Posts by Cassius

That was indeed a great line but if I recall correctly, all credit goes to DON for that one!

I am going to have to come back later for more extended comment but I note that the question uses the word "Pity" and I think that in itself is a deep question -- made famous by Nietzsche - as to the status and desirability of "pity." Compassion, pretty clearly yes, is all over Epicurean texts. Is "pity" the same thing?

Quote from Blank_Emu43

So, how should we as Epicureans feel about a child dying since they didn't get to live past childhood and experience more good things in life?

I think like most of us being confronted with a child dying would cause Epicurus to think any number of things, but I feel certain that among them he would feel feel sadness for just the reason stated here.

Epicurus said that life is desirable, and that means that longer life is also desirable, even if the pleasures involved are "variation" of pleasures already experienced. There's no need to dramatize the issue by referring to a child dying -- life is desirable - period, so long as you don't know for sure that the extra time life will not be more painful than pleasurable.

Beyond that I am sure that the particular circumstances of why the child has died, what could have been done to prevent it, etc., would all be worthy of comment by Epicurus.

Yes I agree Don's pointing out an improvement on the fulfillment aspect, so I would reword:

Cicero's discussion isn't unreasonable. No one - including Epicurus - seems to have ever alleged that (1) *acting toward a desire* and (2) *being fulfilled* are exactly the same thing. You'd have to be pretty obtuse to argue that those are exactly the same in every respect and that it isn't at least somewhat reasonable to distinguish them from each other.

The bigger questions include:

1 - Do both of these concepts (1) and (2) deserve to be included under the label of "pleasure?"

2 - Are (1) and (2) the the *only* type of pleasures, or are there (3) other activities / actions / conditions that also fall within pleasure which are not related to desires being acted toward or being fulfilled?

3 - Do any of these concepts (1) or (2) or (3) stand intrinsically or by some absolute standard as superior, hierarchically, to the other(s), such that they separately deserve to be considered to be the "ultimate pleasure" or "highest pleasure" or the "best pleasure" or "real pleasure" for all people at all times and at all places?

As I understand it Epicurus would answer:

1- Yes.

2 - No.

3 - No.

Quote from Don

It seems to me that there are only two types of pleasure, but I'd again characterize them as "action" and "rest" (with obvious more explanation needed to flesh out those two words).

As for this part I'd say "if we want to talk in terms of action and rest there are only two, but there are many ways to categorize and describe forms of pleasure."

And making the whole issue a question of "movement" being the key question bakes into the cake doubt about the status of "stillness." It becomes very difficult to see how the status of "health" of body or mind is a pleasure if "movement or stillness" is elevated as the defining criteria.

I see issues of movement as one of many ways to slice and dice aspects of pleasure, but I wouldn't elevate movement to the core issue. The core issue is whether whatever we are talking about is pleasing to us or not, and it's not necessary to specify anything more than "being alive and without pain." If we specify that we are alive and what we aren't feeling in a particular experience is pain, then what we're feeling at that experience is pleasure, regardless of how fast or slowly that thing is "moving."

Quote from burninglights

All of this does actually align pretty well with the 'traditional' interpretation of these terms as reported by Cicero -- that a kinetic pleasure would be the pleasure of drinking when thirsty and katastematic being the pleasure of having fulfilled that desire. I think that, probably to hone his attack, he just picked a really banal and myopic example.

Yes - Cicero's discussion isn't unreasonable. No one - including Epicurus - seems to have ever alleged that (1) *acting toward a desire* and (2) *fulfilling a desire* are exactly the same thing. You'd have to be pretty obtuse to argue that those are exactly the same in every respect and that it isn't at least somewhat reasonable to distinguish them from each other.

The bigger questions include:

1 - Do both of these concepts (1) and (2) deserve to be included under the label of "pleasure?"

2 - Are (1) and (2) the the *only* type of pleasures, or are there (3) other activities / actions / conditions that also fall within pleasure which are not related to desires being acted toward or fulfilled?

3 - Do any of these concepts (1) or (2) or (3) stand intrinsically or by some absolute standard as superior, hierarchically, to the other(s), such that they separately deserve to be considered to be the "ultimate pleasure" or "highest pleasure" or the "best pleasure" or "real pleasure" for all people at all times and at all places?

As I understand it Epicurus would answer:

1- Yes.

2 - No.

3 - No.

Right now we have most of our "special resources" stored under this link:

- Epicureanfriends.com

www.epicureanfriends.com

If we end up creating a "concordance" of uses of words that are a variation of "pleasure," we definitely need to add it there.

I don't think we've previously done this (I know I haven't myself) but some of Don's posts have come very close to being a "concordance" of where words denoting pleasure are found.

If we can pull that together somewhere that would be well worth the effort. At the very least we ought to find out where this has been posted before and post the links here, and then we can turn that into a reference page as we have time.

Here's from that Stanford / Konstan article. Possibly all or possibly only part of it is accurate, and no doubt digging in to the details will be helpul, especially if we could prepare a "concordance" of every time one of these words appears.

But one thing I can say for sure - a strictly academic approach can easily make a normal person's eyes glaze over and lead too all sorts of doubt and uncertainty if not handled carefully. Almost like the letter to Menoeceus as to religion being preferable to hard determinism, I could see some people saying "save me God from these incessant vocabulary drills!"

Quote

The ability to reason or calculate (logismos) cannot be a function of images. It is the faculty that lets us infer by analogy from the visible world to the invisible, and also that with which we may recognize that not all pleasures are to be chosen at all times, since some immediate pleasures may lead to long-term pain or harm (Letter to Menoeceus = LM 129). What is more, one must know something about the nature of pleasure in order to pursue it rationally, and likewise for pain. Epicurus, it appears, uses the terms pleasure and pain (hêdonê, algêdôn) strictly in reference to physical pathê or sensations, that is, those that are experienced via the non-rational soul that is distributed throughout the body. As for the rational part or mind, we have positive and negative experiences through it too. Most prominent among the negative mental states is fear, above all the fear of unreal dangers, such as death. Death, Epicurus insists, is nothing to us, since while we exist, our death is not, and when our death occurs, we do not exist (LM 124–25); but if one is frightened by the empty name of death, the fear will persist since we must all eventually die. This fear is one source of perturbation (tarakhê), and is a worse curse than physical pain itself; the absence of such fear is ataraxy, lack of perturbation, and ataraxy, together with freedom from physical pain, is one way of specifying the goal of life, for Epicurus.

There are also positive states of mind, which Epicurus identifies by the special term khara (joy), as opposed to hêdonê (pleasure, i.e., physical pleasure). These states too depend on belief, whether true or false. But Epicurus does not treat khara as an end, or part of the end for living: rather, he tends to describe the goal by negation, as freedom from bodily pain and mental disturbance (LM 128). However, happiness (eudaimonia), according to Epicurus, is not simply a neutral or privative condition but rather a form of pleasure in its own right — what Epicurus called catastematic or (following Cicero’s Latin translation) “static” as opposed to “kinetic” pleasure. Although the precise nature of this distinction is debated, kinetic pleasures seem to be of the non-necessary kind (see below), such as those resulting from agreeable odors or sounds, rather than deriving from replenishment, as in the case of hunger or thirst. The philosophical school known as the Cyrenaics advocated increasing desires and seeking ever new ways of gratifying them.

Epicurus objected that such pleasures are necessarily accompanied by distress, for they depend upon a lack that is painful (Plato had demonstrated the problematic nature of this kind of pleasure; see Gorgias 496C–497A, Philebus 31E–32D, 46A–50C). In addition, augmenting desires tends to intensify rather than reduce the mental agitation (a distressful state of mind) that Epicurean philosophy sought to eliminate. Catastematic pleasure, on the contrary, is (or is taken in) a state rather than a process: it is the pleasure that accompanies well-being as such. The Cyrenaics and others, such as Cicero, maintained, in turn, that this condition is not pleasurable but rather neutral — neither pleasurable nor painful.

Moderators' Note: After this thread gets a week or two old and begins to get less active, let's delete this moderation comment and move the thread here:

Lucretius

Quote from Kalosyni

The question remains...what would a philosopher/teacher wear?

I would say that differs according to how ascetic they were, and since I personally don't think Epicurus was into asceticism, I'd be surprised if he didn't have a varying wardrobe.

Seems I remember that Frances Wright took one of the Cynics to task for his dress in "A Few Days In Athens" but I don't recall her talking about color Epicurus wore. Maybe it's in the first chapter that I skip through quickly because it's a little too "flowery" for my taste.

Nate I have noted over the years on Facebook that both you and your wife are very talented and creative. So is this a painting done with brush and paint, or computer graphic designing, or what? I hope you'll be able to encourage her to do more like this. And do I see that she's done more than one work on Epicurus? I tried to follow links on the etsy page but was not sure how to look for the rest of her work.

Welcome to Episode 200 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the only 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 present you a retrospective of our past work and where we plan to go in the future

Episode Topics:

• Starting January 11, 2020
• Episodes 1-51 were devoted to a line-by-line reading of Lucretius' "On The Nature of Things."
• Starting January 2, 2021
• Episodes 51-92 were devoted to a line-by-line reading of Lucretius' "On The Nature of Things."
• Episodes 93 -104 were devoted to a reading of the Torquatus narrative of Epicurean Philosophy from Cicero's "On Ends."
• Starting January 7, 2022
• Episodes 104 -111 were devoted to a reading of the Torquatus narrative of Epicurean Philosophy from Cicero's "On Ends."
• Episodes 112 -125 were devoted to Epicurus' Letter to Herodotus.
• Episodes 127 -133 were devoted to Epicurus' Letter to Pythocles.
• Episodes 134 -140 were devoted to Epicurus' Letter to Menoeceus.
• Episodes 141 -144 were devoted to Diogenes of Oinoanda.
• Episodes 145 - 154 were been devoted to a book review of Norman DeWitt's "Epicurus and His Philosophy."
• Starting January 2, 2023
• Episodes 155 - 189 were been devoted to continued review of Norman DeWitt's "Epicurus and His Philosophy."
• Episodes 156 -157 were devoted to an interview of Dr. Emily Austin, author of "Living For Pleasure."
• Episode 166 of was devoted to an interview with Dr. David Glidden on Epicurean Prolepsis.
• Episodes 190 through the present have been devoted to a detailed review of Cicero's On Ends Books One and Two.
• Episode 197 was devoted to an interview with Dr. Marcello Boeri, co-author of the book "Epicurean Political Philosophy - Theory and Practice."

I think the topics you suggested earlier don make the most sense.

I'll introduce the session as a retrospective of this being our 200th episode and then we can discuss much of what you suggested:

• Opening thanks to all podcasters and listeners and those who participated by asking questions and leaving comments on the forum
• We'll looking back at the different series that we undertook
  • Lucretius
  • Letters of Epicurus
  • Diogenes of Oinoanda
  • The Torquatus narrative
  • Book Two of On Ends
  • The Dewitt Book
  • The Interviews
    • Emily Austin
    • David Glidden
    • Marcello Boeri
  • A Few Days In Athens (not official part of the podcast series but closely tangential)
  • Our recommendations for sequence of reading
  • List of controversial philosophical issues that still need exploring ways to state them better
    • The proper perspective on reason and propositional logic
    • The proper perspective on "length of life" issues (how long to live?)
    • The proper perspective on whether there is any objective way to rank or decide among pleasure ( including katastematic and kinetic) or is it all purely personal?
    • The proper meaning of "absence of pain" (all feelings which are not pain are pleasure?)
    • Others?
  • Challenges
    • Keeping the focus on big picture issues and not pursuing too many rabbits too far down their holes.
    • Accommodating people who are just beginning to read Epicurus while also holding interest of those who are experienced
    • Avoiding eclecticism and combination with Stoicism, Buddhism, "Humanism," etc.
    • Deferring and diverting to other places divisive local (partisan political) issues that are not truly part of the core philosophy (applying a "no politics" rule to discussions while also acknowledging that individual action in "local" issues is a necessary part of life)
    • Avoiding Frances Wright burnout / shooting star syndrome
  • Future plans
    • Supporting an ongoing "scheme of contemplation" in the form of a structure of daily reading or other participation that reinforces good habits
    • Organizing access to hard-to-find texts and fragments
    • Encouraging wider personal participation by those who wish to pursue it
    • Sustaining the effort over time as older participants retire or pass away
    • Interesting people in Epicurus at a younger age
    • "Advertising" or getting word of the project out beyond our current audience
    • Use of Facebook or other social media and other options.

We're planning a special episode for our 200th podcast, to be recorded on November 5, 2023.

In the meantime, here's an amateurish video put together before we started, in October of 2019. Maybe in the future we can do a better one.

I bet some of you didn't realize that our theme song has a middle section!

Those look great!

Welcome to Episode 199 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the only 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 Books Two of Cicero's On Ends, which are largely devoted Cicero's attack on Epicurean Philosophy. "On Ends" contains important criticisms of Epicurus that have set the tone for standard analysis of his philosophy for the last 2000 years. 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

We are using the Reid edition, so check any typos or other questions against the original PDF which can be found here.

As we proceed we will keep track of Cicero's arguments and outline them here:

Cicero's Objections to Epicurean Philosophy

This week we continue in Book 2 at Section VII, with Cicero continuing to insist that "Freedom From Pain" is something different from Pleasure, with Torquatus responding again and again that they are the same.

VII. Lest you should suppose that the words only differ, I say that the things denoted are also two. Freedom from pain is one thing, possession of pleasure another; you attempt not merely to compound out of these two things, diverse as they are, one single term (for I should find that easier to endure) but to roll the two things into one, which cannot possibly be done. Your philosopher, who approves both things, was bound formally to adopt both, as he does in fact, without distinguishing them in words.

Quote from Blank_Emu43

I don’t have any social media or many online accounts in general.

I totally respect that - and makes me remember to say we appreciate your making an exception for this forum!

I think it's really important to acknowledge how good people are going to differ on this, and that this decision doesn't have a right or wrong answer that fits everyone.

Quote from burninglights

One thing I'm not clear on with katastematic pleasure being "a permanent condition as produced by practice" is whether this implies that the practice must be ongoing for the permanence to remain.

Is Don or anyone saying that Epicurus classified katastematic pleasure as "permanent?" Are we beginning to tread on "once saved always saved" theology?

Quote from Godfrey

Is there a neutral state allowed in this poll?

If you mean is it allowed to say that you have a perfectly balanced overall sum, in which the net pains vs net pleasures seem to perfectly offset each other? - YES that's allowable, because in that case your overall opinion about a situation is like a pair of scales perfectly balanced between pleasure and pain.

If you mean is it allowed to say that you have no feeling about some individual aspect of social media that has been brought to your attention but that you feel neither pain nor pleasure about it? NO.

Because if you admit to an awareness of some aspect of it in particular, and that awareness of that aspect is not painful to you, then by saying "that awareness of that aspect is not painful," you are saying it is pleasant.

What say you to that?

I answered "yes" because on balance the pleasure it brings outweighs the pain that it brings. There are certainly pains involved, but I find them worth it given that I am convinced engagement (especially with friends) is necessary at least for me in my own circumstances. I talk to people at times in "real life" who would definitely not fit the same profile, and for whom it's a net negative, but it seems to me that the inability to manage one's experience is a strong limiting factor on the likelihood of being secure and happy in the world today.

Quote from Don

In any case, just saying "kinetic vs katastematic" masks a whole lot of stuff going on under the surface.

That's my thought too, and that's why I also think that the ultimate crux of the issue is that Epicurus is extending the word "pleasure" to cover both the exciting/stimulative type of activities that everyone acknowledges to be pleasure, plus what I would call - if I were German - EveryOtherExperienceOfLifeThatIsNotPainful.

It's the sweeping inclusion of normal everyday healthy non-painful existence (which is what is being referenced in response to Chysippus' hand argument) under the word "pleasure" that is the revolutionary issue and which makes "a life of pleasure" an attainable goal.

Within that sweeping overall term there are all sorts of pleasurable experiences, including (referencing Don above) "ataraxia ... the tranquility of mind that results from ridding one's mind of fears of death and the gods and obtaining a proper understanding of natural phenomena, and so on." Within that big picture framework I can see the usefulness of discussing k/k matters as a means of being sure we understand every detail. But the big picture is not established by the k/k detail, and any valid interpretation of a k/k distinction is going to have to fit within the big picture that all non-painful life experience is "pleasure."

I think we're all in agreement as to the importance of the Epicurean focus on the importance of freedom from fear of the gods and fear of death. What I don't know that we are all together on is that (1) if there are only two feelings, and (2) if someone is alive they are aware of feeling something(s), and (3) each and every one of those feelings is *either* pleasure or pain but not both in the same part of the person's body or mind.

I actually think most all of us *are* together on that last paragraph, but we're not together on the ramifications of what that last paragraph means. Cicero wouldn't accept that pleasure can embrace both stimulative pleasures and normal ordinary healthy feelings of proper functioning, and I am not sure that we (like Cicero) are all together in accepting it either. It would be surprising if all of our readers here, new and old, *were* all together, because it's a dramatic redefinition of the normal use of the word.

Let's suppose that the issue we are really discussing were the difference between "excited" or "stimulated' experiences, such as riding a rollercoaster or running for the touchdown, vs experiences of daily normal experience that do not involve pain (so we are going to label them pleasurable) but that also do not involve that "rush of excitement" or "rush of stimulation."

Here's one of the problems that you run into unless you are careful, because while these words may be the reverse of excited, most (except for calm and maybe a few others) carry negative connotations that no one but a Stoic would endorse.