I took a detour from editing the podcast because I have been wanting to put together a presentation on pleasure using a pie chart format.
Here's a first draft of that. Not nearly what it should be, but maybe it will inspire someone to do better:
Please turn on close captions for best effect.
The latter "interview" part looks like a repackaging, but the opening sections look new (at least to me). thanks!
minimize pains of all kinds...right?
Yes my typing remains terrible. Will fix.
Here's another way of looking at this too:
I strongly suspect that almost all of our regular posters here on this forum are approaching Epicurus in about the same common-sense way:
We are doing what we can to maximize pleasures of all kinds, and we are doing what we can to minimize pains of all kinds, and we're trying to go about it prudently including analyzing what we spend our time on and what we set as our goals. And we don't worry about life after death because we're convinced there is none. We don't worry about fearing or pleasing "gods" because either they don't exist at all, or they exist and look at us (if at all) like we look at ants, or some combination of the two. We don't really worry past a certain age that we haven't lived long enough, because we begin to see that it truly is just variation of what we've seen before, and as our bodies and minds naturally age we get more tired and less in need of newness in general.
I strongly suspect that the ancient Epicureans were doing the same thing.
The more academic and complicated definitions and arguments are useful for keeping our minds sharp and giving us confidence that we are on the right path -- that we don't have to doubt that what we're doing is all wrong from beginning to end.
So if we're all doing it about the same, as I think we are, what is the issue? I think "the issue" is that the way Epicurean philosophy has come to be viewed that you don't get from the starting point to where we are as easily as you should, because the standard interpretation of the letter to Menoeceus in particular has warped it into a manifesto of Stoic/Buddhist/Ascetic Minimalism. I think I can say that "we" aren't in danger of that kind of interpretation, anymore for a variety of reasons, but not everyone can take the time to read through all the discussions we have to find out that that "standard" interpretations are grossly oversimplified.
Over at Facebook (I don't think I mentioned this) someone recently posted that they wished that some "scholar" would go through and produce an easy-to-understand paraphrase of the Principal Doctrines and use it to print a pamphlet.
That has probably been done already, and there are many ways to do it, but the interesting thing to me is that as far as they go, it's not like the Principal Doctrines need to be "simplified." The language in them now is already direct. The issue is more that the Doctrines are presuming an Epicurean understanding of so many key terms and concepts, and without that background understanding the simple words are generally taken to mean something much different than intended. It's not "simplification" of wording that is needed, it's more "additional" wording that explains the use of the terms.
Improving the roadway from the starting point of the Letter to Menoeceus and the Principal Doctrine to where most of us are now through regular study and reading is what I think is so important. Because when these issues become second nature and fade into the background it becomes much easier to simply and practically focus on achieving a predominance of pleasures over pains.
And of course trying to use "indolence" as part of the explanation probably just points out how bad the problem is.
Like Don, Jefferson's probably finding Cicero's word choice interesting, but no one in 2000 years has probably found the word "indolence" remotely attractive.
Of course maybe it had much different connotations in 50 BC.
To say that Cicero "coined" it probably needs to be hedged that maybe he picked it up from the Epicureans and we simply don't know who first started it, but in the "surviving" literature all we have to go on is Cicero.
I am more in the middle of thinking than I am stating any conclusions, but while I am more convinced than ever that it is very appropriate in Epicurean terms to say things like:
"Absence of pain" means "pleasure."
"Absence of pain" is an identical term with "pleasure."
"Total absence of pain is the highest pleasure."
If someone tells me they are feeling no pain, either in some part of their body or in the sum of their experience, I can reply to them that they are feeling the purest and most intense pleasure, either in that part of their body or in the sum of their experience (respectively).
I am also more sure than ever that stating these things to the "average person" -- without some very elaborate explanation - is almost inevitably going to result in bewilderment, misunderstanding, shock, rejection, or some combination of them all.
And I think that my last sentence there was only slightly less true in 300 BC Athens or 50 BC Rome than in 2023 in any advanced modern country (it's going to be worse in the "less advanced" parts).
So what were the Epicureans in 300 BC Athens or 50 BC Rome doing to bridge that gap between in speaking to non-Epicureans.
Does the Torquatus presentation represent the latest in advancement up to that time?
Is the Torquatus presentation consistent with Lucretius' presentation, or are there any contradictions (I don't really think there are any), but if there were how would that reflect on what the "state of the art" was in 50 BC?
My personal view is that the words Cicero gave to Torquatus are not warped or misrepresentative in themselves, but they are missing this **additional** explanation which is necessary.
What does all this say about how modern Epicureans should approach this problem, because if anything the misunderstandings are getting worse rather than better. At least in 50 BC it looks like the Epicureans were in fact making broad inroads into the "regular people" world. I don't think they could have done so if they didn't have these "additional explanations" that we are talking about in threads like this one.
So, Cicero asks "num propterea idem voluptas est ut ita indolentia?" "Is pleasure (voluptas) the same as "freedom from pain" (indolentia)?" Interestingly enough, indolentia, according to Lewis & Short (*the* Latin dictionary) is a word coined by Cicero!
If I recall correctly Thomas Jefferson picked up that line and put it in his outline:
Yep:
Good points.
It's the regular equation of freedom from pain as "not only" the same thing as "pleasure" but relating it to "the most intense pleasure possible" that I think causes the most potential for confusion.
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." ... Cicero: Still, granting that 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?" Torquatus: "Absolutely the same, indeed the negation of pain is a very intense pleasure, the most intense pleasure possible." CIcero - "On Ends" Book 2:iii:9 and 2:iii:11 (Rackham)
I don't see this as something that Cicero has manufactured to be confusing, and I see it has inherent in a superficial reading of the Letter to Menoeceus, which is why I am fixated upon it.
If we were to say "By pleasure we mean the absence of pain" then a strictly literal reading of that sentence leads to "you can't have pleasure until pain is totally absent" and that leads to the creation of "absence of pain" as some kind of highly unusual state that is divorced from standard reality.
Seems to me that potential ambiguity in the presentation is what Cicero is picking up and running with for all he is worth.
I think it's reconcilable and explainable, but takes effort beyond just reading that passage from Menoeceus over and over.
In English "pleasure" can go up and down in intensity, duration, location (at least).
To say that "absence of pain" is "the same as" pleasure" would imply that it too can go up and down.
But to then state that "absence of pain" is "the highest" or "most intense" pleasure indicates that it is at a fixed position (at least to my way of reading).
It's not really any unusual use of the terminology by you Don that is causing me to think this can be made more clear, but dividing up what are two apparently separate things (varying pleasure) and (pleasure at the highest notch) that I think needs to be made more clear.
I am presuming that the Epicureans saw this as one issue -- pleasure can vary, and can only go so high, but the same thing is being measured all the way up and down the scale.
Uses of these terms "ataraxia," "aponia," "highest good" etc would seem to imply that there is something different at that top notch location.
I do NOT think Epicurus saw anything uniquely different about the top notch vs the lower readings (especially for example 99.9%) but using the terms loosely can be read to imply to casual readers that you don't have anything unless you're at 100%.
It's that issue -- that you want the highest but will take what you can get - that I sense needs to be made more clear in order for the terminology and the system to be made as clear as possible.
Those are good points.
I do see two issues. There is the "foreign word" issue which adds to the complexity, but I am not sure that is really my number one concern. If the foreign word has a clear equivalent that might or might not resolve all the questions.
Rather than the issue being the exact term used, the thing that bothers me more is the implication that there is an "all or nothing" aspect to the discussion.
"Are there degrees of ataraxia and aponia?" Might be the same question.
I am thinking that real life is always a net sum of pleasures and pains, and -almost as with the issues of the gods- we have an "ideal goal" vs a "real thing" issue.
Is ataraxia and aponia and "highest good" something that is attainable in reality for any length of time? If so does a millisecond of doubt spoil the condition?
More so than rather we use Greek or English my question is - do these words indicate separate conditions in themselves, or do they represent ideal objectives which are important to consider (as with " the gods" ) but which in real life are lived one sum of pleasures and pains at a time?
Because if the answer is one sum of pleasures and pains at a time, then the use of the words clearly does not designate something unique that would be the focus of our primary concern - our primary concern always being simply states as the largest predominance of pleasures over pains.
The problem is unsolvable in Hume's terms, not just for Epicurus but for everyone
Also on the same point here's something else I'd like to come back to in the future. I don't know to what extent Bentham agreed with Hume on this issue, and of course my next question would be how (if at all) Frances Wright dealt with it in "A Few Days In Athens." I suspect I don't have enough time in this lifetime to launch off into study of Bentham and Hume and Mill on this issue, but it would make a good project to look into how far the Utilitarians got into this question and how they related it to their interest in Epicurus. I can think of aspects of "A Few Days In Athens" that seem to be touching on it, but I don't recall anything that jumps out at me as how she dealt with it (or communicated that it didn't need to be dealt with.
I've included this from Chapter 15 as an example, but it's not determinative. Chapter 15 is really deep and deserves a lot of consideration on its own:
Until we occupy ourselves in examining, observing, and ascertaining, and not in explaining, we are idly and childishly employed. — With every truth we may discover we shall mix a thousand errors; and, for one matter of fact, we shall charge our brain with a thousand fancies. To this leading misconception of the real, and only possible object of philosophical inquiry, I incline to attribute all the modes and forms of human superstition. The vague idea that some mysterious cause not merely precedes but produces the effect we behold, occasions us to wander from the real object in search of an imaginary one. We see the sun rise in the east: instead of confining our curiosity to the discovery of the time and manner of its rising, and of its course in the heavens, we ask also — why does it rise? What makes it move? The more ignorant immediately conceive some Being spurring it through the heavens, with fiery steeds, on wheels of gold, while the more learned tell us of laws of motion, decreed by an almighty fiat, and sustained by an almighty will. Imagine the truth of both suppositions: in the one case, we should see the application of what we call physical power in the driver and the steeds followed by the motion of the sun, and in the other, an almighty volition followed by the motion of the sun. But, in either case, should we understand why the sun moved? — why or how its motion followed what we call the impulse of the propelling power, or the propelling volition? All that we could then know, more than we now know, would be, that the occurrence of the motion of the sun was preceded by another occurrence; and if we afterwards frequently observed the same sequence of occurrences, they would become associated in our mind as necessary precedent and consequent — as cause and effect: and we might give to them the appellation of law of nature, or any other appellation; but they would still constitute merely a truth — that is a fact, and envelope no other mystery, than that involved in every occurrence and every existence.”
Yes it seems I am always struggling with potential implications of "the perfect' being the enemy of "the good." If a particular phrasing seems to create the implication that only "the perfect" is good enough, then I think that such a construction almost has to be clarified, or explained, or even simply isn't an appropriate deduction to draw from what Epicurus was saying.
Anyway small tangent.
Not so small -- that perspective dominates the world and it's easy to give in to it and retreat into nihilism in the face of it. In fact I'd say it would be impossible not to do so if you couldn't identify at least some number of allies in your life against it.
From my perspective, Epicurus was able to "offset" his physical pain with the "kinetic" pleasure of memories precisely because he had cultivated his katastematic pleasure of a mind free from anxiety and trouble.
Can someone who fears the gods not also offset pleasure against physical pain?
If he had been worried about what happens after he dies, would the gods punish him for some transgression, would be become a shade in the underworld... He wouldn't have been able to find joy in memories of past times with friends.
Basically I'd repeat the same question. Can't Catholics (to take one example) not find joy in memories of past times and friends? (I suspect @Eoghan will have a comment there! 
)
His body was not free from pain or working effortlessly and without struggle or suffering (which I think is a better way to think of aponia rather than just "freedom from pain"), but he could still have ataraxia. Ataraxia and aponia do not arise together. You can have one without the other.
I think this is an interesting discussion. I can see how it is possible to talk about "ataraxia" and "aponia" productively even without being an ancient Greek, but I can also see that these words can get in the way of a more practical understanding. Isn't the bottom line that life comes down to a practical combination of mental and physical pleasures and pains, and we all do our best from moment to moment to try to make sure the pleasures predominate over the pains?
If those words would appear to lead to the conclusion that Catholics can't experience joy in thinking about their friends, or that they can't otherwise offset pleasures against pains, then I would think many people would think such an argument would be contrary to common experience.
Now I think we all agree that such people won't be as fully successful in offsetting pleasures against pains, because they won't be able to completely get rid of fear of death or of the gods. But if that's the issue why don't we just say so in plain English?
[Again, the context here is to help with a practical view of how to offset pleasures against pains, as against those commentators who say that Epicurus held that "katastematic" pleasure is the real goal of life, the only kind of pleasure even worth having, and the very reason for which kinetic pleasures even exist.]
We've discussed this many times before, but it seems to me today that this is worth emphasizing, and maybe having a thread on "Tips on offsetting pleasures against pains."
On Epicurus' last day, when he was experiencing sharp bodily pain from his kidneys, it was "the joy in his heart" that he stated he was offsetting against that pain.
[22] When he was on the point of death he wrote the following letter to Idomeneus: ‘On this truly happy day of my life, as I am at the point of death, I write this to you. The disease in my bladder and stomach are pursuing their course, lacking nothing of their natural severity: but against all this is the joy in my heart at the recollection of my conversations with you. Do you, as I might expect from your devotion from boyhood to me and to philosophy, take good care of the children of Metrodorus.’ Such then was his will.
Under most interpretations of categorizing pleasures, "joy of heart" is considered to be an "active" or "kinetic" pleasure:
And Epicurus in the work on Choice speaks as follows: ‘Freedom from trouble in the mind and from pain in the body are static pleasures, but Joy and exultation are considered as active pleasures involving motion. '
Go many places on the internet and in modern books and you'll find that they say that Epicurus held "static" or "katatestematic" pleasure to be the ultimate goal. But if we focus on what Epicurus himself did when the chips were down and he was in great pain and on the edge of death, it was the value of "active pleasures involving motion," even if only the active motion of his mind in summoning up the joy from memory, to which he looked for comfort in the face of the worst pains.
Epicurus didn't say to himself, as far as we know, "My kidney is in terrible shape, but boy my liver has no pain at all!" He didn't say, "My kidney is in terrible shape, but my mind is 'healthy.'" Both of those would be legitimate observations given the sweeping view of "pleasure" as Epicurus seems to have defined it, but it's worth noting which pleasures he picked out for comfort in that letter to Idomeneus.
So if we were to work on developing tips for what to look to in bad times, certainly "it is sweet" to look upon the troubles of others and see that you are not suffering from them," and that's a comfort to be taken in bad times too. But even there, does not that constitute a "motion" of the mind?
At any rate I think we can resolve all these questions in a very satisfactory way, but the next time we read someone saying that kinetic pleasures exist only for the sake of katatestematic ones, with the implication that we would be better off doing away with all "kinetics" whatsoever, I think we can look to the "Epicurus' last day" example for the very great value of "kinetic" pleasures.
Would we indeed find that it is not always, but frequently the kinetic pleasures to which we reach in making sure that we can find a predominance of pleasure over pain? Maybe it's possible to list out types of situations where looking to one type of pleasure is more useful than others, and that might be a handy way of sorting things out for future reference.
Note: There's some good material in this thread, but it's less useful now as some key posts no longer there.
Thanks for the further explanation Nate and I should not have painted with so broad a brush as to include your wife's art in this thread. You are absolutely right that AI / computers will never be able to replace true creativity, in music or in art, and that when we're really serious about getting something creative done we'll never be well advised to try to let a computer do it. For someone like me even the most expensive graphic or video program is a waste of time, because i have no artistic ability to make use of it. AI has a place, but it's definitely never going to take over the place of true creativity.
Thanks for posting!
Just time for two comments for now:
- He put a lot of effort into that video. Too bad he didn't find a picture of Epicurus to use, and instead used that bald sketch that has no resemblance to Epicurus whatsoever
- I do think his timeline illustration comparing the time after death to the time before birth was well done. That little segment is well worth imitation.!
The problem is unsolvable in Hume's terms, not just for Epicurus but for everyone. There's nothing wrong with that--I actually think we're better off without absolute oughts, which is the same thing as saying that we're better off without absolute morality. If God commands you to sacrifice your firstborn, even allowing a God there is no absolute morality to say that you should follow his whims.
Why should we avoid things that cause pain? You might say, because Nature has given us pain a guide. Okay, why should we follow Nature? Because that is the surest road to the life of happiness. Okay, why should we pursue happiness? Because the happy life is the best of all possible lives. Okay, why do we want to live the best life? Because it's the most pleasant life. Why do we want the most pleasant life? Because it's the best life. Why--
--because I said so!
The problem is unsolvable in Hume's terms, not just for Epicurus but for everyone. There's nothing wrong with that--I actually think we're better off without absolute oughts, which is the same thing as saying that we're better off without absolute morality. If God commands you to sacrifice your firstborn, even allowing a God there is no absolute morality to say that you should follow his whims.
I think this is where I am personally happy to part ways with Hume, but before I travel down that road, the first question I always try to ask is "What did Epicurus think?" Not because I am automatically going to defer to Epicurus, but I am always extremely curious to know his position before I decide whether I am agreeing with it or not. I "think" that I can predict that Epicurus would part company with Hume, but I would be happy to entertain any suggestions that he would not.
But back to the personal part:
I personally am willing to go with an authority on something, like I go with a brain surgeon when I need brain surgery, IF I can first check out the thing in which I am placing my confidence and if I decide that it is worthy of confidence. In the case of "Nature" as a guide I tend to see Hume's infinite regression of "why's" as akin to Democritus' apparent infinite regression to "nothing truly exists except matter and void" and to me that way lies nihilism and despair and the abyss. [Thanks to the Sedley article which describes it better than I can] it appears to me that Epicurus rejected Democritus' radical atomic reductionism, and I am thinking he would reject Hume's reductionism for analogous reasons. At some point you have to make a practical decision to "live," and that point is where we "trust the senses," which amounts to "trusting what Nature gave to us" for survival.
In confirmation of this, we can return to the close and apparently conscious parallelism between Epicurus' treatments of determinism and scepticism. The sceptics refuted in Lucretius IV must be, or prominently include, those fourth-century Detilocriteans like Metrodorus of Chios, Anaxarchus, and even Epicurus' own reviled teacher Nausiphanes, who had played up the sceptical side of Democritus' thought, and against whom Epicurus was eager to marshal the positive empiricist arguments which Democritus had also bequeathed.39 This scepticism was the result of what I shall call reductionist atomism. Because phenomenal objects and properties seemed to reduce to mere configurations of atoms and void, Democritus was inclined to suppose that the atoms and void were real while the phenomenal objects and properties were no more than arbitrary constructions placed upon them by human cognitive organs. In his more extreme moods Democritus was even inclined to doubt the power of human judgment, since judgment was itself no more than a realignment of atoms in the mind XXX. Epicurus' response to this is perhaps the least appreciated aspect of his thought. It was to reject reductionist atomism. Almost uniquely among Greek philosophers he arrived at what is nowadays the unreflective assumption of almost anyone with a smattering of science, that there are truths at the microscopic level of elementary particles, and further very different truths at the phenomenal level; that the former must be capable of explaining the latter; but that neither level of description has a monopoly of truth. (The truth that sugar is sweet is not straightforwardly reducible to the truth that it has such and such a molecular structure, even though the latter truth may be required in order to explain the former). By establishing that cognitive scepticism, the direct outcome of reductionist atomism, is self-refuting and untenable in practice, Epicurus justifies his non-reductionist alternative, according to which sensations are true and there are therefore bona fide truths at the phenomenal level accessible through them. The same will apply to the XXX, which Epicurus also held to be veridical. Pleasure, for example, is a direct datum of experience. It is commonly assumed that Epicurus must have equated pleasure with such and such a kind of movement of soul atoms; but although he will have taken it to have some explanation at the atomic level, I know of no evidence that he, any more than most moral philosophers or psychologists, would have held that an adequate analysis of it could be found at that level. Physics are strikingly absent from Epicurus' ethical writings, and it is curious that interpreters are so much readier to import them there than they are when it comes to the moral philosophy of Plato or Aristotle.
(I haven't gone back and got those pesky Greek letters in my computer yet, thus the "XXX's" )
TauPhi that is a good question and a good example of the benefit of going through "On Ends" to bring out these issues in articulating central ideas.
Bryan -- So you can't just say for example: "Take this sentence: "Death is Nothing To Us" and display it in the style of a golden plaque on a museum wall" ?
Yes ---- The identification of the supreme good is not the same issue as knowing how to pursue and achieve it, and that is why Epicurus puts such a high premium on the practical value of reason and prudence. They don't identify the good for us, Nature does that, but they can tell us how to pursue it. Not even animals (at least the intelligent ones) blindly pursue all immediate pleasure and avoid all immediate pain. Being "blinded by desire" in Torquatus' words is a good turn of phrase. We use the senses to achieve pleasure and avoid pain, but it's the separate faculty of feeling that tells us what is painful or pleasing. The intelligence requires reason and judgment, the feelings don't involve reason or judgment and they are (like the senses) never "wrong" or "right."
[129] And for this cause we call pleasure the beginning and end of the blessed life. For we recognize pleasure as the first good innate in us, and from pleasure we begin every act of choice and avoidance, and to pleasure we return again, using the feeling as the standard by which we judge every good. And since pleasure is the first good and natural to us, for this very reason we do not choose every pleasure, but sometimes we pass over many pleasures, when greater discomfort accrues to us as the result of them: and similarly we think many pains better than pleasures, since a greater pleasure comes to us when we have endured pains for a long time. Every pleasure then because of its natural kinship to us is good, yet not every pleasure is to be chosen: even as every pain also is an evil, yet not all are always of a nature to be avoided. [130] Yet by a scale of comparison and by the consideration of advantages and disadvantages we must form our judgment on all these matters. For the good on certain occasions we treat as bad, and conversely the bad as good.
[32] X. ... Surely no one recoils from or dislikes or avoids pleasure in itself because it is pleasure, but because great pains come upon those who do not know how to follow pleasure rationally. Nor again is there any one who loves or pursues or wishes to win pain on its own account, merely because it is pain, but rather because circumstances sometimes occur which compel him to seek some great pleasure at the cost of exertion and pain. To come down to petty details, who among us ever undertakes any toilsome bodily exercise, except in the hope of gaining some advantage from it? Who again would have any right to reproach either a man who desires to be surrounded by pleasure unaccompanied by any annoyance, or another man who shrinks from any pain which is not productive of pleasure? [33] But in truth we do blame and deem most deserving of righteous hatred the men who, enervated and depraved by the fascination of momentary pleasures, do not foresee the pains and troubles which are sure to befall them, because they are blinded by desire, and in the same error are involved those who prove traitors to their duties through effeminacy of spirit, I mean because they shun exertions and trouble. Now it is easy and simple to mark the difference between these cases. For at our seasons of ease, when we have untrammeled freedom of choice, and when nothing debars us from the power of following the course that pleases us best, then pleasure is wholly a matter for our selection and pain for our rejection. On certain occasions however either through the inevitable call of duty or through stress of circumstances, it will often come to pass that we must put pleasures from us and must make no protest against annoyance. So in such cases the principle of selection adopted by the wise man is that he should either by refusing certain pleasures attain to other and greater pleasures or by enduring pains should ward off pains still more severe.
