Welcome to Episode 344 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 Sections 11 and 12 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
Episode 343 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is now available. This week our episode is entitled: "In The Search For Knowledge, Is 'Probable' Good Enough?"
Glad to have you!
All of them are - to the extent that I would not be surprised if it is finding articles I have written in the past. My current list is still a work in progress but you can find it here.
I have been doing similar research to try to track back this argument to where it was first popularized in the 20th Century, and so far a lot points back to Carlo Diano.
Once you start looking at older articles that OKeefe and Warren cite you begin to see a pattern of certain names that they quote specifically. This is a very interesting exercise and if you pursue it and find other names or relevant facts please let me know and I will update my document.
As to Diano -
Diano is an early source for this argument. In “Épicure: la philosophie du plaisir et la société des amis” [“Epicurus: The Philosophy of Pleasure and the Society of Friends”], Les Études philosophiques, n.s., 22, no. 2 (April-June 1967): 173-186, p. 182, Diano writes:
“Quand on peut le dire! Mais pour pouvoir le dire, pour entrer dans cette espèce de nirvana vécu les yeux grands ouverts, et se mettre hors du temps et vaincre la mort, il faut que l’âme soit libre de toute agitation et de tout désir, de toute jalousie, de tout ressentiment, sereine, en paix avec elle-même et avec le monde. Ainsi, même pour Epicure, on ne peut atteindre le souverain bien qu’à travers la pureté de sa vie et l’ascèse.”
“But to be able to say [I have lived], to enter into this kind of nirvana lived with wide-open eyes, and to place oneself outside time and conquer death, the soul must be free of all agitation and all desire, of all jealousy, of all resentment — serene, at peace with itself and with the world. Thus, even for Epicurus, one can attain the sovereign good only through purity of life and asceticism.”
This does not merely name ataraxia or katastematic pleasure in place of pleasure, but reaches for “nirvana” as the closest available analogy, and pairs the Epicurean summum bonum with “asceticism,” a word standing about as far from ordinary “pleasure” as it is possible to do.
Diano also published Epicuri Ethica (Florence: G.C. Sansoni, 1946) — reviewed by Phillip De Lacy in Classical Philology 44, no. 2 (1949): 141. Peter Preuss’s account of it, p. 149, describes the same thesis in different technical terms: “Right after the second world war C. Diano in his influential work on Epicurus proposed an interpretation, based on Lucr. 4.627-9, of katastematic pleasure as the condition of the organism free from natural and necessary wants, and of kinetic pleasure as presupposing katastematic pleasure and consisting merely in the variation of it.”
Aristos tells us this:
I'm from Serbia, and I'm 30 years old. I'm a food technology engineer by profession, with a wide range of interests and hobbies related to cooking, beverages, metalworking, 3D printing, and many other pursuits.
I've been studying philosophy independently for almost ten years, primarily for my own personal development and understanding. During that time, I've devoted serious attention to many philosophers and philosophical traditions, hoping to find a coherent system that could offer convincing answers to some of the fundamental existential questions.
Epicureanism fascinates me for many reasons, especially when viewed from the perspective of more than two thousand years of intellectual history and the development of the Western philosophical tradition. What I find particularly remarkable is how many Epicurean ideas can be examined - and in many cases even supported through modern science, which serves as an important reference point for evaluating philosophical claims that ancient thinkers first proposed through observation and insight.
I'm interested in every discipline of Epicurean philosophy, partly because I already have some background in epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, and related fields. My goal is to study Epicureanism as a complete philosophical system rather than as a form of popular psychology or a simple remedy for anxiety or identity struggles.
I'm looking forward to learning from the community and participating in thoughtful discussions.
Best regards,
Aristos
Good to hear from you Charles.
If we can't be clear in Epicurean philosophy about the centrality of pleasure, we don't need to be talking about Epicurean philosophy at all.
Might was well also forget the positions on gods and death - which not coincidentally is exactly what a lot of the videos in my "World's Worst Epicurus Videos" thread are doing.
Welcome Aristos
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ALSO - AS OF JULY 16, 2026, the Forum has instituted a new editorial policy as to the advocacy of anything other than Pleasure as what Epicurus taught to be the supreme good. All prospective members must read this post before proceeding with an account at Epicureanfriends.coom:
Against Katastematic Supremacy - Pleasure Is A Unified Good, Not A House Divided Against Itself - INCLUDES FORUM EDITORIAL POLICY
The Current Establishment View - Which It Is the Editorial Policy Of EpicureanFriends.com to Reject
With only a few notable exceptions, practically every modern account of Epicurean ethics repeats the same claim: Epicurus divided pleasure into two distinct kinds, ranked one above the other. Pleasure, like a house, cannot stand if it is divided against itself — and that is exactly the structure this traditional reading imposes on it. On this traditional view, kinetic pleasure covers everything…
Cassius
July 16, 2026 at 2:06 PM
If you have not done so already, please be sure you have read Torquatus' Presentation of Epicurean Ethics (also available in a more compact side-by-side format at EpicurusToday.com). That is the clearest, most complete statement of Epicurean ethics to survive from antiquity, and reading it early will save you -- and us -- a great deal of confusion. Most people arrive with a version of "Epicureanism" assembled from the Tetrapharmakon, the Letter to Menoeceus, or scattered quotations of questionable reliability -- and of the three, the Tetrapharmakon is the least reliable foundation of all. It is many times more compressed even than the Letter, and terse enough that it has been read in sharply different, sometimes incompatible ways by different interpreters; at best it serves as a reminder of Epicurus's four main topics for someone who already knows their content, not as a source of that content. The Letter to Menoeceus is a real summary, but it too is compressed and was written for students who already understood the foundations of Epicurean ethics. Torquatus is the best surviving example of how Epicurus's own well-educated students understood and presented that foundation themselves. It is the fastest and most reliable way to find out whether what you already believe about Epicurus matches what he and his school actually taught.
The moderators here are well aware that many fans of Epicurus hold sincerely-held views about what Epicurus taught that are incompatible with this forum's purpose. This forum exists specifically for people committed to classical Epicurean positions, not for reconciling those positions with modern "eclectic" reinterpretations that borrow Epicurus's name while rejecting his actual conclusions. Reading Torquatus first is the quickest way to see where that line falls, before investing time in posts that argue against the very foundations this forum exists to defend.
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Beyond Torquatus, two books will do the most to deepen your understanding quickly. Norman DeWitt's Epicurus and His Philosophy is the single best book-length treatment available. DeWitt treats Epicurus as a coherent system rather than filtering him through later Stoic, Platonic, or modern secular assumptions. If you read one book beyond the ancient sources, make it this one.
Emily Austin's Living for Pleasure: An Epicurean Guide to Life is a clear, engaging modern introduction that many of our members have found a useful on-ramp. Read it, but read it alongside Torquatus and DeWitt rather than in their place, since like most modern treatments it makes no attempt to give the full picture that DeWitt provides.
From there, Epicurus's own surviving letters -- to Herodotus, Pythocles, and Menoeceus -- and Lucretius's On The Nature of Things are also on the essential reading list. Our Recommended Reading page has a fuller list for when you're ready to go further. None of this is required before you participate, but the more of it you've read -- starting with Torquatus -- the more you'll get out of being here.
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This thread is for discussion of the article:
Looks to me like the same person is generating these - and apparently isn't through yet -
I would be surprised to see a clear statement that any type of pleasure is “non-sensory”
There's a significant amount of variation involved and not everyone states this explicitly, but we can start with the effect that the contextless assertion that the goal is 'absence of pain' does not imply that what is left is any kind of sensation at all. That's why Cicero was charging Epicurus with being inconsistent, because "absence of...." does not in any respect require or imply the presence of any feeling of pleasure of any kind. To a fair and neutral observer, "absence of pain" implies feeling nothing unless you combine it with the knowledge that there are only two feelings, pleasure and pain. But explaining that there are only two feelings and absence of one implies the presence of the other is conspicuously absent from most presentations of this issue, because that leaves those who advocate absence of pain as higher than pleasure right back in the same spot of defending the word they don't like - pleasure.
So any position which leaves "absence of pain" undefined is implicitly calling absence of pain non-sensory. Here are some examples of how that plays out:
This issue is developed much more extensively by Gosling & Taylor in their chapter on Katatestematic and Kinetic pleasure. Many of the academic writers - including Emily Austin and Kelly Aronsen - refer back to this for their analysis. If you feel the pleasure then it is kinetic.
Gosling and Taylor of course agree with your comment, Bryan, that it would be impossible to conceive of Epicurus holding "that any type of pleasure is “non-sensory” – because that means the pleasure is not experienced at all – which is simply not possible." That is exactly why I am pushing this issue so hard, because this implication cannot be allowed to stand unchallenged.
So this issue is exactly the problem that comes from holding that katastematic pleasures are not sensory pleasure at all. The whole chapter which G&T devote to the issue goes through exactly this problem.
In my #67 post, where I stated "the katastemic pleasures one feels when deeply studying and grasping some deep Epicurean concept", I was describing this sensory psychological static pleasure (not the kinetic act of reading words) which we simultaneously receive when acquiring knowledge as I understood from VS-27.
According to your Emily Austin reference in your Substack post (Against Katastematic Supremacy) on this topic (See Chapter 4, note 8.), "katastematic pleasures are sensory pleasures that issue from confidence in one's ability to satisfy one's necessary desires and an awareness of one's healthy psychological functioning".
Both of these quotes are right on point. When Emily Austin takes the position that katastematic pleasures are sensory, she is stating the MINORITY position. The more widespread position that is being argued by many is that katastematic pleasure is not sensory at all. The real meaning of "static" to them is very unclear but the essence is that they are separating it from any feeling of pleasure. Enduring? sure. Long-lasting - sure. Established? sure -- but those words do not capture the "non-sensory" aspect that I think you will find in what Max Duboff wrote, and in many others before him, and that is the real issue.
They are saying that Epicurus held that we would not know the good but for sensory pleasure, but that the good itself is not sensory at all.
I know this is counterintuitive but the fault is in the position that Austin and Aronson and Gosling and Taylor and Nikolsky are pushing back against, and that is why they are pushing back.
I am working on a list of citations where people are arguing the tranquility / non-sensory posiiton that you (and Dave) have asked about and I will have more details for you soon.
"I want my life of pleasure to be stable and established."
Does a sentence like that serve as a bullet train to living on bread and water and denouncing pleasure? Or does it simply remind you that you want your "life of pleasure" -- the life that Diogenes of Oinoanda and Torquatus explictly state to be what Epicurus taught as the meaning of happiness -- to be complete and stable and enduring?
Why would anyone take that expression - with simple and unthreatening adjectives like "complete" and "enduring" -- and then conclude from it "what I want is not really pleasure at all!"?
They wouldn't - unless they have another agenda besides recognizing Pleasure to be the supreme good. While I don't think anyone here does that, I am completely sure that what has motivted comprimisers for hundreds of years - from Gassendi on down to today - is a desire to apologize for pleasure and make it acceptable to the religious and moralistic orthodoxy.
However, it is also clearly true that a single brick -- or even a huge pile of bricks -- is not as good as a whole stable and established brick building.
That would be exactly the analogy I seek to use with the "full cup" of pleasure and what I take DeWitt's "fullness" argument to mean. Yes you want your life to be 100% pleasure and 0% pain, and you want it to stay that way, neither needlessly below the rim (due to the presence of pain) or sloshing over the rim (causing intrustio of pain due to the sloshing). But no matter what perspective you look at the vessel, what it is full of is real tangible experiential pleasure. Or using the other analogy, when you build a house of bricks you have something more desirable than a pile of bricks, but you would be a fool to then think that you have freed yourself from reliance on bricks. You don't need a greater quantity of bricks when you finish building a house in the same way that you don't need a greater quantity of pleasure when your life is 100% full of plesure.
But who would be such a pinhead or so stupid -- when you have a completed house or a full life of pleasure -- to go on a campaign apologizing for, or talking down, or even outright dismissing, the value of bricks or pleasure???
It would be interesting to discuss if anyone sees a conflict between the 2019 "On Pain Pleasure And Happiness" article and their current understanding of the katastematic / kinetic situation and the "Against Katastematic Supremacy" article which is the topic of this thread. If there is any such conflict then by all means it needs to be cleaned up as we go forward.
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:
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