Posts by Cassius

Dave's post has me focused on trying to identify what I see to be two different camps with two different sets of foundational premises:

Camp one maintains that goal is a feeling that is specifically identifiable with "absence of pain." They believe that this term describes not only a specific feeling, but that this specific feeling is the most pleasurable experience that anyone can reach. As with Dave's post, it is of no concern to them which combination of activities that people normally associate with the word "pleasure" might be part of the goal of getting to zero pain. They see "absence of pain" as naming a state that they consider to be an extremely good feeling without need for any further definition. And from this perspective, "pleasure" as ordinarily understood is a threat to absence of pain and no amount of pleasure is sufficient to accept the cost of any amount of pain. So this group prioritizes "pain reduction" and focuses on identifying pains to remove as their first priority. Their goal is to minimize total pain - regardless of any calculation of "ordinary" pleasures - because they consider the specific state of "absence of pain" better than any combination of other mental or bodily pleasures. Does not all this add up to the goal of "minimizing total pain"? And does it not conflict with the proposition that we will sometimes choose pain in order to obtain a greater pleasure? Even worse, is not the goal of "minimizing total future pain" not logically indistinguishable from what is accomplished by dying? (The only way it would logically be distinguishable would be to argue that the dead experience no pleasure, but pleasure is strictly speaking not included within the goal of minimizing total pain.)

Camp two sees the position of camp one as something incomprehensible. They see the goal of "absence of pain" as naming a condition in which it is implied that they are experiencing the many different types of ordinary mental and physical pleasures that are associated with daily life - eating, drinking, reading, talking with friends, zip-lining, etc. -- with no combination of pain distracting them from concentrating on those other pleasures. This camp sees the idea of attaching the name "absence of pain" to a specific feeling as nonsensical. And if fact they see Camp One's view of absence of pain to be describing something much more like a "corpse" than a life devoted to pleasure as the supreme good. So this group focuses on ordinary mental and physical pleasures according to the rule of whether the particular pleasurable activity brings more pleasure than pain. Thus their goal is to maximize net pleasure, fully realizing that some pain is involved in doing so. This is fully consistent with Epicurus' limit of pleasure, because pleasures cannot be maximized beyond extending to 100% of your experience- which is the meaning of absence of pain.

In this post I'm not trying to resolve any conflict between the two positions, I am first trying to describe what I am seeing more accurately.

So might it in fact be something that can be summarized by viewing the issue as being between the competing goals of:

Maximizing Net Pleasure vs Minimizing Total Pain

You are raising some excellent points -- these are the issues that need discussing.

First, as to singular or plural in PD03, it looks to me like the translators are all over the board on which is corrrect. Given their disagreement it would be good to hear what Don or Bryan think, because I agree with your perspective that it would make a difference to us in English whether it is singular or plural. But given the different variations I expect that's not going to be easy to sort out, and I suspect that the end result is the same. In any language we can look at pleasure as a concept or pleasure as one or more particular pleasures, and we always have to be able to move between the contexts as appropriate.

Among the most important parts of your post was this part

Quote from DaveT

I think this focus allows me to not worry about which pleasure, or how much of it will make me happy more often than sad when navigating the reality of every day life. This focus tells me to first notice what is painful bodily and/or mentally and address the removal of that condition. When I do that I'm left with the various stages of pleasure and happiness however I define it.

I think that depending on how one interprets what you have written there you are going to find huge differences of opinion.

If what you mean is that your first priority is to seek out and eliminate any bodily or mental pain from your life before you turn to any pleasure, and that in the process of eliminating those pains it makes no difference what pleasures you choose to employ, then that's quite a stark statement.

If what I gather to be Kelly Arenson's opinion is correct - that katastematic pleasure is that kind which we experience in smelling roses or listen to music which is not required of us because we experience a lack of rose-smells or music, then arguably someone who used your formula would never pursue roses or music until they reach a state of perfect painlessness.

Clearly there is a dual focus that arises from the existence of both pleasure and pain. We want to BOTH choose pleasure and avoid pain. The question is whether it is correct to erect the elimination of any pain of body or mind as the "prime directive" that is to be pursued before one would choose to pursue any pleasure of any type or degree, especially a type of pleasure that is "discretionary" because it is not something we need for the relief of a specific pain.

I suspect you will say that that is not what your formulation is doing, but my personal opinion is that it comes very close to saying that, and I would not agree that that would be the correct conclusion. Sometimes we choose pain in order to avoid a worse pain or achieve a greater pleasure.

These are exactly the issues that are both the subject of this thread and of the thread on Kelly Arenson's book, so I'll just note here that people reading into this should refer to both threads.

THe only record of Hiernymous of Rhodes is what Cicero says about him as explained in our earlier thread (note from 2019) with the citations. Hieronymus of Rhodes embraced "absence of pain" but not pleasure, as Cicero explains.

They support the point that when you have reached the "limit" of anything you still have the full volume of what you started with to build to that point. You do not have something different than water when you fill a glass of water to the brim. You have a glass of water, and to say that you at that point do not need water is to say that you need no MORE water, not that the water you have has become worthless because you filled the glass.

I realize that it is counterintuitive to have to say that when you complete the accumulation of something all you care about is the concept of the accumulation and not the content of it, but that is what the argument is about. It's simply not going to be something that can be understood without reading the argument that Plato made about "being" as the good, rather than "the becoming." At present the best guide through all of that is the first several chapters of Arenson's book, where she lays out all the citations to The Republic and to Philebus.

Thread

Are You Epicurean Or Hieronymian?

According to Doctrine 3, Epicurus held that the limit of quantity of pleasure is the absence of pain. This is a function of the truism / premise that there are only two feelings - pleasure and pain - which means that in quantity, the measurement that describes the "absence" of the one is the same measurement as the "presence" of the other. But this observation is limited to quantity - it has nothing to do with the quality or the detail of the type of pleasure (or pain) that is being…

Cassius

October 1, 2019 at 2:08 PM

This also relates to review of Academic Questions:

Blog Article

The 'Academic Questions' Behind Evaluation Of Pleasure And Happiness

"Academic Questions" sounds like exactly what a modern reader expects from ancient philosophy: a dry, technical argument about definitions, conducted by men with nothing better to do, over a question no one outside a classics department has any reason to care about. That impression is wrong. The argument Cicero stages between Lucullus and himself -- whether the senses can ever deliver real knowledge, or whether we are stuck with mere probability -- is not a side issue in ancient philosophy. It…

Cassius

August 1, 2026 at 3:15 PM

Interesting to see a Chinese take on Nolan's version of the Odysee, including how Nolan states that modern filmmakers need to apologize for greatness, and his statements about gods at the end:

Welcome to Episode 345 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 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. This week will continue in Section 13 of Book Two.

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: Cicero On Nature Of Gods Academica Loeb Rackham : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

As we proceed through the end of Academic Questions these are the topics we expect to cover:

24. Lucullus's Extended Rebuttal of the Academic Doctrine, and His Concluding Appeal to Cicero (2:XIII)
25. Cicero Begins His Reply (2:XX)
26. Cicero Lays Out the Syllogism About Assent and Opinion (2:XXI)
27. Cicero Turns to Antiochus's Own Inconsistency (2:XXII)
28. Cicero Defends His Citation of the Ancient Philosophers (2:XXIII)
29. Cicero Adds Chrysippus and the Cyrenaics, Then Returns to Arcesilas and Zeno (2:XXIV)
30. Cicero Returns to Attacking the Senses (2:XXV)
31. Cicero Presses the Sun's Size and the Limits of Trained Perception (2:XXVI)
32. Cicero Turns the "Art" Argument Back on Lucullus (2:XXVII)
33. Cicero Multiplies Examples From Madness (2:XXVIII)
34. Cicero Attacks Reason and Dialectics: The Sorites Paradox (2:XXIX)
35. Cicero Presses the Liar Paradox (2:XXX)
36. Cicero Presents Carneades's Own Positive Doctrine of Probability (2:XXXI)
37. Cicero Distinguishes the Academic Position From Epicurus's (2:XXXII)
38. Cicero Defends Probability Against the Charge That It Cannot Support Memory or Action (2:XXXIII)
39. Cicero Answers the "Self-Refuting" and "Two Incompatible Propositions" Objections (2:XXXIV)
40. Cicero Broadens the Argument Beyond the Stoics (2:XXXV)
41. Cicero Reflects on His Own Position Among the Competing Schools (2:XXXVI)
42. Cicero's Survey of Disagreement Among the Natural Philosophers (2:XXXVII)
43. Cicero Presses the Problem of Providence and the Limits of Physics (2:XXXVIII)
44. Cicero's Survey Continues: The Soul, the Antipodes, and the Motion of the Earth (2:XXXIX)
45. Cicero Asks Which Natural Philosopher He Would Even Choose to Follow (2:XL)
46. Cicero Turns to Ethics: Even the Gods Are Disputed (2:XLI)
47. Cicero's Roll Call of Rival Schools on the Chief Good, Part One (2:XLII)
48. Cicero's Roll Call of Rival Schools on the Chief Good, Part Two (2:XLIII)
49. Cicero Weighs Zeno Against Antiochus on Virtue and the Happy Life (2:XLIV)
50. Cicero Catalogs the Stoic Paradoxes About the Wise Man (2:XLV)
51. Cicero's Climactic Debate Between Pleasure and Honor (2:XLVI)
52. Cicero Turns to the Canon of Truth, and Zeno's Hand (2:XLVII)
53. The Dialogue's Close (2:XLVIII)

I am posting this link to a new "blog" post I have just completed because it deals directly with the issues raised by Arenson in her book.

Blog Article

The 'Academic Questions' Behind Evaluation Of Pleasure And Happiness

"Academic Questions" sounds like exactly what a modern reader expects from ancient philosophy: a dry, technical argument about definitions, conducted by men with nothing better to do, over a question no one outside a classics department has any reason to care about. That impression is wrong. The argument Cicero stages between Lucullus and himself -- whether the senses can ever deliver real knowledge, or whether we are stuck with mere probability -- is not a side issue in ancient philosophy. It…

Cassius

August 1, 2026 at 3:15 PM

Quote from Matteng

Pleasure/Pain guide to what ?

They are the guide to the best life, because pleasure is the word we choose to use to describe all that is intrinsically desirable.

Yes this is a word game, and if you want to argue that the goal should be set as "virtue" or "being like god" you can argue that too. In the end all these things are just words.

But some words can be tied to real experiences. In the case of Pleasure as the goal, that is tied to the feelings of pleasure and pain which our experiences reveal to us directly. Other goals are not so directly establishable - they are just words that float around forever in ambiguous and unprovable assertions about things like "gods" or "virtue" that can never be pinned down because they are just abstractions for which there is no direct sensory experience of them.

We have often mentioned in the past the cliche about the perfect not being the enemy of the good.

A variation of that is probably easier to see in this context is that the goal is not the enemy of the process, or the destination is not the enemy of the journey.

Embedded in the Platonic analysis seems to be the idea that "the good" should be viewed as the result of actions, but that the actions themselves are not good. It appears that the example that is cited is ships and shipbuilding -- that "ships" are "the good" of shipbuilding.

If you use that approach then ships are good, but shipbuilding is not good. Now the defenders of Platonism may say that that's not what they mean, but nevertheless that is what the ordinary person is going to gather from the statement. That shipbuilding is inferior to ships - that shipbulding is at best a necessary evil, and that what you really want is ships with the implication that you can dispense with shipbuilding.

That's also implied in the quoted statement - Pleasure/Pain guide to what ? As if all you need to know is what the goal is, and that once you know the goal you can dispense with pleasure and pain.

This attitude perspective is a big part of the issue with the way people are reading Menoeceus 128:

The right understanding of these facts enables us to refer all choice and avoidance to the health of the body and (the soul's) freedom from disturbance, since this is the aim of the life of blessedness. For it is to obtain this end that we always act, namely, to avoid pain and fear. And when this is once secured for us, all the tempest of the soul is dispersed, since the living creature has not to wander as though in search of something that is missing, and to look for some other thing by which he can fulfill the good of the soul and the good of the body. For it is then that we have need of pleasure, when we feel pain owing to the absence of pleasure; (but when we do not feel pain), we no longer need pleasure.

Yes you no longer need ADDITIONAL pleasure, but that's because what you have is made from all the normal pleasures of life. Would someone in the business of ships properly say "Now that I have a ship I no longer have need of nails, fabric, wooden beams, ropes, tar, or the rest?"

That would be ludicrous -- the only way to make sense of that is to understand you don't need MORE of them but ONLY because you already have them in the completed ship that you're going to sail on.

Would it be proper for a doctor to say - You have your health, so you no longer need skin, bones, food, water, air, shelter, or clothing. (?)

Of course not - that would be ludicrous - you have "health" ONLY because you have the things that make up health.

Epicurus is talking in Platonic terms to someone who would have understood that this relationship between the perfect and the good, between the goal and the process was a major concern of the time because Plato had preached it and Aristotle had wrestled with it without making the proper perspective clear.

And we're obviously still wrestling with it today, because CLEVER people have us convinced that "the good" is what we should be concerned about rather than what that term means.

And so we have people obsessed with 'a healthy mind in a healthy body" without any concern whatsoever for what "health" is all about - in fact allowing or even demanding that health be divorced from pleasure, even though it is absolutely ludicrous to do so.

We talk as if we are so superior to the rubes who believe in supernatural gods and punishments or rewards after death, when in truth much of the discussion about Epicurus today is trapped in an illusion that is far worse than those mistakes. As Epicurus said, at least those who follow religion have the hope of happiness by cozying up to the gods. Those who are mesmerized by "tranquility" and "health" and "happiness" and 'the good" and even "absence of pain" while looking down on pleasure are trapped in something far worse. They have created a divide that can never be healed because they think that "being" (the goal) is all that matters and that "becoming" (the required process) is beneath them.

Note: This analysis would also apply to the relationship between virtue to prudence, honor, and justice in PD05. Don't preach to me about "happiness" if you don't understand that happiness is inseparable from the actions that produce it (we call those actions virtues). It's the same point: Don't talk to me about "ships" if you don't understand that ships are inseparable from the wood and nails and cloth and rope from which a "ship" is made. Don't talk to me about "absence of pain" unless you understand that "absence of pain" is inseparable from the regular bodily and mental pleasures from which "absence of pain" is made.

I have another analogy that I think applies.

Today a friend sent me the linked video because he was so impressed how it went through the Bible and asked a series of questions that calls the Bible into question. 109 Questions For God

I think the video is good, and there was a time when I really would have been impressed by it. And a video like that probably has a lot of good uses for those people who are really worried about whether the Bible is true.

But the entire approach of the video is to "play on the other team's turf." It accepts many of the premises of the Bible and simply tries to use its own logic against it.

That's useful to a point, but when do you move on and stop granting them their premises in the first place.

Arenson's book really shines the spotlight on these stupid platnic arguments that the goal is "being" not 'becoming" and so our goal ought to be "heath" rather than the pleasures that plato acknowledges that some people find to be good.

When you accept the premise that only the "complete" or the "perfect" or "things that have a limit" are good, then you're playing on Platonic turf.

As Arenson says even Aristotle was smart enough to reject that "processes are inferior to goals" argument.

It looks to me like Epicurus included the discussion, such as contained in PDO3, because Plato was fixated on arguing that there is a middle ground between pleasure and pain and that that middle ground - absence of pain - is not pleasure at all.

Epicurus refutes that by arguing that there are only two feelings, that if you don't feel any pain what you feel is pleasure, and at that point that's actually the most "complete" pleasure because there's no pain involved at all.

That wins the logical point and is something that is important for people immersed in Platonism (like almost everyone was in 300 BC) to know.

But by even granting the premise that the state of "absence of pain" is important to talk about, you set the stage that Cicero walked into when he pointed out that "if you're concerned about pleasure you shouldn't care about absence of pain at all." That produced the argument that Epicurus really should have said he was a value dualist (a term we've seen here recently) and admitted that pleasure and pain are two separate goals and not the same thing.

Torquatus adamantly refused to admit that and for good reason - there's only pleasure and pain and so when we have no pain what is left is the most "complete" pleasure possible.

But is "complete pleasure" the most intense? Is it the longest in duration? Does it involve the most parts of the body? No necessarily on any of those three counts, except on purely "logical" terms. No one can credibly argue that "feeling no pain" tells you anything about the specific mental or bodily experience of a particular moment.

So while the point is important for refuting Plato's anti-pleasure logic, and needs to be discussed with anyone who is concerned about "being vs becoming" - it's a point that makes little sense outside that context. Arenson spends a lot of time talking about whether Cicero knew what he was talking about, and how much we should believe his descriptions about what Epicurus taught, but what is beyond dispute is that Cicero has succeeded in perpetuating this "war" between "pleasure as a process" vs. "the goal as some fixed and definite thing." And every anti-Epicurean of every religious stripe or ascetic position has used that as an invitation to say that that "fixed and definite thing" is not pleasure at all, but something entirely different.

So to be clear I am not criticizing Epicurus at all - he had to make the point to refute Plato on pleasure just like he refuted Aristotle on atomism. But we have to understand the specific history of the argument and the context in which it lives, because outside its context the terminology is easy to twist into the opposite of what Epicurus intended.

And that's the same reason most of us don't spend a lot of time on logical arguments about the flora and fauna of the garden of Eden -- we reject the whole paradigm, and it doesn't bother us.

The whole paradigm of "being vs becoming" and "pleasure as a process" and "pleasure as restricted to replenishment" are similar artifacts of a specific ancient argument that few people recognize or care about anyome - and for good reason - it was nonsense from the time Socrates and Plato et all started spinning it.

Quote from Don

I'm getting it via interlibrary loan soon.

OMG.

Don, you and I and Joshua and many others here have done a creditable job and I'm not going to apologize for what we've done, because I think we're on the right track.

But what little we've done to comment on Philebus and Plato has been woefully incomplete.

I don't know where Arenson ends up yet (other than skimming the conclusion) so I can't say that we'll agree with all of her conclusions, but she's done in this book what we've needed to do for a long time -- go over in detail the arguments against pleasure not only in the Philebus but also in the Republic, and then go through Aristotle's tentative pushback.

Aristotle long before Epicurus had rejected this stupid and woefully insufficient "replenishment" theory of pleasure, which is tied to that cursed "process" and becoming vs being" argument which Aristotle also rejected. We've been talking around Epicurus' rejection of the same thing without getting the full picture in view of how central this "becoming is inferior to being" argument, and the citations she's collected will help us get much closer to where we need to be.

I think I can safely predict that neither you nor most of us here are going to find this to be an "enjoyable" book - at least in the sense of Emily Austin's "Living For Pleasure" because it's highly technical. But the background she provides is going to - I hesitate to say "revolutionize" but something on the same order - how we need to be discussing these issues.

A major difficulty is that she's doing what all academics do - presenting the various arguments without taking strong and immediate positions on which are correct. And many of us aren't going to be able to wade through it.

She covers much of the same ground as Gosling and Taylor, but they were even more frustatingly non-committal as they wade through it. Arenson is being considerably more clear in the implications of what's going on. And Socrates and Plato are just abominations who deserve to be exposed for the folly or maliciousness of their arguments, not simply viewed as being "clever" -- which itself appears to be a key word.

All this denunciation of pleasure as not the true good because it is a "process" rather than an "end" is definitely "clever" - but it's cleverness in the employment of something very much to be rejected.

I have a long way to go before finishing, and this is definitely not going to be a book for "everyone." But it's exactly the resource that those of us who are really trying to work through this need.

It is highly irritating to me that this has been out for over five years without me spending more time on it long ago.

That's a large part of why all this has to be a team effort.

Added to the files section here:

File

Life And Works Of Hermarchus of Mytilene

This is the second installment of the Co-founders of the Garden project. Unfortunately, it is also the last one since there's not enough transmitted material about Polyaenus of Lampsacus to create a similar compilation about him.

Cassius

July 31, 2026 at 12:39 PM

I have spent the morning listening to the first two chapters of the Arenson book, which is focused on what is said about Pleasure in the Republic and Philebus.

The whole structure of holding being to be better than becoming and the need to discuss "limits" is deeply disturbing to me in listening to this.

So much of this discussion of being vs becoming and limited vs unlimited is just unadulterated trash - it is very similar to religious discussion of angels dancing on pinheads.

This is likely to radicalize me further: Thomas Jefferson was far too lenient in his conclusions about Plato and other Greeks like the Stoics. These word games are as deceptive and manipulative as any religion ever invented.

Epicurus was right to point out their logical fallacies, but lingering too long in disputing them plays into their hands by distracting from a common sense understanding of pleasure and pain.

Probably the smartest this Torquatus said was at the beginning when he said that Epicurus refused to admit any need for argument or discussion to prove that pleasure is desirable and pain is to be avoided.

I am beginning to see this as very close to the argument as go religion. Yes it is good to point out that the religious view of the nature of divinity is flawed, but it makes no sense to spend your life debating priests about the supernatural.

And yes it makes sense to point out that the logic of the anti-pleasure arguments is wrong, but it makes no sense to argue forever about logical definitions of how to slice and dice pleasure into logical but meaningless categories.

It's as big a mistake to speculate endlessly about categories of pleasures as it is to speculate whether gods speak Greek or Latin.

If our goal is to better the lives of real people rather than pinheads, it's far better to stick to basic points and then work to apply them in real life, not just debate about words and definitions.

To clarify - this is an excellent book for those who want to understand how we got to where we are. Unfortunately those who need it most are probably the least likely to read it.

Quote from Matteng

I would decide against it precisely because one loses one's freedom and connection to the real world; returning is difficult to impossible, and one sacrifices everything.

It is very interesting to see how individual people either deal with or refuse to deal with hypotheticals. It's certainly very important to evaluate whether the hypothetical is possible in reality or not.

But the purpose of a logical possibility is to exactly test the premise by abstracting out what are current realities. "But it's not possible" is essential to real life and it's why we choose real life over fantasy --- but some people are going to say that it is avoiding the question, and I do not think that they should be faulted to say that.

In this case the part I quoted above does not grapple with the question at hand.

Because in logical terms the answer to what is quoted above is clear --- why would you care about "freedom" or "connection to the real world" unless they bring pleasure?

That's why Kally Arenson made the statement she did -- NOTHING -- even "reality" or "being human" or anything else -- is desirable in itself unless it brings pleasure. Exempting ANYTHING from that test -- does it bring pleasure? -- is not good logic from the standpoint of logic alone.

If one chooses to play logic games, then rather than step outside of the philosophic position that pleasure is the supreme good, it would probably be better to say more like:

Logic is not truly useful unless its premises are grounded in reality, Your hypothetical is not grounded in realty, so I refuse to waste my time with it, just like Epicurus refused to entertain a hypothetical about necessity as to whether Hermarchus must be alive or dead tomorrow.

Thanks for that update Morgan!

Quote from Don

*My statement here assumes anyone would even notice if I was quiet or not. I apologize for the narcissism inherent in saying that.

It is a shame that i could hit only one reaction. I hit like but I would have liked to LOL at the stame time.

Quote from Kalosyni

The EpicureanFriends forum policy is intended to make sure that the clarity of the objective (the Epicurean summum bonum) as being pleasure, is not lost by substituting something else as the "supreme good."

Yes that's basically it.

Don is an invaluable member of the forum and his absence absolutely has been noticed.

I've said a lot about the general topic already and I'll have a lot more to say in the future, but at the moment here's what seems most appropriate:

This past weekend I and several of us here watched Christos Yapiyakis - for whom I also have tremendous respect - give a presentation on Thomas Jefferson and Epicurus to a ladies' American Hellenic Association. It caught my eye during the presentation, and afterward when I reviewed the slides that Christos sent me, that the focus words for the slides and the talk were almost entirely about "happiness" with only one or two minor uses of the word "pleasure" during the entire talk.

Jumping around here to make a connection, I saw in my email yesterday that Hiram Crespo - for whom I also have a lot of respect - posted the following quote from Michael Onfray:

Quote

Pleasure scares people. They are scared of the word and the actions, reality, and discourses around it. It either scares people or makes them hysterical. There are too many private and personal issues, too many alienating, intimate, painful, wretched, and miserable details. There are secret and hidden deficiencies. There are too many things in the way of just being, living, and enjoying. Hence, people reject the word. They produce spiteful critique that is aggressive and in bad faith or that is simply evasive. Disrespect, discredit, contempt, and disdain are all means for avoiding the subject of pleasure. – Michel Onfray

What Onfray is talking about is essentially the reason there's a need for a "policy" for our educational/promotional work at EpicureanFriends.

Yes if and when I myself give a talk to a mature ladies' club i am going to lead with connections they are familiar with, such as Thomas Jefferson. We've done a lot of that here at the forum. And yes it's fully appropriate to talk about "tending gardens" and using other ways to get conversations going with people who view you with suspicion.

But for better or worse and not entirely by choice or forethought, EpicureanFriends has become the "fundamentalist Epicurean" platform on the internet. And that's where the message gets boiled down to its essentials.

When you start with the foundation that there are no supernatural gods and therefore no absolute foundations for morality, and no life of any kind after death, what you immediately have to face is being clear about what your standard for living is going to be, and in Epicurean terms that is pleasure and pain. Yes there there are all sorts of important things to be said about mental pleasure and bodily pleasure and the many types of pleasure and pain to be chosen from and avoided, but the only way you get to that discussion in he first place is to first identify that its pleasure that constitutes what is desirable, rather than piety or logic or any other definition of "the good."

We're all under the tremendous pressure that Onfray mentions to avoid using the term pleasure, and to find some other term that is more acceptable to those who totally reject Epicurus' worldview. And we all have very different circumstances -- age, sex, health, nationality, education level, and on and on -- that play into what each of us find to be the type of pleasure that we find to be most desirable. But in the Epicurean analysis all of those types fall under the single category of pleasure. Given the nature of the universe there's no single way to look at the "most pleasant" other than the target being "all pleasure and no pain." That's how you end up talking about absence of pain as a way of defining the goal, but if you don't explain that background, you end up playing right into the hands of those who want to eliminate "pleasure" from the discussion.

That substitution of "absence of pain" in the place of pleasure is exactly what Hieronymus of Rhodes did, but which it's amply clear that Epicurus refused to do.

Epicurus' logic in rejecting Hieronymus's view is easy to understand:

When you get to the limit of pleasure you haven't left behind all the bodily and mental pleasures you've accumulated to get there. You still have those pleasures -- it's just that you're now experiencing those same pleasures without any mixture of pains.

Episode 344 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is now available. This week our episode is entitled: "What Is Our Mind's Role In Determining Truth?"

This episode will be up later today - in the meantime as a note to myself and Joshua, we discuss in this one that the Stoic position is that some perceptions are so clear that they cannot be denied -- and yet the stoics are talking about "assent" to the perception as required. Now, how the stoics square their requirement for "assent' to their view that essentially all things are determined / preordained by their nature/god is a contradiction that we'll want to address as we go further.

For Epicurus, there is no such contradiction, because there are no perceptions which are so clearly true that they cannot possibly be false. With Epicurus, ALL perceptions are constantly weighed against the anticipations, feelings, and senses, and our formation of opinions are in our minds (never in the senses themselves) so the praise or blame for reaching correct opinions is always in play. It's always up to us to assess things accurately, there are no divine "marks" or "signs" that can always be considered to be the indicia of truth.

We left this point hanging because we ran out of time, but we'll come back to this next week when we continue comparing this to Socrates' positions in The Republic.

Note -- Godfrey posted that this "Health Hedonism" book by Erica Oberg is relevant to the "health" aspect of the Arenson book.

I am still in the process of reading this book but I have added it to the "recommended" section along with the DeWitt and Austin books for several reasons:

1. Generally, she takes a modified "Gosling & Taylor" approach and does not read "kinetic pleasure" out off the goal of Epicurean philosophy.

2. More specifically, these two paragraphs quoted below are a compelling argument against anyone who wants to argue that the Epicurean goal is "health" rather than pleasure. This is an excellent point and observation - I'd put it on par in terms of insight with Emily Austin's suggestion in Chapter 22 of Living For Pleasure that Lucretius likely intended to end Book Six of his poem with additional material from Thucydides. In what I am about to quote Arenson raises a point that is of even greater practical importance.

I have added the underlines to emphasize the issue.

Quote from Kelly Arenson - Health and Hedonism In Plato And Epicurus - p 161

Given that the Epicureans stress how important health and the awareness of it is to happiness, one lingering question is why they do not identify health rather than pleasure as our highest and innate good. Why factor hedonism into the equation at all? It seems they could have gone the route of Plato’s Republic and claimed that although the best life is pleasant, our aim should be the internal harmony that engenders the pleasure rather than the pleasure itself. Perhaps this is just a version of Cicero’s objection that the Epicureans seem to propose two distinct goals: pleasure and the absence of pain. If the Epicureans understand the absence of pain in terms of health, then why not say that the end is health rather than pleasure? Perhaps the Epicureans do not stop at health because they are interested in describing the telos in terms of human feelings: that is, even if health were ontologically or epistemologically the best condition for humans, Epicureans would not be interested unless health also felt the best. We get the sense that in Plato’s eyes the just life will still be the best even if it is not the most pleasant: a just soul is always ontologically better than an unjust one. But the goal of Epicureanism is to help people feel better—to lessen their anxiety, help them avoid frustrated desires, and enable them to enjoy their lives. To say that health itself is the goal, divorced from our perceptions of how health feels, would be nonsensical to Epicureans, who would argue that health is worth talking about at all only because of its connection to the feeling of pleasure.

I think this point is related to Epicurus’ rejection of philosophy as an end in itself. For the most part, Epicurus advises us to concern ourselves with philosophy insofar as it will lead to pleasure. Th is position is expressed in an Epicurean work of unknown origin, reported by Porphyry: “Empty is that philosopher’s reasoning by which no human affliction is cured. For just as there is no benefit in the medical art if it does not cure the diseases of bodies, so there is no benefit in philosophy if it does not drive affliction out of the soul.” According to Epicureans, we should learn the truth about the gods, the limits of pain, and our abilities to get what we desire because having this knowledge enables us to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. We will have no use for philosophy if it should fail to bring about painless mental and physical experiences, and we will have no use for health if it should fail to do the same. Th is is not to say that Epicureans envision a contingent connection between health and pleasure; they argue, as I have tried to show in this study, that our experience of health—either in the process toward achieving it or in the condition itself—is intrinsically related to pleasure. Nevertheless, Epicureans would say that were health not linked to pleasure in this way, there would be no reason to care about health’s ontological credentials.

This is very perceptive. It's devastating to the argument that the true goal isn't Pleasure, and to arguments that state or imply that we don't need pleasure - "all we need is health of mind and body." Why did they talk so much about pleasure if all they wanted was "health"???

Amazon description: This book links Plato and Epicurus, two of the most prominent ethicists in the history of philosophy, exploring how Platonic material lays the conceptual groundwork for Epicurean hedonism. It argues that, despite their significant philosophical differences, Plato and Epicurus both conceptualize pleasure in terms of the health and harmony of the human body and soul. It turns to two crucial but underexplored sources for understanding Epicurean pleasure: Plato's treatment of psychological health and pleasure in the Republic, and his physiological account of bodily harmony, pleasure, and pain in the Philebus.

Kelly Arenson shows first that, by means of his mildly hedonistic and sometimes overtly anti-hedonist approaches, Plato sets the agenda for future discussions in antiquity of the nature of pleasure and its role in the good life. She then sets Epicurus' hedonism against the backdrop of Plato's ontological and ethical assessments of pleasure, revealing a trend in antiquity to understand pleasure and pain in terms of the replenishment and maintenance of an organism's healthy functioning.