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Posts by Cassius
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Welcome to Episode 298 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world.
Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts, and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes.
This week we return to our series covering Cicero's "Tusculan Disputations" from an Epicurean viewpoint.
After two weeks looking at Plutarch, today we are back in Part 3 of Cicero's book, addressing much the same issues within the framework of anger, pity, envy, and other strong emotions. This week we will be following up on last week's discussion about absence of pain as we move forward into Section XX, where Cicero continues to spell out dramatically the difference between the Epicurean goal of life and that of the other "more reputable" schools.
This week in our Sunday Zoom we wiil start by revisiting the question asked at the end of last week's episode. We've continued that discussion online this week here.
We'll devote as much as half of the this meeting to finish that, then we will move on to the next (but related) topic: "By Pleasure We Mean All That is Not Painful" Discussion guide for that is here:
I agree this could be a fruitful line to explore. It seems to be a key attribute of canonical faculties that they operate "mechanically" and without opinions of their own, and often here people have commented that there may be an aspect of "pattern matching" going on with prolepsis. (I started to say pattern "recognition" but that might not be the best word in this context.)
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Thank you for the direct link Kochie!
Good idea Patrikios we can kick that around. The big barrier to it is that the Athens seminar is conducted in Greek and for Greeks, and I don't think they're entirely ok with the idea of listening in English, just as we aren't able (interested or not) to listen in Greek. That's been the major barrier in the past, other than in the single year that Christos (who is bilingual) coordinated a zoom. I suspect that if Christos had thought that that effort was worth the trouble it cost he probably would have done another one since then, but at some point we can look at that again because I know some of us would like to hear from him more than we do.
Episode 297 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is now available. Today Joshua returns, and our episode is entitled: "Is Philosophy At War With Perfume?"
Godfrey I am aware that your post is largely in agreement with prior posts, so that's good and I should not stir the pot
However on this part I am curious, because I would think that it would probably be a generality that a physicist would likely consider discovery as generically more pleasurable than many other pleasures, or else one would not choose to be a physicist as an occupation?
Even so, often a creative discovery is the result of "scratching an itch," or problem solving to remove a pain. Additionally, the creative process itself is often pleasurable yet often tortuous. All to say that the predominance of pleasure over pain might be quantifiable in retrospect for a very specific instance, but that it's ridiculous to try to make a generic statement ranking the pleasure of making a discovery as higher or lower than any other specific pleasure.
Another general comment about why I think topics like this are so helpful.
To me, when you drill down and realize that for an individual some pleasures are much "greater" than others in terms of intensity, duration, and parts of the body affected, you see clearly that some specific pleasures are much more desirable to you than others. All pleasure is pleasure because it is desirable, but all pleasures are not the same in every respect to all people at all times, or even to the same person at different times, and therefore as to specific characteristics, some pleasurable experiences can be more pleasurable (more intense, longer lasting, or affecting more parts of the body) than others.
This observations exposes as absolute B.S. the ascetic interpretation: that we should simply work to remove all specific pains, and therefore abrakadabra we are at the height of our individual experience of pleasure.
In my humble opinion no human being of moderate intelligence, and certainly not Epicurus, would make such an assertion. Epicurus' assertion was the philosophic one that when you have 100% pleasure you cannot go to 101%, and that consitutes the limit of pleasure. Epicurus never said to discard your common sense and experience and think that for you, a life of filing your fingernails is the equivalent of a life of a physicist going from discovery to discovery.
In order to experience the height of pleasure possible TO YOU, you must act to make sure that your pleasures are those that you in fact feel to be the best possible combination of pleasures to you. Obsessing over identification and removal of every pain does nothing to optimize your best mix of activities and therefore pleasures.
And that's why I will always maintain that what people are doing by discussing "Absence of pain" without explaining this context is playing into the hands of Cicero and Plutarch and all the other enemies of Epicurus.
We've discussed issues like this in the past such as whether we can construct a Calculus of Pleasure spreadsheet to help us plan our choices in life.
I recall my conclusion to have been that such an exercise is of definite value to ME, or would be for any other individual, but that it would be absolutely invalid to transfer or apply the results of my calculation to another person, because each person answers these problems differently.
So while the lion and the physicist both have their own scales and reports of pleasure experiences, by which they definitely do rank their choices and pleasures, I would say it is simply invalid to compare the pleasure of the lion to that of a physicist, or between ANY two individuals no matter how you dramatize their "value to the world," because there is no agreed objective standard by which to compare.
Past spreadsheet posts are below. I don't use anything like this on a regular basis, and I don't think it's practical to try to do so. However if I were faced with a big decision or evaluation at a particular point in time I do think something like this would be useful. And I am sure that others could design a better implementation as a spreadsheet or using other paradigms. The activities listed on the draft are far too general but were put there just as fillers. Despite the difficulties, I've always thought that it was too extreme to assert that calculations such as this are impossible or totally useless for an individual. Seems to me that the raw format is pretty much exactly how our minds work in evaluating choices, to the extent that we do use our minds to make decisions in a particular case.
This appears to be Steve's citation but I need a PDF or link to Gutenberg for more context:
"Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry. If the game of push-pin furnish more pleasure, it is more valuable than either."
This quote is found in Book III, Chapter I of The Rationale of Reward.
Bentham's hedonism
Jeremy Bentham
Bentham believed any particular pleasure or pain had a determinate value, which could be measured and compared. He attempted to construct a scale of comparison and measurement of pain and pleasure. He called this scale the felicific calculus. He claimed that the value of a pleasure was to be determined by such factors as its duration and its intensity. Bentham’s hedonism may be labeled quantitative hedonism, since all pleasures and pains appear on the same scale, being measured according to the same set of criteria (such as duration and intensity).
This assumption—all pleasures and pains can, in principle, be subjected to the same such measurement—entails that all pleasures are ultimately of the same sort, and that no pleasure is by its very nature superior to any other. Bentham argues, "The utility of all these arts and sciences, …the value which they possess, is exactly in proportion to the pleasure they yield. Every other species of preeminence which may be attempted to be established among them is altogether fanciful. Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry. If the game of push-pin furnish more pleasure, it is more valuable than either."[2] Bentham’s assumption that all pleasures and pains can, in principle, be subjected to such measurement entails that "push-pin may be better than as poetry." Pushpin was a simple child’s game played at the time, perhaps comparable to tiddlywinks. It all depends on the amount of pleasure one actually gains from the activity.
@Raphael can you comment on this, because this is not the way I understood your question:
Old debate. Does push-pin give equal pleasure to poetry? It's similar to the debate here with the lion eating his/her prey and the scientist making the great discovery.
Jeremy Bentham supposedly said that push pin was the equal of poetry even though that's a misrepresentation from John Steward Mill, with Mill arguing the quality of the pleasure mattered. Poetry creating a superior pleasure to a children's table game in Mill's view.
Push-pin (game) - Wikipedia
My take on the debate on the thread here is that pleasure is pleasure and the two are of equal value in the moment, but the scientist with his great discovery has the greatest pleasure over time. He gets to enjoy the accolade's as his discovery is confirmed and also gets pleasure from contemplating his discovery. He can use it as well as a springboard for future discoveries and pleasures from that. All consistent with the Epicurean perspective of mental pleasures being superior because they can be enjoyed in the present, past and future.
Focusing on this sentence in particular:
My take on the debate on the thread here is that pleasure is pleasure and the two are of equal value in the moment, but the scientist with his great discovery has the greatest pleasure over time.As for me, the pleasure I get from a great poem is not at all the same as the pleasure I get from push-pin. I can certainly differentiate the two and prefer one to the other, so I would not agree with the underlined section if the question is how "I" value them to me. The two are not of equal value to me no matter how long the experience.
I'd still like to find the Bentham citation directly to see what is being referenced.
My understanding of the dispute was that Bentham and/or others were considering whether pleasure could be reduced to units of some kind, in which context it would make senses to consider the greatest good for the greatest number by adding up all the pleasure units to see in which configuration the number is largest.
My further understanding of the situation is that this is impossible - or an invalid approach - because there is no objective standard by which we can compare pleasure units between individuals, which is exactly the issue with comparing pleasure between lions and humans. From the point of view of the lion the eating of the prey is an extreme pleasure, while from the point of view of the physicist the discovery is an extreme pleasure, but there is no "objective" way to measure the units of pleasure being created so as to say that one generated more "pleasure" than the other.
Are we are not trying to focus on the issues involved in comparing the pleasure of a lion to the pleasure of a physicist in order to dramatize the question of whether pleasure can be "objectively" measured? If not, then I don't even know what the discussion is about!
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In this episode Joshua is back and he does not fail to deliver another memorable quotation to dramatize the issues. We're still (always!) on the topic of pleasure, and while Cicero gives us plenty of material from which to pick a title, for the present I have switched away from:
"Which Is More Helpful To Aid An Affliction: A Treatise of Socrates Or A Sturgeon?"
to
"Is Philosophy At War With Perfume?"
The problem lies with Nietzsche who wrote on a wide variety of questions without having a clearly defined system.
Yes that's a big problem in saying anything definitive about Nietzsche!
On the hedonism question, we've recently gone over what Cicero reports Zeno the Epiurean was teaching about Epicurus in his time (Tusculan Disputations, Part 3 Section XVII):
Quote
Do I explain your opinion rightly? for your disciples are used to deny that we understand at all what Epicurus means. This is what he says, and what that subtle fellow, old Zeno, who is one of the sharpest of them, used, when I was attending lectures at Athens, to enforce and talk so loudly of; saying that he alone was happy who could enjoy present pleasure, and who was at the same time persuaded that he should enjoy it without pain, either during the whole or the greatest part of his life; or if, should any pain interfere, if it was very sharp, then it must be short; should it be of longer continuance, it would have more of what was sweet than bitter in it; that whosoever reflected on these things would be happy, especially if satisfied with the good things which he had already enjoyed, and if he were without fear of death, or of the Gods. You have here a representation of a happy life according to Epicurus, in the words of Zeno, so that there is no room for contradiction in any point.We talk frequently here about the issue of how Epicurus advised the fine-tuning of luxuries, but as in your earlier comments Ontologix I would say that the standard label of Epicurus as "atomist" is far to restrictive, as are the standard views that he was either a pursuer of food that was either primarily luxurious or primarily simple.
The way that Zeno characterizes the main point seems to me to be authoritative and focuses properly on the most important issues. Zeno doesn't fine-tune our tastes as ends in themselves, but seems to focus on enjoying a life in which we have a general level of confidence about core goals. Those goals that Zeno lists are that physical and mental pleasures will predominate over pains, that we appreciate what we have without obsessing over the shortness of life, and that there are neither any supernatural gods to threaten us nor life after death in which we are punished or rewarded.
I personally don't like the term "hedonist" either. As best I can tell the ancient Epicureans identified themselves as "Epicureans," not "hedonists," because Epicurean philosophy is much more subtle and wide-ranging than what the term "hedonist" evokes.
Also, I find it interesting that we have what is probably a disproportionately large number of native Germans here on the forum, and that prompts me to ask something else:
By no means all, but a significant number, of people I have run into who are fans of Epicurus are also fans of Nietzsche. I know Nietzsche had some negative things to say about Epicurus, but especially in "AntiChrist" he also spoke positively. Given that you are German I am curious about your views of the intersection (or lack thereof) between Epicurus and Nietzsche. And do not be concerned that you will offend anyone regardless of your views because we have people on all sides of how to appraise Nietzsche.
I know this is a deep subject so of course feel free to respond as fully or as briefly as you like.
I took the liberty of pasting here your response to my post 6 above (which you wrote on my wall). Unfortunately the forum software does not do a good job of searching walls when someone is looking for something, and I want your very interesting post to be findable. Thanks for the reply!
Quote from Ontologix on Cassius' WallDisplay MoreYes, my first language is German. No, I do not have a favourite English translation of Lucretius. I read Lucretius either in German or in the Latin original which is not als difficult to read as e.g. Livius or Tacitus.
There are two translations of Lucretius into German. Both are by a publisher called Reclam, one in West Germany and the other in former East Germany.
I do not like the older West German translation. The title "Die Welt aus Atomen" (The World Made of Atoms") is misleading because Epicure was an atomist but not only an atomist, by far not. Also the translation is not so easy to read stylistically.
The East German translation in the Aufbau-Verlag is much more readable and also the title is much more appropriate "Vom Wesen des Weltalls" (On the Nature of the Universe) This is suprising since Latin was practically not taught in East German secondary schools.
Epicure was a favourite with East German ideologues since he was rightly seen by Marxists as one of the precursors of Marx whose doctoral thesis was on The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature.
After the fall of the Berlin wall everything East German was sold off at ridiculously low prices and I bought a heap of their Lucretius edition and gave them to my students.
So, I am afraid, I do not know any English translations of Lucretius.
What I may add is my gratitude to Cicero whom we owe the edition of Lucretius' poem although Cicero, a devotee to the Academy, was anything but a follower of Epicure. Materialist thinking was definitely not Cicero's cup of tea. Without Cicero's edition however Lucretius' whole poem might have been lost.
Ontologix I take it your first language is German so this question may not apply, but as you are a Latin teacher, do you have a favorite English translation of Lucretius?
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