ALL CURRENT AND PROSPECTIVE PARTICIPANTS SHOULD READ THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT OF FORUM EDITORIAL POLICY: "Against Katastematic Supremacy - Pleasure Is A Unified Good, Not A House Divided Against Itself."
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My posting of this earlier in this thread and Pacatus' reminder have in turn reminded me that this is where we were in 2019 - almost seven years ago to the day.
We've come a long way since then - in many ways forward - but we still don't have many articles / posts here that are as on target on this topic as this one. I have now added it to the front page as one of the featured blue buttons to call more attention to it.
Let me expand further on what I have said in some of these recent comments.
When Epicurus says that he is not able to conceive the good without the pleasures that he mentions, all of those pleasures he mentions are "active" - not "katastematic" under the normal definition that people seem to be presuming. While pleasure is the supreme good, it is not the pleasures of the moment, but the life of pleasure, which is foreseen to be the final result, and that means at time choosing pains.
In other words, there are many perspectives on pleasure and the life of pleasure, and more than one can be true at the same time, and they are not in conflict.
What most of us seem to accept here is that the word katastematic refers to something that is stable or established. Is there something there which is not a subset of DURATION, which is referenced in PD09? Of course we want our pleasures to have the longest duration possible!
Is anyone here thinking I am advocating against pleasures being stable and established? OF COURSE NOT. What I am saying is that 'stability' and 'being established' are attributes of something else, not of themselves, and that something else is PLEASURE.
Rather than taking the passage "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" in isolation, we should consider it with all the rest we know. We know that Epicurus held that because there are only two experiences, for the living human whenever pain is not present what is present is pleasure. This quoted passage need be saying nothing more than that mental or bodily well-being (meaning when pain is absent) constitutes a "stable" perspective on the goal of life. This is a perspective that does not change and does not vary from person to person. This is because we all want 100% pleasure and 0% pain in mind and body. At individual times and places, however, some people are going to engage in food, some in sex, some in zip-lining, and some in studying ancient Greek literature. Those activities and the pleasures that come from them are as stated in PD09 - they vary in intensity and duration and parts of the body that are effected -- they CHANGE with the circumstance.
But those changing circumstances are exactly what human life is made of. At the same time, we maintain a stable attitude that our goal - to the extent we can attain it - is 100% pleasure and 0% pain. This is a goal that is stable and which never varies, and if we keep it mind mind with the reasons for it, then we can have confidence and not be deterred by obstacles.
Is this interpretation spelled out by Diogenes Laertius? Is exactly the same description given by Gosling and Taylor or Boris Nikolsky or Emily Austin or Kelly Aronsen? No, but the writers u have listed are making an effort to present a theory in understandable terms without just chanting Greek words as if they were stating something impossible for the American mind of 2026 to understand in English.
And whichever interpretation you end up taking for yourself, you end up focusing on pleasure in understandable terms that does not incline you toward thinking that being "untroubled" is the best you can do with your life. There are all sorts of ways to be "untroubled" in life and you damn well better specify what you mean rather than leave it to the imagination that blowing your mind out with drugs, or worse, is an equally acceptable way to become "untroubled."
There is absolutely no reason that the factors listed by Epicurus in regard to pleasure - intensity, duration, and parts of the body effected - are not all that anyone needs to make rational decisions about what activities to pursue and what results should be considered the target. And to repeat - injecting untranslated Greek terms into the ultimate description causes much more harm than good.
So I certainly am not arguing against the value of attitudes, or the value of locking up in your mind certain knowledge about import topics, or anything of the sort connected with stability and being established. But the reason this dispute arises is because that's not the interpretation that normal people are going to give to attempts to hold up "Tranquility" or "Calm" or the like as Epicurus' true goal of life. If someone is in this group it is because they are legitimately trying to make use of Epicurean philosophy not only for themselves - but in the great Epicurean tradition, for others as well. And that means being able to explain it in understandable terms.
If katastematic means simply stable and established then say so, and talk in plain terms about how much we value and appreciate things that we have been able to make stable and established in our lives. If someone wants to argue that it means something else - that it is not in fact pleasure, that it means something higher and better than pleasure itself -- then they can take that argument outside this group, because that is the straight highway to asceticism, minimalism, and the total abandonment of the term "pleasure" as we see happening so often. it's not even a slippery slope - it's a Chinese bullet train to that same destination.
Stating things plainly in English will not tempt anyone to think that "tranquility" is an attribute of pleasure that can be detached from pleasure itself. Stating things plainly in English will not tempt people to think that being "tranquil" is the Epicurean supreme good. When virtually every expert has their own individual interpretation about what katastematic means and what activities fall within it, that's neither a stable nor established base on which to move forward. And to let this argument undermine the whole philosophy - as it is doing - is absolutely unacceptable.
it's the job of Academics to debate each other. It's our job to make Epicurean philosophy useful for ourselves and other regular people.
Another overlay to all of this in which I will triple down on Cicero's attitude: if you can't express clearly in your own language what you want to express, then you don't know what you are talking about. English is every bit as rich as Latin or Greek, and if we have something important to say we need to say it clearly in English. Many if not most of the disputes that arise over interpretation of Epicurus would go away if people would in every case express what they mean clearly in English.
Is it wrong to pursue both kinetic and katastemic pleasures, especially the katastemic pleasures one feels when deeply studying and grasping some deep Epicurean concept
What is wrong is that what you are describing there is a pleasure of change - of motion - and there is no authoritative reason to consider what you are describing as katastematic at all. THAT is the problem - any activity including studying is much more likely to have been considered kinetic than katastematic. We need to pursue these activities for the pleasure that they bring , not because we like the sound of the word katastematic so we can slap that label on it.
I fully admit that it takes a lot of reading to go through what Gosling and Taylor, Nikolsky, and Kelly Aronsen have written, but what is there should disabuse us of the notion that there is anything magic about the word katastematic.
But for those who don't want to take that time, they should be cautioned that they are using terminology in a confident way that they should not be confident of at all - and in which they are very likely wrong.
Why not just describe the pleasure and embrace it if it brings greater pleasure than pain , without worrying whether it is kinetic or katastematic?
Welcome to Episode 343 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 start are continuing our series reviewing Cicero's "Academic Questions" from an Epicurean perspective, which gives us an overview of the issues that split Plato's Academy and helps us understand Epicurus' position on the same issues.
We are now in Section 10 of Book 2, moving into Section 11.
Our text will come from
Cicero - Academic Questions - Yonge We'll likely stick with Yonge primarily, but we'll also refer to the Rackham translation here:
As we moved into section ten, Lucullus (from the Stoic perspective) attacked those who imply that the mind - a creation of nature - is useless for obtaining knowledge, which has the result of overturning the whole of life.
He then will move to address those who argue that there is a difference between saying everything is uncertain and that nothing can be perceived, and this takes him toward the discussion of Cicero's own position - that it makes sense to say that some things are probable and some are not.
Then as we move into eleven the talk turns more and more to discussing "signs" - and that is the beginning of the point we are looking for - so that we can eventually tackle Philodemus' "On Signs"
Transcript:
don’t know if that word pleasure (and pain as well) scares people.
There's absolutely no doubt --most people are scared to death of the term, and they would never want to be associated with a philosophy of pleasure - especially in Academia.
Since there's a lot of criticism of negativity embedded in this discussion I thought I better draft something as an example of what I personally think is a more positive approach to Epicurus. Nothing that people here haven't seen a hundred times before, but again that's the point - we are the tiny minority, and I don't think we should sit back and make no effort to change that by talking about the core issues - WITHOUT lathering it with apologies for pleasure, with appeals to asceticism, minimalism, resignation, withdrawal, or the like. Posting this mainly for X, Facebook, Substack, etc.
This thread is for discussion of the article:
Dave's questions and this thread have me constructively focusing on the issue of what IS really important to focus on. I'm working on some new thoughts for articles about the general issue of the public perception of what "hedonism" means and how much of a problem that word can be.
I was watching a short clip this morning of someone who was mad about an issue and he concluded by accusing his opponents of being "greedy" and essentially focusing on their own pleasures of the moment to the exclusion of concern about future generations. Whether he was right or wrong on the particular issue isn't nearly as important as the fact that he specifically called his opponents "hedonists" as if there is no other possible meaning of the word beyond a narrow focus on the immediate bodily-pleasures-of-the-moment.
I tend to think that one of the most effective lines of argument is to look to the actual lives of the ancient Epicureans to see how they implemented the philosophy. The contents of Epicurus' will and his last letter are extremely helpful in putting to rest any ambiguities because we can see how Epicurus himself lived his philosophy.
Many of us here and I am one of them love to spend time digging into the details of the surviving fragments to glean more out of them, but can I say that I really have time to do that given that I can't seem to eat right and exercise enough and already have a clear focus on the balance of short and long term and greater and lesser pleasures and pains? No, I can't say that I've come nearly far enough on the basics, and spending too much time on nonessential details may in my case at least be a way of procrastination from what really needs to be done.
So there's all sorts of things that need to be addressed, not only in others but in ourselves. And a time and a proper way to say everything - even denouncing with righteous indignation those who are so blinded by desire that they choose a lesser but immediate pleasure that will cost them a future but much greater pain.
On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of the pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain.
Respecting the man, and Epicurus' mind, is what the Forum is dedicated to, right
That's one way of looking at it, maybe like there is more than one way to view pleasure.
Yes if we respect Epicurus' mind and person, as Lucretius did for example, that's a good guardrail. But just like Epicurus himself as a real person, we all have to live day to day and focus on the most important issues, just as he wrote in the letter to Herodotus about not always needing to know the details but always returning to the headings.
So I would say the real idea is to focus more on the importance of the core ideas which are needed all the time (true views of gods, death, pleasure as the goal, pain as manageable) and only after those are firmly established as the organizational principles would we be prudent to be spending much time on secondary issues.
Of course its tricky - advocacy that Epicurus had a goal other than pleasure is not a secondary issue at all. That takes us back to Pacatus' observation that we will never have consensus on some things. If we are going to buiod content and community on the view that pleasure is the goal, there has to be a limit on advocacy that undercuts that.
Eikadistes lets us know about his recent work:
Greetings .....
I hope all is well. I just wanted to share a project I finished.
I finished an attempt at Book 1 of On Gods. No published translations are currently available of P.Herc. 26. Dr. David Armstrong apparently started doing so, but ... Philodemus really, really, really sucks to the modern eye as a prose writer, so Dr. Armstrong, as I've read, abandoned the project. Anyway...
I published my translation of the entire book here: https://www.academia.edu/170344034/Philodemus_On_Gods_Book_1
I will be revising updates on twentiers.com/on-gods/
Pacatus i think your post does a good job of summarizing where we need to be.
I didn’t read the policy thread as forbidding any and all discussion of kinetic/katastematic pleasure (or aponia/ataraxia). They’ve been batted around on here since I’ve been here – often helpfully.
Correct. These terms and questions can be discussed without advocacy of the opposing position, and the very existence of the controversy is an "elephant in the room" that cannot be made to go away by ignoring it. I expect to write many additional posts and articles that address the issue from the "pleasure is the supreme good / pleasure is a very wide concept perspective, and I hope others will too. We can also have "private" discussions that do not affect the publicly-viewable flow of the site and distract from its central message.
But it seems as if the various arguments (using that word in a technical, not a pejorative sense) about trying to parse strict distinctions are unlikely to ever be settled to any general satisfaction.
And that is probably the most important point. There will never be universal agreement on these points, even among those of us who devote extensive time to reading about Epicurus. In my own mind I come back over and over to the scenes in the "Agora" movie about Hypatia, where the Platonic-like philosophers were consumed in their disputes about astronomy and geometry while their world was collapsing around them outside their doors. There's a time and a place for everything, but these are not the times nor is this the place to allow the focus of the site to be distracted away from central issues.
I don't think anyone on this website is an ascetic or even a minimalist at heart or views "pleasure" or even "desire" with suspicion. And yet those attitudes and perspectives have embedded themselves into Epicurean discourse, largely through this dispute that somehow "katastematic" pleasure is superior and different to pleasure itself.
I haven't recently referenced Elayne's article from 2019 but it continues to be a good non-technical discussion of the issues:
Dave - You wrote:
.Certainly a person can feel katastematic pleasure over longer periods of time than physical pleasure. Can we agree to that?
it appears to me that we can include among those who would not agree with that Professor Kelly Aronsen in her 2019 Health and Hedonism in Plato and Epicurus. There, Aronsen parses kinetic vs. katastematic entirely differently from the mental vs physical your question implies:
Contrary to the dominant scholarly view, I argue that there is good reason to avoid classifying non-restorative pleasures as kinetic since they are not derived from movements toward painless, healthy functioning. In this chapter I contend that pleasures from taste, sex, sound, etc., are painless in themselves and are therefore katastematic; no matter whether they occur in the midst of pain (such as when we enjoy tasty food when hungry) or are isolated from pain (when we enjoy dessert after filling up on dinner), they are perceptions of the painless workings of the organism.
I don't write this to encourage us to spend more time looking for classical scholars to take sides with on the meaning of kinetic and katastametic. Nor should we throw up our hands and conclude that Epicurean philosophy is hopeless because we've lost so many texts. The right way forward for virtually everyone is to focus on the basics as it is clear that Lucretius, Diogenes of Oinoanda, Diogenes Laertius, and the general ancient world understood him. And it seems clear that they saw Epicurus as embracing pleasures of both types - pleasures of action or pleasures of state or whatever those words mean - and choosing among those pleasures by applying a a common sense analysis of whether they will bring us more pleasure or more pain.
Glad to have you William.
Welcome WilliamJ !
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Certainly a person can feel katastematic pleasure over longer periods of time than physical pleasure. Can we agree to that?
And interestingly, no - we can't even agree to that.. The "experts" themselves are all over the board as to what pleasures really fall within katastematic and kinetic in the first place. I have been going through the Kelly Arenson book today and she - who like Emily Austin largely if not fully agrees with the fundamentals of the Gosling & Taylor and Nikolsky position cited in my article - has a very different interpretation than I have seen before.
So no - other than the flat statement that Diogenes Laertius records Epicurus himself having said, there is very little if anything we can agree on with certainty as to anything about the meaning of "katastematic" or "kinetic" or the implications of those terms.
On the other hand, there is much we can agree on about pleasure. And while the katastematic-kinetic debate occupies some for another 2000 years, normal people need a fundamental understanding of Epicurus that focuses on pleasure as the category that defines the goal.
After all, physical pain and discomfort are crucial bodily mechanisms to maintaining good health. So why is it unreasonable to distinguish the two forms of pleasure just within those distinctions?
It is not unreasonable at all to distinguish pleasures in terms of how long they last, what parts of the body they effect, and how intense they are? What is necessary about adding on words like "kinetic" and "katastematic" on top of that which Epicurus himself did not include in PD09?
There are all sorts of things that are reasonable Dave, but prolonged advocacy that Epicurus held that anything other than the word Pleasure is the supreme good is the target of this policy for the reasons stated in the article.
If the policy is unclear in some way please let me know. The goal is to reinforce the ultimate conclusion that appears at the head of this forum (If then even the glory of the Virtues, on which all the other philosophers love to expatiate so eloquently, has in the last resort no meaning unless it be based on Pleasure, whereas Pleasure is the only thing that is intrinsically attractive and alluring, it cannot be doubted that Pleasure is the one supreme and final Good and that a life of happiness is nothing else than a life of Pleasure.")
which is the same as stated by Seneca to be posted outside the forum. Here our highest good is PLEASURE.
I think that those outside the forum who advance the argument which is the target of this policy probably understand very well the rhetorical question that is involved. The issue is not fine-tuning types of pleasure so as to reach the best result - that is a primary subject for us all to address. The question is what IS the best result, and as Diogenes of Oinoanda finally had to shout - a life of happiness is a life of pleasure. He did not shout katastematic pleasure, he shouted pleasure.
What is not acceptable here is to adopt the rhetoric of people who want to substitute some other term for pleasure as the description of he supreme good, and who run from use of the term pleasure as if it is embarrassing.
There are many places that people who believe that approach is best can advocate for it - outside this forum.
No doubt this policy will reduce the actual or potential number of participants here. We could become immensely more popular by adopting the rhetoric displayed in my collection of "World's Worst Epicurus Videos." But that's not an acceptble goal for this forum.
This thread is for discussion of the post
the Stoic Epicurus - not a word about pleasure except to dismiss it as "mere pleasure"
The original thread included the following paragraph on which I want to make a special comment:
I find some posts here have overly emphasized pleasure. Yes, pleasure, pleasure, I love pleasure. In my younger years I was very much a hedonist. But, some years back I discovered Epicureanism and toned down my pleasure seeking, which is a good thing. Yes, we all want pleasure, but also we need common sense (prudence) both in life and in a marriage. The greatest pleasure, as Epicurus states, is the absence of physical pain (aponia) and mental disturbance (ataraxia), which are the Katastematic, not the kinetic pleasures, which are fleeting,
The above statement as to Epicurus' views is not correct. As Diogenes Laertius wrote, Epiurus embraced both kinetic and katastematic pleasure, and held the Supreme Good to be Pleasure, not katastematic pleasure or any specific type of pleasure. Some people have different views on this matter, but this forum is dedicated to the view that Epicurus taught Pleasure to be the supreme good, as explained in great detail by Gosling & Taylor's The Greeks On Pleasure and as discussed many times elsewhere on this forum.
Cicero, On Ends 1.29 (Rackham)
We are inquiring, then, into what is the final and ultimate Good, which as all philosophers are agreed must be of such a nature as to be the End to which all other things are means, while it is not itself a means to anything else. This Epicurus finds in Pleasure; Pleasure he holds to be the Chief Good, and Pain the Chief Evil.
