Posts by Cassius

That's great! Let us know you thoughts and any questions of particular interest as you read through them. That's what we're here for!

Quote from Titus

He also argues that Epicurus is characterized by words by Sidonius Apollinaris:

"You do not burn with envy at the thought of those paintings all over the gymnasia of the Areopagus and in the prytanea showing Speusippus with his head bowed forward, Aratus with his head bent back, Epicurus with unwrinkled skin, Diogenes with long beard, Socrates with trailing hair, Aristotle with out-thrust arm."

That's an interesting quote I don't think I have focused on before. Do those observations also carry over beyond Socrates and Aristotle also to Speusippus and Aratus? I will have to look up what is available on that. I suppose it could be argued that the figure in orange does not appear to have wrinkled skin either.

If someone were looking for "fat and sleek...." then the wreathed figure does fit that description, but would that not refer to "a hog in Epicurus' herd" rather than to Epicurus himself?

Episode 94 of the Lucretius Today podcast is now available. Today we continue our examination of Epicurean Ethics by reading further into the Torquatus narrative contained in Cicero's "On Ends." Our topic today is Torquatus' further introduction of the issues involved with pleasure being the goal of life, as well as how this is a principle of wide application, extending even to his own family's history of military leadership for Rome.

As long as "red" and "sweet" are not thought of as changing our definition of what an apple is, and are considered only as varieties of apples which are not intrinsically better or worse than others according to some outside value judgment, I would agree with that.

Also a variation would be caramel apples, dried apples, sliced apples, apple pie, etc --- with the point being that these are different ways in which apples can be enjoyed, but (1) not intrinsically better or worse than another, but according to personal taste (how pleasant you feel it to be), and (2) without thinking that these varieties of ways to eat apples are somehow ordained by nature as categories in themselves which we have some intrinsic significance of their own (which might also imply some kind of natural ranking of worthiness).

As additional incentive to re-read Nikolsky:

It would also help the discussion to know if you disagree with any of the major assertions of the Nikolsky article, and if so, why.

Good points as to those quotes, but without the surrounding context we don't have the important part of the assertion that is generally made, which is that pleasures of rest are superior and the goal of pleasures of action. In fact by the absence of those statements in these excerpts we have the opposite implication, that such conclusion does not exist. And the reason for DL looking for those excerpts to pull out is what Nikolsky explains - the division suggested by Carnaedes.

Note also this footnote from page 444 of the Nikolsky article, and the section it references;

So I think again we're basically in agreement as to our final interpretation, the issue is what is to be done with that interpretation. I know you are saying you don't see any harm in using it, and I agree, just so long as we all stay aware that the implications that some pleasures can by value judgment be determined to be higher or lower is not allowed to take root and grow, because THAT is the lever by which the Platonists seek to overturn the whole analysis. You don't do that yourself because you are now convinced that moral value judgments do not supercede pleasure (or at least I think you are ). But the majority of the world is not convinced of that, and they will immediately join the k-k distinction to the value judgment that only katastematic is worth pursuing, and that is why you see that assertion in virtually every modern article written about Epicurus.

So there's a problem to be dealt with and I look forward to everyone's suggestions on how to do so.

Welcome to Episode Ninety-Five of Lucretius Today.

This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who lived in the age of Julius Caesar, and who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the only complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world.

I am your host Cassius, and together with our panelists from the EpicureanFriends.com forum, we'll walk you through the six books of Lucretius' poem, and we'll discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. We encourage you to study Epicurus for yourself, and we suggest the best place to start is the book "Epicurus and His Philosophy" by Canadian professor Norman DeWitt.

At this point in our podcast we have completed our first line-by-line review of the poem, and we have temporarily turned to the presentation of Epicurean ethics found in Cicero's On Ends, as narrated by "Torquatus." But before we start with today's episode, let me remind you of our three ground rules:

First: Our aim is to bring you an accurate presentation of classical Epicurean philosophy as the ancient Epicureans understood it, which is not the same as presented by many modern commentators. We hope that our fresh perspective will encourage you to rethink the meaning of Epicurean philosophy for yourself.

Second: We won't be talking about contemporary philosophical or political issues in this podcast, and in fact we will stay as far away from them as possible. We want everyone to understand that Epicurus had a unique philosophy of his own. Epicurus was not a Stoic, a Humanist, a Buddhist, a Taoist, an Atheist, a Marxist, or a modern politician of the left or right - and it is very unfair to Epicurus and to ourselves to try to force Epicurean philosophy into one of those modern boxes.

Third: Lucretius' poem is mainly concerned with the many details of Epicurean physics, but we'll always try to learn from those details what they mean for the best way to live our own lives. Lucretius will show that Epicurus was not obsessed with luxury, but neither did he teach minimalism or asceticism, as you often find written on the internet today. Epicurus taught that pleasure is the ultimate guide of life, not supernatural gods, not the abstractions of idealism, and not absolute notions of "virtue." Epicurus taught that there are no supernatural beings, no fate, and no life after death. That means that any happiness we will ever have must come in this life, which is why it is so important not to waste time in confusion.

If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive to you, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where you will find a discussion thread for each of our podcast episodes and many other topics.

Now let's join our panel for today's discussion, with Martin reading today's text:

XI. [37] But let what has been said on this occasion suffice concerning the brilliant and famous actions of illustrious men. We shall indeed find a fitting opportunity by and by for discoursing about the tendency of all the virtues towards pleasure. At present however I shall shew what is the essence and what are the characteristics of pleasure, so as to remove all confusion caused by ignorant people, and to make it clear how serious, how sober, how austere is that school which is esteemed to be pleasure-seeking, luxurious and effeminate. For the pleasure which we pursue is not that alone which excites the natural constitution itself by a kind of sweetness, and of which the sensual enjoyment is attended by a kind of agreeableness, but we look upon the greatest pleasure as that which is enjoyed when all pain is removed. Now inasmuch as whenever we are released from pain, we rejoice in the mere emancipation and freedom from all annoyance, and everything whereat we rejoice is equivalent to pleasure, just as everything whereat we are troubled is equivalent to pain, therefore the complete release from pain is rightly termed pleasure. For just as the mere removal of annoyance brings with it the realization of pleasure, whenever hunger and thirst have been banished by food and drink, so pain is removed. For just as the mere removal of annoyance brings with it the realization of pleasure, whenever hunger and thirst have been banished by food and drink, so in every case the banishment of pain ensures its replacement by pleasure.

[38] Therefore Epicurus refused to allow that there is any middle term between pain and pleasure; what was thought by some to be a middle term, the absence of all pain, was not only itself pleasure, but the highest pleasure possible. Surely any one who is conscious of his own condition must needs be either in a state of pleasure or in a state of pain. Epicurus thinks that the highest degree of pleasure is defined by the removal of all pain, so that pleasure may afterwards exhibit diversities and differences but is incapable of increase or extension.

[39] But actually at Athens, as my father used to tell me, when he wittily and humorously ridiculed the Stoics, there is in the Ceramicus a statue of Chrysippus, sitting with his hand extended, which hand indicates that he was fond of the following little argument: Does your hand, being in its present condition, feel the lack of anything at all? Certainly of nothing. But if pleasure were the supreme good, it would feel a lack. I agree. Pleasure then is not the supreme good. My father used to say that even a statue would not talk in that way, if it had power of speech. The inference is shrewd enough as against the Cyrenaics, but does not touch Epicurus. For if the only pleasure were that which, as it were, tickles the senses, if I may say so, and attended by sweetness overflows them and insinuates itself into them, neither the hand nor any other member would be able to rest satisfied with the absence of pain apart from a joyous activity of pleasure. But if it is the highest pleasure, as Epicurus believes, to be in no pain, then the first admission, that the hand in its then existing condition felt no lack, was properly made to you, Chrysippus, but the second improperly, I mean that it would have felt a lack had pleasure been the supreme good. It would certainly feel no lack, and on this ground, that anything which is cut off from the state of pain is in the state of pleasure.

Also as I edit I think we are going to want to circle back and discuss the bowling analogy proposed by Josha at around the 45 minute mark. I'd like to question whether that analogy has a "time" component that would need to be considered.

I think Joshua's subsequent question about micro vs macro evolution bears on what I am asking: Must the goal of a living being at any moment along the lane be judged in accord with the end of the lane, a point that depending on how long a person lives might never be reached (again, using the bowling alley analogy).

Around probably the fifteen minute mark of today's podcast we look for but never find a word for the Christian church father practice of "innoculating" the flesh against sin. Upon editing the podcast I think I remember now that the word I was looking for was "mortifying" the flesh - or mortification. Joshua or Don can correct me if there's a better word for what we were discussing.

Quote from Cassius

Just as an aside, I am at peace with the idea that if I live for another 30 years into my doddering old age I will still be engaged in this precise debate til the very end.

But that doesn't mean I want to do it exactly the same way, over and over. This is probably where it makes sense to develop a way to convey the shade of meaning used in a particular context, so that it is clear for example when someone means "good-in-and-of-itself" or "good-as-desirable-for-the-moment-as-a-tool" or "good-as-pleasant." And I am sure there are more shades of meaning that are important to set out.

Likewise we need to be more clear on:

(1) the relationship of "feeling" and "sense" and what it means to "experience" something.

(2) the shades of meaning of "pleasure," including the issue of comparatively choosing between different pleasures.

If we can come up with a set of key issues for discussion we can start separate threads on each and maybe eventually find a way to make them "required reading" for new people at the forum.

Just as an aside, I am at peace with the idea that if I live for another 30 years into my doddering old age I will still be engaged in this precise debate til the very end.

There's no getting around it: people come to the discussion thinking about their own experiences, and they have their own definitions. I do that too.

But in order to be able to carry on a clear conversation, we have to take a lot of time to explain what the words mean in a particular context. Most of the good people who are smart enough to reject the mainstream and come to the study of Epicurus know enough to realize that the mainstream doesn't make sense, but they haven't taken seriously what the Platonists and Stoics were really saying. They don't get the implications of "virtue is its own reward" and what "good in itself" is really talking about. They think that the Platonists and Stoics and everyone else just wants to live a happy life, and the only thing that separates us is the details of how to get there.

I want to be clear than I don't think I am smarter than other people and I certainly could be wrong, but until you go through the details of the Platonic arguments in Philebus and elsewhere I don't think most people today will appreciate the differences and the depth of the word game that's involved in explaining those differences.

And that means that for the six or so years that this website has existed we have gone round and round on that issue. No matter how long it continues to exist into the future, and so long as new people come to the discussion, it will be necessary to go into it over and over again.

So I hope we all enjoy the ride and maybe every time we go through it we can find new and better ways to explain what it's all about.

The time to worry would be if we don't have this discussion, because that would indicate we are stagnant and not expanding.

Quote

To claim that pleasure is good, then, does not mean imagining that all pleasures are equally good (Jones, 1989: 49–50).

OK right off the bat I say to that writer -- NO! Clearly Epicurus says that all pleasure are good, and all pains are bad -- yes you have to drill down, but this is where I think Godfrey is clearly correct because now the emphasis is on choiceworthiness and desire, but that doesn't mean that they still aren't "good" in the sense of pleasing. I know that we are now going down the rabbit hole of the meaning of "good," but in these philosophical discussions I strongly think that unless we generally refer to "good" as meaning "good in itself" then we never get anywhere in being clear.

Quote

Epicureans therefore distinguished between two categories (Mitsis, 1988: 45–51; Preuss, 1994: Ch. 6).

I also of course question this. D.L. did so, per the quote above. Cicero did so. But show me an instance of an authoritative EPICUREAN doing that distinguishing.

As I read the rest of that I won't comment in as much detail other than to say that I don't doubt that Mil and Bentham were struggling with their formulations because they where in fact trying to distinguish higher and lower pleasures - which means that they were looking for a standard other than pleasure itself.

Unfortunately I have to say that the entire analysis of that excerpt strikes me as totally disastrous, for the reason that is explained amply in Philebus.

Once anyone starts down the road of saying that some pleasures are "more good" or "higher" or "lower" than others, then you are introducing into the discussion the strong implication that there is another standard - a standard outside of pleasure itself, by which you can rank pleasures into "more good" or "less good" or "higher" or "lower" or "more noble" or "less noble." You are then inevitably led to the conclusion that the "art of distinguishing the higher from the lower" is more important than pleasure itself. And what is the "art of distinguishing the higher and the lower"? Of course it's WISDOM (even call it PRUDENCE if you like) -- which are VIRTUES -- and you are led to conclude, as Philebus surrendered and concluded, that wisdom is the true target of life and not pleasure.

This thread is advancing my thoughts on this topic for the reason I stated to Kalosyni: "We all can feel at times what it means to "rest" and to have a "good attitude" and a "positive outlook" and similar emotions and feelings. We know that those are important to us, and so when we read (from the commentators!!!) that Epicurus was really interested in "resting" pleasures, we presume "Oh that makes sense and I totally agree!" and we end up endorsing the "kinetic / katastematic distinction" as if it were a really important part of Epicurean philosophy."

So I strongly think that was these commentators are doing. They are so immersed into the "psychological" or even "clinical" perspective that they assure themselves that because they identify in their own minds background feelings which they think are important, and they want to find that in Epicurus, they grasp at these few lines from DL and from Epicurus and say "See, this is where the Epicureans said what we modern psychologists say!" But they are trying to graft that psychological viewpoint on top of the foundational philosophic battle over these words and goals that was going on between Stoics and Epicureans after Epicurus himself was long dead. The danger in doing so is that if you start playing around with the debate about "the good" (which is what so much of Greek philosophy was all about) by changing it around to fit one's views of psychology, then you make it impossible to see what the foundational argument was all about.

We're continuing to go back and forth on this issue of whether pleasures can be "ranked" in our individual lives, or chosen between in daily life. Of course they can and should be chosen between, all pleasures are not exactly the same in every respect. But the very definition of pleasure is that it "feels good" to us and if some fundamental meaning is put on "good" of the "feels good" other than "pleasant," then you're implying that there is a standard outside and superior to pleasure.

So I assert that it is foundational that "all pleasures are good" and that cannot convey any meaning other than that "all pleasures are pleasing." It makes sense to say "some pleasures are more pleasing than others" because that is how we feel them to be (duration, intensity, etc). But to vaguely say that "some pleasures are more good than others" implies that there is a standard of choiceworthiness other than how pleasing they are.

Yes in strictly Epicurean terms we can define "pleasing" and "good" to mean exactly the same thing, and we can use those words interchangeably.

But the world is full of Stoics and Platonists and Peripatetics, and they assuredly do NOT mean "pleasing" and "good" to mean exactly the same thing. We as Epicureans are a very small minority, and if we don't make this distinction clear then we get swept up in the tide of Platonism and lose any claim to distinctiveness.

So the concluding lines of that excerpt are in my mind pure Platonism/Stoicism: "What matters is not just what we do but the reasons why we do what we do (Jones, 1989: 51)." That's where you end up, just like Philebus, when you decide to rank pleasures as "lower" or "higher" on a scale outside of pleasure itself (Lower or higher here implying "less noble" or "more noble.")

I would say strongly no to that last sentence of the excerpt -- "the reasons why we do what we do" rings of "virtue" ---What matters is not the "reason" (our understanding of "wisdom" or of "why") but the actual practical result - whether our lives are pleasing or not. Yes we want wisdom in order to produce pleasure, but what "matters" is the result (pleasure) not the too (wisdom).

And Cicero's own very unflattering views of Epicurus and of the role of pleasure and virtue (if he can be believed in writing this to his own son):

For now, one more comment as to Cicero's own views, this from the first part of De Officiis, which Cicero wrote to his son:

OK I have re-read the Wenham Article ("On Cicero's Interpretation of Katastematic Pleasure") and I do need to correct what I said above:

I now remember why I find Wenham's article useful, but not in the way of Gosling & Taylor and Nikolsky.

The key point of departure in Wenham is that when Wenham is forced to decide whether Cicero (1) misrepresented Epicurus or (2) misunderstood Epicurus, Wenham departs from G&T and decides to go easy on Cicero and accuse him of incompetence rather than malevolence. Here's the key part - Wenham is sure Cicero is wrong, but the question is WHY:

.... And so Wenham decides that CIcero simply must be wrong. The rest of the article gives his reasoning, which is where my memory was bad. Wenham says (I think rightly) that Epicurus held that pleasure is pleasure because it can be experienced, and so Wenham concludes that whatever katastematic pleasure it, is must be felt / experienced just like kinetic pleasure.

Maybe you'll read the article differently than I do, but where does that leave Wenham in describing what katastemtatic pleasure must mean (under this theory)? I've read over the article several times, and I think he's left right where we would expect. He can't and doesn't even try to define katastematic pleasure as separate from kinetic. All he does is conclude that whatever it is, it must be "experienced" or "felt" because that's the way Epicurus looked at pleasure.

So as I read it this article would implicitly support Don's current position, but I say that still convinced that the reason Wenham stops where he does is that he doesn't follow Gosling & Taylor to the logical conclusion that Nikolsky took them. Wenham chooses to believe that despite Cicero's sweeping knowledge, access to the Epicurean friends and teachers, and Cicero's own training in Epicurean philosophy, that Cicero simply "misunderstood" what Epicurus was saying.

That's where I would say that people should trust there instincts and always beware of lawyers!

And so i take the position taken by Norman DeWitt, another line I haven't forgotten despite my poor memory: "i do not believe he could have misrepresented the truth so successfully had he not understood it completely."

Quote from Don

In my study, I'm coming to the conclusion that katastematic pleasure refers to deriving pleasure from a stable (albeit temporary) state or condition while kinetic pleasure has to do with deriving pleasure from an action.

it will be beneficial as we go along in the future to to post sources so we can see what exactly exists in the Epicurean texts to support the respective reconstructions.

Quote from Kalosyni

For me the katastematic "pleasure at rest" is a mental sense of satisfaction and gratitude, a quiet feeling of joy...when everything is fullfilled.

See the difficulty there is that if you can "feel" the sensation of pleasure -- which I think is doubly clear when you refer to it as joy, then by definition according to the scholars what you are feeling is not katastematic pleasure - it is kinetic simply because you do in fact feel and enjoy it.

Once again I want to be especially clear: I am not criticizing yours or anyone else's descriptions of what you feel. What I am doing is pointing out that when you dive deep into the technical terms that they were using in ancient Greeks, there is a lot of specificity that we as "normal people" who haven't devoted our lives to studying ancient Greek and Greek philosophy don't have any way of knowing about.

In fact as I write this comment I think what we're talking about here is exactly what a large number of commentators are doing and have done to us. We all can feel at times what it means to "rest" and to have a "good attitude" and a "positive outlook" and similar emotions feelings. We know that those are important to us, and so when we read (from the commentators!!!) that Epicurus was really interested in "resting" pleasures, we presume "Oh that makes sense and I totally agree!" and we end up endorsing the "kinetic / katastematic distinction" as if it were a really important part of Epicurean philosophy.

To the contrary, I think Nikolsky, Gosling & Taylor, Wenham, and others (I'll include dewitt here) have totally demolished that argument and upended the academic viewpoint. They have done so not by showing that such pleasures don't exist - they clearly do! But rather the academic viewpoint has never been consistent with or perceptive in understanding what Epicurus taught. You can't follow the full argument without the information that Nikolsky provides, which is that this darned katastematic-kinetic distinction is an essentially STOIC method of categorization, and that it likely appears in Diogenes Laertius only because by 300 AD (when DL wrote) and even by 50 BC (when Cicero was trying to defeat Epicureans with word games) it had become common practice among philosophers to split up types of pleasures using those terms. DL was going through chapter after chapter of Greek philosophers attempting to explain their positions in terms that people in 300AD would expect to see, and in 300 AD most people interested in philosophy (not necessarily including Epicureans of the day) expected to hear about katastematic pleasure.

OK - again - these aren't my arguments, these are the arguments of people a lot smarter than me (Gosling, Taylor, Nikolsky, etc.)

But I will repeat too that I think Wenham points out a real key to the situation. If you always keep in mind that nothing trumps PD2, and that all good and evil comes to us through sensation, and without sensation we're dead, and that nothing that doesn't produce sensation is of any concern to us, then you will burn in your mind that "pleasure" (which we all seem to agree is the ultimate goal) must come to us through sensation - through experience. And is apparently universal among the literati that the definition of katastematic pleasure EXCLUDES pleasure that can be sensed. I leave it to you to unwind what that means as to "katastematic pleasure" as the ancient Greeks defined it, but I suggest to everyone that Epicurus was interested in pleasure that can be felt. Pleasure that can't be felt - no matter what term is applied to it, not only cannot therefore be the highest good, as so many allege, but I would allege in turn that if it can't be felt it is of no more concern to us than death itself.

Which makes it prime territory for the Stoics and other logicians, who apparently where the ones obsessing over the term.

I haven't re-read either the Nikolsky article or the Gosling & Taylor chapter, but if I recall one of my reactions to G&T it is that there is an in my view extreme difficulty in ascertaining what "katastematic" pleasure really is if it cannot be sensed. I tend to focus on the fact that that which cannot be sensed is nothing to us, as in PD2, and if we are defining Katastematic pleasure in that way then that poses real problems for the person asserting that it is important, much less that it is the true goal of life.

But to really dig into this it's necessary to go back in the history that G&T present, because what I am remembering is not just that any pleasure that can be sensed is by definition kinetic, it's really an issue of "change" or "motion" at the deepest level that is involved. In other words that's why the referenced "learning" but it goes further -- if you can sense any change at all, much less a beginning or an end, to the activity, then it's kinetic. In fact you pretty much have to rule out anything that is an "activity" or anything that you "feel" -- which gets into the complicated implications of "feeling" vs. "sensation." I personally think it's fair to say that if you can "feel" the pleasure then you're engaged in a kinetic pleasure, and that includes "feeling good" or "feeling appreciation for a work of art" or "feeling happy" or any other experience of life. In fact that focus on "experience" - if I recall correctly - is the point of the Wenham artlcle, because the argument would be that anything that can be "experienced" is kinetic -- meaning that katastematic pleasure (I get to the point where I hate even to type the word) cannot be "experienced."

Wenham - On Cicero's Interpretation of Katastematic Pleasure in Epicurus

(I'm really going out on a limb here because I haven't read Wenham in a long time, and my memory is already questionable - I hope I am at least partly right in citing him for that proposition. )

Edit:

OK yes glancing at the abstract indicates to me that while I may have to be corrected, there's probably at least some resemblance between the way I described it and the content of the article:

Well, "rest" is another word that has lots of shades of meaning.

"Coming to rest" in atomic terms is never anything more than temporary, while at the other extreme a thing like "horseness" was intended (in my view)to refer to something eternally unchangeable.