Posts by Cassius

We cross posted -- much of the answer to your question is in the "animality objection" in post 82 above.

Quote from Don

I thought the "All pleasure is good" precluded the ranking of pleasure.

That would be correct if we considered all pleasure is good" to mean "all pleasure is THE highest good" but it is by no means clear (at least to me) that Epicurus was considering "good" here in that absolute sense, rather than in the relative sense in which there are many goods, some better than others. That's the reason for the SUMMUM in the "summum bonum" I think.

Another way of stating the question is that if he had been consistent, as soon as Epicurus formulated his philosophy he should have retired to his cave and lived a subsistence existence totally apart from the crowd. But he did not -- he lived a life of relative material luxury and devoted much of his time to philosophical controversy. Why - one naturally would ask? And I think the answer has to be in part that he valued the pleasures that he chose to pursue more highly - much more highly - than the pleasures he would have achieved had he retired to the cave on bread and water.

He chose - not the life of a cow - but the life of a supreme philosophical warrior and veritable "savior" of mankind!

And I would say that what seems like the obvious answer to me is that he chose the pleasures derived from the life of philosophical study and writing and controversy as much more pleasant to him than the life of "grazing in the grass."

Our target, here, I think - at the end of the day - will include that we have a cogent and potent response to criticism that Epicureans would limit our ambition in life to "grazing in the grass" -- otherwise known as the "animality objection" - from Cicero and Aristotle and of course others:

Quote from Don

So, my contention is that a desire need not be grand. It need not be capital-D Desire. Just like pleasure doesn't need to be capital-P Pleasure. There are things that we desire because they're necessary for living, and only the living can experience pleasure.

Yes I think we all agree on that (I am not saying "Why did you bother to repeat it?" but rather. "Yes that is one of our fundamental presumptions.")

The next step though is significantly harder, which is the analysis of "ranking" pleasures not only on a necessary scale, but on some other scale, such as (1) natural, but also (2 ad infinitum) with words such as "intensity" or "depth of feeling" or "importance to 'us' as individuals, rather than just "us as human beings who have to eat, sleep, etc."

We can probably start with the "natural" because that is in Menoeceus and Torquatus, but I have always found that term significantly harder to apply than "necessary." I don't think the key either is "whether it has a limit" because necessary pleasures too have a limit (air, food, water, etc) so there must be some other factor than "having a limit" which distinguishes "natural." So one place to start is to try to get a grip on "natural."

But I don't think even those two give us the subjective element of "intensity" or "depth of feeling" or "importance to 'us' as individuals, rather than just 'us' as human beings" and I surely think that Epicurus did not deprecate those other than perhaps to the "necessary" in the sense that "pleasure has no meaning except to the living" and if we don't get the necessary pleasures we don't remain living very long.

Quote from Don

I'm going to duplicate my post from above on that phrase "most pleasant" so it doesn't get lost.

I am thinking it would it be helpful to go through and collect the posts specifically on desire vs pleasure and "copy" (as opposed to move" them to either a new thread or an existing one on the same topic. What do you think?

As is usual when we start talking about the natural and necessary analysis I end up thinking I am being too hard on it. I so think it is used as a justification for asceticism by those who are inclined to it for other reasons, but I think that is "their problem" and it is not inherent in the analysis. I think one can easily be oriented toward normal pleasure maximization (as I think Epicurus was) and use the observations simply as a tool of analysis for how much trouble to expect from any course of action. No harm in that UNLESS one has already bought into the goal of avoiding pain "at any cost.".

Yes Godfrey I see that in Nussbaum, but that is likely because she is strongly disposed towards the Stoics, and not because Stoicism was hiding in Epicurus' when he penned the doctrine.

We can go as far as we need to in analysis of this issue of how desire relates to pleasure, but let's not forget to come back to the reason we got into it: how does one analyze and determine what Epicurus' meant when he said not to choose which pleasure is longest but which is "most pleasant."

If we don't get back to it soon though I suspect we will have lost track of Philia and the reason for her posting the thread

Quote from Don

We feel pleasure and pain resulting from a specific desire being fulfilled.

But remember I think it is clear too that we also feel pleasure or pain independently of any desire -- thinks happen to us which we did not plan in any way. I think we are not veering into the discussion of "replenishment" theory of pleasure and similar, because the reason this comes to mind is that there is apparently a classical example of walking outside and smelling a rose or flower -- you in no way planned or anticipated or lacked anything prior to that moment, but when the fragrance came to your nose you experienced pleasure that was in no way related to a "lack" of anything. Or at least that is what I have read somewhere in philosophy writings.

Does it appear that perhaps we need to hyperlink the "Table of Contents" to the respective place in the text for it's easiest use as a PDF?

This is pretty clearly the most extensive listing of the alternate translations that I have seen, and this took a tremendous amount of work.

Nate do you have a website or some place you plan to feature this going forward? It would probably be very well worth producing an HTML or other version of this that people could easily access on their mobile phones (since so many people use only their phones for all internet access).

One thing I might like to do for us here would be to cut and paste each one into the "lexicon" feature here so that when someone clicks through to the doctrine they see the full set. Would that be OK with you?

But even after doing that, some method of distributing it so that it is easily accessible to the world on any format device would be highly desirable.

As you know I am a tech geek and one format that I don't use much, but always appeals to me, is the single-page HTML format that is available in the "Tiddlywiki" format. There are lots of customizations of its format I haven't figured out but this one might be interesting (Tiddlywiki For Scholars) or this one: https://thannymack.com/?page_id=14#Welcome! or maybe better this one that has a contents list on left: https://giffmex.org/stroll/stroll.html

Anyway thank you again Nate!!

Somehow I missed seeing this until now. Thanks Nate!

File

KURIAI DOXAI, a Compilation of Translations by Nathan H. Bartman (2021)

This compilation contains 150 years worth of English translations of the "Key Doctrines" of Epicurus.

Eikadistes

May 3, 2024 at 11:14 PM

I would say that may be too broad. Can't we desire to feel pain in order to experience more pleasure later?

On the other hand, while we are feeling pain or pleasure we are feeling it without thinking why - we just feel it.

Is that not a difference?

Is not a desire somehow more "willed" while pleasure and pain are simply reactions?

That gets back to pathe right? A desire is not a pathe is it?

Godfrey for a long time I've observed that one of the approaches I like least is Nussbaum's "Therapy of Desire."

It seems to me there is definitely an issue in focusing on "desire" as opposed to "pleasure" but I don't have a handle on what the issue would be.

Do you agree with Don's: I'd offer that a "desire" is a mental concept sensing a need for some thing one does not currently have or for an experience one is not currently undergoing. One senses a lack or void that one feels needs to be filled. Whether one fills that sensed need is the crux of making choices and rejections. "

I am not sure whether it is clear to me that a desire is a "mental concept" or a feeling or what?

I think you can write down and define a desire much better than you can a pleasure, but I am not sure I see them as entirely separate things, especially in the way the words are commonly used.

At the moment I am just not sure about the implications of these words at all.

I see this related to "Choices and Avoidances" as well, which I gather is a title to one of Epicurus' works.

So OK we have at least two high-level questions:

(1) What is the relationship between desire and pleasure?

That needs to be pursued, but I am thinking that we are beginning to stray from the original question of

(2) What is the meaning of "Most pleasant"(?) [That was based on the comment in the post above to the effect that Don submits: "I interpret that "the most pleasant" with the idea of pleasure *over a period of time.* The *length* of time is not the focus; it's the *persistence* of pleasure over the time in question."]

Quote from Godfrey

I still think that there are subtle but useful differences between desire and pleasure.

- Pleasure is a Feeling, a faculty, a criterion or measurement. Desire is not.

- To my limited understanding, pleasure and desire are neurologically/biochemically different.

- Pleasure is "The Goal", desire is not.

I agree with this, but probably more is needed to define what desire really is.

Are we talking a Nietzchean "will to power" -- some kind of basic urge of the will that would cause someone to look at something pleasureable that he or she might experience without any pain at all but would cause him to say "Nah, I don't think i will partake of that pleasure, I just don't want to."

Quote from Don

There is no consideration necessary of the duration, intensity, etc. of the specific *pleasure* itself of drinking wine. What will be the result of this desire if it is fulfilled? If not? The decision to pursue one's desire to experience the pleasure derived from drinking wine is completely contingent on personal factors and subjective feelings of what pain and pleasure will result from whether this desire is fulfilled or not.

See in that first sentence i would say that it is impossible and illogical to evaluate the result without considering each of the factors (duration intensity etc) that we are discussing. The result IS largely those resulting factors, is it not?

Quote from Godfrey

So, conversely, without understanding the categories of desires one can't make proper decisions regarding pleasure and pain.

I think we are communicating, because I think what you write there is pretty clear, but I am not sure we are agreeing

I have always looked at it pretty much from the reverse perspective, influenced by Rackham's translation of Torquatus:

45 Nothing could be more useful or more conducive to well-being than Epicurus's doctrine as to the different classes of the desires. One kind he classified as both natural and necessary, a second as natural without being necessary, and a third as neither natural nor necessary; the principle of classification being that the necessary desires are gratified with little trouble or expense; the natural desires also require but little, since nature's own p51 riches, which suffice to content her, are both easily procured and limited in amount; but for the imaginary10 desires no bound or limit can be discovered. 14 46 If then we observe that ignorance and error reduce the whole of life to confusion, while Wisdom alone is able to protect us from the onslaughts of appetite and the menaces of fear, teaching us to bear even the affronts of fortune with moderation, and showing us all the paths that lead to calmness and peace, why should we hesitate to avow that Wisdom is to be desired for the sake of the pleasures it brings and Folly to be avoided because of its injurious consequences?

To me, the "principle of the classification" is the key, and the principle does not derived from human-described categories, but from the nature of the activities involved. Breathing, for example, is absolutely natural and necessary through the nature of things, but not because we ourselves recognized it is as category. On the other hand things which are unnecessary and unnatural (absolute political power, maybe?) have no limit because we can always ask for more. Again, that's from the nature of the situation, not because we categorize it that way.

So from my point of view the understanding of the principle involved is not really an invitation to categorize intellectually, but just a recognition that the closer to absolutely natural you get, nature has made those easiest to obtain, while the opposite nature has made the hardest, with the recognition being that the hardest requires the most pain and the easiest requires the least pain.

But in the end, the whole exercise is nothing more than posing the same question: How much pain is my chosen pleasure going to cost me to obtain? And in that, you rank the intensity and satisfaction you get from your pleasure, and you rank the intensity and length of the pain it is going to cost you, and you make a totally personal and subjective decision based on your own unique circumstances.

The result (to me) is that you've performed a mental exercise that really does nothing but help you reflect on what you expect to be the pleasure and pain that you yourself expect to experience, and you decide to go forward or not on that basis.

That's really the way the spreadsheet we talked about was set up. You can perform the mental exercise of thinking about these things, but there's no way in the end to make the final decision except for you yourself to decide how much you value a particular pleasure, and how much you mind the particular pain you expect that to cost, and then you go ahead or not based on your own estimation of "is it worth it to me." And in the final analysis the dividing up into categories has pretty much zero to do with the final result. You keep those in minds and thumbnail aids to thinking, but they don't dictate anything in and of themselves, and more than the spreadsheet model dictates anything. There's no "necessity" in human action so there's no way to reduce these questions to across the board formulas that always apply. Even breathing you can give up for a few minutes if it's necessary to swim through a flooded corridor to get out of a sinking submarine. The rules of thumb are always rules of thumb and never absolute categories in themselves.

Maybe the bottom line is that the categories we are discussing are "useful" but not necessary and in fact don't add a lot if you just use common sense to evaluate the situation carefully. And if we ever move to the point where the categories become hard and fast rules in themselves, then we have moved into the same danger as when "virtue" seems to be an end in and of itself. And in fact some writers do seem to state or at least imply that Epicurus held that we should always and only pursue pleasures that are natural AND necessary, which I do not think he would say at all -- or at least - Epicurus certainly did not live that way himself, with his relatively wealthy living with multiple pieces of real estate, material goods, and even slaves. The same would go for Atticus especially, nor do I understand that the historical record reveals even a single Epicurean reputed for his or her truly ascetic living.

i interpret those terms to be equivalent to pleasure and pain, so I don't see a distinction, as they essentially in my understanding constitute the basis for any categories which we may choose to construct in our minds (which categories don't really "exist" except to the extent we choose to use them to describe our feelings).

I think we're possibly diverging in this conversation due to my intrerpreting this is another example of uses of "words" which have no meaning except as we define them, and our definitions never are able to create reality - the reality is only in our feelings and not in any categories or forms.

I honestly am not sure what you mean. Yes I can rank my desire in terms of intensity, but I would certainly say that I can rank the pleasure I get from steak as higher than the pleasure I get from hot dogs. I see both "desire" and "pleasure" to be terms that include many different instances, each of which is capable of being ranked in degrees of greater or lesser.

I would have thought that to be a totally non-controversial statement.

Are you using a definition of these terms differently than I am?

Quote from Don

We cannot rank pleasures.

Wait are you disagreeing with Godfrey's point too when he says "of course they're not"?

I definitely rank my pleasures -- steak is much more pleasant than hot dogs.

Quote from Godfrey

Of course they're not

Yes of course my feelings exactly, but if we extended the point that pleasures cannot be compared or ranked in any way at all, that would be the reduction to the absurd, so in my mind that proves that this cannot have been Epicurus' meaning.

Quote from Godfrey

This is off the top of my head, but if I'm not mistaken, the only mechanism that Epicurus gives for evaluating choices and avoidances is by categorizing desires.

Well there I would say that each reference goes in the direction of the purely practical: "What will happen to me if I make this choice?" So rather than "categorizing" which would be definitional logical analysis which might actually sound platonic, I would say he is emphasizing the reverse and say evaluate them pragmatically only by their results. And their results are not measured by categories but only by the resulting feeling. In that respect I see "natural and necessary" categories in that same way - strictly biological or feeling-driven, rather than by any intellectual categories.

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?"

Quote from Godfrey

This is getting interesting, digging into the weeds!

YES!!

The Unity of Pleasure discussion:

.... unfortunately DeWitt goes off into kinetic vs katastematic and doesn't really grapple with our point of whether all pleasures are the same, but:

All we really have from DeWitt then is the issue of all pleasures being "good" irrespective of their consequences.

So we still have to deal with the question: "Are all pleasures the same in all respects so that we should consider the choice of any pleasure to be equivalent to the choice of any other?"

Quote from Godfrey

So wouldn't all the talk of duration, intensity, absence of pain and so forth really be misleading? At least it seems so in terms of daily living. Analyzing one's desires would be far more useful and effective in determining how to live pleasurably. Continuous pleasure just means, at least in this line of reasoning, that one is living well by prudently choosing and fleeing from one's desires.

My initial reaction to splitting the discussion of desires and their results is to be wary of that, because just like virtue, what does it gain anything to talk about desires apart from the results of pursuing those desires? In the end there is nothing given by nature for the decision of what to choose and to avoid other than pleasure and pain. A science of desires separated from their consequences, would be no more helpful or useful than a science of virtue, apart from the results of pursuing those virtues.

Further and to the same point, since there is no "necessity" in human affairs, there is no more necessity as to the result of pursuing a particular desire "in general" than there is ability to predict by necessity that Hermarchus must be either alive or dead tomorrow. Certainly generalizations and predictions can be given, but absent a necessary connection between any desire and its result, we can't derive an ironclad rule, and the best we can do is make the generalization -- which is useful, but not really deeply philosophical, as it is largely dependent on context.

So rather than say that talk of duration, intensity, absence of pain and so forth might be misleading, I could see the argument as stronger that they are really all that is worth talking about, because they are the only ways of evaluating pleasures vs pains that make particular choices "good" or "bad" (in the sense of nothing good but pleasure; nothing bad but pain).

So one of the foundational issues here is whether "Are all pleasures the same in all respects so that we should consider the choice of any to be the equivalent of the choice of any other?"

I would say the answer to that is "No!" They share a certain attribute (we find them all pleasing) but not in the same degree, manner, intensity, duration, etc.

At least as for me, I definitely choose my pleasures according to those characteristics and I do not pursue all pleasures with the same intensity. Does anyone advocate that Epicurus held that we should?

Here we need to dive back into DeWitt's "Unity of Pleasure" chapter.