Posts by Cassius

Let me expand further on what I have said in some of these recent comments.

When Epicurus says that he is not able to conceive the good without the pleasures that he mentions, all of those pleasures he mentions are "active" - not "katastematic" under the normal definition that people seem to be presuming. While pleasure is the supreme good, it is not the pleasures of the moment, but the life of pleasure, which is foreseen to be the final result, and that means at time choosing pains.

In other words, there are many perspectives on pleasure and the life of pleasure, and more than one can be true at the same time, and they are not in conflict.

What most of us seem to accept here is that the word katastematic refers to something that is stable or established. Is there something there which is not a subset of DURATION, which is referenced in PD09? Of course we want our pleasures to have the longest duration possible!

Is anyone here thinking I am advocating against pleasures being stable and established? OF COURSE NOT. What I am saying is that 'stability' and 'being established' are attributes of something else, not of themselves, and that something else is PLEASURE.

Rather than taking the passage "Freedom from trouble in the mind and from pain in the body are static pleasures, but Joy and exultation are considered as active pleasures involving motion" in isolation, we should consider it with all the rest we know. We know that Epicurus held that because there are only two experiences, for the living human whenever pain is not present what is present is pleasure. This quoted passage need be saying nothing more than that mental or bodily well-being (meaning when pain is absent) constitutes a "stable" perspective on the goal of life. This is a perspective that does not change and does not vary from person to person. This is because we all want 100% pleasure and 0% pain in mind and body. At individual times and places, however, some people are going to engage in food, some in sex, some in zip-lining, and some in studying ancient Greek literature. Those activities and the pleasures that come from them are as stated in PD09 - they vary in intensity and duration and parts of the body that are effected -- they CHANGE with the circumstance.

But those changing circumstances are exactly what human life is made of. At the same time, we maintain a stable attitude that our goal - to the extent we can attain it - is 100% pleasure and 0% pain. This is a goal that is stable and which never varies, and if we keep it mind mind with the reasons for it, then we can have confidence and not be deterred by obstacles.

Is this interpretation spelled out by Diogenes Laertius? Is exactly the same description given by Gosling and Taylor or Boris Nikolsky or Emily Austin or Kelly Aronsen? No, but the writers u have listed are making an effort to present a theory in understandable terms without just chanting Greek words as if they were stating something impossible for the American mind of 2026 to understand in English.

And whichever interpretation you end up taking for yourself, you end up focusing on pleasure in understandable terms that does not incline you toward thinking that being "untroubled" is the best you can do with your life. There are all sorts of ways to be "untroubled" in life and you damn well better specify what you mean rather than leave it to the imagination that blowing your mind out with drugs, or worse, is an equally acceptable way to become "untroubled."

There is absolutely no reason that the factors listed by Epicurus in regard to pleasure - intensity, duration, and parts of the body effected - are not all that anyone needs to make rational decisions about what activities to pursue and what results should be considered the target. And to repeat - injecting untranslated Greek terms into the ultimate description causes much more harm than good.

So I certainly am not arguing against the value of attitudes, or the value of locking up in your mind certain knowledge about import topics, or anything of the sort connected with stability and being established. But the reason this dispute arises is because that's not the interpretation that normal people are going to give to attempts to hold up "Tranquility" or "Calm" or the like as Epicurus' true goal of life. If someone is in this group it is because they are legitimately trying to make use of Epicurean philosophy not only for themselves - but in the great Epicurean tradition, for others as well. And that means being able to explain it in understandable terms.

If katastematic means simply stable and established then say so, and talk in plain terms about how much we value and appreciate things that we have been able to make stable and established in our lives. If someone wants to argue that it means something else - that it is not in fact pleasure, that it means something higher and better than pleasure itself -- then they can take that argument outside this group, because that is the straight highway to asceticism, minimalism, and the total abandonment of the term "pleasure" as we see happening so often. it's not even a slippery slope - it's a Chinese bullet train to that same destination.

Stating things plainly in English will not tempt anyone to think that "tranquility" is an attribute of pleasure that can be detached from pleasure itself. Stating things plainly in English will not tempt people to think that being "tranquil" is the Epicurean supreme good. When virtually every expert has their own individual interpretation about what katastematic means and what activities fall within it, that's neither a stable nor established base on which to move forward. And to let this argument undermine the whole philosophy - as it is doing - is absolutely unacceptable.

it's the job of Academics to debate each other. It's our job to make Epicurean philosophy useful for ourselves and other regular people.

Another overlay to all of this in which I will triple down on Cicero's attitude: if you can't express clearly in your own language what you want to express, then you don't know what you are talking about. English is every bit as rich as Latin or Greek, and if we have something important to say we need to say it clearly in English. Many if not most of the disputes that arise over interpretation of Epicurus would go away if people would in every case express what they mean clearly in English.

Quote from Patrikios

Is it wrong to pursue both kinetic and katastemic pleasures, especially the katastemic pleasures one feels when deeply studying and grasping some deep Epicurean concept

What is wrong is that what you are describing there is a pleasure of change - of motion - and there is no authoritative reason to consider what you are describing as katastematic at all. THAT is the problem - any activity including studying is much more likely to have been considered kinetic than katastematic. We need to pursue these activities for the pleasure that they bring , not because we like the sound of the word katastematic so we can slap that label on it.

I fully admit that it takes a lot of reading to go through what Gosling and Taylor, Nikolsky, and Kelly Aronsen have written, but what is there should disabuse us of the notion that there is anything magic about the word katastematic.

But for those who don't want to take that time, they should be cautioned that they are using terminology in a confident way that they should not be confident of at all - and in which they are very likely wrong.

Why not just describe the pleasure and embrace it if it brings greater pleasure than pain , without worrying whether it is kinetic or katastematic?

Welcome to Episode 343 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts, and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes.

This week we start are continuing our series reviewing Cicero's "Academic Questions" from an Epicurean perspective, which gives us an overview of the issues that split Plato's Academy and helps us understand Epicurus' position on the same issues.

We are now in Section 10 of Book 2, moving into Section 11.

Our text will come from
Cicero - Academic Questions - Yonge We'll likely stick with Yonge primarily, but we'll also refer to the Rackham translation here:

• Cicero On Nature Of Gods Academica Loeb Rackham : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

As we moved into section ten, Lucullus (from the Stoic perspective) attacked those who imply that the mind - a creation of nature - is useless for obtaining knowledge, which has the result of overturning the whole of life.

He then will move to address those who argue that there is a difference between saying everything is uncertain and that nothing can be perceived, and this takes him toward the discussion of Cicero's own position - that it makes sense to say that some things are probable and some are not.

Then as we move into eleven the talk turns more and more to discussing "signs" - and that is the beginning of the point we are looking for - so that we can eventually tackle Philodemus' "On Signs"

Quote from Pacatus

don’t know if that word pleasure (and pain as well) scares people.

There's absolutely no doubt --most people are scared to death of the term, and they would never want to be associated with a philosophy of pleasure - especially in Academia.

Since there's a lot of criticism of negativity embedded in this discussion I thought I better draft something as an example of what I personally think is a more positive approach to Epicurus. Nothing that people here haven't seen a hundred times before, but again that's the point - we are the tiny minority, and I don't think we should sit back and make no effort to change that by talking about the core issues - WITHOUT lathering it with apologies for pleasure, with appeals to asceticism, minimalism, resignation, withdrawal, or the like. Posting this mainly for X, Facebook, Substack, etc.

Blog Article

Living For The Pleasures Of The Moment Isn't Epicurean — It's Lunacy: Why the World's Most Famous "Hedonist" Would Have Despised What We Call Hedonism

The Passage You've Seen a Thousand Times, and What It Actually Says

You have almost certainly seen this sentence before, even if you've never read a word of it: "Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum, quia dolor sit, amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..." It's the source of "Lorem Ipsum" -- the scrambled placeholder text that has filled empty design mockups and dummy web pages for decades. Almost nobody who has typed it, pasted it, or stared at it while waiting for real content ever learns…

Cassius

July 17, 2026 at 3:05 PM

This thread is for discussion of the article:

Blog Article

Living For The Pleasures Of The Moment Isn't Epicurean — It's Lunacy: Why the World's Most Famous "Hedonist" Would Have Despised What We Call Hedonism

The Passage You've Seen a Thousand Times, and What It Actually Says

You have almost certainly seen this sentence before, even if you've never read a word of it: "Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum, quia dolor sit, amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..." It's the source of "Lorem Ipsum" -- the scrambled placeholder text that has filled empty design mockups and dummy web pages for decades. Almost nobody who has typed it, pasted it, or stared at it while waiting for real content ever learns…

Cassius

July 17, 2026 at 3:05 PM

Dave's questions and this thread have me constructively focusing on the issue of what IS really important to focus on. I'm working on some new thoughts for articles about the general issue of the public perception of what "hedonism" means and how much of a problem that word can be.

I was watching a short clip this morning of someone who was mad about an issue and he concluded by accusing his opponents of being "greedy" and essentially focusing on their own pleasures of the moment to the exclusion of concern about future generations. Whether he was right or wrong on the particular issue isn't nearly as important as the fact that he specifically called his opponents "hedonists" as if there is no other possible meaning of the word beyond a narrow focus on the immediate bodily-pleasures-of-the-moment.

1. Is it worth anyone's time to write material trying to rehabilitate the word hedonism?
2. Does it make more sense just to explain that that's not what Epicurus was about?
3. Why is it in fact so hard for people to weigh the pleasures of the moment against the pains that are sure to follow? Aren't there ways to work on improving that situation without talking as if pleasure and desire should be entirely abandoned?

I tend to think that one of the most effective lines of argument is to look to the actual lives of the ancient Epicureans to see how they implemented the philosophy. The contents of Epicurus' will and his last letter are extremely helpful in putting to rest any ambiguities because we can see how Epicurus himself lived his philosophy.

Many of us here and I am one of them love to spend time digging into the details of the surviving fragments to glean more out of them, but can I say that I really have time to do that given that I can't seem to eat right and exercise enough and already have a clear focus on the balance of short and long term and greater and lesser pleasures and pains? No, I can't say that I've come nearly far enough on the basics, and spending too much time on nonessential details may in my case at least be a way of procrastination from what really needs to be done.

So there's all sorts of things that need to be addressed, not only in others but in ourselves. And a time and a proper way to say everything - even denouncing with righteous indignation those who are so blinded by desire that they choose a lesser but immediate pleasure that will cost them a future but much greater pain.

Quote from Torquatus On Ends 1:33

On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of the pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain.

Quote from DaveT

Respecting the man, and Epicurus' mind, is what the Forum is dedicated to, right

That's one way of looking at it, maybe like there is more than one way to view pleasure.

Yes if we respect Epicurus' mind and person, as Lucretius did for example, that's a good guardrail. But just like Epicurus himself as a real person, we all have to live day to day and focus on the most important issues, just as he wrote in the letter to Herodotus about not always needing to know the details but always returning to the headings.

So I would say the real idea is to focus more on the importance of the core ideas which are needed all the time (true views of gods, death, pleasure as the goal, pain as manageable) and only after those are firmly established as the organizational principles would we be prudent to be spending much time on secondary issues.

Of course its tricky - advocacy that Epicurus had a goal other than pleasure is not a secondary issue at all. That takes us back to Pacatus' observation that we will never have consensus on some things. If we are going to buiod content and community on the view that pleasure is the goal, there has to be a limit on advocacy that undercuts that.

Eikadistes lets us know about his recent work:

Quote

Greetings .....

I hope all is well. I just wanted to share a project I finished.

I finished an attempt at Book 1 of On Gods. No published translations are currently available of P.Herc. 26. Dr. David Armstrong apparently started doing so, but ... Philodemus really, really, really sucks to the modern eye as a prose writer, so Dr. Armstrong, as I've read, abandoned the project. Anyway...

I published my translation of the entire book here: https://www.academia.edu/170344034/Philodemus_On_Gods_Book_1

I will be revising updates on twentiers.com/on-gods/

Pacatus i think your post does a good job of summarizing where we need to be.

Quote from Pacatus

I didn’t read the policy thread as forbidding any and all discussion of kinetic/katastematic pleasure (or aponia/ataraxia). They’ve been batted around on here since I’ve been here – often helpfully.

Correct. These terms and questions can be discussed without advocacy of the opposing position, and the very existence of the controversy is an "elephant in the room" that cannot be made to go away by ignoring it. I expect to write many additional posts and articles that address the issue from the "pleasure is the supreme good / pleasure is a very wide concept perspective, and I hope others will too. We can also have "private" discussions that do not affect the publicly-viewable flow of the site and distract from its central message.

Quote from Pacatus

But it seems as if the various arguments (using that word in a technical, not a pejorative sense) about trying to parse strict distinctions are unlikely to ever be settled to any general satisfaction.

And that is probably the most important point. There will never be universal agreement on these points, even among those of us who devote extensive time to reading about Epicurus. In my own mind I come back over and over to the scenes in the "Agora" movie about Hypatia, where the Platonic-like philosophers were consumed in their disputes about astronomy and geometry while their world was collapsing around them outside their doors. There's a time and a place for everything, but these are not the times nor is this the place to allow the focus of the site to be distracted away from central issues.

I don't think anyone on this website is an ascetic or even a minimalist at heart or views "pleasure" or even "desire" with suspicion. And yet those attitudes and perspectives have embedded themselves into Epicurean discourse, largely through this dispute that somehow "katastematic" pleasure is superior and different to pleasure itself.

I haven't recently referenced Elayne's article from 2019 but it continues to be a good non-technical discussion of the issues:

Blog Article

On Pain, Pleasure, and Happiness

Not "absence of pain" as a full statement of the goal of life, but “the Feelings are two, pleasure and pain” and “Pleasure is the beginning and the end of a happy life.”

Brief: The feelings are only two, pleasure and pain—there is no third state such as neutral, and there are no “fancy pleasures” which are different from regular pleasures. Because there is no neutral, reducing pain in life is only possible if there is a corresponding increase in pleasure. The extent of pleasure can be…

Elayne

July 15, 2019 at 7:31 PM

Dave - You wrote:

Quote from DaveT

.Certainly a person can feel katastematic pleasure over longer periods of time than physical pleasure. Can we agree to that?

it appears to me that we can include among those who would not agree with that Professor Kelly Aronsen in her 2019 Health and Hedonism in Plato and Epicurus. There, Aronsen parses kinetic vs. katastematic entirely differently from the mental vs physical your question implies:

Quote from Kelly Aronsen

Contrary to the dominant scholarly view, I argue that there is good reason to avoid classifying non-restorative pleasures as kinetic since they are not derived from movements toward painless, healthy functioning. In this chapter I contend that pleasures from taste, sex, sound, etc., are painless in themselves and are therefore katastematic; no matter whether they occur in the midst of pain (such as when we enjoy tasty food when hungry) or are isolated from pain (when we enjoy dessert after filling up on dinner), they are perceptions of the painless workings of the organism.

I don't write this to encourage us to spend more time looking for classical scholars to take sides with on the meaning of kinetic and katastametic. Nor should we throw up our hands and conclude that Epicurean philosophy is hopeless because we've lost so many texts. The right way forward for virtually everyone is to focus on the basics as it is clear that Lucretius, Diogenes of Oinoanda, Diogenes Laertius, and the general ancient world understood him. And it seems clear that they saw Epicurus as embracing pleasures of both types - pleasures of action or pleasures of state or whatever those words mean - and choosing among those pleasures by applying a a common sense analysis of whether they will bring us more pleasure or more pain.

Glad to have you William.

Welcome WilliamJ !

There is one last step to complete your registration: All new registrants must email Cassius so that this Welcome Thread can contain basic information about your background and interest in Epicurus. In that email, please tell us what prompted your interest in Epicureanism and which particular aspects of Epicureanism most interest you, and/or post a question.

This forum is the place for students of Epicurus to coordinate their studies and work together to promote the philosophy of Epicurus. All posting here is subject to our Community Standards, Participation Levels, and Posting Policies -- please read that page; it explains our ground rules and will save everyone time and friction.

ALSO - AS OF JULY 16, 2026, the Forum has instituted a new editorial policy as to the advocacy of anything other than Pleasure as what Epicurus taught to be the supreme good. All prospective members must read this post before proceeding with an account at Epicureanfriends.coom:

Against Katastematic Supremacy - Pleasure Is A Unified Good, Not A House Divided Against Itself - INCLUDES FORUM EDITORIAL POLICY

If you have not done so already, please be sure you have read Torquatus' Presentation of Epicurean Ethics (also available in a more compact side-by-side format at EpicurusToday.com). That is the clearest, most complete statement of Epicurean ethics to survive from antiquity, and reading it early will save you -- and us -- a great deal of confusion. Most people arrive with a version of "Epicureanism" assembled from the Tetrapharmakon, the Letter to Menoeceus, or scattered quotations of questionable reliability -- and of the three, the Tetrapharmakon is the least reliable foundation of all. It is many times more compressed even than the Letter, and terse enough that it has been read in sharply different, sometimes incompatible ways by different interpreters; at best it serves as a reminder of Epicurus's four main topics for someone who already knows their content, not as a source of that content. The Letter to Menoeceus is a real summary, but it too is compressed and was written for students who already understood the foundations of Epicurean ethics. Torquatus is the best surviving example of how Epicurus's own well-educated students understood and presented that foundation themselves. It is the fastest and most reliable way to find out whether what you already believe about Epicurus matches what he and his school actually taught.

The moderators here are well aware that many fans of Epicurus hold sincerely-held views about what Epicurus taught that are incompatible with this forum's purpose. This forum exists specifically for people committed to classical Epicurean positions, not for reconciling those positions with modern "eclectic" reinterpretations that borrow Epicurus's name while rejecting his actual conclusions. Reading Torquatus first is the quickest way to see where that line falls, before investing time in posts that argue against the very foundations this forum exists to defend.

All of us here arrived at our respect for Epicurus after long journeys through other philosophies. We don't demand of others what we weren't able to do ourselves. Epicurean philosophy is different enough from most other philosophies that understanding how deep those differences run simply takes time. That's why we have participation levels that give new members room to learn, but it's also why we have standards that can mean arguments being limited, or participants removed, when the purpose of the community requires it. Epicurean philosophy is not inherently democratic, isn't committed to unlimited free speech within its own meetings, and isn't organized around anything except the pursuit of truth and a happy life through pleasure as Epicurus explained it.

Please tell us a little about your background reading Epicurean texts, how you found this forum, and what particularly interests you -- that context helps us help you. Our Getting Started page also has ideas for using the site.

Beyond Torquatus, two books will do the most to deepen your understanding quickly. Norman DeWitt's Epicurus and His Philosophy is the single best book-length treatment available. DeWitt treats Epicurus as a coherent system rather than filtering him through later Stoic, Platonic, or modern secular assumptions. If you read one book beyond the ancient sources, make it this one.

Emily Austin's Living for Pleasure: An Epicurean Guide to Life is a clear, engaging modern introduction that many of our members have found a useful on-ramp. Read it, but read it alongside Torquatus and DeWitt rather than in their place, since like most modern treatments it makes no attempt to give the full picture that DeWitt provides.

From there, Epicurus's own surviving letters -- to Herodotus, Pythocles, and Menoeceus -- and Lucretius's On The Nature of Things are also on the essential reading list. Our Recommended Reading page has a fuller list for when you're ready to go further. None of this is required before you participate, but the more of it you've read -- starting with Torquatus -- the more you'll get out of being here.

Welcome to the forum!

Quote from DaveT

Certainly a person can feel katastematic pleasure over longer periods of time than physical pleasure. Can we agree to that?

And interestingly, no - we can't even agree to that.. The "experts" themselves are all over the board as to what pleasures really fall within katastematic and kinetic in the first place. I have been going through the Kelly Arenson book today and she - who like Emily Austin largely if not fully agrees with the fundamentals of the Gosling & Taylor and Nikolsky position cited in my article - has a very different interpretation than I have seen before.

So no - other than the flat statement that Diogenes Laertius records Epicurus himself having said, there is very little if anything we can agree on with certainty as to anything about the meaning of "katastematic" or "kinetic" or the implications of those terms.

On the other hand, there is much we can agree on about pleasure. And while the katastematic-kinetic debate occupies some for another 2000 years, normal people need a fundamental understanding of Epicurus that focuses on pleasure as the category that defines the goal.

Quote from DaveT

After all, physical pain and discomfort are crucial bodily mechanisms to maintaining good health. So why is it unreasonable to distinguish the two forms of pleasure just within those distinctions?

It is not unreasonable at all to distinguish pleasures in terms of how long they last, what parts of the body they effect, and how intense they are? What is necessary about adding on words like "kinetic" and "katastematic" on top of that which Epicurus himself did not include in PD09?

There are all sorts of things that are reasonable Dave, but prolonged advocacy that Epicurus held that anything other than the word Pleasure is the supreme good is the target of this policy for the reasons stated in the article.

If the policy is unclear in some way please let me know. The goal is to reinforce the ultimate conclusion that appears at the head of this forum (If then even the glory of the Virtues, on which all the other philosophers love to expatiate so eloquently, has in the last resort no meaning unless it be based on Pleasure, whereas Pleasure is the only thing that is intrinsically attractive and alluring, it cannot be doubted that Pleasure is the one supreme and final Good and that a life of happiness is nothing else than a life of Pleasure.")

which is the same as stated by Seneca to be posted outside the forum. Here our highest good is PLEASURE.

I think that those outside the forum who advance the argument which is the target of this policy probably understand very well the rhetorical question that is involved. The issue is not fine-tuning types of pleasure so as to reach the best result - that is a primary subject for us all to address. The question is what IS the best result, and as Diogenes of Oinoanda finally had to shout - a life of happiness is a life of pleasure. He did not shout katastematic pleasure, he shouted pleasure.

What is not acceptable here is to adopt the rhetoric of people who want to substitute some other term for pleasure as the description of he supreme good, and who run from use of the term pleasure as if it is embarrassing.

There are many places that people who believe that approach is best can advocate for it - outside this forum.

No doubt this policy will reduce the actual or potential number of participants here. We could become immensely more popular by adopting the rhetoric displayed in my collection of "World's Worst Epicurus Videos." But that's not an acceptble goal for this forum.

This thread is for discussion of the post

Blog Article

Against Katastematic Supremacy - Pleasure Is A Unified Good, Not A House Divided Against Itself - INCLUDES FORUM EDITORIAL POLICY

The Current Establishment View - Which It Is the Editorial Policy Of EpicureanFriends.com to Reject

With only a few notable exceptions, practically every modern account of Epicurean ethics repeats the same claim: Epicurus divided pleasure into two distinct kinds, ranked one above the other. Pleasure, like a house, cannot stand if it is divided against itself — and that is exactly the structure this traditional reading imposes on it. On this traditional view, kinetic pleasure covers everything…

Cassius

July 16, 2026 at 2:06 PM

the Stoic Epicurus - not a word about pleasure except to dismiss it as "mere pleasure"

The original thread included the following paragraph on which I want to make a special comment:

I find some posts here have overly emphasized pleasure. Yes, pleasure, pleasure, I love pleasure. In my younger years I was very much a hedonist. But, some years back I discovered Epicureanism and toned down my pleasure seeking, which is a good thing. Yes, we all want pleasure, but also we need common sense (prudence) both in life and in a marriage. The greatest pleasure, as Epicurus states, is the absence of physical pain (aponia) and mental disturbance (ataraxia), which are the Katastematic, not the kinetic pleasures, which are fleeting,

The above statement as to Epicurus' views is not correct. As Diogenes Laertius wrote, Epiurus embraced both kinetic and katastematic pleasure, and held the Supreme Good to be Pleasure, not katastematic pleasure or any specific type of pleasure. Some people have different views on this matter, but this forum is dedicated to the view that Epicurus taught Pleasure to be the supreme good, as explained in great detail by Gosling & Taylor's The Greeks On Pleasure and as discussed many times elsewhere on this forum.

Cicero, On Ends 1.29 (Rackham)

We are inquiring, then, into what is the final and ultimate Good, which as all philosophers are agreed must be of such a nature as to be the End to which all other things are means, while it is not itself a means to anything else. This Epicurus finds in Pleasure; Pleasure he holds to be the Chief Good, and Pain the Chief Evil.

ADMIN NOTE: The original version of this thread, along with the original first post, has been deleted. The following is a reconstruction from the main part of the posts that were present as of 7/15/26. If anyone's prior post here needs correcting, please let me know and I will adjust it.

SUMMARY OF ORIGINAL POST 7/1/2026

The post asks whether marriage and children are still "worth it" given the financial burden and relational strain they now entail, framing declining birth rates across Europe, Japan, and Korea as people rationally pursuing pleasure by avoiding the anxiety and cost of family life — costs the author pegs at $300k–$1.8M per child depending on replacement-rate assumptions. It traces this to a widening rift between the feminist movement (women pursuing career and independence over homemaking) and MGTOW (men, inspired by Schopenhauer's view of romantic love as nature's trap, opting out of marriage to protect their time and autonomy), arguing both sexes are still chasing pleasure, just no longer through the couple-and-children model. The author draws a historical parallel to Augustus Caesar's responses -- the Lex Iulia and LexPapia Poppaea, which used law to push marriage and reproduction — and asks whether benefits for larger families)should be tried today.

The second half turns more speculative and rhetorical: it lists childless historical figures (Da Vinci, Plato, Kant, Epicurus himself) as a counterpoint before pivoting to civilizational stakes — AI/robot labor replacing workers, mass immigration replacing native populations, and whether "too much pleasure" among a leisured class (the "Otiosi") produces decadence and nihilism, invoking Nietzsche's warning about Western moral decline. It closes by comparing today's turmoil to the chaos after Alexander the Great's death that led Epicurus to found the Garden, implying that whatever the answer to the marriage/children question, the philosophy's real offer is a stable, peaceful community amid social upheaval, now some 2,333 years running.

Cassius - 7/2/26:

Basic analysis of this issue is also going to be related to, or a subset of, the entire question of friendship relationships, and there we have some clear points:
1 - We pursue friendship for pleasure, even though over time the pleasure of our friends becomes as important to us as our own.
2 - We must run risks in order to obtain friendship.
3 - We know going into a friendship that one of us is likely to die first, so if it is the friend then any friendship is going to entail at least that pain, which is very intense. Of course there are other pains as well, but the pain of a friend dying is particularly intense and serves as a good
illustration of the point that friendship or any other relationship among humans is not a rose garden of all pleasures and no pains, and that we choose these relationships, even though there will be a large cost in pain, when we judge that the pleasure will outweigh the pain.

Post by “Noah Calderon” of July 2, 2026 at 9:11 AM

Marriage and children don't seem to have been out of the question for Epicureans, but Epicurus and his followers definitely seemed to place more emphasis on friendship more generally than on pair-bonding, romance, and reproduction. This makes sense because strong friendship and community provide the strongest and most natural sense of security and freedom from worry about not having access to the necessary things in life. It would require a lot of zeroes to already be in one's bank statement or budget to be confident that raising children would be pleasurable enough to justify the cost, as this post points out. Having a good group of friends one is on equal grounds with allows one to spread costs and energy and also just amplifies enjoyment. The same goes for your friendship with the person you are producing the children with or who you are marrying. Lacking respect or equality in gender relations might engender resentment and pain and distort the relationship which should be one of support and mutual pleasure.

Of course, the environment one lives in must also be conducive to raising children, but that veers into how we organize society and therefore politics. If we're looking for just advice for the Epicurean on raising children and marrying, I would s say the philosophy makes it quite clear that you have to have a strong community and strong friendships (especially with the person you are marrying) first. Maybe seeing these things as purely individual or familial is eroding the personal pleasure they produce, and placed in the context of supportive friendships they become more bearable. In any case, that's the reason I am personally not prioritizing them as a young person, and I live in a country with very supportive politics for childrearing.

On this note it would be interesting to hear from anyone on this forum that has researched what the marriage institution in Epicurean communities in ancient times actually looked like, and how it might have differed from today.

Post by “Elli” of July 2, 2026 at 1:40 PM

Ηello to all epicurean friends,

[ADMIN NOTE: THE FOLLOWING REFERS TO THE DELETED POST] Sorry but your whole text is a measurement of turmoil, not pleasure. You count taxes, cost of living, politics, technology, decline, demographics, robots, migration, feminism, MGTOW, Schopenhauer, Augustus, Rome, Nietzsche, the West , but you do not count yourself.

Epicurus says that every desire must be judged by the pleasure it brings and the disturbance it creates. You judge having children in terms of the market, not in terms of the Canon. Physiology (biology) is clear; it has an unforgiving law: children are the future of the city.

Without children, society dies. Lucretius describes how human nature softened when people first saw their children; children created friendship, empathy, cooperation. Biology, anthropology, and history agree: children are not a “cost,” they are a bond. They are the natural root of human sociality.

And here we must see something else: you invoke Schopenhauer - a man who saw the world through his personal trauma. Schopenhauer looked at his relationship with his mother, felt rejection and turmoil, and concluded that “the world is will and representation” and that life is suffering. But this is not the physiology of the world - it is the projection of his own psychological condition onto the world. Epicurus (the physician) would tell him: “If your mother did not love you, that is a condition that cannot be changed now, but it does not mean that nature is evil or that love is a trap. It simply means that you never learned to build the community that would support you.” Trauma is not philosophy; it is an obstacle. And when trauma becomes ideology, philosophy stops healing and starts fortifying. When we say “marriage is a trap,” we no longer need to risk rejection. When we say “everything is decline,” we no longer need to try to build anything. It becomes a convenient empty belief that protects
us from the pain of possible failure.

But the Canon does not impose having children; it measures it. If having children increases your pleasure, have children. If it increases your turmoil, do not. A child is not an economic act; it is a desire. And every desire is judged by the pleasure and the disturbance it brings - not by its cost.

And here lies the real problem: if we are afraid, it is because we are alone. Our turmoil is not biological; it is socially constructed. It is borrowed from a society that supports no one. Epicurus said it clearly: “When the wise man limits himself to what is natural and necessary, he knows more how to give than to receive; such a treasure of self-sufficiency he has found.” Self-sufficiency does not mean isolation; it means friendship. It means community. It means people who share burdens. It means you are not afraid to give, because you are not afraid of being left alone.

You measure having children inside a society that has dissolved into individuals without face and without identity - an amorphous mass. That is why it seems like a burden. When you live in a society where everyone is alone, where there are no communities, no support networks, no stable friendships, no functioning family structures, when everything has become individual and nothing is shared, then every burden feels unbearable. But in Epicurus’ Garden, having children is not a burden; it is an act of pleasure. There, the children of friends are the children of all, the community shares the burden, friendship provides security, and giving creates self-sufficiency.

And here comes something very simple: even if you do not want children, you do not live in a vacuum. Some of your friends will have children. Some of your relatives will have children. Some people around you will carry burdens that you do not carry. And you, says Epicurus - as someone who wants to be wise and self-sufficient - can offer help. Do you know what pleasure you will gain from that? The pleasure of participation, of care, of community. The pleasure Epicurus describes: to give more than you take. Unless you do not want to help either friends or relatives, but then you go against one of the most beautiful Epicurean sayings: LXI.(61)

“Beautiful indeed is our relationship with those around us, and especially with our relatives, who because of this become even more willing.” Friendship and kinship are not burdens; they are sources of pleasure. And offering help to the children of friends and relatives is an act of self-sufficiency, not an act of cost.

Epicurean ethics shows that having children is not a burden when there is community. In his will, Epicurus cared for the children of his friends: he gave them guardianship, financial support, moral support. In the Garden, children are not a private matter; they are a shared responsibility. Friendship reduces the turmoil of having children. Community shares the burden. Community protects children. Community gives security. Community gives pleasure. Community gives a future. Nietzsche said it clearly: “Unhappy marriages do not come from lack of love, but from lack of friendship.” If you find friendship, you find companionship. If you find companionship, you find security. If you find security, having children is not a burden; it is pleasure. Friendship is the foundation of self-sufficiency. Friendship is the foundation of the future.

In short, Epicurean philosophy says: Measure, and have children if it increases your pleasure. Do not have children if it increases your turmoil. And if you do not want children, offer help to the children of your friends and relatives - you will find a treasure of self-sufficiency. And if you want children but are afraid, find a community or create one yourself. Friendship reduces turmoil and creates homeostasis. Community gives security. Security gives pleasure. And pleasure is wealth, because it is the foundation of life - the foundation that gives a future!

Post by “DaveT” of July 2, 2026 at 2:13 PM

Yes, as Cassius said, there are a lot of issues worth discussing. Not the least one being that Epicurus seemed to discourage creating children within the marriage contract except if you were one of the rare Wise Men. But that is not my main point. I think the angst, if I can call what you described with that word, is nearly unknown for most of the world's population. The pleasure/avoidance of pain effects involved in childbearing within marriage are not the most basic. Those who desire pleasure, dare I say unnatural and natural/unnecessary ones that are available within western Industrialized educated, rich societies rather than fulfilling some biblical originating duty to procreate are minorities even among that overall group.

Also, the pleasure urge, expressed as sex leading to babies, of the non Industrialized part of the globe, comes from the basic, human (animalistic based desire) to find pleasure in the sex act. I want to say that sex scratches the urge for pleasure far better than unnatural/unnecessary things. Note that I don't say sex is absolutely necessary, but (fill in the blank) sure is
pleasurable and available to anyone in every station in life.

As a fellow senior citizen, I respectfully suggest that concern over population ebb and flow in the future is not worth the time spent on it. It is for those elite in every society who enormously profit from the labor of the populations who need to worry. For me, relief over these issues comes from to the teaching: Do not fear death. In a sense, we should not fear the future that /will unfold slowly after we are gone, it means nothing to us. And the kids will do fine.

Post by “Elli” of July 2, 2026 at 4:02 PM

Epicurus classifies sex as a desire “natural but not necessary.” He does this for a very precise reason: sex activates two different neurochemical systems in the human organism. One of them is stabilizing; the other is destabilizing.

The stabilizing part is oxytocin - the hormone of bonding, trust, and emotional connection. This is why sex is “natural”: it creates a bond. Oxytocin moves us toward connection, care, and mutual support - all of which are compatible with the Epicurean Physiology, Canon and Ethics.

But this oxytocin bond becomes stable only if it transforms into friendship. If it does not become friendship, the destabilizing systems take over: dopamine (craving and pursuit), noradrenaline (arousal and anxiety), and vasopressin (possessiveness and jealousy). These produce turmoil, not pleasure. They generate instability rather than the “well‑balanced constitution” that Metrodorus praised as eustathia. Today in neurobiology has a synonym word with "eustathia" as Homeostasis.

This is exactly why Epicurus says sex is natural but not necessary. If you do not have it, you do not lose your eudaemonia i.e. the homeostatic balance of body and soul. And if you do have it, it brings pleasure only when the oxytocin bond becomes
friendship: a stable, reliable, fear‑reducing relationship that Epicurus considered the foundation of self‑sufficiency.

Without friendship - the state of security, trust, and mutual reliability - sex by itself activates the destabilizing systems; with friendship, it aligns with the natural ones. And that’s all.

Post by “Elli” of July 3, 2026 at 3:24 AM

Epicurus’ Political Revolution Without Bloodshed

In On the Education of Children, Plutarch begins with a series of “moral” recommendations that Epicurus would immediately classify as empty beliefs. These are external social norms that have nothing to do with human nature, intimacy, or love, but with what society allows you to choose as a life partner. Plutarch says you must not marry a courtesan, must not marry a concubine, must not marry a woman of humble origin, and - most absurd of all - must not marry a short woman if you are a king. The example of Archidamus is telling: “If you are King Archidamus, do not marry a short woman, because you will produce little lizard-kings instead of real kings.” The Spartans fined Archidamus for marrying a short woman, believing her appearance would “pollute” the quality of his offspring. A great expert in DNA, Plutarch… what can we say.

In other words, if you were a Spartan or an Athenian and dared to fall in love with a woman your social circle did not approve of …watch out, because you’d get fined and socially bullied! Did you dare to love Aspasia, the courtesan? You will never become a statesman like Pericles, nor will you build a democracy… watch out, because you’ll get bullied! Did you choose the courtesan Leontion as your life partner? You will never become Metrodorus, nor will you teach philosophy in a school named as Garden… watch out, because you’ll get
bullied!

Are you the titan philosopher Epicurus, and you allowed courtesans, and slaves to attend your philosophical school - the Garden - in order to free them from ignorance, fear, and all the things that disturb human life? That’s not a philosophical school - that’s a filthy brothel… and watch out, because you’ll receive brutal and eternal bullying as a philosopher!

These social norms - social class, origin, appearance, “what people will say,” height measurements, class moralizing, Platonic “virtue,” Spartan punishments - are exactly what Epicurus calls empty beliefs. They are external obstacles telling you which woman you are “allowed” to choose as your life partner and which one you are not. They have nothing to do with happiness, friendship, and pleasure. They are social pressures that produce disturbance, not tranquility. And it is astonishing how easily these beliefs reappear in every era, just with new names.

Epicurus sets no such norms. He does not measure height, origin, class, or wealth. He does not say “whom you are allowed to love in order to marry.” On the contrary, we see him offering an exhortation: “your wife must not be afraid of you, because you did not marry her to serve you, but to be your companion in life”. We see that with this exhortation Epicurus does something
deeply radical: he clearly rejects the idea that a relationship - whether marriage or friendship - is a relationship of power. For Epicurus, a relationship is a relationship of friendship. And in ancient Greek, the verb “to love” was the verb “philein” - from which the word philia (friendship) comes. Love is a form of friendship. Friendship is a form of love. And friendship is the highest form of human connection.

Lucretius states it plainly (DRN 4.1278–1287): love is not born from origin, appearance, social class, nor from the mythical “arrows of Aphrodite.” It is born from intimacy and daily interaction, like drops of water falling on a rock and slowly penetrating it over time. This is empiricism, not idealism. This is human nature, not social norm.

And here is the funny part: in the forum, our friend - without realizing it - fell into the same trap as Plutarch. Plutarch measured height, origin, social class. Our friend measures taxes, cost of living, politics, technology, demographic collapse, robots, migration, feminism, MGTOW, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, the decline of the West. In other words, modern empty beliefs. The same external obstacles, just with new names. Both forget the Epicurean criterion: love is born from intimacy, not from social norms.

So the real question is - “should you have children or not.” The real question is with which woman (or man) you will have children or not - and not with which social norms allow or forbid you to choose her as your life partner. Plutarch says: “with the one society approves.” Our friend said: “with the one the era, politics, and economy approve.” Epicurus says: “with the one you love.” Lucretius says: “with the one intimacy binds you to.”

From Diogenes Laertius’ description of the wise man: “And indeed, the wise man will marry and have children, as Epicurus says in On Problems and On Nature, but only in accord with the circumstances of his life.”

And now, we ask : What is the main circumstance? That you love her and she loves you, that you are friends - because we choose friendship for its own sake, but its beginning lies in mutual benefit. Today, many people say they cannot find a partner to have children with. But Epicurus would smile gently and say: you cannot find friends. You cannot find philia (friendship). You cannot find the human warmth that makes love possible. What you call “a crisis of relationships” is simply a crisis of friendship - a crisis of intimacy that leads to loneliness, desertion, and depression. This is the weapon of tyrants: where tyranny exists, there is no friendship, no frank
speech, no freedom. But when everything around us collapses, these are the only fortresses that remain standing.

Post by “Elli” of July 3, 2026 at 4:26 AM

Plutarch was not a neutral observer. He was a priest of the Delphic priesthood, an ideological guardian of the Platonic and religious establishment. When he could not refute Epicurus philosophically, he resorted to ad hominem attacks, moralistic slander, and ideological gossip. He even spread the rumor that Epicurus and Metrodorus “shared” Leontion - a claim found nowhere else in antiquity. It was not history; it was propaganda.

And yet, Plutarch himself preserves one of the most extraordinary acts of Epicurean humanity: during a famine in Athens, Epicurus distributed beans one by one to his friends, ensuring that they survived. The irony is striking: the same man who accused the Garden of being a “filthy brothel” records that Epicurus saved human lives with food.

And these were not just any beans. They were the “impure,” “unholy” beans forbidden by Pythagoras - the beans the superstitious feared. Epicurus acted exactly as a wise man would: beans can be stored for a very long time, and because the superstitious considered them impure, no one would raid the Garden to steal them. Epicurus chose a resource that fear and superstition would protect for him. This was not only kindness; it was strategic survival. And with this strategy, he saved his friends.

The irony becomes even sharper: according to certain idealist doctrines, it would be “better” to starve than to eat the supposedly impure beans. Epicurus, guided by Nature and the Canon rather than by ideological taboos, used those very beans to preserve life. This contrast shows how detached idealistic prohibitions can become from human reality, while Epicurean philosophy remains grounded, humane, and life‑preserving.

Post by “Elli” of July 3, 2026 at 4:43 AM

Quote from Cassius
Thank you for that post Elli!
I am sure someone will ask about this:

Quote

Quote from Elli
Epicurus sets no such norms. He does not measure height, origin, class, or
wealth. He does not say “whom you are allowed to love in order to marry.” On
the contrary, we see him offering an exhortation: “your wife must not be afraid
of you, because you did not marry her to serve you, but to be your companion
in life”

Is this an actual quote for which there is a citation, or is this exhortation a paraphrase?

Elli responded:

I have read this quote in a post of a friend, who claimed that said by Epicurus, but this is fake!

Post by “DaveT” of July 3, 2026 at 9:13 AM

Quote

Quote from Elli
Today, many people say they cannot find a partner to have children with. But Epicurus
would smile gently and say: you cannot find friends. You cannot find philia (friendship).
You cannot find the human warmth that makes love possible. What you call “a crisis of
relationships” is simply a crisis of friendship - a crisis of intimacy that leads to
loneliness, desertion, and depression.

Elli I enjoyed reading your posts. I'm not sure whether friendship is a subset of intimacy, or intimacy is a subset of friendship. But your statement above made me think of the old saying that to have a friend, you must be a friend. And perhaps to have an intimate (or loving?) relationship you have to love and be open to intimacy.

Post by “Elli” of July 3, 2026 at 11:10 AM

DaveT Thank you for your kind words and your thoughtful reflection.

Epicurus would agree with you that intimacy and friendship are deeply intertwined. In fact, in Diogenes Laertius "on the wise man" we read that friendship begins from practical need, but becomes a “community of life” sustained by mutual pleasure. That shared life -that philia -is
exactly what makes intimacy possible.

So when I wrote that modern people cannot find partners because they cannot find friendship, I meant it in this Epicurean sense: intimacy is not something separate from friendship, nor something that appears magically. It grows out of the daily practice of mutual care, openness, and trust. To have a friend, you must be a friend -and to have intimacy, you must cultivate friendship.
Epicurus sees love as the deepening of philia. Without friendship, intimacy cannot arise; without intimacy, love cannot survive. What we call a “crisis of relationships” is, at its root, a crisis of friendship, a crisis of human warmth.

SUMMARY OF DELETED POST 7/4/26

The core argument of this post is that poverty undermines pleasure rather than enabling it: a poor man who has five children will likely raise them hungry and illiterate while shortening his wife's health from repeated childbirth, whereas having only one or two children he can properly feed and educate produces far more actual pleasure and far less pain. The post frames Epicurus himself as evidence for this — not a starry-eyed idealist but a prudent, practical administrator who had to secure real funding to run his school and sustain decades of writing — arguing that marriage and childrearing likewise demand realism, responsibility, and discipline, not just goodwill.

The second half builds a historical case that marriage was traditionally understood as a financial contract (the author traces "wed" to Old English *weddian*, "to pledge/stake"), a partnership of pooled money and land between families that only later got buried under a "romantic" ideal invented by troubadours and artists — an illusion the author says is now supercharged by social media and dating apps, which push men and women toward fantasy partners (the multi-millionaire, the sex goddess) instead of realistic, decent matches like "the apprentice plumber" or "the girl down the street." The author concedes they were once a hedonist but says discovering Epicureanism taught them to balance pleasure with prudence, citing Epicurus's ranking of katastematic pleasure (aponia/ataraxia) over fleeting kinetic pleasure. The piece closes by saying that some financial cushion ("zeroes") is necessary before marrying, so a couple can grow their family only as fast as their means allow — and closes on the Letter to Menoeceus line that "prudence is a more precious thing even than philosophy."

Post by “Elli” of July 6, 2026 at 2:38 PM

It is striking to observe how someone can speak of prudence while repeating the very error Aristotle made when he claimed that women have fewer teeth than men - without ever opening a single mouth to count. He preferred abstraction to reality, assumption to experience, theory to observation. And here, the same gesture reappears: a man theorizing about marriage, children, and prudence without ever examining the living substance of Epicurean philosophy.

He speaks of marriage as a contract of business, reducing an ancient institution of joy, pleasure, and friendship into a commodity for the marketplace. He has not yet understood that this reduction is one of the primary causes of unhappy marriages: two spouses locked in separate rooms, each counting money in a private chest, each guarding his own fear of death instead of sharing a real pleasant life. When marriage becomes an accounting exercise, joy evaporates, friendship collapses, and the household turns into a pair of isolated treasuries. This is not prudence; it is moral decline - the quiet erosion of philia under the weight of economic suspicion. It is the collapse of friendship into accounting, the transformation of human intimacy into a spreadsheet, the replacement of shared life with Excel morality, where the only virtue is the balance of columns.

He speaks of children as liabilities, of prudence as financial foresight, as if human bonds were items on a balance sheet. He measures children by the cost of their upbringing, failing to see that the cost of being alone is the one price he is actually paying. Two private anxieties are elevated into universal laws, as though the entire human condition must conform to the architecture of his fear. This is not prudence; it is projection disguised as philosophy.

Epicurus teaches that prudence and pleasure are inseparable - two movements of the same soul. He separates them. Epicurus teaches that friendship is the highest security - the foundation of a life free from fear. He replaces it with economic caution. Epicurus teaches that desires must be measured by the pleasure and disturbance they bring - not by their cost of money. He measures them by risk and liability. What emerges is not Epicurean prudence but Aristotelian household economics, where human beings are evaluated as units of production and reproduction.

And just as Aristotle never counted the teeth, he never counted the pleasures, the friendships, or the disturbances born from fear itself. He counted only the coins. And a man who counts only coins will always conclude that life is too expensive. Epicurus did not build the Garden on contracts, pledges, or liabilities. He built it on friendship, mutual care, shared burdens, and the courage to live pleasantly. Prudence is not the art of avoiding life; it is the art of choosing the life that frees one from fear.

Anyone who wishes to speak of prudence must first open the mouth of the philosophy he invokes - and count its teeth. Otherwise, he remains a prisoner of his own projections, mistaking the ledger for the landscape, merely theorizing about human nature without ever looking at the human beings in front of him.

Post by “Patrikios” of July 7, 2026 at 9:06 PM

This is an interesting thread, to which I’ll post other replies. However, to this opening sentence, I would tell someone today, that I have heard this same refrain of similar “burdens” on married life for decades. It was true in 1970, as it is still true today.

The joys of seeing new life grow is a pleasure that can be treasured in memory to outweigh the pain of these burdens - for most people. But not all family relationships turn out well. Many do lead to painful memories that may be difficult to forget.

And yes, there are those persons who don’t have the desire, capacity or support to pursue raising children in a meaningful marriage. They today may be pressured into raising a family from a variety of sources. More later. This is just an opening perspective on the topic.

Post by “Cassius” of July 13, 2026 at 7:47 PM

I have been delinquent in not spending more time with this thread, especially since I encouraged the posting of it.

Quote

Quote from Elli
So when I wrote that modern people cannot find partners because they cannot find
friendship, I meant it in this Epicurean sense: intimacy is not something separate from
friendship, nor something that appears magically. It grows out of the daily practice of
mutual care, openness, and trust. To have a friend, you must be a friend -and to have
intimacy, you must cultivate friendship.

Yes these are the issues that need discussion to find ways to address them. Another aspect of this is the increasing difficulty of speaking freely to people and letting them know what we actually think about things. Monitoring and censorship and the fact that the
internet seems forever can tend to make people reluctant to say what they really think, and in a time when people rely on meeting others online, you don't have much to go on other than a picture and look in someone's eye, and with AI image creation you certainly can't trust even that anymore.

If you are - like many of us - very opinionated and also not in the "majority' on many of these issues, it becomes very difficult to find people who really "connect" with you.