Posts by Cassius

My response to Donald:

My general response to all of these is that I thought the point of our dicsussion was to decide whether Jefferson was more Stoic than Epicurean! What I have done in the article is to point out that (1) Jefferson fully understood the basic differences between Stoics and Epicurus, and that he sided with Epicurus on every fundamental point and (2) that on the points where Epicurus agrees with a Stoic phrase, the point behind the Stoic phrase is obvious and is not related to the core of Stoic belief. I may go back and prepare some more detailed comments to several of Don's points here, but I am already very comfortable that a reader who checks the material I have quoted from Jefferson will find that I am correct.

This exchange so far is actually kind of amusing in seeing that Donald does not accept my quotes from Jefferson as bearing on the issue, or that they need additional "argument" from me. The reason for that goes back to the comments about my opening - Donald and I have a very different understanding of what Stoicism is. When I say "Stoicism" I mean the very clearly defined positions of the ancient Stoics; when Donald says it, he seems to primarily mean Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, tinged with selected aspects of Stoic views toward suppression of emotion.

I don't read anything in these series of comments from DR that make me think my article needs adjustment or supplement to assist a fair reader. Yes, Jefferson was widely read and appreciated some selected quotes from Stoics that are little more than common sense observations. Jefferson didn't and wouldn't deny that the sun rises in the east just because a Stoic said it, but at the same time he was fully aware of the true meaning of Stoicism and totally rejected it.

Donald Robertson's responses:

You place a lot of emphasis at the beginning on your claim that Jefferson is a clear thinker compared to what you call the muddy thinking of Marcus Aurelius. But I think anyone reading that first letter you quote to William Short is going to find that clashes very much with the claim because what Jefferson says there most people will probably find very muddy indeed. He both criticizes and praises the Stoics repeatedly in the space of a few sentences but by the end he hasn't stated clearly what the reasons for his disagreement, if any, actually are. Surely you have to admit that most people reading that are going to be left scratching their heads if asked to explain what Jefferson is actually saying about the Stoics?

Donald Robertson With respect, I also think very few people will agree with your premise stated at the outset: "both Cicero and the Stoics saw themselves as continuances and extensions of the Platonic line, so that every time Jefferson attacks Cicero or Plato, he is attacking the Stoics as well by implication." You'd have to try to substantiate that somehow. As it stands, I would think most readers will find that a questionable basis for the argument that you're making in the rest of the piece.

Then we get the criticisms of Plato's Republic. But the Stoics were not Platonists. They argued fiercely with the Platonists. Their school originated with Zeno's critique of Plato's Republic. So unless you can provide some argument to prove that Jefferson's criticisms fall equally on the Stoics, I doubt most people reading this will go along with you this far in your argument.

Donald Robertson "Their supreme wisdom is supreme folly; & they mistake for happiness the mere absence of pain." Strangely, on the face of it, that sounds a lot more like a criticism of Epicurean ataraxia than of Stoic virtue. It seems to echo the typical wording of ancient criticisms of Epicureanism. It's not a criticism normally levelled at the Stoics because it doesn't seem to correspond with what they actually believed. In this letter, Jefferson perhaps sounds more like Cyrenaics criticising the Epicureans than an Epicurean himself.

Donald Robertson "in denying to you the feelings of sympathy, of benevolence, of gratitude, of justice, of love, of friendship, she has excluded you from their controul." - I thought Epicurus denied the existence of a natural bond of affection between friends and argued instead that friendship was a sort of social contract based on the utility of friends in securing the goal of ataraxia.

Donald Robertson "Never spend your money before you have it. << A commonplace observation not intrinsically Stoic at all", etc. I did not claim that those statements were intrinsically Stoic. So this part of your article contains a series of Straw Man fallacies.

Donald Robertson "Take things always by their smooth handle. << A common sense observation not intrinsically Stoic." - I think most people will recognize that's a reference to Epictetus' Enchiridion, the book Jefferson says he admired, recommended his friends should read, and which he had intended to translate himself. The historian I cited who edited his papers, and others, have already made this point. So, again, I think you'd have to make a case for your skeptical position by providing some sort of argument.

Donald Robertson "Conclusion. Thomas Jefferson fully understood the essential characteristics of Stoic and Epicurean philosophies, and he emphatically embraced Epicurus and condemned Stoicism and its variants. You should too." -- Wait, what happened??? You didn't actually seem with respect, to provide any argument at all. Just a lot of quotes, which certainly don't appear to contradict what I wrote in my article. I hope you don't mind me pointing this out but you didn't actually directly address the evidence or arguments I cited in the article.

Mike probably the more accurate way to put it is that these letters, plus others, and Jefferson's association with Frances Wright of A Few Days in Athens fame, shows that Jefferson understood the philosophical issues and embraced Epicurus, which is a pretty huge achievement for his time. But he was a politician more than philosopher and he kept these views largely private so there are definite limitations.

Donald's article correctly points out that Jefferson also appreciated some of the formulations of the Stoics, but what DR fails to appreciate or point out is that Jefferson did so while explicitly rejecting the core ideas of Stoicism.

To me that is consistent with a pattern I see in "modern Stoicism" to be very selective in embracing only a part of what true Stoicism was really all about. My view is that modern Stoicism is really hardly Stoicism at all, but rather a psychological therapy technique that uses the name of a philosophy to enhance its credibility.

That's why we see a steady flow of people who go looking for an alternative to religion on the internet, find Stoicism, but eventually recognize in Epicurus more of what they were looking for in the first place. Which is to a degree my own story too.

Great points Nate. I know in my own case that I have learned a tremendous amount from reading the non-Epicurean parts of both "On Ends" and "Diogenes Laertius" and I could kick myself around the block for thinking back in college that they were too hard, or irrelevant, and putting off reading them.

And there's no doubt in my mind that the Epicureans spent almost as much time reading the Platonic and Aristotelian material as they did reading their own material. They were reacting against the common teachings just as we have to do now. And just because we study the others, and pick up snappy lines from different places, doesn't make us less Epicurean.

I ran out of steam in looking for cites to Epicurean texts to relate to most of the "ten rules," but almost all of them can be related to Epicurean texts of one kind or another. Probably over time it's worth going back and supplementing my article with more examples.

Yes I agree that is definitely something to explore, and what immediately comes to mind are some of the sections in DeWitt where he refers to "human nature" as what is learning over time. For example:

Ok I have scanned through it pretty thoroughly once. There is some very good material in it, but there is also lots of ......words... lots of emoting about things without really providing much in the way of answers (?)

For example, am I correct that this is the final and concluding paragraph?

If so, then my reaction is "What? That's the conclusion?" and that pretty much sums up my reaction to the whole. I detect that there is a lot of good material here that could be useful, but I haven't yet got a fix on really where he is going.

Maybe i am just reading the introduction and you are referring to something else. What I just read came from "Machine Man and other Writings" / Cambridge / Ann Thompson, in which this was some 28 pages long. Is this only part of a much longer book?

Also I see on the back cover of "the Hedonist Alternative" that Voltaire said that "La Mettrie would have been dangerous if he hadn't been completely insane." Was that entirely a joke, or did he in fact have issues? In reading what I just read I begin to wonder that myself just from the way it is put together (?)

I particularly like this:

There is much that i am reading that I like, but some seems to strike discordant tones. Here is another that I cannot imagine Epicurus saying:

I am having trouble on first reading determining if Mettrie is speaking for himself or for someone else.

For example, when he says this passage below, is he saying that this is his own view? Or Epicurus' view? Because I question whether this is an accurate representation of Epicurus' view at all. It seems to contrast pleasure with happiness in a way that is dependent on time and "calmness," and in a way that makes pleasure subordinate to and of a separate kind from "happiness," and I immediately suspect that this is not what Epicurus would say - not at all! But I doubt Seneca can readily be summarized as saying this either, although that may be possible...

HIram to this point I have only scanned sections so I have no firm opinion yet, but I am hopeful that I am going to agree with your analysis, and it seems likely given what I have read so far. I will report back.

I can't speak much about Montaigne, but in addition to being self-declared I would say that he next step in indicating how seriously someone takes Epicurus is whether they take the time to articulate Epicurean doctrine with any accuracy. In Jefferson's case, the letters cited above do indicate to me that he was serious about Epicurus. In the case of Montaigne (and many others of similar style) I am not aware that much can be documented in favor of their understanding of the full sweep of Epicurean physics, epistemology, and ethics, much beyond the fact that they spoke in general terms about pleasure and/or opposed standard religion in some often ambiguous sense.

Also as for digging too deeply into any individual's application of Epicurean philosophy, as opposed to their understanding of it, that's even more perilous. How people actually live rarely reflects closely on how they say they should live, although in Epicurus' own case the aspiration and the practice seems to have been closer than most.

well first and foremost as we know Jefferson was not involved in the constitutional convention and did not express particularly high regard for it, and took the position that it needed to be open to substantial revision with every generation. You may be talking about the Declaration (?) Which has some good material in it but definitely far from perfect either.

There is definitely a lot to be questioned about Jeffersons personal life but going too far in that direction is generally a tactic that gets us too much into ad hominem rather than focusing on the philosophy.

i think this is simply another example that every word from every writer, even translations of Epicurus himself, have to be compared to the big picture to evaluate whether corruption has snuck in. We are too many years away with too many layers of transmitters between us to take any one statement or position in isolation.

Taken together and using the same system of thought that clearly seems to have been advised, however, the big picture is readily pretty clear.

Donald Robertson to recently linked to an article he wrote and asked the question: "Was Thomas Jefferson more Stoic or Epicurean?" In answering "Epicurean" I will break down my response into three categories in order of importance:

(1) Be sure you understand what it means to be "Epicurean" and to be "Stoic."

The Stoic and Epicurean schools developed very clear doctrines that are totally incompatible, and for that reasons Stoics and Epicureans in the ancient world were bitter enemies of each others' views. Just scratching the surface, we can compare the big picture of both schools as follows:

In physics, Epicurus held that there area no supernatural gods or supernaturally imposed "order" or "fate," that the universe is eternal in time and boundless in space, and that the earth is not only not the center of attention for divine beings, but only one of countless locations in the universe where life thrives. In epistemology, Epicurus held that the senses, the feelings of pleasure and pain, and the intuitive faculty he called "anticipations" are the methods by which we determine all that is true to us. Epicurus specifically campaigned against abstract dialectical logic as misleading and unhelpful for determining a natural philosophy of life. In ethics, Epicurus taught that humans have agency to influence the outcome of their own lives, that pleasure is the goal of living, that the feelings of pleasure and pain are the guides which nature gave us for determining ethical decisions, and that the term "virtue" has no independent meaning other than as a description of tools which are useful for living pleasurably.

The Stoics could not have been more different or opposed to these Epicurean views.

In physics, the Stoics held that the universe was created by one or more divine beings who impose order on the entire universe and "fate" on the lives of humanity, and that the earth and humanity are essentially the center of the universe and the focus of the gods' attention and manipulation. In epistemology, the Stoics took Plato to new extremes and held that abstract dialectical logic alone is the key to understanding the divine nature of the universe, and that the senses are deceptive and lures to unworthy living. In ethics, the Stoics taught that the goal of life should be to live virtuously, which essentially means in conformity with the will of the gods, who dictate the outcome through fate, that pleasure is destructive, that emotion is to be suppressed in favor of reason, and that virtue has independent existence and is its own reward -- and that in fact to seek a reward for living virtuously would be by definition un-virtuous.

The ancient Stoics and Epicureans realized that there was no middle ground between these two positions, and the deeper you study the two schools the more clearly you can understand why they reached that conclusion, despite what muddy thinkers like Marcus Aurelius centuries after the schools were formed would have you believe.

(2) Thomas Jefferson wrote clearly and forcefully in favor of Epicurus and against Stoicism.

Like Marcus Aurelius, Thomas Jefferson was both a practical man and a politician, and Jefferson was willing to state publicly things that he saw as true regardless of who may have said them first. Unlike Marcus Aurelius, Thomas Jefferson was not a muddy thinker, and in his private correspondence he was very clear as to his own views. What follows is an assortment of those statements. In reading them, remember that both Cicero and the Stoics saw themselves as continuances and extensions of the Platonic line, so that every time Jefferson attacks Cicero or Plato, he is attacking the Stoics as well by implication:

Jefferson to William Short, 1819:

As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us. Epictetus indeed, has given us what was good of the stoics; all beyond, of their dogmas, being hypocrisy and grimace. Their great crime was in their calumnies of Epicurus and misrepresentations of his doctrines; in which we lament to see the candid character of Cicero engaging as an accomplice. Diffuse, vapid, rhetorical, but enchanting. His prototype Plato, eloquent as himself, dealing out mysticisms incomprehensible to the human mind, has been deified by certain sects usurping the name of Christians; because, in his foggy conceptions, they found a basis of impenetrable darkness whereon to rear fabrications as delirious, of their own invention. These they fathered blasphemously on him who they claimed as their founder, but who would disclaim them with the indignation which their caricatures of his religion so justly excite. Of Socrates we have nothing genuine but in the Memorabilia of Xenophon; for Plato makes him one of his Collocutors merely to cover his own whimsies under the mantle of his name; a liberty of which we are told Socrates himself complained. Seneca is indeed a fine moralist, disguising his work at times with some Stoicisms, and affecting too much of antithesis and point, yet giving us on the whole a great deal of sound and practical morality....

I take the liberty of observing that you are not a true disciple of our master Epicurus, in indulging the indolence to which you say you are yielding. One of his canons, you know, was that “that indulgence which prevents a greater pleasure, or produces a greater pain, is to be avoided.” Your love of repose will lead, in its progress, to a suspension of healthy exercise, a relaxation of mind, an indifference to everything around you, and finally to a debility of body, and hebetude of mind, the farthest of all things from the happiness which the well-regulated indulgences of Epicurus ensure; fortitude, you know is one of his four cardinal virtues. That teaches us to meet and surmount difficulties; not to fly from them, like cowards; and to fly, too, in vain, for they will meet and arrest us at every turn of our road.

(There is much more in this letter, including an outline of Epicurean thought, that illustrates how closely Jefferson had studied Epicurus.)

Jefferson to John Adams 1814:

Having more leisure there than here for reading, I amused myself with reading seriously Plato’s Republic. I am wrong, however, in calling it amusement, for it was the heaviest task-work I ever went through. I had occasionally before taken up some of his other works, but scarcely ever had patience to go through a whole dialogue. While wading through the whimsies, the puerilities, and unintelligible jargon of this work, I laid it down often to ask myself how it could have been, that the world should have so long consented to give reputation to such nonsense as this? How the soi-disant Christian world, indeed, should have done it, is a piece of historical curiosity. But how could the Roman good sense do it? And particularly, how could Cicero bestow such eulogies on Plato! Although Cicero did not wield the dense logic of Demosthenes, yet he was able, learned, laborious, practised in the business of the world, and honest. He could not be the dupe of mere style, of which he was himself the first master in the world. With the moderns, I think, it is rather a matter of fashion and authority. Education is chiefly in the hands of persons who, from their profession, have an interest in the reputation and the dreams of Plato. They give the tone while at school, and few in their after years have occasion to revise their college opinions. But fashion and authority apart, and bringing Plato to the test of reason, take from him his sophisms, futilities and incomprehensibilities, and what remains? In truth, he is one of the race of genuine sophists, who has escaped the oblivion of his brethren, first, by the elegance of his diction, but chiefly, by the adoption and incorporation of his whimsies into the body of artificial Christianity. His foggy mind is forever presenting the semblances of objects which, half seen through a mist, can be defined neither in form nor dimensions. Yet this, which should have consigned him to early oblivion, really procured him immortality of fame and reverence.

Jefferson to John Adams, 1820:

But enough of criticism: let me turn to your puzzling letter of May 12. on matter, spirit, motion etc. It’s crowd of scepticisms kept me from sleep. I read it, and laid it down: read it, and laid it down, again and again: and to give rest to my mind, I was obliged to recur ultimately to my habitual anodyne, ‘I feel: therefore I exist.’ I feel bodies which are not myself: there are other existencies then. I call them matter. I feel them changing place. This gives me motion. Where there is an absence of matter, I call it void, or nothing, or immaterial space. On the basis of sensation, of matter and motion, we may erect the fabric of all the certainties we can have or need. I can conceive thought to be an action of a particular organisation of matter, formed for that purpose by it’s creator, as well as that attraction in an action of matter, or magnetism of loadstone. When he who denies to the Creator the power of endowing matter with the mode of action called thinking shall shew how he could endow the Sun with the mode of action called attraction, which reins the planets in the tract of their orbits, or how an absence of matter can have a will, and, by that will, put matter into motion, then the materialist may be lawfully required to explain the process by which matter exercises the faculty of thinking. When once we quit the basis of sensation, all is in the wind. To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart.

Jefferson to Maria Cosway, 1786 (written as an address responding to an advocate of the "Head" / Logic):

Let the gloomy monk, sequestered from the world, seek unsocial pleasures in the bottom of his cell! Let the sublimated philosopher grasp visionary happiness while pursuing phantoms dressed in the garb of truth! Their supreme wisdom is supreme folly; & they mistake for happiness the mere absence of pain. Had they ever felt the solid pleasure of one generous spasm of the heart, they would exchange for it all the frigid speculations of their lives, which you have been vaunting in such elevated terms. Believe me then my friend, that that is a miserable arithmetic which, could estimate friendship at nothing, or at less than nothing. Respect for you has induced me to enter into this discussion, & to hear principles uttered which I detest & abjure. Respect for myself now obliges me to recall you into the proper limits of your office. When nature assigned us the same habitation, she gave us over it a divided empire. To you she allotted the field of science; to me that of morals. When the circle is to be squared, or the orbit of a comet to be traced; when the arch of greatest strength, or the solid of least resistance is to be investigated, take up the problem; it is yours; nature has given me no cognizance of it. In like manner, in denying to you the feelings of sympathy, of benevolence, of gratitude, of justice, of love, of friendship, she has excluded you from their controul. To these she has adapted the mechanism of the heart. Morals were too essential to the happiness of man to be risked on the incertain combinations of the head. She laid their foundation therefore in sentiment, not in science. That she gave to all, as necessary to all: this to a few only, as sufficing with a few. I know indeed that you pretend authority to the sovereign controul of our conduct in all its parts: & a respect for your grave saws & maxims, a desire to do what is right, has sometimes induced me to conform to your counsels.

A few facts however which I can readily recall to your memory, will suffice to prove to you that nature has not organized you for our moral direction. When the poor wearied souldier whom we overtook at Chickahomony with his pack on his back, begged us to let him get up behind our chariot, you began to calculate that the road was full of souldiers, & that if all should be taken up our horses would fail in their journey. We drove on therefore. But soon becoming sensible you had made me do wrong, that tho we cannot relieve all the distressed we should relieve as many as we can, I turned about to take up the souldier; but he had entered a bye path, & was no more to be found; & from that moment to this I could never find him out to ask his forgiveness. Again, when the poor woman came to ask a charity in Philadelphia, you whispered that she looked like a drunkard, & that half a dollar was enough to give her for the ale-house. Those who want the dispositions to give, easily find reasons why they ought not to give. When I sought her out afterwards, & did what I should have done at first, you know that she employed the money immediately towards placing her child at school. If our country, when pressed with wrongs at the point of the bayonet, had been governed by its heads instead of its hearts, where should we have been now? Hanging on a gallows as high as Hamans. You began to calculate & to compare wealth and numbers: we threw up a few pulsations of our warmest blood; we supplied enthusiasm against wealth and numbers; we put our existence to the hazard when the hazard seemed against us, and we saved our country: justifying at the same time the ways of Providence, whose precept is to do always what is right, and leave the issue to him. In short, my friend, as far as my recollection serves me, I do not know that I ever did a good thing on your suggestion, or a dirty one without it. I do forever then disclaim your interference in my province. Fill papers as you please with triangles & squares: try how many ways you can hang & combine them together. I shall never envy nor controul your sublime delights. But leave me to decide when & where friendships are to be contracted.

Additional detail can be found in Jefferson documents collected at http://www.newepicurean.com/jefferson.

(3) Analyzing the "Rules of Life," to the extent a Stoic said any of them they are commonplace truisms that even a Stoic could not get wrong.

If after reading the above, especially Jefferson's Head and Heart letter, you are still tempted to think that Jefferson was in any substantial way a Stoic, let's look at the list of "ten rules" and quickly comment on each. Over time we can come back and address each in more detail, but for now:

1. Never put off till tomorrow what you can do to-day. << This is a commonplace observation equally supportable by any of several Epicurean doctrines, such as Vatican Saying 10, "Remember that you are mortal, and have a limited time to live, and have devoted yourself to discussions on Nature for all time and eternity, and have seen “things that are now and are to come and have been,” and Vatican Saying 14: "14. We are born once and cannot be born twice, but for all time must be no more. But you, who are not master of tomorrow, postpone your happiness. Life is wasted in procrastination, and each one of us dies while occupied."
2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself. << Another commonplace observation that is not intrinsically Stoic, but is stated in such Epicurean doctrines as Vatican Saying 45. "The study of nature does not make men productive of boasting or bragging, nor apt to display that culture which is the object of rivalry with the many, but high-spirited and self-sufficient, taking pride in the good things of their own minds and not of their circumstances."
3. Never spend your money before you have it. << A commonplace observation not intrinsically Stoic at all.
4. Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you. << A commonplace observation not intrinsically Stoic at all.
5. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst and cold. << A commonplace observation not intrinsically Stoic at all.
6. We never repent of having eaten too little. << A commonplace observation not intrinsically Stoic at all. There is plenty of Epicurean advice about accustoming oneself to doing without when necessary: "And again independence of desire we think a great good — not that we may at all times enjoy but a few things, but that, if we do not possess many, we may enjoy the few in the genuine persuasion that those have the sweetest enjoy luxury pleasure in luxury who least need it....To grow accustomed therefore to simple and not luxurious diet gives us health to the full, and makes a man alert for the needful employments of life, and when after long intervals we approach luxuries disposes us better towards them, and fits us to be fearless of fortune."
7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly. << A commonplace observation, and to the extent this statement implies agency or "free will," it is not Stoic
8. How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened! << A commonplace observation not intrinsically Stoic at all.
9. Take things always by their smooth handle. << A common sense observation not intrinsically Stoic.
10. When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, an hundred. << Simple common sense and not intrinsically Stoic at all.

(4) Conclusion:

Thomas Jefferson fully understood the essential characteristics of Stoic and Epicurean philosophies, and he emphatically embraced Epicurus and condemned Stoicism and its variants.  You should too.

This is to start planning a special podcast episode devoted to the topic: Epicurus Against the Platonists and Aristotelians.

Please post ideas for organization and topics to cover initial thoughts are:

1. Introduction of panelists
2. Identify that Plato and Aristotle had some differences but were basically the same on most issues of relevance to this discussion.
3. Basic issues on which Platonists / Aristotelians and Epicureans disagree
   1. Physics / Nature of the Universe
   2. Epistemology
   3. Ethics
4. Examples where these arguments are featured:
   1. Frances Wright A Few Days in Athens, especially as to comments on Aristotle
   2. The statements of Thomas Jefferson condemning Plato
   3. Statements of Frederich Nietzsche (?)
5. Summary and conclusions
   1. Eclecticism / combination of the two is not the answer

Resources / references to use for the episode:

1. A Comparison Chart: Stoic vs. Epicurean Philosophy

This is to start planning a special podcast episode devoted to the topic: Epicurus Against the Stoics.

Please post ideas for organization and topics to cover initial thoughts are:

1. Introduction of panelists
2. Basic issues on which Stoics and Epicureans disagree
   1. Physics / Nature of the Universe
   2. Epistemology
   3. Ethics
3. Examples where these arguments are featured:
   1. Frances Wright A Few Days in Athens, especially the debate between Epicurus and Zeno
   2. The letter of Cosma Raimondi
   3. The statements of Thomas Jefferson condemning Stoicism
   4. The statements of Frederich Nietzsche condemning Stoicism
4. Summary and conclusions
   1. Eclecticism / combination of the two is not the answer

Resources / references to use for the episode:

1. A Comparison Chart: Stoic vs. Epicurean Philosophy

Quote from Mike Anyayahan

Such prejudice pressuposes that the audience or listeners are virtuous the same way Cicero ridicules Epicureanism.

Why do you think they understood pleasure that way

Here's something else I want to add on this point, and it also comes from "On Ends."

Cicero/Torquatus offers an answer to that question which I do think explains some of the attitude toward pleasure, but falls far short of explaining all of it:

Quote

. But I must explain to you how all this mistaken [1]idea of reprobating pleasure and extolling pain arose. To do so, I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure,[2] but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain [3], but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure

Now I am not trying to be too hard on Torquatus, because it;s possible to limit who he is talking about (say, "men of good will") and have that to be largely accurate, But of the three points I tagged, point [1] is too charitable, in that it applies only to men of good will, and points [2] and [3] are both too charitable and outright incorrect.

Cicero himself qualities as an example. Cicero is certainly not "mistaken" about Epicurean philosophy. He was a brilliant man and understood the philosophy fully, learning it and discussing it with Epicureans of high qualifications. And yet Cicero still devoted strong efforts to doing all he could to persuade people to reject Epicurean philosophy and pleasure itself as the goal of life. And as to rejecting, disliking, and avoiding pleasure itself because it is pleasure, and loving and pursuing or desiring pain because it is pain, it is not a leap to suggest that Cicero was not all that far from being a Stoic himself in the attitude that choosing pain is a noble thing that either leads to or constitutes virtue itself.

And of course we could go far beyond Cicero in pointing out examples of people who are convinced that pain is to be chosen for reasons other than the eventual pleasure it might bring, even to the point of pursuing pain of and for itself -- and at the very least, pursuing pain for their enemies, or suggesting to their enemies that they embrace pain for themselves.

My point here is just that it is a mistake to adopt too "soft" an attitude about the enemies of Epicurus and pleasure and to make blanket excuses for them. Many people no doubt ARE simply mistaken, and they can be straightened out, and it is good to give them a "way out" of their position by saying that they have misunderstood. And perhaps Torquatus was a friend of Cicero and wanted to extend him exactly that courtesy. That's very legitimate and should be a part of Epicurean discussion.

But Epicurus was all about candor and speaking accurately, and it seems to me that it's possible to go too far in saying things, even with the best of intentions, that end up causing more harm than good, And that's because if Epicureans fail to understand what they are up against then they can easily fail to take the stronger steps necessary to protect themselves and their views from committed enemies.

I remember in the most recent LucretiusToday podcast (four) Elayne cited a statement and said that it was "naive" to suggest that all conflict arises from failures to communicate. That's what I am saying here. It is naive to suggest that all opposition to pleasure arises from failure to understand, or from "mistakes." And Cicero was many things, but he was not "naive" about Epicurean philosophy.

Quote from Mike Anyayahan

Why do you think they understood pleasure that way? Was there an authority defimition of pleasure around the time of Epicurus that was far different from his description of pleasure?

Mike my reading on that question only goes as deep as the Gosling & Taylor treatise "The Greeks on Pleasure." What I recall from reading that is not much different than what we would expect today in terms of attitudes toward pleasure. The impression I get is that the battle was the same then as it is now -- people who assert something that is "higher" or more "noble" or more "worthy" than normal human existence take an elitist attitude and look down on normal existence, and they portray it as "Lower" or "less noble" or "less worthy" than the ideas that the come up with in their minds. And as a result the brand "pleasure" as something that only animals should pursue -- talking about the lives of "oysters" or "cows" and suggesting that men should do better than that because of their implicit spark of divinity -- their "Reason."

That's the reason for my "rant" in the preceding posts - I don't think this is a good faith argument by the great majority of these leaders against pleasure. I think they realized (and realize today) exactly what they are doing - they are taking the side of their vision of a "higher reality" and attempting to marginalize and intimidate those who are willing to follow Nature rather than make up some fictitious goal of their own.

Clearly this is a subject worth a lot of study, because it is one of the ultimate questions. But when I read this excerpt from "On Ends" I get the impression that Epicurus was dealing with exactly what we are talking about:

Every animal, as soon as it is born, seeks for pleasure, and delights in it as the Chief Good, while it recoils from pain as the Chief Evil, and so far as possible avoids it. This it does as long as it remains unperverted, at the prompting of Nature's own unbiased and honest verdict. Hence Epicurus refuses to admit any necessity for argument or discussion to prove that pleasure is desirable and pain to be avoided. These facts, be thinks, are perceived by the senses, as that fire is hot, snow white, honey sweet, none of which things need be proved by elaborate argument: it is enough merely to draw attention to them. (For there is a difference, he holds, between formal syllogistic proof of a thing and a mere notice or reminder: the former is the method for discovering abstruse and recondite truths, the latter for indicating facts that are obvious and evident.) Strip mankind of sensation, and nothing remains; it follows that Nature herself is the judge of that which is in accordance with or contrary to nature. What does Nature perceive or what does she judge of, beside pleasure and pain, to guide her actions of desire and of avoidance?

AND MIKE THAT IS ALSO WHEN I READ THIS NEXT PASSAGE, WHAT I HEAR IS THE ECHO OF COWARDLY LATER FOLLOWERS WHO ABANDONED EPICURUS TO TRY TO APPEASE THE ANTI-PLEASURE CRUSADERS BECAUSE THEY COULD NOT STAND FIRM AGAINST THE HIGH-SOUNDING CALLS TO "VIRTUE":

Some members of our school however would refine upon this doctrine; these say that it is not enough for the judgment of good and evil to rest with the senses; the facts that pleasure is in and for itself desirable and pain in and for itself to be avoided can also be grasped by the intellect and the reason. Accordingly they declare that the perception that the one is to be sought after and the other avoided is a notion naturally implanted in our minds. Others again, with whom I agree, observing that a great many philosophers do advance a vast array of reasons to prove why pleasure should not be counted as a good nor pain as an evil, consider that we had better not be too confident of our case; in their view it requires elaborate and reasoned argument, and abstruse theoretical discussion of the nature of pleasure and pain.

So when I read that I read it not as cleverness or intelligence, but as accommodation and compromise, and as the kind of attitude that accepts alliances with people who are mortal enemies of pleasure and who are just working to undermine Epicurean philosophy from the inside. Such people may think they have good intentions, they may think that they are being "cute" and even employing manipulation techniques of their own, but in the end they end up undermining themselves and the philosophy.

Thinking further and ranting longer, I see this as another illustration of how the fight over "pleasure" is really a sort of "proxy war" for the real issue, which is better stated as "feeling vs idealism," or even more clearly stated, natural individual human feeling vs those who want to employ supernatural gods or rationalism or dialectical logic or any other form of "authority" for the proposition that there are absolute rules of right and wrong. This harks back to the Neitzchean "beyond good and evil" because all of those are just ways of asserting that there is a "good" and an "evil" deriving from something other than human feeling.

So those who are opposed to human feeling disparage it by making the word "pleasure" evoke nothing but the simplest bodily pleasures, while what it really means is ALL agreeable feelings of any kind whatsoever, including the most elaborate and sophisticated and elegant art and literature and scientific achievement known to man.

They are playing a manipulation game with which we should never seek to compromise, because compromise sells our feeling and grants legitimacy to things that have no basis in fact whatsoever other than the assertion of others who wish to have you ignore your own guidance system.

The Senecas if the world are not fairminded and admirable, they deserve all the condemnation of a humans sacrificing cannibal, because that is exactly what they are - cannibals masquerading as grandmotherly when they are worse than witches on broomsticks.

Quote from Hiram

This is a good example of Seneca’s fairmaindedness, as well as of his compelling style of argumentation, whereby he manages to both strike a point in favor of his opponents and one against them in a single sentence.

I don't have access to the details to be able to comment forcefully, but this hints at the problem that results from half-hearted defense of pleasure, which in many cases is not "fairmindedness" but "damning with faint praise" or worse. Once you give in even a little to false premises then you are on a slippery slope from which you won't recover. And that's why all these half-hearted appeals like "the honourable part of its teaching passes unnoticed, but the degrading part is seen by all" is so damaging.

Once you accept the notion that there are standards of "honor" or "degrading" that do not derive from pleasure and pain, but derive from some other standard, then you have planted the seeds of your own destruction.

And I feel confident Seneca FULLY understood that, which is why I would not call him "fairminded."

It seems to me that we see the same half-hearted, pulled-punches defense of Epicurus in most of the writings about him, especially the English writers, ever since the end of the ancient world.  This kind of defense plays into the hands of the enemies of Epicurus and ensures that we always lose. To the extent that it appears that Mettrie did not engage in that, he looks to be one of the better alternatives and few exceptions to the general rule.

Presumably you are quoting below the statement of Stoic, and if this is composed by Mettrie, then this is the level of bright-line contrasting that works much better than half-hearted defenses that accept the rules of our enemies. The reverse of this, stated by an Epicurean, is a good description of the battle lines.  

“You devote yourself to pleasures, I check them; you indulge in pleasure, I use it; you think that it is the highest good, I do not even think it to be good: for the sake of pleasure I do nothing, you do everything.

So an Epicurean would first be clear that his listeners understand what he means by "pleasure," with its sweeping nature that underlays everything in life that constitutes any kind of positive feeling within us, and would then say, int the role of an Epicurean speaking to a Stoic:

“I devote myself to pleasures, you check them; I "indulge" in pleasure, you "use" it; I think that pleasure is the highest good, you do not even think it to be good: for the sake of pleasure I do everything, you do nothing."