Posts by Cassius

Just so this thread has a target, here's the situation as I understand it:

We translate the Greek "eudaemonia" as "happiness" even though the Greek is really an idiom of an expression that developed along the lines of "having a good demon or spirit."

In our discussions we aren't targeting writing a Greek dictionary, we're targeting the practical concept of "happiness," which "everyone agrees" is the goal of life. The precise question discussed now is something like "To what extent does happiness depend on matters that are outside of ourselves (to what extent are they "external" to us)?"

The issue appears to involve the well acknowledged fact that life requires things that are external to us (food, water, air), and so it is necessary to determine the impact of the observation that no person is entirely self-sufficient.

Some Platonists turned into radicals like the Stoics and wanted to conclude that happiness requires *nothing* external to us. To achieve that, they wanted to work through our minds to obtain happiness by obtaining complete virtue, which they defined happiness to mean. Since their happiness is virtue, they say we obtain complete happiness when we obtain complete virtue. (Virtue is an end in itself: there is nothing truer than true or straighter than straight.) Further, they say that once obtained, happiness like wisdom or any other virtue is never lost. (Anything less than true is no longer true and anything less than straight is no longer straight. If something we thought was true or straight becomes untrue or bent, then we obviously misunderstood its perfection in the first place since it had within it the potential for imperfection.)

Aristotle thought that direction was a bridge too far and so he held that some things that must be obtained are indeed outside ourselves and are indeed out of our control. Aristotle focused on virtue too, but in the end Aristotle held that the universe was created by a divine prime mover so whatever happens you can be happy because you are part of the divine plan.

Epicurus held there is no divine mover and no plan and that definitely some things are out of our control, but much is within our control. Epicurus said Nature gives us only pleasure and pain as guides, and that our Natural goal is pleasure. But since we are not "gods" who have the ability to achieve pleasure 100% of the time, sometimes we have to choose pain to obtain pleasure, or avoid worse pain, so Epicurus also talked about happiness as what we are aiming for. Epicurus defined happiness to mean total pleasures predominating over total pains, as he (for example) experienced in his last days while happy but in extreme pain. Therefore the smart person is going to order his affairs through studying nature and applying the lessons he learns from nature. The smart person is going to use all available means, internal and external, to obtain the goal of happiness (pleasures dominating over pains). Just like you take advantage of all resources to generate pleasure, whether they are internal or external, you work to minimize pains from all sources internal and external. And in the end from the Epicurean point of view you don't obsess over categories like "external goods."

Endlessly looking for definitions of "eudaemonia" or worrying about whether things that lead to happiness are "internal" or "external" is a good way to let the fans of Aristotle draw you into a major waste a lot of time. It seems to me the perspective Epicurus was teaching is that the goal of life is living happily, you live happily when you experience pleasures predominating over pains, and pleasures predominate over pains when you wisely keep your focus on all pleasures and pains, both mental and physical and whether past, present or future, and you use all the mental and physical resources at your disposal to pursue that goal.

An email from Academia sending a link to the Manetti article reminded me of this thread. Skimming through it this morning i think one thing that is at least for me personally un-done is to find and post a link to the 1978 update of the DeLacy book. I rely on the appendix to the older edition a lot, so it would be good to locate a source for the "current" (now 40+ year old) edition.

Who said this and what does it mean? Wikiquote says that Solon said this to Croesus but gives no citation.

End - Wikiquote

Lucretius Today Podcast Episode 217 - Cicero's On Ends - Book Two - Part 24 - "Does Luck Control Whether An Epicurean Is Happy?" Is Now Available -

Welcome to Episode 218 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 you will find a discussion thread for each of our podcast episodes and many other topics.

This week we continue our discussion of Book Two of Cicero's On Ends, which is largely devoted Cicero's attack on Epicurean Philosophy. Going through this book gives us the opportunity to review those attacks, take them apart, and respond to them as an ancient Epicurean might have done, and much more fully than Cicero allowed Torquatus, his Epicurean spokesman, to do.

Follow along with us here: Cicero's On Ends - Complete Reid Edition. Check any typos or other questions against the original PDF which can be found here.

Last week we focused on Cicero's allegation that luck places the happy life out of reach of many Epicureans. This week we pick up at the start of Section XXVIII,

REID EDITION

XXVIII. Come, you will say to me, these are small matters. The wise man is enriched by nature herself, whose wealth, as Epicurus has taught us, is easily procured. His statements are good, and I do not attack them, but they are inconsistent with each other. He declares that no less pleasure is derived from the poorest sustenance, or rather from the most despicable kinds of food and dink, than from the most recherché dishes of the banquet. If he declared that it made no difference to happiness what kind of food he lived on, I should yield him the point and even applaud him; for he would be asserting the strict truth, and I listen when Socrates, who holds pleasure in no esteem, affirms that hunger is the proper seasoning for food, and thirst for drink.

But to one who, judging of everything by pleasure, lives like Gallonius, but talks like the old Piso Frugi, I do not listen, nor do I believe that he says what he thinks. He announced that nature’s wealth is easily procurable, because nature is satisfied with little. This would be true, if you did not value pleasure so highly. The pleasure, he says, that is obtained from the cheapest things is not inferior to that which is got from the most costly. To say this is to be destitute not merely of intelligence, but even of a palate. Truly those who disregard pleasure itself are free to say that they do not prefer a sturgeon ‘to a sprat; but he who places his supreme good in pleasure must judge of everything by sense and not by reason, and must say that those things are best which are most tasty.

But let that pass; let us suppose he acquires the intensest pleasures not merely at small cost, but at no cost at all, so far as I am concerned; let the pleasure given by the cress which the Persians used to eat, as Xenophon writes, be no less than that afforded by the banquets of Syracuse, which are severely blamed by Plato; let the acquisition of pleasure be as easy, I say, as you make it out to be; still what are we to say about pain? Its agonies are so great that a life surrounded by. them cannot be happy, if only pain is the greatest of evils. Why, Metrodorus himself, who is almost a second Epicurus, sketches happiness almost in these words; a well regulated condition of body, accompanied by the assurance that it will continue so.

Can any one possibly be assured as to the state of this body of his, I do not say in a year’s time, but by the time evening comes? Pain then, that is to say the greatest of evils, will always be an object of dread, even though it be not present, for it may present itself at any moment. How then can the dread of the greatest possible evil consort with the life of happiness? Someone tells me: Epicurus imparts to us a scheme which will enable us to pay no heed to pain. To begin with, the thing is in itself ridiculous, that no attention should be given to the greatest of evils. But pray what is his scheme? The greatest pain, he says, is short. First, what do you mean by short? Next, what by the greatest pain? May the greatest pain not continue for some days? Look to it, that it may not continue some months even! Unless possibly you refer to the kind of pain which is fatal as soon as it seizes any one. Who dreads such pain as that? I wish rather you would alleviate that other sort, under which I saw that most excellent and most cultivated gentleman, my friend Gnaeus Octavius, son of Marcus, wasting away, and not on one occasion only or for a short time, but often and over quite a long period. What tortures did he endure, ye eternal gods, when all his limbs seemed on fire! Yet for all that we did not regard him as wretched, but only as distressed, for pain was not to him the greatest of evils. But he would have been wretched, if he had been immersed in pleasures, while his life was scandalous and wicked.

Epicurus gives an analogy in the Vatican Sayings that I'd like to speculate about:

VS37. Nature is weak toward evil, not toward good: because it is saved by pleasures, but destroyed by pains.

What I am about to say is far from a perfect analogy to VS37, but I think it might be meaningful for those of us who are constantly reading about health and diet. Unfortunately I don't have time for a long post with lots of cites so I will stick to what I think is strictly non-controversial.

1. In order to be strong, our bodies need energy.
2. Energy can come either from "carbohydrates" or "fat/protein."
3. Both sources of energy appear to have important uses.
4. The body stores fat/protein and burns fat/protein when carbohydrates are not present.
5. People can experience "sugar highs" from carbohydrates, but (unless I missed the article) there are rarely if ever "fat-highs or protein-highs."
6. It's obvious where this would go:
7. Stimulative pleasures analogize to our bodies burning the carbohydrates / sugars that we find so stimulatively pleasing when we eat them.
8. Non-stimulative pleasures analogize to burning the stored fat/protein (fat first) in the body during which we can function just as well as from carbohydrates, but this energy arises from the natural healthy operation of our bodies. In fact it happens either through mentally sticking to a low-carb diet or simply not having the option of carbohydrates, and not from the stimulative addition of food in the form of the carbohydrates that we can find so addictive but also damaging if overused.
9. Both types of bodily processes (burning carbohydrate and burning fat/protein) are normal and natural and meet separate needs.
10. Carbohydrates in nature are not always available (in older times, mainly in spring and summer when fruits were available). Fats/proteins are "always" available, either through burning our stored excess fat/protein, or from killing and eating animals, which themselves store fat/protein.
11. Our natures are "saved by pleasures" but "destroyed by pains" analogizes to that we need pleasure like energy from food. Pleasure can come from stimulative or non-stimulative pleasures, and energy can come from burning carbohydrates or it can come from burning fat/protein. The selection between the two is largely a matter of circumstances and keeping the two options in a balance that leads the body as a whole to be healthy and strong.
12. No reasonable person thinks that carbohydrates are "bad in themselves" unless they are misused. No rational person thinks that fat or protein are "superior" forms of energy in themselves, because there are many benefits from consuming foods that contain both.
13. No reasonable person would argue that carbohydrates are included under the term "food" but that fat/protein is not, nor would they argue the reverse, or that the term "food" contains only one type or the other. Both types are food, just like both types of pleasure are pleasure.
14. No reasonable person thinks that we consume carbohydrates because the "goal" of our bodies is to produce fat and protein. Likewise, no reasonable person should think that "stimulative" pleasures are in themselves better or worse than "non-stimulative pleasures. Both are required for healthy living.
15. The goal of our bodies is to live a healthy life, which requires a healthy total relationship between carbohydrates and fat and protein. The goal of a philosophically-correct person is to live a happy life, which requires that pleasures are always found to be available either from stimulative or non-stimulative sources, adding up to a total picture in which pleasures predominate over total pains.

I seem to recall from the dim past of my schooling that I was taught that the "proper" forms are "more nearly perfect" and "most nearly perfect" leading up to perfect itself.

If Jefferson had written the constitution I bet he wouldn't have made that grammatical slip!

What do you make of that Bryan?

Reliable? Totally False? Totally made up? Partly made up? Evidence that Epicurus was never an ascetic?

Another separate comment: Of Course, if the purpose of the "covered father" exercise is to point out that words like "know" can have multiple meanings, and that it is important to know which meaning you are referring to in a particular circumstance, then that is very beneficial.

So you'd have to decide whether the purpose of the philosoper is (1) skepticism, or (2) a stronger view of knowledge that takes into account perspective.

Quote from Don

These kinds of "paradoxes" seem so disingenuous to me.

Presumably because they *are* disingenuous - so what are we to make of that?

One thing I would assert is important to make of them is not just that they are silly, but that they show that there are people who will definitely use philosophy for manipulation just like priests use religion!

So it definitely pays to be discreet on which philosophers you choose to ally with.

Thank you again Bryan. I'd like to test opinions on this part in particular. Do we think that this part, which is not stated to be inconsistent with Epicurus, would be something that Epicurus would have agreed with? If so, this would be a helpful statement of detail on the relationship between pleasure and happiness that i don't think we have preserved in the Epicureans' own texts to this level of detail. Much of this *does* seem to be consistent with Epicurus and at the moment I am inclined to believe that all of it may represent the Epicurean view as well as Cyreniac.

Anyone see a reason to reject any of this?

Quote from Bryan

They also hold that there is a difference between "end" and "happiness." Our end is particular pleasure, whereas happiness is the sum total of all particular pleasures, in which are included both past and future pleasures.

[88] Particular pleasure is desirable for its own sake, whereas happiness is desirable not for its own sake but for the sake of particular pleasures. That pleasure is the end is proved by the fact that from our youth up we are instinctively attracted to it, and, when we obtain it, seek for nothing more, and shun nothing so much as its opposite, pain. Pleasure is good even if it proceeds from the most unseemly conduct, as Hippobotus says in his work On the Sects. For even if the action be irregular, still, at any rate, the resultant pleasure is desirable for its own sake and is good.

Quote from Bryan

This statement is in part a response to the view of the Κυρηναϊκοί (Cyrenaics), following Ἀρίστιππος ὁ Κυρηναῖος (Aristippus of Cyrene), that (1) pleasures do not differ from one another, (2) one pleasure is not more or less pleasant than another, and (3) any particular pleasure is momentary, unable to be prolonged. This incorrect understanding leads to indiscrimination in choosing pleasures.

That's very helpful Bryan! Is the source of that information from Diogenes Laertius, or somewhere else? It's probably worth it to track this down to a particular cite so that we can annotate PD09 with this information. Do you know how they come up with that (what seems to me) very strange set of positions? Is the explanation in the cite you are referencing?

This comment is relevant to many discussions, and I hate to think of how many instances of this quote need to be changed on this forum. I have changed some of the most important and most recent, but if anyone sees this somewhere and wants to drop me a line to correct it please do.

I thank Bryan for point this correction out to me, as I think it goes to a central point where the some editions of "On Ends,' can be misleading.

The issue is the underlined part of this exchange between Cicero and Torquatus at Book 2, section 11 (Torquatus speaking first):

“‘Can then,’ my friend said, ‘anything be sweeter than to feel no pain?’ ‘Nay, I said, ‘be it granted that there is nothing better, for I am not yet investigating that question; does it therefore follow that painlessness, so to call it, is identical with pleasure?’ ‘It is quite identical, and is the greatest possible, and no pleasure can be greater."

The Latin in the key phrase is "Plane idem, inquit, et maxima quidem, qua fieri nulla maior potest."(Cic. Fin. 2.11) which Bryan translates the same as Reid: "Clearly the same, he says, and indeed the greatest, beyond which none greater can possibly be."

However the better-known translation is Rackham, which I have used more frequently myself, and here it is at Lacus Curtius:

"Well," he asked, "can anything be more pleasant than freedom from pain?" "Still," I replied, "granting there is nothing better (that point I waive for the moment), surely it does not therefore follow that what I may call the negation of pain is the same thing as pleasure?" "Absolutely the same," said he, "indeed the negation of pain is a very intense pleasure, the most intense pleasure possible."

I think that Rackham version is very misleading in using the word "intense," as "intensity is one of the three variables that Epicurus refers to in PDO9 (along with duration and part of the body affected). But what is being discussed here is what is the "Greatest" pleasure, more in the context of the "limit" of pleasure or the "measurement of pleasure" as we have been discussing. It is not a question of "intensity" and more than it is a question of "duration" or "part of the body involved."

Epicurus never said that you reached the "greatest pleasure" by dialing up the "intensity" knob to 100%, or dialing up the "duration" knob to 100%, or dialing up the "part of the body" to 100%. How you dial those three knobs is going to be a matter of personal preference within the context of your personal circumstances.

So if we are going to keep in mind a distinction between the "greatest pleasure" as against "the most intense pleasure," this Book 2:11 quote needs to be as Reid has translated it, rather than Rackham.

-----

I am going to look for the Yonge translation and add it here for comparison when I have time. In the meantime thank you Bryan!

Here is Yonge:  IV. Is it possible, said he, for anything to be more delightful than freedom from pain? Well, said I, but grant that nothing is preferable to that, (for that is not the point which I am inquiring about at present,) does it follow on that account, that pleasure is identical with what I may call painlessness ? Undoubtedly it is identical with it, said he ; and that painlessness is the greatest of pleasures which no other can possibly exceed.

Preliminary Conclusion: The problem is with Rackham, the most current and most wide-used of versions.

Quote from Kalosyni

One place in which we "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" is in De Rerum Natura which we know has some places with scientifically incorrect causations, but yet there still are many good and beneficial aspects to Lucretius' writing.

Yes that's a huge point too, and applies not only to Lucretius but to all of Epicurus. People who can't separate the baby from the bathwater end up passing through Epicurean philosophy quickly, and the harder time they have seeing what's important from what is not, the faster they pass through and move on to something else.

From the wikipedia entry -- I really like the second suggestion as much or more than the first, although they are both about the same in the end.

"Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" is an idiomatic expression for an avoidable error in which something good or of value is eliminated when trying to get rid of something unwanted.^[1][2][3]

Earliest record of the phrase from Narrenbeschwörung (Appeal to Fools) by Thomas Murner, 1512

A slightly different explanation suggests this flexible catchphrase has to do with discarding the essential while retaining the superfluous because of excessive zeal.

Well then when we discuss Cicero's ordinary person who can distinguish sturgeon from sprat we can call the ordinary person "Don."

In our case, however, unlike with Cicero himself, our imaginary person "Don," who has no problem distinguishing ordinary-tasting-fish from better-tasting fish, also has no problem calling both types of fish-eating "pleasure" without feeling himself to be philosophically inconsistent!

So it looks like Sturgeons are both much larger and much tastier than sprats and therefore very easy to distinguish from each other?

Is sprat a delicacy?

Sprat is not typically seen as a delicacy like lobster, salmon, eel or, of course, herring. And yet sprat is a delicious fish: fatty, soft and creamy in flavour; when hot-smoked, it can even be compared to eel. However, sprat’s status is nowhere near that of eel or herring, and for that reason, often referred to as the most undervalued fish species.

I think in this episode we will begin with a recap of what we discussed last week (the respects in which time does and does not make a difference in "pleasure"). We can talk about the comments made since then about how "pleasure" can be viewed from the same perspective as the Stoics viewed virtue. Paraphrasing Seneca, we can explain that there is nothing straighter than straight, nothing more true than true, and nothing more pleasurable than pleasure.

That will give us an opportunity to review Dewitt's subsection on "The Unity of Pleasure, starting on page 232 of his book. There we have DeWitt's explanation as to how all pleasures fit into a single class, all being good, irrespective of time or intensity or part of the body affected or whether we intellectually (morally) approve or disapprove of them or not.

That should put us in good position to understand the proper response to Cicero's new arguments that Epicurus doesn't seem to recognize the distinctions between pleasures that any ordinary person recognizes. We will then be better able to go back and forth between "the one" and "the many" without being thrown off by the different perspectives.

As i write this I am trying to think of an article or section of one of the recognized commentary books that makes this same point. Can anyone think of one?

Probably this issue would be expected to be covered in a section that mentions the "kinetic/kastatematic" classification, but instead of making DeWitt's point that all pleasures are pleasure, thus explaining Epicurus consistently through the unity of pleasure, most of the ones I am aware of go off the rails in stressing the differences between the two. They argue that one is better and more to be chosen than the other, which defeats the "unity" point, turns the argument on its head, and undermines the argument rather than explaining it.

Here is a link to more on the topic for Monday (the aphorism as to not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good). We've previously discussed this here and it would be interesting to discuss if there are any examples in Epicurean literature of the same point. One possibility is here:

Post

RE: The Importance Of The Perfect Not Being Allowed To Be The Enemy of The Good

I understand that Kalosyni may make this topic a part of our "First Monday* zoom for 3/4/24.

In addition to what has already been stated in the thread, I wonder if people can think of passages from the main Epicurean texts which support the point.

After thinking for a while without coming up with anything, I wonder if we should not include the "Romantic Intoxication" passage in Lucretius Book 4 as almost exactly on point. Is not a major part of that passage the goal of showing that looking for a…

Cassius

March 1, 2024 at 5:16 PM