Posts by Cassius

I wake up this morning thinking about this, which is not a response to present interlocutors but to the Wikipedia-Epicureans.

If there is really one major primary and unyielding position I have on the "katastematic / kinetic" pleasure issue, it comes down to this:

I am going to presume that the goal of this website and at least most of our joint work here is to make Epicurean philosophy understandable and practical to a new generation of people. Given that presumption, and that the presumption that they aren't minting too many new people whose first language is ancient Greek, then it is imperative that the word "katastematic" not be left in Greek, but be translated into plain English. "Kinetic" needs the same treatment, but at least given our modern usage of the word "kinetic, that word is not so ambiguous and amorphous. I suspect what we are reading into it given the English version is not faithful to what was really meant philosophically by "kinetic," because Kinetic" today has an implication of "frenzy" which is not positive. But at least "kinetic" is not grossly useless and meaningless and amorphous like "katastematic."

So what are we REALLY talking about in this issue?

Did Epicurus hold that the "healthy functioning of the organism" is a pleasure? HECK YES!

Did Epicurus hold that a background sense of calmness and tranquility is also a pleasure? HECK YES!

Did Epicurus hold that a confident continuation of our present state of pleasure is also a pleasure? HECK YES!

Did Epicurus hold that our ideal state of functioning to be filling our experience pleasures and thereby eliminating from our experience all pains? HECK YES!

And I suspect that we could go on and on, as long as we are clear what we are talking about in our native language.....

However for purposes of explaining Epicurus to other people and even most of us understanding it for ourselves, we need to be clear on what Epicurus did not do:

Did Epicurus hold that he had come up with a semi-mystical concept so subtle and so exotic that no one but a Greek uttering the incantation "katastematic" could understand what he was talking about? HECK NO!

Did Epicurus ever hint that "katastematic" pleasure, even when translated into understandable terms, was a special type of "fancy pleasure" (Elayne's term) which supercedes and transcends all other types of pleasure and is the true goal of life? HECK NO!

It's really only when we constantly talk about a word that no one today truly knows all the shades of (since we are not ancient Greeks) that we find the divide unbridgeable. Explain what is meant in clear terms and we can then agree where possible and reduce the disagreements to clearly defined issues, but until we explain in clear English terms what we are talking about, we just spin our wheels endlessly.

No one here at EpicureanFriends is guilty of what I am complaining about, and just to be super-clear I am 100% confident of the motives of everyone in this present conversation. But the Wikipedia-world is dominated by people who are perpetuating just this kind of confusing, and they are doing it because they will not accede to "PLEASURE" being what Epicurus held to be the goal and guide of life. And getting back to the opening premise, if the goal of the website here is to help explain Epicurus to a new generation of people, then we have to get ready to stand up to the Wikipedia-mindset on this issue.

I had a chance to re-read the G&T and Nikolsky articles over the last 24 hours and one comment that I think is worth making is this:

It is DEFINITELY important to Epicurus to have a sweeping definition of pleasure that includes basically any feeling of any kind that a person feels in any way. That means not only the "exuberant" activities like "sex, drugs, and rock and roll" but also all feels which are conscious in any way of the "smooth functioning" of the organism. This i take to be the meaning of Torquatus' example as to why the hand needs nothing more, because it is not in pain -- it is smoothly functioning, which is itself pleasurable.

It's this wide scope and sweep of the word "pleasure" that is important, because it is fundamental objection to Pleasure as the guide goal to observe that we don't always have the ability to pursue "sex, drugs, and rock and roll." Sometimes in life about all we can do, or should do, is calmly sit still and reflect on things that are mentally pleasurable to think about.

Those "quiet times" have to fall under the term "pleasure" in order for "pleasure" to be available to everyone everywhere except in the most extremely difficult of conditions -- and in those, where no pleasure of any kind is available or to be hoped for, that's where you can "exit the stage when the play ceases to please us.

But what I read in G&T and Nikolsky is pointing up that Epicurus' primary objective was to establish "Pleasure' as the guide/goal, and for that reason he (legitimately) wanted to include each and every and all experience of smooth functioning as under the umbrella of pleasure.

It's therefore a mistake polemically to deprecate any kind of pleasure, "static" or "active", because each have the place and time and appropriateness in life and an appreciation for ALL of them, working together as team, that's necessary in order to uphold "Pleasure" as the ultimate end rather than "virtue" or "godliness" or the other competitors for the title of "highest good."

In fact Don I suspect that after you read them you are going to conclude that their conclusions actually are consistent with yours.

The issue is much more on the level of "perspective" than it is on the details of ways that pleasure can be usefully discussed.

My best estimate of why this issue is significant is that:

- some people focus on the subject as a matter of considering details of types of pleasure, which is useful in itself, yes, but

- some people are focusing on the "polemical" aspect of the debate, in certain aspects of the details can be taken out of context to make it appear that Epicurus was being inconsistent, illogical, impractical, and useless. That's what Cicero was doing in general - attacking Epicurus - and so from the perspective of starting with the basics before moving into the details, these people see that these details can be used as a way to undermine the big picture. The examples from wikipedia are what we face today but it's interesting to note that Nikolsky published his paper in 2001 and thought it accurate to say:

"Practically every modern survey of the Epicurean conception of pleasure begins by saying that Epicurus' concept of pleasure was twofold: in the opinion of researchers, Epicurus distinguished two kinds of pleasure — a `static' pleasure or a pleasure 'in a state of rest' and a 'kinetic' pleasure or a pleasure 'in motion.'"

And G&T Published in 1981 and saw the same issue then.

The problem stretches much further back than that too.

Show notes: The Richard Dawkins article cited in the show:

Edge.org

1 - Unfortunately there is really no way for me to summarize their argument satisfactorily, because they dive deep into all the specific cites you are raising above. Butt I think the general answers are:

A -- YES - that is their ultimate position

B -- NO - In fact their chapter is right after the main chapter on Epicurus.

2 - Despite what might appear to some that this discussion is distracting or unnecessary, I realized in recording the podcast this morning that pursuing the details on difficult topics can be very motivational. I think DEWitt makes the comment that Epicurean philosophy flourished while it was the topic of controversy, and died away when people stopped arguing about it. "Arguing about it" is a very important part of keeping it alive / bringing it back.

Quote from Don

To that, I'd say "Bingo!" According to On Choices and other quoted material, Epicurus used the words katastematic and kinetic. Yes, I will continue to "assert" that. But *maybe* they weren't central to his philosophy because THEY'RE BOTH PLEASURES. He didn't see the need to belabor the point. He didn't put them in a hierarchy. He recognized that, sure, there are different kinds of pleasure. In fact, there are two general "species." But his philosophy stood on the assertion that PLEASURE is the Good to which everything else points. He then needed to demonstrate *how* to live pleasurably by making choices and rejections, etc. My take on the On Choices quote from Epicurus is (and I'll go ciceronian and put dialogue in his mouth):

Epicurus: "Sure, I'll agree with the general idea that there are katastematic and kinetic pleasures, but the important thing is that they're *both* pleasurable! You also have two hands. Do you lift heavy stones with only one hand? Of course not! In the same way, to have a pleasurable life you need to consider all pleasures as available to you, and choose among all pleasures prudently, making choices and rejections among them. There is a time for stillness, there is a time for dancing."

This is where you and i completely agree. The issue is not the direction you are going, the issue is that the direction the "Wikipedia Worldview" of Epicurus is going, which (if accepted) would make Epicurean philosophy completely unacceptable to most of the world, especially (in Cicero's words) "the Senate" and "the Camp."

If we take the wider view of pleasure on which both you and I agree, then these difficulties dissolve and Epicurean philosophy is seen to be completely and vitally relevant to everyone in every aspect of life, including "the Senate and the camp."

Quote from Don

That's the kind of thing that needs to be accounted for: What's actually stated in the text.

And I grant you it takes effort to get through the lengthy and detailed discussions in Gosling and Taylor and Nikolsky but they WILL help on this issue.

This is probably a good place to repeat and repost the "abstract" from Nikolsky's article, which very clearly and succinctly states the issue in two short paragaphs:

The real issue here comes down to whether

(1) the term "Pleasure" as the goal of life needs to be replaced with "katastematic pleasure" as Wikipedia's commentators would do, or

(2) the term "Pleasure" as the goal of life is perfectly adequate, but needs to be stated clearly to include ALL pleasurable aspects of life of any kind, mental or physical, resting or active, necessary or unnecessary, or any other categories one wants to come up with.

It's when the categories (which allow us to focus on certain aspects of pleasure that allow us to focus on what is important to us at a particular moment) take over the entire discussion that the cart gets before the horse. I think this is directly analogous to the issue with "virtue" -- so long as we understand "virtue" in its proper role of a thing which is valuable for producing pleasure, then "virtue" is a valuable thing to talk about. It's when 'virtue" becomes the goal in and of itself that the problem arises.

Here, 'katastematic pleasure," which is at most a single category of the much wider term "pleasure" threatens to take over the whole field, and crowds out a proper understanding that it is just one among many pleasures, not by any means the ultimate or highest or only significant pleasure to aim for.

Quote from Don

For the record, however, there is no doubt that Epicurus divided up pleasures into at least 2 different but related kinds. No matter what, we have to account for:

Unfortunately i cannot agree even with this statement. There is not doubt that Diogenes Laertius makes the assertion that that K/K distinction was significant to Epicurus, but there is strong reason to believe that Diogenes Laertius is wrong. And to "account for" the references that are cited is exactly what Gosling and Taylor and Nikolsky go through in great detail. The issue is not whether DL said what he said, but whether DL was right in saying it, and that's the crux of the problem.

We also know that for example Epicurus divided things into "natural and necessary," and that that distinction was significant to be recorded several places very clearly, including the principal doctrines, the letter to Menoeceus, and the vatican sayings

Whatever Epicurus may have thought about K/K, those thoughts were not significant enough to make it into those key documents. Here again, references to ataraxia and aponia are not admitted to be relevant to any kind of K/K distinction. The K/K distinction simply does not appear when the key aspect of pleasure as the good is discussed in the main places where pleasure is addressed.

And the reason why this is worth getting to the bottom of is what we see happening here - what is hardly more than a footnote in DL assumes significance out of all proportion to anything else, and comes to be seized on so as to take the place of the core original point about pleasure in the first place.

That's a large part of the reason Cicero seized on it -- to use as a battering ram to make the whole discussion of pleasure seem nonsensical.

"I can show you at this moment in the writings of Epicurus a graded list of goods just like that of our own school."

Yes that's a good catch, but as far as we know the Epicureans themselves (Philodemus, Lucretius, etc) didn't see fit to preserve such a list. There are lots of other cautions that could be made to taking that too far, but I think that's the most important ones, plus we do have the parts about natural and necessary and other issues that could also be considered to be sort of a gradation. But in the end, would one expect there to be an absolute list that's much more specific than food, water, air, shelter, etc? And in the end, even those do not take precedence at every moment of life.

Quote from Kalosyni

Also, there are circumstances in modern life that are much different than in Epicurus' time, which may alter how the teachings should be interpreted.

Absolutely there are differences in circumstances that would lead the general principles to be APPLIED in different ways, but if the core teachings themselves needed fundamental "reinterpretaton" then that would just be a way of saying that the philosophy core teachings are no longer relevant, which I would say is not true.

Quote from Kalosyni

then it would only make sense if Epicurus had clearly defined all of these categories.

Yes, any categories that Epicurus were really concerned about he would want to define, I agree. But the absence of more deliberate and stricter definitions in the core teachings also says something in the direction that what we are talking about are "principles" that will have different applications in different circumstances.

Yes Godfey, lots of good stuff in your post. The single thing I would particularly echo is the concern about "necessary" and "unnecessary" pleasures. There is no way to avoid, IMHO, the implication that someone who is talking about "unnecessary" pleasures seems to be relegating those pleasures to the modern ear to a second-place status.

I don't think that this was Epicurus' intent, and I don't think that he expected his words to be interpreted that way, but that's the way they are being interpreted in many corners, and I think that a full understanding of Epicurus requires a clear position that there isn't a list of "unnecessary" absolutes out there that end up pointing us to life in the proverbial cave in pursuit of only those that are "necessary."

I'll put this comment here, because it applies here, even though it applies in numerous other threads:

Why do I think this topic is so important that it needs to be discussed in so much detail?

Because I think the ULTIMATE point, on which I think Don and I agree, is that Epicurus taught that ALL Pleasure is desirable, that PLEASURE is the alpha and omega of a blessed life, and because there is ultimately no absolute standard of higher pleasures which all human beings should pursue equally.

The question in every case is that each person has to ask himself:

VS71. Every desire must be confronted by this question: What will happen to me if the object of my desire is accomplished, and what if it is not?

And there is no absolute right and wrong answer to that question using any form of categories that applies to everyone all the time and everywhere except "pleasure" and "pain."

Definitely there are lots of other ways of looking at the question, such as asking oneself whether the desire/ sought after pleasure is "natural" or "necessary," and you can ask whether it is bodily or mental, and how long the pleausure will last, and how much pain will be required to get that pleasure, and how intense the relative pains and pleasures will be, and all sorts of other "practical" questions.

But what the advocates of "katastematic" pleasure clearly appear to be doing, and we see it in the way the entries at wikipedia are written and in many of the recent articles, is to seek to replace "PLEASURE" in the minds of the student of Epicurus with something entirely different, but which does in effect relegate "pleasure" as commonly understood to be a term of second-place status. And that guts the heart out of Epicurean philosophy and replaces it with a minimalist, simplistic, "let's do just enough to get by so that we never experience any pain at all" mentality.

That's the danger, and that's the problem with focusing on "katastematic pleasure" as fundamental, that Gosling and Taylor, Nikolsly, and Wenham identify in very well- documented terms.

OK here is some important G&T discussion of the derivation of the katastematic term:

That's enough of my clips for now.

This is a very complicated subject about which the experts themselves are widely divergent, so my first and main position is that we need to be very careful about taking any position that implies that the goal of life is not adequately conveyed in the single word "pleasure."

The aponia statement is particularly important.

The question we are talking about is whether there is any form of "non-sensory pleasure" that was of importance to Epicurus, and they are arguing that there was *not* a "non-sensory" form of pleasure.

I perceive however that the real reason that we are having this discussion is that people are considering "katastematic pleasure" to be a form of sensory pleasure, and that's what Gosling and Taylor deny is the case based on their extensive study of PRE-Epicurean thought, during which these terms were apparently developed. Given that Epicurus did not take the time so far as we know it to offer his own discussion of "katastemic pleasure," if he cared about the term at all, it is a fair inference that we and he and everyone concerned with the issue should use the standard meaning of katastematic pleasure, which G&T assert to mean to be "non-sensory."

This is the full statement of the G&T position which explains the value of ataraxia and aponia without mixing them up with "katastematic pleasure":

Aside from showing what Gosling and Taylor are concluding (that katastematic pleasure is not a "greatest pleasure" or goal of life) the implicit presumption in these passages is that all pleasures which are "perceived" or "sensed" are kinetic, and that katastematic pleasures are not "perceived" or "sensed."

I still need to find the passage where G&T explain that, but I am afraid it is buried deep in a prior chapter.

So the point I am presenting is not that ataraxia and aponia are not wonderful things. The point I am presenting, and that G&T are arguing, is that experiences of ataraxia and aponia are *perceptions* and therefore do not meet the definition of "katastematic pleasure" in the authorities who devote time to talking about that term.

It seems apparent that Epicurus was not himself someone who spent a great deal of time talking about the term "Katastematic" and so for the accepted definition of that term among other groups we are going to have to look elsewhere. (We'll find it eventually in G&T, perhaps using the cites in the Nikolsky or Wenham articles.)

So I will be arguing that the issue is not whether concepts denoted by peace of mind and freedom of pain are valuable to an Epicurean - they certainly are.

The question is whether these pleasures are in fact properly called "katastematic" and I will be citing the chapter devoted to just this question in Gosling and Taylor, which we have on the forum here:

File

Gosling & Taylor - On Katastematic and Kinetic Pleasure

Gosling & Taylor on Katastematic and Kinetic Pleasure

Cassius

February 3, 2018 at 1:28 PM

They go into great length debating the different positions, but here is one of their conclusory paragraphs. Unfortunately G&T go into great detail to consider every possible position, so they number their paragraphs in excruciating detail and often seem to be debating themselves. It's really necessary to read the full chapter to see how they marshall their evidence AGAINST the view that it was an important aspect of Epicureanism to distinguish between kinetic and katastematic pleasures.

It's not good form to argue authorities, but few of us have written a whole book on the Greek views on pleasure, so the Gosling & Taylor viewpoint which they document at great length deserves (at least) a lot of attention.

That's a nice list of positive experiences in which pain is absent, but why do you think that those experiences are the same as "katastematic" pleasure?

I would say that those are experiences of living breathing active people who *feel* those experiences, and are no different than any other kind of experiences of pleasure.

All references to peace and absence of pain are equally explainable as conscious and active experiences of the mind which we find pleasurable. We will have to dig into the authorities to verify or dispute this, but active experiences of the mind are to my reading kinetic.

This topic is always good for new discussion, and the thought just occurs to me today, connecting this topic with the term "shibboleth" as to the size of the sun, that here's another angle:

I am not sure whether Epicurus was aware in his own time of people who think this way (I am referring to scholars who are vigilantly "idealist" on the subject of the Epicurean gods) but if he were alive in the 20th/21st centuries he would definitely observe what the reaction I see today, which contrasts sharply with what even later Epicureans including apparently Philodemus had to say:

Epicurus was absolutely clear that his definition of gods was non-supernatural, non-omniscient, non-omnipotent, and totally without involvement in human affairs, and he really gave them no specific attributes at all other than deathlessness combined with the ability to "have a good time" without any pain, and to do this consistently and without end. As such, these beings are absolutely no threat to any of us (including to those scholars) and the Epicurean gods are really nothing more than what we would think of as "advanced space aliens" who are of little more relevance to us other than as good material for endless "Star Trek" episodes.

Nevertheless, just like with "pleasure as the good" and "pigs as mascots" and "the size of the sun," there exists a strong tendency in certain scholars to want to have absolutely nothing to do with Epicurus' suggestions as to these extraterrestrial beings. These scholars do everything in their power to write entirely out of Epicurean philosophy the position that the Epicurean gods could be "real," just like they would write out "pleasure" and "pigs" and "the size of the sun."

And interestingly at the same time such people are frequently (I presume) perfectly happy to watch science fiction movies about advanced races, they are frequently advocates of animal "rights" and the nobility of intelligent animals (dolphins, etc) and they certainly have no problems engaging in the pursuit of pleasure so long as they don't admit it publicly.

So in my own mind I am seeing a collection of "shibboleths" or "litmus tests" which do serve well as indications of where a scholar really is on Epicurus:

1. Do they focus on "Ataraxia" or "Katastematic Pleasure" as the highest good?

2. Do they run away from the "pig" model not for the reason that Cicero did (comparing Epicureans to living like cows) but as animals that pursue "unworthy" pleasures?

3. Do they default to the position that Epicurus was just wrong about the size of the sun so forget about the issue?

And to those I would add:

4. Are those scholars constantly on a campaign to "prove" that Epicurus was misrepresenting his own view of extraterrestrial "gods"?

All of us (including me) are going to go through various phases in our personal views on answers to those questions. However I am also convinced that the longer one studies, and the more one is willing to avoid "compartmentalization" so as to preserve some aspect of one's "modern" viewpoints, the more that person is going to appreciate the depth of Epicurus' thinking and conclude that none of these positions were lightly or erroneously chosen.