looks like a bee resting on a flower" or read a poem and say "Oh, this reminds me of a day I spent in the sunshine." YOU are imbuing algorithmically-selected words with meaning. Granted, we do SOME of this with all poetry, but the author has an intention of what they wrote if it's a human author.

You and Pacatus are building a strong argument in favor of judging whether you want to participate in a pleasure by an across-the-board requirement that the source from which it comes NOT be AI.

I definitely sign on to that viewpoint to the extent that you have to understand the source of a pleasure in order to evaluate whether in the end it is going to cause you more pleasure than pain.

But isn't that just the same question just stated differently(?) Don't we have to be certain that *all* AI generated pleasure is going to harm us more than help us in order to reach that conclusion? Because certainly there are *some* major benefits to AI or else it would not be "taking the world by storm." Are we to adopt Cicero's viewpoint on Epicurean philosophy and go on a crusade against AI? I'm all for crusades in the right context.

But that's where I think the debate is still open. I don't yet have the sense that by necessity all use of AI is so dangerous that it should be banned (and we're not just talking the forum but society as a whole). I would think that there's a lot of subtlety on where to draw the line.

And my gosh this debate is everywhere. It's hard to read a list of articles on any subject at any time day or night without some part of this debate being brought up.

Thanks again Don, those are very helpful leads and we can pursue this into the future as time allows.

Yes it seems to be commonly noted that Horace was more Epicurean when younger than older, but I've never seen much explanation behind those general comments.

Below is more of the Latin from your wikisource link. So there's clearly a first imperative clause that reads spurn pleasures / "Sperne voluptates.... followed by a new thought.

I would think that the best hope for a saving construction would be that the clause/phrase after that is intended to restrict the meaning to "spurn those pleasures that cause more pleasure than pain." My Latin is not good enough to be confident of any construction, but it sure doesn't look at first glance like his choice of words goes in that direction. In fact at this point it's hard to imagine much of a different construction - everything adds up to something like "Spurn pleasures; pleasures acquired by pain are harmful." And I see that as entirely contrary to the heart of what Epicurus was saying. Life constantly presents options where choices have to be made whether to engage in activities that are painful in order to acquire pleasures that are more worthwhile.

It's possible that as a mirror to the redefined meaning of "pleasure" there was also a redefinition of "pain" so that all sorts of effort that we would consider struggle and involving pain might fall outside the Epicurean definition of pain. However I don't see the texts going in that direction - does anyone? Given the expansive definition of pleasure we should probably be open to concluding that Epicurus had a narrow reading of "pain," but if so I'm not sure the texts we have really indicate that interpretation. I know there's reference to not needing to pursue desires involving "struggle" so maybe the possibility exists that the argument was being made, by Horace or others, to the effect that painful exertion which causes greater pleasure in the end should not be considered pain at all. But at the moment I don't see that as likely.

If so that's definitely something for us to pursue and clarify, but it seems more likely that this is more attributable to Horace being depressed post-Philippi.

Nodictionaries has the component words as:

More of the Latin:

Quote

Non domus et fundus, non aeris aceruus et auri
aegroto domini deduxit corpore febris,
non animo curas; ualeat possessor oportet,
si comportatis rebus bene cogitat uti. 50

Qui cupit aut metuit, iuuat illum sic domus et res
ut lippum pictae tabulae, fomenta podagram,
auriculas citharae collecta sorde dolentis.

Sincerum est nisi uas, quodcumque infundis acescit.

Sperne uoluptates; nocet empta dolore uoluptas. 55

Semper auarus eget; certum uoto pete finem.

Inuidus alterius macrescit rebus opimis;
inuidia Siculi non inuenere tyranni
maius tormentum. Qui non moderabitur irae,
infectum uolet esse, dolor quod suaserit et mens, 60
dum poenas odio per uim festinat inulto.

Ira furor breuis est; animum rege, qui nisi paret,
imperat, hunc frenis, hunc tu compesce catena.

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Thanks Don! Lots of clearly correct material in there. But this crucial line in narrower context still seems objectionable to me, so I'll try to dig further into whether the Latin justifies it. If the Latin does, I would still fault Horace for this formulation, which is perhaps worse even that the first suggested translation:

Unless the vessel be sweet, whatever you pour into it turns sour. Despise pleasures, pleasure bought with pain is hurtful. The covetous man is ever in want; set a certain limit to your wishes.

The P.E. More book "Hellenistic Philosophies" concludes a section on Epicurus with this quote:

"Speme voluptates, nocet empta dolore voluptas" which is suggested to be translated as "Hope for pleasures, but pleasure bought with pain is harmful."

I'm looking for the original without much success so far - I cannot confirm this search result below, but it should be relatively easy to trace this further.

If the suggested translation is correct, then I have to think that this may be an indication of Horace's fall from Epicurean grace, so to speak, because this would in my view contradict the explicit words of Epicurus in the letter to Menoeceus, and contradict the way Torquatus explains the issue in "On Ends."

The issue would be that a flat condemnation of every undergoing any pain for the sake of a greater pleasure, would indeed bolster the ultra-minimalist argument that we should never seek any pleasure that costs any amount of pain, a view to which i think most all of us here on the forum would object.

Hopefully when we trace the origin of this back there will be additional context to explain this. Further, a simple tweaking of the verb from "is" to "can be" or "sometimes is" would solve the problem. But a flat prohibition against every undergoing any pain for the sake of pleasure would in my mind be irreconcilable with correct Epicurean doctrine. If there is no way to redeem this quote, it may prove to be an excellent citation to establish that Horace cannot be relied on for correct Epicurean interpretations. And such a viewpoint would also help explain why Horace was indeed reputed to have let go of his Epicurean views later in life - he didn't understand or apply them properly.

Here's the first search results:

The Latin phrase "Speme voluptates, nocet empta dolore voluptas" can be translated into English as "Hope for pleasures, but pleasure bought with pain is harmful."A reliable source for this translation is the work of Horace, a Roman poet, as this phrase is derived from his writings, specifically from his "Epistles" (Book I, Epistle II, line 55). The Latin text and its English translation can be found in reputable classical literature databases or translations of Horace's works.For a reliable source, you can refer to:

• Perseus Digital Library (Tufts University): This provides access to Horace's original Latin texts and translations. The specific line can be found in Horace's Epistles (Book I, Epistle II).
  Link: Perseus Digital Library - Horace's Epistles

This source includes the original Latin text and reliable English translations, ensuring accuracy for your query.

This is a long quote but think the forum software will provide a collapsible box so it doesn't break the flow of the thread. The analysis is perverse just as DeWitt describes it, but it's well worth reading in full as an expansive interpretation in modern language of Plutarch's criticism. This is a position that is widespread and if you're a fan of Epicurus you need to understand the argument and have a position on why it is wrong. Rolfe who is asking the question and Don who read Plutarch recently for the podcast will definitely see how it tracks.

Quote from P.E. More - "Hellenistic Philosophies"

The difficulty that confronts us when we try to understand Epicurus is the extraordinary paradox of his logic. What, in a word, is to be said of a philosophy that begins with regarding pleasure as the only positive good and ends by emptying pleasure of all positive content? There is no possibility, I think, of really reconciling this blunt contradiction, which was sufficiently obvious to the enemies of Epicurus in antiquity, but it is possible, with the aid of Plutarch’s shrewd analysis, to follow him step by step from his premises to his conclusions, and so to discover the source of his entanglement. [Note 1]

Epicurus began with the materialistic and monistic theses which had allured Aristippus, and which, mingled in varying proportions from the teaching of Heraclitus and Protagoras and Democritus, had come to be the prevailing belief of the Greek people; they were, indeed, no more than the essence refined out of the voluble lecturing and debating of the so-called sophists against whom Socrates and Plato had waged a relentless but unsuccessful warfare. This visible palpable world of bodies is the only reality, and the only thing which to man, in such a world, has any certain value is his own immediate physical sensations. Pleasure we feel and pain we feel, in their various degrees and complications; and we know that all men welcome pleasure and shrink from pain by a necessity of nature. Pleasure, in fact, is simply a name for the sensation which we do welcome, and pain for the sensation from which we do shrink. The example of infants and animals is before us to nullify any attempt to argue away this primary distinction.

These are the premises of Epicurus, as they had been of Aristippus, and to these he will cling through thick and thin, whatever their consequences may be and however they may entangle him in self-contradictions.He seems even to have gone out of his way at times to find the grossest terms to express the doctrine, whether his motive was to shock the Philistines of morality or to fortify himself and his friends in their positive belief. The avowed programme of the school was “not to save the Greeks, but to indulge the belly to the limit of safety with meat and drink”; and in a letter to a friend Epicurus says: “I invite you to continuous pleasures, not to virtues that unsettle the mind with vain and empty hopes of fruition.”

The programme is simple enough in all conscience, and might satisfy the most cynical votary of the flesh, but, desiring like his predecessor to be a voluptuary, Epicurus was driven despite himself to be a philosopher, even more a philosopher than the Cyrenaic, whether his wisdom came from deeper reflection or greater timidity. His experience might be described as the opposite of that of Johnson’s humble acquaintance who had been trying all his life to attain philosophy but failed because cheerfulness would break in. Aristippus could make a boast of his Habeo, non habeor, but, however he might twist about, his dependence on the fleeting sensation of the moment left him at last a prey to the hazards of circumstance.

Clearly the hedonist who was enough of a philosopher to aim at liberty and security must embrace a wider view of life than the Cyrenaic; and so the first step of Epicurus was to take happiness, conceived as a continuous state of pleasure, rather than particular pleasures, for the goal. This is the initial, and perhaps the most fundamental, difference between the strictly Epicurean and the Cyrenaic brand of hedonism.

But how, taking individual pleasures still in the grossly physical sense, was a man to assure himself of their consummation in happiness? It was well to make a god of the belly and, in the Epicurean language, of any other passage of the body that admitted pleasure and not pain, but, as soon as he began to reflect, the philosopher was confronted by the ugly fact that the entrances of pain are more numerous than those of pleasure, and that the paroxysms of pain may surpass in intensity any conceivable pleasure. He saw that there was something ephemeral and insecure in the very nature of pleasure, whereas pain had terrible rights over the flesh, and could dispute her domain with a vigour far beyond the power of her antagonist. Evidently, in a world so constituted, the aim of the philosopher will be lowered from a bold search for sensations to the humbler task of attaining some measure of security against forces he cannot control; and so, I think, we shall interpret the curious phenomenon that the greatest of all hedonists was driven to a purely defensive attitude towards life.

On the one hand he knew, as Plato had shown, that the recovery from disease and the relief from anguish do bring a sense of active well-being, and hence it was possible for him to define pleasure in negative terms without seeming to contradict flagrantly his grosser views about the belly and other bodily organs. Again, since positive pleasure and pain by some law of nature are so intimately bound together that the cessation of one is associated with access of the other,[2] then, clearly, the only pleasure free of this unpleasant termination is that which is itself not positively induced but comes as the result of receding pain. For the content of happiness, therefore, the Epicurean will look to sensation of a negative sort : “The limit of pleasure is reached by the removal of all that gives pain,” and “Pleasure in the flesh admits no increase, when once the pain of want is removed; it can only be variegated.”[3] But the philosopher cannot stop here, Such a state of release, though in itself it may not be subject to the laws of alternative pleasure and pain, is yet open to interruption from the hazards of life. And so Epicurus, in his pursuit of happiness, is carried a step further.

Not on the present possession of pleasure, whether positive or negative, will he depend for security of happiness, but on the power of memory. Here, at least, we appear to be free and safe, for memory is our own. Nothing can deprive us of that recollected joy, “which is the bliss of solitude” ; even what was distressful at the time may often, by some alchemy of the mind, be transmuted into a happy reminiscence:

‘Things which offend when present, and affright, In memory, well painted, move delight." [Note 4]

The true hedonism, then, will be a creation in the mind from material furnished it by the body. Plutarch describes the procedure of Epicurus thus, and exposes also its inadequacy: Seeing that the field of joy in our poor bodies cannot be smooth and equal, but harsh and broken and mingled with much that is contrary, he transfers the exercise of philosophy from the flesh, as from a lean and barren soil, to the mind, in the hopes of enjoying there, as it were, large pastures and fair meadows of delight. Not in the body but in the soul is the true garden of the Epicurean to be cultivated. It might seem as if by the waving of a magic wand we had been translated from a materialistic hedonism to a region like that in which Socrates and Plato looked for unearthly happiness.

But in fact there is no such magic for the Epicurean. The source of the pleasures which compose our happiness is still physical, and only physical; the office of the soul, so-called, is merely to retain by an act of selective memory the scattered impressions of sensuous pleasure and to forestall these by an act of selective expectation. If you hear the Epicurean crying out and testifying that the soul has no power of joy and tranquility save in what it draws from the flesh, and that this is its only good, what can you say but that he uses the soul as a kind of vessel to receive the strainings from the body, as men rack wine from an old and leaky jar into a new one to take age, and so think they have done some wonderful thing.

And no doubt wine may be kept and mellowed with time, but the soul preserves no more than a feeble scent of what it takes into memory; for pleasure, as soon as it has given out one hiss in the body, forthwith expires, and that little of it which lags behind in memory is but flat and like a queasy fume, as if a man should undertake to feed himself today on the stale recollection of what he ate and drank yesterday. What the Epicureans have is but the empty shadow and dream of a pleasure that has taken wing and fled away, and that serves but for fuel to foment their untamed desires, as in sleep the unreal satisfaction of thirst and love only stings to a sharper lust of waking intemperance.

Memory, though it promise a release from the vicissitudes of fortune, is still too dependent on the facts of life, too deeply implicated in the recurrence of passionate desires. There is no finality of happiness here, and so the Epicurean is driven on to further refinement. If pushed hard, he will take refuge in imagining a possible painlessness of the body and a possible stability of untroubled ease. Life itself, in some rare instances, may afford the substance of this comfort, and memory then will be sufficient; but if the substance eludes us, we have still that within us which by the exercise of free will can lull the mind into fancying it remembers what it never possessed. Step by step the reflective hedonist has been driven by the lessons of experience from the pursuit of positive pleasure to acquiescence in pleasure conceived as the removal of pain; from present ease in the flesh to the subtilizing power of memory in the mind, and, when memory is starved, to the voluntary imagination that life has gone well with him. The fabled ataraxy, or imperturbable calm, of the Epicurean turns out to be something very like a pale beatitude of illusory abstraction from the tyranny of facts, the wilful mirage of a soul which imagines itself, but is not really, set apart from the material universe of chance and change.

Habeo non habeor, was the challenge of Aristippus to the world; the master of the Garden will be content with the more modest half : Non Habeor. There is something to startle the mind in this defensive conclusion of a philosophy which opened its attack on life under such brave and flaunting coIours. There is much to cause reflection when one considers how in the end hedonism is forced into an unnatural conjunction with the other monistic philosophy with which its principles are in such violent conflict. For this ataraxy of the avowed lover of ease and pleasure can scarcely be distinguished from the apathy which the Stoic devotees of pain and labour glorified as the goal of life. This is strange. It is stranger still, remembering this negative conclusion of Epicurean and Stoic, by which good becomes a mere deprivation of evil, to cast the mind forward to the metaphysics of another and later school of monism which led the Neoplatonist to reckon evil as a mere deprivation of good. Into such paradoxical combinations and antagonisms we are driven as soon as we try to shun the simple truth that good is good and evil is evil, each in its own right and judged by its immediate effect in the soul. It may appear from the foregoing that the hedonist, in his pursuit of the summum bonum, argues from point to point in a straight line; in practice he seems rather to follow no single guide, but to fluctuate between two disparate yet inseparable motives.

At one time, in a world where physical sensation is the only criterion of truth, the basis of all reality, the liberty of enjoyment is the lure that draws him on; at another time, in a world of chance and change or of mechanical law which takes no great heed of our wants, it seems as if security from misadventure must be the limit of man’s desire. Other philosophers, the Platonist in his vision of the world of Ideas, the Christian in his submission to the will of God, may see their way running straight before them to the one sure goal of spiritual happiness, in which liberty and security join hands. The path of the hedonist wavers from side to side, aiming now at positive pleasure and now at mere escape from pain; and this, I take it, is one of the curious reprisals of truth, that the dualist should have in view a single end, whereas the monist should be distracted by a double purpose. Whether one or the other of the revolving objects shall stand out clearer before the hedonist’s gaze, will depend perhaps chiefly upon his temperament. With an Aristippus the pleasure of the moment is supreme, though he too will have his eye open for the need of safety; with an Epicurus, more timid by nature and more reflective, the thought of security at the last will almost, if never quite, obliterate the enticement of pleasure. It was still as a good Epicurean that Horace could write:

Speme voluptates, nocet empta dolore voluptas.

_____________

[Note 1: Non Posse Suaviter Vivi Secundum Epicurum, I draw freely on the racy language of the old English translation.]

[Note 2: This association of pleasure and pain was familiar to Plato, He refers to it in Phaedo 60b, and deals with it at greater length in the Philebus.]

[Note 3: Sayings 3 and 18. In my quotations I sometimes adopt the language of the excellent versions in R. D. Hicks’s Stoic and Epicurean.]

[Note 4: Cowley, Upon His Majesty's Bestoration.]

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Quote from Don

PS. I am more than happy to have this deleted or delete it myself if this veers too political for the forum.

I haven't clicked through to the article but will do so now. Certainly it seems to me what you've posted is helpful, so I think the post itself certainly should stay up. I'll read the link and come back and comment further if it seems additional warning on following the link is appropriate.

Update: Just read the article. Aside from a passing reference to the current president and to past events in Stalingrad which adds nothing important to the article, there's not much partisan politics in it at all. I didn't follow all the links or watch the linked videos, but the great majority of the article seems to contain a lot of useful information and argument - some of it stated in a colorful way, but nothing that would cause me to think that the link strays from our posting policies. It's a good collection of issues arising from AI.

In some reading I am seeing reference in the work of P.E. More to this Latin phrase and that it may be associated with Aristippus, but it's new to me.

From More:

Habeo non habeor, was the challenge of Aristippus to the world; the master of the Garden will be content with the more modest half : Non Habeor. There is something to startle the mind in this defensive conclusion of a philosophy which opened its attack on life under such brave and flaunting coIours. There is much to cause reflection when one considers how in the end hedonism is forced into an unnatural conjunction with the other monistic philosophy with which its principles are in such violent conflict.

Also:

If, however, the good things of this world which wealth can purchase have come my way, I have enjoyed them, as I have enjoyed such little scraps of literary or worldly success as fate has allotted to me. But my motto has always been the wise one of Aristippus of Cyrene, [Greek: echo, ouk echomai], habeo, non habeor, or, to translate it into idiomatic English, "I am taken by these things, but they do not take me in," and to sacrifice one's life for them seems to me absurd.

I post this to follow up on later and evaluate whether there's any merit to More's attribution of this to Aristippus and the contrast he draws to Epicurus.

I have never previously tracked down DeWitt's reference to the P.E. More criticism, but More's book is on Archive.org and here is the relevant section in greater detail. It is very interesting and I think very helpful to read through this kind of strong denunciation of Epicurus. I am going through the full section and will post it here because it amplifies the reasoning that Don and I discussed in the podcast and which Rolf is asking about.

And even more directly DeWitt concludes his section "Pleasure Can Be Continuous" of Chapter 12 this way:

Quote

Even at the present day the same objection is raised. For instance, a modern Platonist, ill informed on the true intent of Epicurus, has this to say: "What, in a word, is to be said of a philosophy that begins by regarding pleasure as the only positive good and ends by emptying pleasure of all positive content?" [P. E. More, Hellenistic Philosophies (Princeton University Press, 1923), page 20.] This ignores the fact that this was but one of the definitions of pleasure offered by Epicurus, that he recognized kinetic as well as static pleasures. It ignores also the fact that Epicurus took personal pleasure in public festivals and encouraged his disciples to attend them and that regular banquets were a part of the ritual of the sect. Neither does it take account of the fact that in the judgment of Epicurus those who feel the least need of luxury enjoy it most and that intervals of abstinence enhance the enjoyment of luxury.[Diogenes Laertius, 10.131] Thus the Platonic objector puts upon himself the necessity of denying that the moderation of the rest of the year furnishes additional zest to the enjoyment of the Christmas dinner; he has failed to become aware of the Epicurean zeal for "condensing pleasure."

This thread is going to become a primary resource for arguments about absence of pain, so I want to include here one of the major sections by DeWitt bearing on this, from Chapter 12 of his book under the subheading "The Unity of Pleasure":

Quote

Though we certainly fall short of possessing the whole argument of Epicurus, there is ample evidence upon which to construct the skeleton of a case. The Feelings, as usual, are the criterion. It may be recalled how he proved life itself to be the greatest good by pointing out that the greatest joy is associated with the escape from some dreadful destruction. By a similar argument, even if not extant, it could be shown that the recovery of health is a positive pleasure when the individual has recently survived a perilous illness. It would be a positive pleasure also to be freshly relieved from the fear of death and the gods through the discovery of the true philosophy.

To substantiate this drift of reasoning it is not impossible to quote a text: "The stable condition of well-being in the flesh and the confident hope of its continuance means the most exquisite and infallible of joys for those who are capable of figuring the problem out." [Usener 68]

This passage marks a distinct increase of precision in the analysis of pleasure. Its import will become clear if the line of reasoning already adumbrated be properly extended: let it be granted that the escape from a violent death is the greatest of joys and the inference must follow that the possession of life at other times cannot rank greatly lower. Similarly, if the recovery from a dangerous illness be a cause for joy, manifestly the possession of health ought to be a joy at other times. Nevertheless the two pleasures differ from one another and it was in recognition of the difference that Epicurus instituted the distinction between kinetic and static pleasures. The difference is one of intensity or, as Epicurus would have said, of condensation. At one time the pleasure is condensed, at another, extended. In other words the same pleasure may be either kinetic or static. If condensed, it is kinetic; if extended, it is static.

There is a catch to this reasoning, however; it holds good only "for those who are capable of figuring the problem out." This marks Epicurus as a pragmatist, insisting upon the control of experience, including thought. His reasoning about kinetic and static pleasures is sound, but human beings do not automatically reason after this fashion; they fail to reason about the matter at all. Although they would spontaneously admit the keenest joy at recovery from wounds or disease, they forget about the blessing of health at other times. Hence it is that Epicurus insists upon the necessity of being able to reason in this way. Moreover, this reasoning must be confirmed by habituation. The same rule applies here as in the case of "Death is nothing to us." It is not enough to master the reasons for so believing; it is also necessary to habituate one's self to so believe. [Diogenes Laertius, 10.124] This is pragmatism.

There is also another catch to this line of reasoning. The conclusion clashes with the teaching of Aristippus and Plato and it also violates the accepted usage of language. It was not usual to call the possession of health a pleasure and still less usual to call freedom from pain a pleasure. It was this objection that Cicero had in mind when he wrote: "You Epicureans round up people from all the crossroads, decent men, I allow, but certainly of no great education. Do such as they, then, comprehend what Epicurus means, while I, Cicero, do not?" [Cicero, De Finibus, 2.4.12-13] The common people of the ancient world, however, for whom Platonism had nothing attractive, seem to have accepted Epicurean pragmatism with gladness. Cicero, being partial to the aristocratic philosophy and having no zeal to promote the happiness of the multitude, chose to sneer.

The irritation which Cicero simulates in the above passage was beyond doubt genuine with those from whom the argument was inherited. They had been nettled by the phraseology of Epicurus, who was mocking Plato. The words "those who are capable of figuring the problem out" are a parody of Plato's Timaeus 40d, where the text reads "those who are incapable of making the calculations" and the reference is to mathematical calculations of the movements of the celestial bodies, which "bring fears and portents of future events" to the ignorant. Baiting the adversary was a favorite sport of Epicurus.

Epicureans at a later time were in their turn subjected to incessant baiting by Stoic opponents, and it may have been these who tried the reduction to the absurd by means of a ridiculous example. If those who are not in a state of pain are in a state of pleasure, "then the host who, though not being thirsty himself, mixes a cocktail for a guest is in the same state of pleasure as the guest who is thirsty and drinks the said cocktail." [Cicero, De Finibus, 2.5.17]

Cicero, however, had his tongue in his cheek and knew that this was mere dialectical sparring, intended rather to disconcert the opponent than to refute him. He was partial to the New Academy and to Stoicism, both of which tended to turn argumentation into a game and thus make it an end in itself. They could not fail to be intolerant of the procedures of pragmatism, of which action is the primary object and not logomachy.

This extension of the name of pleasure to freedom from fear and pain was not the sole achievement of the new analysis. In popular thought, the correctness of which Plato assumed, pleasures were classified according to the parts of the body affected, eating, drinking, sexual indulgence, philosophical thinking. In respect also of this conventional classification Epicurus exhibited finer discrimination. He not only discerned that the pleasure associated with one organ is brief and intense while that associated with other parts is moderate and extended but also observed that certain pleasures, like that of escaping a violent death, affect the whole organism.

The next step in this new analysis was to declare that this fact of extension or intension was of no fundamental importance. The high value assigned to this principle is indicated by its promulgation as Authorized Doctrine 9: "If every pleasure were alike condensed in duration and associated with the whole organism or the dominant parts of it, pleasures would never differ from one another." Positively stated, the meaning would be that pleasure is always pleasure; it is of no consequence that some pleasures are associated with the mind, others with the stomach, and others with other parts, or that some affect the whole organism and others only a part, or that some are brief and intense, others moderate and extended. In other words, it makes no difference that some pleasures are static and others kinetic. Pleasure is a unit. This unity could be expressed in ancient terminology by saying that all pleasure was a kind of motion, kinesis or motio, the ancient equivalent of reaction.

To put the colophon upon this topic it should be added that three Authorized Doctrines, Nos. 8, 9, and 10, deal with pleasure and all three imply the quality of unity. The eighth stresses the fact that the evil attaches solely to the consequences; all pleasures are alike in being good: "No pleasure is evil in itself but the practices productive of certain pleasures bring troubles in their train that by many times outweigh the pleasures themselves."

The ninth Doctrine has been quoted above. In it the item about "condensed pleasure" was pounced upon by Damoxenus of the New Comedy as a good cue for merrymaking; quite aptly he allowed a cook to dilate upon it.[Fragment 2, pages 349-350 (Kock)] Some five centuries afterward the frivolous Alciphron testified to the longevity of the theme by assuming it to be still good for a laugh.[Usener, 432]

The tenth Doctrine, last of the three, serves to shift all ethical condemnation from pleasures themselves to the consequences: "If the practices productive of the pleasures of profligates dispelled the fears of the mind about celestial things and death and pains and also taught the limit of the desires, we should never have fault to find with profligates, enjoying pleasures to the full from all quarters, and suffering neither pain nor distress from any quarter, wherein the evil lies." Such declarations afforded to enemies of Epicurus a means of besmirching his name, but he was absolutely honest; he did not evade the logical implications of his principles; he flaunted them. By disposition he was a teaser; he drew enjoyment from the squirming of the piously orthodox.

A variation of the same teaching appears in an isolated saying. "I enjoy the fullness of pleasure living on bread and water and I spit upon the pleasures of a luxurious diet, not on account of any evil in these pleasures themselves but because of the discomforts that follow upon them." [Usener, 181] The net effect of these pronouncements is to put all pleasures in a single class, all being good, irrespective of extension or condensation or of the organ affected or of approval or disapproval, which attach only to consequences. This is an instance where Epicurus exhibited deeper insight than Plato in the latter's own field, discerning the one in the many.

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Just thought I would add here too that since this thread started we've come across a long discussion of "frugality" by Cicero in Tusculan Disputations giving the word "frugality" a much more expansive meaning than we probably would today:

III-VIII.¶

And from these considerations we may get at a very probable definition of the temperate man, whom the Greeks call σώφρων, and they call that virtue σωφροσύνην, which I at one time call temperance, at another time moderation, and sometimes even modesty; but I do not know whether that virtue may not be properly called frugality, which has a more confined meaning with the Greeks; for they call frugal men χρησίμους, which implies only that they are useful: but our name has a more extensive meaning; for all abstinence, all innocency, (which the Greeks have no ordinary name for, though they might use the word ἀβλάβεια, for innocency is that disposition of mind which would offend no one,) and several other virtues, are comprehended under frugality; but, if this quality were of less importance, and confined in as small a compass as some imagine, the surname of Piso would not have been in so great esteem. But as we allow him not the name of a frugal man (frugi), who either quits his post through fear, which is cowardice; or who reserves to his own use what was privately committed to his keeping, which is injustice; or who fails in his military undertakings through rashness, which is folly; for that reason the word frugality takes in these three virtues of fortitude, justice, and prudence, though it is indeed common to all virtues, for they are all connected and knit together. Let us allow, then, frugality itself to be another and fourth virtue; for its peculiar property seems to be, to govern and appease all tendencies to too eager a desire after anything, to restrain lust, and to preserve a decent steadiness in everything. The vice in contrast to this is called prodigality (nequitia). Frugality, I imagine, is derived from the word fruge, the best thing which the earth produces; nequitia is derived (though this is perhaps rather more strained, still let us try it; we shall only be thought to have been trifling if there is nothing in what we say) from the fact of everything being to no purpose (nequicquam) in such a man; from which circumstance he is called also Nihil, nothing. Whoever is frugal, then, or, if it is more agreeable to you, whoever is moderate and temperate, such a one must of course be consistent; whoever is consistent, must be quiet; the quiet man must be free from all perturbation, therefore from grief likewise: and these are the properties of a wise man; therefore a wise man must be free from grief.

I've not yet made up my mind to do this, but it appears that neither Joshua nor Don are available for this weekend's podcast. While we wait on Joshua's return before going further in Tusculan Disputations, I am thinking of using this thread of comments on Episode 295 and just recording a commentary as I pick out some to talk about on the general topic of Plutarch's criticisms, especially on "absence of pain" (I will omit the names of the post writers).

So if you're considering adding a comment to this thread, please do, as that will give us more material with which to work. And to repeat, if I do this at all I'll pull out only the thrust of the comments and I won't be associating them with names of posters (other than probably Don as he made his points on the first episode).

Quote from Rolf

Regardless of all the abstract reasoning I’m engaging in while trying to understand this point,

Well you may have found something to say that I disagree with! I don't think your comments constitute abstract reasoning (with the implication that there's something improper about them). I think the questions you are asking are the most practical possible. If good answers do not exist to them, then Epicurean philosophy is worse than worthless.

I can't imagine much that would be worse than a philosophy that would appear to argue that the goal of life is to obsess over being anesthetized from all pain, and living with the minimum pleasure possible to sustain you. In fact, that's exactly what I strongly criticize the Stoics, Buddhists, and others for in essence advocating.

Respectfully I don't think I would reach that same conclusion myself. I suppose we have another issue with the limitations of hypotheticals, but I think I can state pretty broadly that if in fact I found a poem to be one of the most enjoyable I had ever read, I don't think I would wish that that experience had never happened to me just because I later found out that the poem was AI-generated. I'm not saying that finding out it was AI generated would not have major implications for future conduct, but presuming that the poem did in fact cause me great enjoyment and that I could continue to read the poem in the future with enjoyment and with no necessary harmful effects, I would not wish not to have had the experience.

I know I know that it will be objected BUT THERE WILL BE HARMFUL EFFECTS but I do not at least at this point believe it makes sense from an Epicurean perspective (no fate / no necessity) to say that overridingly harmful effects will necessarily occur simply from the fact that a particular poem is AI generated. More would be needed to reach that conclusion.

I feel sure others will have different perspectives and I'd like to hear them.

Thanks for bringing that up Pacatus. Let me ask you this:

And if in fact someone posted a poem that so appealed to you that you in fact found it to be one of the most enjoyable poetic experiences of your life to read it, would you then wish that you had never read it if you found out later it had been generated by AI?