Posts by Cassius

SInce all of us have unlimited time to read every possible article on this subject (joke!), here is the Packer article that DeWitt is referencing. I read it when I first found it several years ago, but don't remember much about it. I seem to remember that she questions Torquatus' illustration of the best and worst lives because she thinks that the description of the best life is too active, which is a position I disagree with, so I don't cite the article very often. But it's possible that the rest of the article touches on the issue that we are discussing here (the manner of presenting arguments about the "greatest good), so it might be worth re-reading.

File

CIcero's Presentation of Epicurean Ethics - By Mary Porter Packer (1938)

A study based primarily on De Finibus I and II

Cassius

February 16, 2022 at 1:27 PM

This thought just occurs to me:

Do we think that Cicero's Torquatus was mistaken to frame the discussion the way he did? If so, do we think;

1 ) Cicero intentionally or negligently misrepresents the Epicurean argument by doing this?

2) Cicero was accurately reporting the way Epicureans were arguing in 50 BC?

I ask that because if we begin to have a consensus that this form of argument was an error in talking to Cicero (who certainly did not agree with Epicurean definitions) then we might profit from figuring out how this happened.

And in that regard I have more "immortal" words from Norman DeWitt on Cicero's presentation of Epicurean ethics: "I do not believe he could have misrepresented the truth so successfully had he not understood it so completely." (Note - this isn't necessary a reference to this part of Torquatus, but to Cicero's commentary on Epicurus in general.)

Quote from Godfrey

The quote from Godfrey references this quote from Don It seems to me that the "actual linguistic meaning" of"good", at its most basic, is simply "that which provides pleasure." "Evil" is"that which causes pain." I'm pretty sure we can all agree on this.

To me it becomes questionable when it's stated as "the Good", and that seems to be just a philosophical argument which leads down a rabbit hole and is of limited or no practical use. All of the examples in post #37 are "lower case" goods and make sense both practically and philosophically as far as I can tell.

I'll repeat this more clearly below but it seems to me that the issue is that while WE can agree on this, using Epicurean terminology, this terminology differs greatly from all non-Epicurean terminology and so is very confusing unless we constantly restate our context.

Quote from smoothiekiwi

surprised how little of a hedonist (in the modern sense of the world)

Yes, another occasion on which I can say "I hate that word" ("hedonist") this is where Elli's curse on the use of "isms" terminology rings the most true.

Quote from Don

Okay, good! Now, we're getting somewhere. So, as a generic adjective or noun in common speech, we all(?) can agree on this this meaning of good and evil.

Again as cited above, WE can, but the rest of the world strongly disagrees. How do we handle that?

Quote from Don

I am glad Godfrey cited "practical wisdom is the greatest good." Do we have problems with that statement?

Yes it seems like we can line up more than one "greatest good" description from Epicurus. At least this one, and then the one about escape from a deadly peril, seem targeted at a greatest good, then of course we have Torquatus saying that Epicurus held it to be "pleasure." I wonder how many we could come up with, if we tried to list them?

So in terms of getting somewhere can we even regroup far enough back to decide what our goal is here?

1. I think we agree that Epicurus held pleasure to be "good."
2. I don't think we agree whether Epicurus held there to be one or many goods, although it appears that maybe the weight of the evidence is that he held there to be multiple goods?
3. I don't think we agree (do we?) that Epicurus himself used the formulation greatest good (?) Unless we accept what Torquatus wrote we don't have that in Epicurus' own words do we? Something that implies that there are multiple goods and that pleasure is the greatest of them?
4. I think we may agree that Epicurus is using "good" with a different definition than most other philosophers (?)
5. Do we have even a proposal as to how to deal with using Epicurus' definition while acknowledging that the rest of the world uses it differently? In the case of gods we can call them "Epicurean Gods." Are we suggesting that in this context we need to use the term "Epicurean Good" or "Epicurean Greatest Good" to avoid confusion?

Excellent post and no need to worry about repetition. We'll be repeating this as long as we live.

Quote from smoothiekiwi

. In order to gain the maximum pleasure, we have to keep a balance, but the goal doesn't become the balance itself- it's only an instrument...

I do think that you're using the word colloquially, so that "balance" is find as an approximation of the issue, but in the end it is probably an important point that "balance" is not in itself a goal. We don't want a "Balance" of pleasure and pain, for example, or a balance between nutritious food and poison.

There are lots of ways to talk about this and I can't even begin to list them. I really don't care for the word "prudent" because of its modern connotations, but I guess that really is more in the direction we're looking for. We aren't looking in most cases for "balance" - we're looking for the "right amount" that maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain.

My answer to that question to Don is that some (but not many) don't have the mental capacity to see the full extent of the philosophy. Also it may be a reference to the reality that some people are sickly and die almost from birth, and never develop the capacity through no fault of their own.

And this also touches on "how long do you have to live in order to live a full life?"

But that "full life" is probably another one of those conceptual traps like "the good."

Just to be clear about Wright, here I think is the heart of what we need to be concerned about:

"...Certain images of virtue, vice, truth, knowledge, are presented to the imagination, and these abstract qualities, or we may call them, figurative beings, are made at once the objects of speculation and adoration. A law is laid down, and the feelings and opinions of men are predicated upon it; a theory is built, and all animate and inanimate nature is made to speak in its support; an hypothesis is advanced, and all the mysteries of nature are treated as explained."

She didn't use the word "good" in this list, but I am thinking this is what we need to avoid doing ourselves with "good" and "evil," so as to avoid being sucked into the games that other schools play when they try to do exactly that.

We're on firm ground when we are discussing pleasure and pain, but much less so in discussing good and evil.

Note on this passage from Wright:

Maybe I am feeling inadequate, or I want to flatter us in this discussion, or something, but whenever I read that paragraph, and especially now in regard to this current discussion, I see this argument as"DEEP" and very possibly brilliant. It's not something that someone can pick out from a couple of readings of Diogenes Laertius at twenty years old, no matter how smart someone is.

We've been studying Epicurus for quite some time, reading lots of commentators and articles, and I don't think I've seen much anywhere that gets at this issue like she does here. These are not the thoughts of someone who has had only a couple of years of exposure to Epicurus, not unless those were *very* intense years, with some very good people with whom to compare notes.

It seems Frances Wright had access to numbers of relatives and friends who were into materialist philosophy, so maybe we can still yet discover in her circles some other writers who she herself bounced off of to gain some of her insights. And that continues to be my point on this: Yes - All praise to Frances Wright for giving this to us, but I want more of it, and maybe more of it actually exists that we can find in the future.

Although I think she carried this too far, I think we need to consider what Wright said in Chapter 15:

Quote

“I apprehend the difficulties,” observed Leontium, “which embarrass the mind of our young friend. Like most aspirants after knowledge, he has a vague and incorrect idea of what he is pursuing, and still more, of what may be attained. In the schools you have hitherto frequented,” she continued, addressing the youth, “certain images of virtue, vice, truth, knowledge, are presented to the imagination, and these abstract qualities, or we may call them, figurative beings, are made at once the objects of speculation and adoration. A law is laid down, and the feelings and opinions of men are predicated upon it; a theory is built, and all animate and inanimate nature is made to speak in its support; an hypothesis is advanced, and all the mysteries of nature are treated as explained. You have heard of, and studied various systems of philosophy; but real philosophy is opposed to all systems. Her whole business is observation; and the results of that observation constitute all her knowledge. She receives no truths, until she has tested them by experience; she advances no opinions, unsupported by the testimony of facts; she acknowledges no virtue, but that involved in beneficial actions; no vice, but that involved in actions hurtful to ourselves or to others. Above all, she advances no dogmas, — is slow to assert what is, — and calls nothing impossible. The science of philosophy is simply a science of observation, both as regards the world without us, and the world within; and, to advance in it, are requisite only sound senses, well developed and exercised faculties, and a mind free of prejudice. The objects she has in view, as regards the external world, are, first, to see things as they are, and secondly, to examine their structure, to ascertain their properties, and to observe their relations one to the other. — As respects the world within, or the philosophy of mind, she has in view, first, to examine our sensations, or the impressions of external things on our senses; which operation involves, and is involved in, the examination of those external things themselves: secondly, to trace back to our sensations, the first development of all our faculties; and again, from these sensations, and the exercise of our different faculties as developed by them, to trace the gradual formation of our moral feelings, and of all our other emotions: thirdly, to analyze all these our sensations, thoughts, and emotions, — that is, to examine the qualities of our own internal, sentient matter, with the same, and yet more, closeness of scrutiny, than we have applied to the examination of the matter that is without us: finally, to investigate the justness of our moral feelings, and to weigh the merit and demerit of human actions; which is, in other words, to judge of their tendency to produce good or evil, — to excite pleasurable or painful feelings in ourselves or others. You will observe, therefore, that, both as regards the philosophy of physics, and the philosophy of mind, all is simply a process of investigation. It is a journey of discovery, in which, in the one case, we commission our senses to examine the qualities of that matter, which is around us, and, in the other, endeavor, by attention to the varieties of our consciousness, to gain a knowledge of those qualities of matter which constitute our susceptibilities of thought and feeling.”

Note - this isn't the only deep part -- most all of Chapter 15 is deep and related to this issue.

Quote from Nate

Is there a good that is equal to or greater than pleasure? If we cannot identify a good that is at least equal to pleasure, then I think we can safely say that pleasure is not just a good, but rather the good, the "greatest" good.

I think we crossposted and I did not see this initially. I think you're probably right that we cannot identify a "good" higher than pleasure, but now I am concerned that I do not know what "good"" really is!

And that reminds us of course of the statement that we would not have the ability to conceive the good without the pleasures of sex etc......

Diogenes Laertius: [06] They say that he wrote to many other women of pleasure and particularly to Leontion, with whom Metrodorus was also in love; and that in the treatise _On the End of Life_ he wrote, ‘I know not how I can conceive the good, if I withdraw the pleasures of taste and withdraw the pleasures of love and those of hearing and sight.’

Is that too not a warning from Epicurus to be careful in using the word "good"?

And again - I am not saying we shouldn't use the word "good." What we may have may be similar to the "god" issue where Epicurus uses the same word but vests it with very different attributes and views it in different ways than does the rest of the world.

Quote from Nate

OR, is it our suggestion that any adjective implying "greatest" is inappropriate to link to the noun meaning "good"?

Those are very helpful cites. I am thinking that the issue is not so much the adjective but the noun.

In other words IF we could agree on what "good" means, and that there is more than one, then we could pretty well establish that of all of them, pleasure would be at the top.

But are we really clear on what "good" means, and whether there are more than one "goods" or a "single good?" I'm still remembering a comment that Kevin G made recently that the Stoics held Virtue to be a single unified thing, and DeWitt talks as if Epicurus held that perhaps in some way pleasure is unified as well.

I am afraid we are in the middle of a "one and many" argument that is mostly conceptual and difficult to unwind.

So to recap, I doubt the argument is really so much about the "summum" as it is about the "bonum."

It appears to me that Epicurus started with the observation that all living things pursue pleasure and avoid pain, using "feeling" as the guide, but then he was warning against translating that observation into an improper concept of "good." I feel like we are straying into Frances Wright territory too of needing to be careful in moving from an observation to a conclusion. We can "observe" feeling but it is much harder to be sure that what we are observing is "good." In fact, in Frances Wright terms, is "good" only a "theory"?

It is beginning to appear to me that Epicurus was willing to make that step and talk about "good" but that he was warning to be very careful about it. By talking about a highest good we are presuming that a single highest good can be ascertained, and I am not sure that Epicurus held that. Most of us I think would agree that there are many pleasures, and that it is impossible to rank those pleasures on any kind of absolute scale. But doesn't "highest good" tempt us to do just that, unless we are very careful to observe the differences between the word "good" and the word "pleasure"?

The "Summum Bonum" aspect of this thread has been moved here: From The "Golden Mean" to tbe Summum Bonum - Proper Frames of Reference?

Another thought to add: I think DeWitts translation of the same span of time argument makes sense, but not so much his conclusion as to what it means.

VS42. The same span of time embraces both the beginning and the end of the greatest good.

Doesn't Epicurus say that Pleasure is the alpha and Omega of the blessed life, which is a fairly similar statement?

To me, Dewitts translation makes sense as part of the same argument we are having now about "the good.". It's not a statement that life is the greatest good, but that the greatest good (pleasure) takes place only while we are living and isn't an abstraction that is beyond our own lives. To me that's parallel also to the "escape from death" statement which also criticizes harping on "the good."

I would tentatively classify this as another example where DeWitt is going in a better direction than the standard commentators but misses just slightly in his wording of his conclusion.

And I think we are building up a considerable list of references from which the takeaway is that we should be careful about how and when we refer to "good" and "evil."

Given that I think Lucretius was doing his best to be a fundamentalist Epicurean, I'd like to see what we can get from him on this point beyond the already-mentioned "Divine Pleasure Guide Of Life."

At the moment I can't recall whether summum bonum appears in Lucretius at all.

Yes we may be tilting windmills so I am not inclined to add much more at the moment, other than that I have never had a good feeling about the Tetrapharmakon and I would not accept its wording as being from Epicurus or authoritative. At very best it is a very loose version of the first PDs, and "God only knows" who wrote it and whether it was written as a good or bad example of Epicurean thought (I understand the associated fragments were substantially targeted at combatting errors, but I gather the context is so lost that it is impossible to tell in what sense the Tet was used.)

At the moment I am resting at the point that all these words are abstractions, with pleasure being the least abstract and most concrete as a feeling, which everyone can sense in themselves. The other words are much more abstract, with Good and Evil being the most abstract, and I suspect that is why Nietzsche wrote a book suggesting we need to go "Beyond" them.

Maybe we should look to the practical result of this:. The choice of a single word helps us debate with Plato and Aristotle, but it doesn't solve our moment by moment need to make decisions, and that is where we look to all forms of pleasure and pain which may result from our actions.

There is no tangible definition of "Good" to which we can refer to make any decision beyond referring to the resulting pleasures, and no tangible definition of evil other than the resulting pains.

Attempting to collapse all of the analysis into "Good" and "Evil" is likely unworkable except as a debating tool, and worse - it can easily serve as a cloak which obscures the natural fact that our only natural guides are pleasure and pain.

Thank you for this post and all you have done to start this thread on Valentine's Day!

Just in case someone reading this thread is not thoroughly familiar with these passages that are critical to this conversation:

First Epicurus quoted by Plutarch:

Quote

U423

Plutarch, That Epicurus actually makes a pleasant life impossible, 7, p. 1091A: Not only is the basis that they assume for the pleasurable life untrustworthy and insecure, it is quite trivial and paltry as well, inasmuch as their “thing delighted” – their good – is an escape from ills, and they say that they can conceive of no other, and indeed that our nature has no place at all in which to put its good except the place left when its evil is expelled. … Epicurus too makes a similar statement to the effect that the good is a thing that arises out of your very escape from evil and from your memory and reflection and gratitude that this has happened to you. His words are these: “That which produces a jubilation unsurpassed is the nature of good, if you apply your mind rightly and then stand firm and do not stroll about {a jibe at the Peripatetics}, prating meaninglessly about the good.”

Ibid., 8, p. 1091E: Thus Epicurus, and Metrodorus too, suppose {that the middle is the summit and the end} when they take the position that escape from ill is the reality and upper limit of the good.

Second Torquatus in Book One of On Ends, implying that he himself (Torquatus) disagrees with Epicurus as to what kind of proof is necessary:

Quote

IX. ‘First, then,’ said he, ‘I shall plead my case on the lines laid down by the founder of our school himself: I shall define the essence and features of the problem before us, not because I imagine you to be unacquainted with them, but with a view to the methodical progress of my speech. The problem before us then is, what is the climax and standard of things good, and this in the opinion of all philosophers must needs be such that we are bound to test all things by it, but the standard itself by nothing. Epicurus places this standard in pleasure, which he lays down to be the supreme good, while pain is the supreme evil; and he founds his proof of this on the following considerations.

[30] Every creature, as soon as it is born, seeks after pleasure and delights therein as in its supreme good, while it recoils from pain as its supreme evil, and banishes that, so far as it can, from its own presence, and this it does while still uncorrupted, and while nature herself prompts unbiased and unaffected decisions. So he says we need no reasoning or debate to shew why pleasure is matter for desire, pain for aversion. These facts he thinks are simply perceived, just as the fact that re is hot, snow is white, and honey sweet, no one of which facts are we bound to support by elaborate arguments; it is enough merely to draw attention to the fact; and there is a difference between proof and formal argument on the one hand and a slight hint and direction of the attention on the other; the one process reveals to us mysteries and things under a veil, so to speak; the other enables us to pronounce upon patent and evident facts. Moreover, seeing that if you deprive a man of his senses there is nothing left to him, it is inevitable that nature herself should be the arbiter of what is in accord with or opposed to nature. Now what facts does she grasp or with what facts is her decision to seek or avoid any particular thing concerned, unless the facts of pleasure and pain?

[31] There are however some of our own school, who want to state these principles with greater refinement, and who say that it is not enough to leave the question of good or evil to the decision of sense, but that thought and reasoning also enable us to understand both that pleasure in itself is matter for desire and that pain is in itself matter for aversion. So they say that there lies in our minds a kind of natural and inbred conception leading us to feel that the one thing is t for us to seek, the other to reject. Others again, with whom I agree, finding that many arguments are alleged by philosophers to prove that pleasure is not to be reckoned among things good nor pain among things evil, judge that we ought not to be too condent about our case, and think that we should lead proof and argue carefully and carry on the debate about pleasure and pain by using the most elaborate reasonings.

Another way of stating the issue:

If you are going to ask the question "What is the greatest good?" The answer is "pleasure."

But you also have to consider "Should you be asking that question?"

As I wake up this morning I think it is important to address Don's argument about "Why the hesitancy?"

I am sure I have said written many times in the past, and will in the future, that pleasure is the greatest good. So why the hesitancy now?

It's not just a matter of wanting to agree or disagree with DeWitt, that's for sure. I think what we are sensing as we drill down on the question is that we need to figure out why Epicurus seemed to be treating this question carefully, which even Torquatus seems to admit when he said that Epicurus denied the necessity to construct a logical argument that pleasure is good (if that was the point of Torquatus comment).

Something similar seems to run through several questions. How can a thing be judged "good" unless it bring pleasure? Is virtue itself a pleasure, or is it something that brings pleasure?

No one would argue, I think, that the words pleasure and good mean exactly the same thing. They don't . We define pleasure as a feeling (I think) but what is it that tells us that something is "good"? Is there some other quality besides feeling pleasure that defines good? If so what is it?

I think Epicurus would clearly say that pleasure is the guide of life because we feel it to be so just like we see or hear.

But to say that pleasure is "good" or especially "the greatest good" seems to require some other criteria - almost mystical in nature - which I can see good reasons to be careful about.

Yes it is clear that pleasure is the only thing desirable in and of itself, and if we want to define "good" as desirable in and of itself" then pleasure is not only the highest but the only good. But is that so clearly what we mean by the word "good?

We have the word guide which is clear. What is added by calling it "good" or calling pain "evil"?

When talking to Plato and Stoics who insist on talking about good, it is natural to answer "pleasure".

But very possibly Epicurus did not want to let THEM set the terms of the debate? And perhaps we should be careful as well?

As a categorical answer for philosophical debate, I agree with you. And as a statement of the *guide* of life I would agree even more. But as a practical and discrete definition of "greatest good" that an average person can apply, I don't think that the single word is sufficient to convey the full meaning that Epicurus would convey if he were here to explain it in greater detail. And I am not yet convinced that he would even attempt to do so, beyond providing the example that he then used to show the futility of the Peripatetics efforts.

Also, in discussion tonight on chapter 3 of A Few Days In Athens, Kevin brought up that it was the Stoics who postulated a single unified and unitary good - virtue - which is something that in his view even Aristotle did not do. (Kevin suggested that Aristotle spoke in terms of many goods in Nichomachean Ethics.)

That makes me more concerned than ever that the search for a "greatest good" might not be Epicurean at all, despite Torquatus' framework.

Then there is the question of whether pleasure is a "unity" such that pleasure can be considered singly in a way similar to the way the Stoics considered virtue to be a unity. And that would implicate the PD which refers to "if pleasure could be condensed.....". I am still not confident what that saying means at all, much less whether he is implying an affirmative or negative answer.

I think this question probably has an answer that we can eventually come to terms on, but I am now thinking that being confident would require more knowledge of what the earlier philospher had done with the issue of single versus multiple goods than I presently have myself.

When I combine the Lucretian reference to pleasure as a guide with what I see in the letter to Menoeceus, I see much more foundation for seeing pleasure as the GUIDE than I do for a specific "greatest good" analysis.

Cause frankly I am pretty sure I know what a "guide" is, but I am not at all sure I know what a "greatest good" is.

Thanks for this deep analysis!

I'll just leave the point as is at the moment, because I am not nearly as qualified as DeWitt or even Don to parse the Latin and Greek. I will repeat that I do see differences between "good" and "goal" and I can imagine all sorts of confusion arising from those distinctions. I am reminded of the phrase in Book Two of Lucretius - " ...GUIDE of life, divine pleasure." (ipsaque deducit dux vitae dia voluptas)

I am particularly not willing to say that I think DeWitt is definitely right, or definitely wrong, because it does appear to me that Epicurus was cautioning against walking around uselessly harping on the meaning of the good, and I see this as something that other philosophers are harping on rather than Epicurus. The danger to me only comes when we get fixated on the "greatest good" and presume that there is a single answer to that question that fits everyone. I am not sure that Epicurus accepted any real logical framework other than the observation that nature gives us only two signals by which to determine what to choose and what to avoid, and that is pleasure and pain. Torquatus himself seems to say that even in this same On Ends - only a few moments after he had framed the question in this very way.

Is DeWitt correct to say that pleasure and pain have meaning only to the living, so that without life pleasure and pain are of no consequence to us? Certainly I would say that the answer to that is "yes."

Does that make pleasure or life the "highest good?" I am afraid that I think that is a linguistic exercise that is fraught with many dangers. So at least for the moment I consider that to be a question that cannot readily be answered. And I remain uncertain that the question "What is the greatest good?" was a way in which Epicurus himself liked to frame his philosophy.

Quote from Don

I'll need to go and read DeWitt's "summum bonum fallacy" (Where is that again?),

I thought we already had it here somewhere, but apparently not. That has been remedied:

I had forgotten that DeWitt marshals in support of this argument his interpretation of VS42, so this article places that in issue too. I have always thought that DeWitt's argument on VS42 makes sense, so it will be interesting to get comments on that too.

File

Epicurus: The Summum Bonum Fallacy

The aim of this article is to show how the lack of a definite article in Latin obliterated the doctrine of Epicurus that life itself and not pleasure is the greatest good.

Cassius

February 13, 2022 at 4:00 PM