Posts by Cassius

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

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 "perfect" romantic partner can get in the way of finding a "good" romantic partner?

Anyone agree or disagree with that, or have other suggestions of passages that illustrate the point?

Welcome to Episode 217 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 why Epicurus said that time does not make pleasure better. This week pick up further along in Section XXVII, where Cicero charges Epicurus with inconsistency in saying that pleasure is the root of happiness, when pleasure requires things external to us which are subject to fortune and not under our own control.

REID EDITION

XXVII ....

Oh, but our philosopher is subject to pain as well. Yes, but he sets it at nought; for he says that, if he were being roasted, he would call out how sweet this is! In what respect then is he inferior to the god, if not in respect of eternity? And what good does eternity bring but the highest form of pleasure, and that prolonged for ever? What boots it then to use high sounding language unless your language be consistent ? On bodily pleasure (I will add mental, if you like, on the understanding that it also springs, as you believe, from the body) depends the life of happiness. Well, who can guarantee the wise man that this pleasure will be permanent? For the circumstances that give rise to pleasures are not within the control of the wise man, since your happiness is not dependent on wisdom herself, but on the objects which wisdom procures with a view to pleasure. Now all such objects are external to us, and what is external is in the power of chance. Thus fortune becomes lady paramount over happiness, though Epicurus says she to a small extent only crosses the path of the wise man.

Quote from Godfrey

You must think completely outside of (discard?) the Platonic worldview in order to fully understand Epicurus, even though Epicurus does the work to refute the Platonic worldview

I would say that definitely you do not have to be restricted by the bounds of the box set by Plato, but I do not think it is a good idea to "discard" knowledge of Plato's worldview, because i think we see that Epicurus was in many cases responding to an argument of Plato, so you have to know that the argument came from Plato in the first place, and at least understand its outline, so you can understand why Epicurus is addressing the issue.

I think most of us would say that the argument that a thing cannot be the good unless it can be contained within definite limits (nothing is straighter than straight) is a relatively absurd argument. And yet it seems in Epicurus' time it was a huge issue, huge enough to rank third in attention behind the first two principal doctrines.

And yet because we today don't keep in mind the Platonic/Cicero/Seneca argument, we presume that Epicurus must be saying something else that is profound, and so a simple statement that pleasure also has definite measurements, and can therefore be grasped and attained, becomes transmuted into a call to live like a monk on bread and water in a cave!

I don't mean to sound too frivolous in that last paragraph. I think that's exactly what has happened, and why so many Epicureans today are in thrall of "simplicity" and "minimizing desires" and the other assorted corruptions that so attract those of Buddhist or Stoic mindset.

And it is also safe to say that there would be a lot of resistance by the same crowd to updating their viewpoint on what PD03 and Absence of Pain are all about, but that's exactly what is needed from my point of view.

Quote from Don

"Therefore the power and the greatness of virtue cannot rise to greater heights, because increase is denied to that which is superlatively great. You will find nothing straighter than the straight, nothing truer than the truth, and nothing more temperate than that which is temperate. 9. Every virtue is limitless; for limits depend upon definite measurements. Constancy cannot advance further, any more than fidelity, or truthfulness, or loyalty. What can be added to that which is perfect? Nothing otherwise that was not perfect to which something has been added. Nor can anything be added to virtue, either, for if anything can be added thereto, it must have contained a defect. Honour, also, permits of no addition; for it is honourable because of the very qualities which I have mentioned.[5] What then? Do you think that propriety, justice, lawfulness, do not also belong to the same type, and that they are kept within fixed limits? The ability to increase is proof that a thing is still imperfect."

The closer you look at this the more clear it is, so we can thank Seneca in addition to Cicero.

Part of why this is complex to us is because of the multiple meanings of "limits", but Seneca makes it clear:

Every virtue is limitless; for limits depend upon definite measurements.

That's the sentence that shines the spotlight - what they are talking about when they are talking about limits is not "the highest" or "the best" but whether a thing can be measured with definite measurements.

Saying that "Absence of pain = pleasure" does not primarily refer to the "most intense" or "longest" or "widest scope of the organism" - it refers first and most importantly to a definite measurement which can be grasped and understood.

"Absence of pain" is important because it is a definite measurement of pleasure.

It is only by recognizing that "absence of pain equals pleasure" that we can conceptualize a definite amount of pleasure, and that applies regardless of whether we are talking about a length of time, a part of the body, a measure of intensity ---- or an entire lifetime.

Somewhere along the way the Stoics apparently took this to the ridiculous extreme exhibited in Hermotimus that a moment at the top of the mountain of virtue would be worth a lifetime of effort. That makes no more sense than arguing that a moment of "pure pleasure" is worth a life time of effort.

But along the way, the observation that a definite measurement is possible allows you to talk about a goal and to see that no matter how long you live, the experience of pleasure never gets 'better" than before - it only varies. And yes more experiences of pleasure are desirable, so it is desirable to live longer, but you can die knowing that you have not missed pleasure that was "better" than what you actually experienced while you were alive.

This perspective also fits along well with Martin's example of the set level of temperature which we have discussed a number of times and which Onenski brought up last night.

Quote from Cassius

This does in fact place pleasure in the same category of "completable" or "graspable" things as virtue, which as Joshua stated in the podcast, could be a concern --- but the concern isn't a problem when you see that the main issue is not that the perfect is being made the enemy of the good, but in fact the perfect is a "concept" that is being used as a guide toward the good, never to be confused with our actual experience. That's another application too of "all models are wrong, but some models are useful." Neither the words "virtue" nor "pleasure" exist as entities out in the universe on their own - they are just conceptions of the human mind, but when viewed properly they are very useful conceptions.

Given that Joshua stated his concern very eloquently in the podcast episode that there was a danger in viewing pleasure as the stoics apparently viewed virtue, this issue deserves further comment.

Joshua was essentially affirming the hazards of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Joshua stated that it would be very self-defeating and would lead to all sorts of frustrations and other negative consequences if you allow perfectionism to prevent you from achieving the "good enough." We see that all the time in real life, when people get obsessed with perfection. We run into the problem than an friend once mentioned in the form of a question: "You know what happened to the man who kept searching for the perfect woman? He found her but couldn't keep her, because she was searching for the perfect man!"

It seems to me that Joshua's concern is very close to what has happened to many modern Epicureans. In thinking that "absence of pain" means that they must drain every ounce of pain from their lives, which they frequently think is best done through "simple living / asceticism," they obsess over their goal just like a stoic obsesses over virtue. Wen they fail to achieve a pleasurable life, which they always fail to do (PD25. If on each occasion, instead of referring your actions to the end of nature, you turn to some other, nearer, standard, when you are making a choice or an avoidance, your actions will not be consistent with your principles) they either stay frustrated or give up on the philosophy completely or just compartmentalize it as just another impractical philosopher's dream.

If, in contrast, we follow the lead of Torquatus' statements and see that the primary meaning of Epicurus' doctrine is that pleasure is absence of pain and absence of pain is pleasure, then we see that the terms are interchangeable and mean nothing more of less than each other. Seeing that, we don't fall for the trap of pursuing frugality or luxury as the way to a happy life of pleasure. We can see that since pleasure is absence of pain then we can spend our time on whatever combination of pleasures that result from "outside stimulation" or "inner appreciation of living" that we ourselves find most suited to our conditions and our preferences and our personalities.

We need to be "extraordinarily obstinate" on this point: On Ends Book Two, 9 : Cicero: “…[B]ut unless you are extraordinarily obstinate you are bound to admit that 'freedom from pain' does not mean the same thing as 'pleasure.'” Torquatus: “Well but on this point you will find me obstinate, for it is as true as any proposition can be.” Which is basically the same, but more starkly clear given the surrounding conceptual argument, as Epicurus saying in the letter to Menoeceus that ”By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul.“

Getting confident on this issue is going to mean getting confident in seeing why Torquatus was right in saying that this formulation is as true as any proposition can be. It seems very similar to using the same reasoning which leads someone to say "You will find nothing straighter than the straight, nothing truer than the truth, and nothing more temperate than that which is temperate" to also conclude that "there is nothing more pleasurable than pleasure."

Quote from Don

Epicurus answers that by saying pleasure cannot rise to greater heights than the absence of all pain, therefore, pleasure cannot be added to once it has replaced all pain.

Still thinking about this, and to repeat a point from post 23, I think a danger in emphasizing this "pleasure cannot be added to once it has replaced all pain" part of the perspective is that the superficial point overwhelms the deeper point. While it is true that once "all pain is removed no more pleasure can be added," that situation is effectively limited only to "the gods." If we obsess over the goal of eliminating "all pain" then we are trying to duplicate Zeus, which we can never fully do.

Now we can approximate Zeus figuratively, and I think that's what Epicurus is talking about as "competing with Zeus" and "living as a god among men." But that distinction between literally eliminating all pain and becoming a Zeus, vs figuratively eliminating as much pain as possible so you can run with Zeus for a while, is very important.

What I think a lot of writers about Epicurus are doing is saying that your literal goal is to be Zeus by draining every drop of pain from experience, and they imply the best way to do that is live on bread and water in a cave. When living ascetically fails to satisfy us, as it always will, we set ourselves up for disappointment and thus fail to be as happy as we could otherwise. So from that perspective wanting to be Zeus would be a natural but unnecessary desire - unnecessary because while the variation is desirable, we can live approximately like Zeus while we are alive and say we have tasted the same thing. Frustration at not being perfect doesn't become an enemy of living a good pleasant life.

So to repeat what I think is the main point that needs center stage:

You will find nothing straighter than the straight, nothing truer than the truth, and nothing more temperate than that which is temperate -- and you will also find nothing more pleasurable than pleasure.

This does in fact place pleasure in the same category of "completable" or "graspable" things as virtue, which as Joshua stated in the podcast, could be a concern --- but the concern isn't a problem when you see that the main issue is not that the perfect is being made the enemy of the good, but in fact the perfect is a "concept" that is being used as a guide toward the good, never to be confused with our actual experience. That's another application too of "all models are wrong, but some models are useful." Neither the words "virtue" nor "pleasure" exist as entities out in the universe on their own - they are just conceptions of the human mind, but when viewed properly they are very useful conceptions.

Thank you Don for the extra Seneca because that ("You will find nothing straighter than the straight, nothing truer than the truth, and nothing more temperate than that which is temperate") does make the point more clear.

I think we are on the same track but for perhaps the final sentence:

Quote from Don

Epicurus answers that by saying pleasure cannot rise to greater heights than the absence of all pain, therefore, pleasure cannot be added to once it has replaced all pain.

If pleasure IS absence of pain, as Torquatus insists to Cicero multiple times, then the same analysis applies to pleasure as to virtue. There is no "rising" or "moving" involved in the analysis at the level we are talking about. "You will find nothing straighter than the straight, nothing truer than the truth, and nothing more temperate than that which is temperate." It's easy to extend that to "You will find nothing more pleasurable than pleasure."

The important point would be NOT that it is essential to remove all pain in life before we can experience pleasure. Only "the gods" can do that, and that is the lever that Cicero is using to argue that Epicurus makes no sense. Cicero is saying that Epicurus himself does not even experience pleasure because what he in fact experiences is a mixture of pleasure and pain, which is not pleasure.

The important point would be that WHEREVER pleasure exists, pain is absent, which means that anytime we experience pleasure we are in fact experiencing pleasure in the full and complete sense of the term. Nothing is more pleasurable than pleasure.

If this were not so, then we would never be able to experience pleasure at all, because what we would be experiencing would be some incomplete pleasure, some mixture of pleasure and pain, which from this perspective is not pleasure at all. A "mixture" is not the same thing as a "thing in its pure form."

So this "pleasure is the absence of pain" is necessary to comprehend that it is possible to experience pleasure at all.

This would be the "mental" part of the perspective, the part that the mind has to do in order for the person to understand that what his body feels when it feels pleasure is not lacking something, but which is in fact complete.

And since I think it is fair to say that Seneca is even more derivative as a philosopher than is Cicero, we are going to find this same point argued in other forms in other philosophers of the Platonic-Stoic line. But at the moment, this particular passage from Seneca stands out for its clarity.

We had some interesting discussion in the Zoom tonight, with most of the comments being relatively consistent with what has been discussed already.

My own thoughts are not likely to be satisfied without more clarity (citations) on what exactly the non-Epicureans were arguing about about the nature of the "limits" argument (which I perceive to be likely another way of stating Plato's "class of the infinite" argument).

For me, the most clear statement at the moment of what I perceive to be the "limits" argument remains that of Seneca. I wonder that the next-to-last sentence in this translation could be made more clear, and I would like to see this more precisely stated using the word "limit" in the sense of edge or "definition" (in the sense of high-definition photo) but i think this helps a lot:

Seneca’s Letters – To Lucilius – 66.45: “What can be added to that which is perfect? Nothing otherwise that was not perfect to which something has been added. Nor can anything be added to virtue, either, for if anything can be added thereto, it must have contained a defect. Honour, also, permits of no addition; for it is honourable because of the very qualities which I have mentioned.[5] What then? Do you think that propriety, justice, lawfulness, do not also belong to the same type, and that they are kept within fixed limits? The ability to increase is proof that a thing is still imperfect.”

It's the last sentence that seems to me to be most revealing. I wonder if the meaning of "perfect" here is not "perfect in the sense of best" but rather "perfect in the sense of perfected / finished / sharp."

In other words, an incomplete / imperfect jar is not really a jar at all - it is something else that is in the process of becoming a jar, but it is not a jar at all.

If that is the direction of the argument, then incomplete or unfinished pleasure is not really pleasure at all, and the drift of the argument from Seneca's / Plato's / Cicero's perspective is that "pleasure" cannot really be experienced at all, because it is always accompanied by pain of some sort, and that the experience is mixed and not the same as pleasure.

From Epicurus' perspective, this argument (that it is impossible to experience pleasure at all because it is always mixed with pain) is solved by showing that what we are experiencing anytime we feel pleasure in some part of our experience. In other words, there is no such thing as "incomplete" pleasure, because if you feel pleasure you know it is pleasure because it does not feel painful.

This interpretation would place the emphasis on understanding from a conceptual perspective that pleasure is pleasure and pain is pain and they can exist in *different* parts of the body and in different amounts of duration and different intensities, but that these differences do not mean that what is being experienced at any moment of pleasure is not pleasure.

This interpretation would also mean that what is being discussed is not the "best" or the "highest" pleasure at all, but whether "pleasure" itself can be said to exist as a certain thing that can be experienced, or whether it is always (like a gas or liquid) something that can never be grasped and is always "slipping through our fingers."

Were it not for the understanding that every experience of pleasure is "complete in itself," then one would never be able to experience pleasure at all.

It seems to me that that might be an interpretation of PD03 that would explain how it fits in parallel along with PD01 and PD02 as an antidote (ok, a "remedy" if you like) for a major error that has to be refuted. The three are:

(1) The error that a "god" would concern himself with us is refuted by the position that a god is complete in itself,

(2) the error that the state of being dead is a concern for us is refuted by showing that where life is, death is not (life is complete without needing any aspect of death) and

(3) the error of thinking that pleasure can never be attained is refuted by establishing that pleasure too is complete in itself. All pleasure is complete in itself because given that there are only two feelings, whenever what we are feeling is not painful it is pleasurable - pleasure is complete wherever pleasure exists. The life that contains some pain does not fail to contain pleasure, it is just the life of a human being, in contrast to the life of a "god," which has attained the ability to never expeience pain.

PD03. The limit of quantity in pleasures is the removal of all that is painful. Wherever pleasure is present, as long as it is there, there is neither pain of body, nor of mind, nor of both at once.

Nothing here would then be intended to imply that "absence of pain" should be understood to describe is the most intense pleasure, the longest pleasure, or the pleasure covering the most numerous parts of the body. Nor would it imply at all that you need not concern yourself with continuing to stay alive, because you do in fact want to experience more pleasure by staying alive. The main point would be that since pleasure is complete whereever pleasure exists, the consideration of "pleasure" to be a proper goal of life does make sense, because it is in fact possible to experience pleasure. You're not doomed to be always drowning an inch below the surface never able to breathe - you do in fact figuratively "break through to the surface of the water and escape drowning" every time you experience any pleasure at all.

It would be very desirable to see if there are other surviving texts (such as the Seneca quote, or the statement in Hermotimus) that will make clear that this aspect of completeness was what was being argued by the non-Epicurean philosophers. Finding statements even more clear than Seneca's would help nail down this perspective and keep us from going around and around being frustrated that Plato's Philebus argument was not as clear as we would like it to be asking: SOCRATES: Have pleasure and pain a limit, or do they belong to the class which admits of more and less?

Understanding and being able to explain clearly to an ordinary person why asked that question, and why Epicurus' answer would differ from that of Plato, is key.

I will run the current state of the discussion past the Zoom group tonight and we can assemble the circular firing squads again after that

Godfrey I agree with all your conclusions in Post 16, but I also have to say that ....

Quote from Godfrey

Simply put, to my understanding the longer life of pleasure is more pleasant than the shorter life of pleasure.

... with which I also agree, would appear to most people to contradict PD19 (PD19. Infinite time contains no greater pleasure than limited time, if one measures, by reason, the limits of pleasure) unless we clearly explain why that contradiction does not exist in a way that normal people can grasp.

I think there are ways to do that, but those ways are going to -- as you say and as I agree - make clear that living a longer life of pleasure is better than a shorter life of pleasure, and that's going to conflict with a lot of modern orthodox interpretation. He who isn't satisfied with enough will never be satisfied! ... It doesn't matter to me if I die today! And all that....

Before I go further I looked back at Torquatus' initial presentation of the ethics and this is really the only part I see that touches on PD19 at all:

Quote from On Ends Book One

[38] Therefore Epicurus refused to allow that there is any middle term between pain and pleasure; what was thought by some to be a middle term, the absence of all pain, was not only itself pleasure, but the highest pleasure possible. Surely any one who is conscious of his own condition must needs be either in a state of pleasure or in a state of pain. Epicurus thinks that the highest degree of pleasure is defined by the removal of all pain, so that pleasure may afterwards exhibit diversities and differences but is incapable of increase or extension.

I think we can productively ask why Torquatus's summary of Epicurean ethics *apparently* does not contain more explanation of this -- or maybe it does and we are just not seeing it. Rather than concluding that Cicero stacked the table and just omitted the explanation, I think we can infer that Cicero's interpretation of PD19 as meaning that time doesn't matter - which is probably the interpretation that prevails in Epicurean circles today -- is where the error lies.

Torquatus never says that time doesn't matter, and the common senses position is that time DOES matter. Maybe the (limited) point being made is that the experience doesn't get any "better" -- but that word "better" is where the devil resides in the details. I think we should look to the argument people seem to be making about virtue being complete in itself for a clue as to how pleasure can be complete in itself.

It would be perverse to interpret Epicurus as saying that it doesn't "matter" to us how long we live, and yet that interpretation prevails.

It seems clear that "the highest degree of pleasure" as stated by Torquatus in interpreting the "no greater degree" in PD19 is being given a limited technical meaning that is absolutely not intended to wipe out a common sense understanding that a longer life of pleasure is generally going to be preferred to a shorter life of pleasure.

Clue from Cicero in Section XXVIII:

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.

Quote from Godfrey

is in many ways a matter of materialism v idealism.

Another point:

While I personally am quick to throw around the "materialism" vs "idealism" contrast, I think we need to be clear what it means. Epicurus doesn't hold that things need to be "material" in order to be felt -- he says mental feelings are stronger than physical ones. So "idealism" can certainly cause pleasure and pain, I would presume, and that makes idealism at least as "real" as dreams in that idealism can affect us.

This gets blurry as well in asking "are we talking about concepts vs things that have a material existence?

I think we need to be clear in what respect saying that something is "idealism" means something. "Capitalism" and "communism" may not exist as independent entities, but they do exist as "concepts" or "ideals," and a lot of tears have been shed over "capitalism" and "communism" just the same, so they are certainly "real" in that they can cause pain or pleasure.

Quote from Godfrey

So one's goal is to prudently maximize one's pleasure, which is limited by one's lifespan. Cicero's argument is about the larger issue of materialism v idealism.

I think this is a helpful direction, Godfrey, but I think it will need further explanation to be clearly understandable.

Is Epicurus in fact saying that a longer life is not more pleasant than a shorter life, or is he only comparing the limited human span (whatever it is ) to an unlimited span? Cicero is arguing that Epicurus said that length of time adds nothing to pleasure. Did Epicurus in fact say that? If that is the case, then the position applies to no matter how long or short that the human life is, not just that it is "limited." If complete pleasure can be experienced the first day we are born, and nothing more is needed and we are indifferent to living longer, than we should say so explicitly. I do not think that is what Epicurus meant.

As to materialism vs idealism, I suppose I am not sure that materialism is the opposite of idealism. Maybe it's the opposite of spiritualism or supernaturalism, but is "idealism" the same thing as those two? Were the Stoics really that obtuse as to think that there is something called "virtue" that if grasped only for a moment is all that one needs to be satisfied? It seems they said so, but I don't think we can clearly discuss what they were saying without more reference material / citations that establish what they were thinking.

As we asked in the episode, is it not clear to anyone that it would be "better" to be virtuous for a year than for a day? Maybe the question is defining "better," but if some limited or special definition of "better" is the issue, then we need to know what that is so that we can see if Epicurus was applying that same definition to pleasure.

This is a good time to try to hash through some of these questions so we can add a substantive entry to the FAQ and/or other places on the website, because I don't think we are anywhere close to a persuasive explanation of what Epicurus was really saying.

Of course I invite anyone to propose a full statement reconciling these issues including the contrast with the Stoics!