Posts by Cassius

Just for fun I'll post here a graphic I did previously:

I believe I started on this before but I cannot find my draft. No doubt this deserves many different approaches and many different articles. As for me, what I thought would be most useful in unwinding this was a relatively simple hierarchical outline like this, reducing the major arguments to a manageable handful in summary. It needs to have references to the text ( the Jowett text is here) (preferably line numbers, but some means of finding the section; here is the Adelaide version; the Jowett commentary is here).

One way of looking at it is that the arguments divide down along three key words/concepts: (1) "limits" (2) "purity" and (3) "continuity" but each one requires significant explanation to begin to understand the issue. Also there are probably other high-level divisions, and not all of them may be fully expressed in Philebus. But reducing them to series of headings would go a long way toward helping us get a grasp of them.

Plato's Arguments In Philebus Against Pleasure As The Good / The Ultimate Goal

1. Plato's argument from "limits" - that the good / the ultimate goal must be something which has a limit, and Pleasure has no limit, so pleasure is disqualified.
   
   1. Plato's Argument in Detail:
      
      1. A thing which has a limit cannot be improved
      2. If a thing can be improved, then it cannot be considered perfect
      3. SOCRATES: I omit ten thousand other things, such as beauty and health and strength, and the many beauties and high perfections of the soul: O my beautiful Philebus, the goddess, methinks, seeing the universal wantonness and wickedness of all things, and that there was in them no limit to pleasures and self-indulgence, devised the limit of law and order, whereby, as you say, Philebus, she torments, or as I maintain, delivers the soul. — What think you, Protarchus? … SOCRATES: Have pleasure and pain a limit, or do they belong to the class which admits of more and less? PHILEBUS: They belong to the class which admits of more, Socrates; for pleasure would not be perfectly good if she were not infinite in quantity and degree. SOCRATES: Nor would pain, Philebus, be perfectly evil. And therefore the infinite cannot be that element which imparts to pleasure some degree of good. But now — admitting, if you like, that pleasure is of the nature of the infinite — in which of the aforesaid classes, O Protarchus and Philebus, can we without irreverence place wisdom and knowledge and mind? And let us be careful, for I think that the danger will be very serious if we err on this point. PHILEBUS: You magnify, Socrates, the importance of your favourite god. SOCRATES: And you, my friend, are also magnifying your favourite goddess; but still I must beg you to answer the question. … SOCRATES: And whence comes that soul, my dear Protarchus, unless the body of the universe, which contains elements like those in our bodies but in every way fairer, had also a soul? Can there be another source? PROTARCHUS: Clearly, Socrates, that is the only source. SOCRATES: Why, yes, Protarchus; for surely we cannot imagine that of the four classes, the finite, the infinite, the composition of the two, and the cause, the fourth, which enters into all things, giving to our bodies souls, and the art of self-management, and of healing disease, and operating in other ways to heal and organize, having too all the attributes of wisdom; — we cannot, I say, imagine that whereas the self-same elements exist, both in the entire heaven and in great provinces of the heaven, only fairer and purer, this last should not also in that higher sphere have designed the noblest and fairest things? PROTARCHUS: Such a supposition is quite unreasonable. SOCRATES: Then if this be denied, should we not be wise in adopting the other view and maintaining that there is in the universe a mighty infinite and an adequate limit, of which we have often spoken, as well as a presiding cause of no mean power, which orders and arranges years and seasons and months, and may be justly called wisdom and mind? PROTARCHUS: Most justly.
      4. The same argument in Seneca
         1. Seneca’s Letters – Book I – Letter XVI: This also is a saying of Epicurus: “If you live according to nature, you will never be poor; if you live according to opinion, you will never be rich.” Nature’s wants are slight; the demands of opinion are boundless. Suppose that the property of many millionaires is heaped up in your possession. Assume that fortune carries you far beyond the limits of a private income, decks you with gold, clothes you in purple, and brings you to such a degree of luxury and wealth that you can bury the earth under your marble floors; that you may not only possess, but tread upon, riches. Add statues, paintings, and whatever any art has devised for the luxury; you will only learn from such things to crave still greater. **Natural desires are limited; but those which spring from false opinion can have no stopping point. The false has no limits. **
            
         2. Seneca’s Letters – To Lucilius – 66.45: “What can be added to that which is perfect? Nothing otherwise that was not perfect to which something has been added. Nor can anything be added to virtue, either, for if anything can be added thereto, it must have contained a defect. Honour, also, permits of no addition; for it is honourable because of the very qualities which I have mentioned.[5] What then? Do you think that propriety, justice, lawfulness, do not also belong to the same type, and that they are kept within fixed limits? The ability to increase is proof that a thing is still imperfect.”“THE ABILITY TO INCREASE IS PROOF THAT A THING IS IMPERFECT.”
            
         3. (Need to add the text in the GRAPHIC which follows these two here)
   2. Philebus' Improper Response
      1. One
      2. Two
   3. Epicurean Proper Response
      1. PD3 et al
      2. Two
2. Plato's argument from "purity" - The pure is more to be preferred than a larger quantity of the impure, and as a result we must have wisdom in order to separate the pure from the impure (which means that something other than Pleasure itself is of the ultimate importance)
   
   1. Plato's argument in detail:
      1. SOCRATES:* True, Protarchus; and so the purest white, and not the greatest or largest in quantity, is to be deemed truest and most beautiful? PROTARCHUS: Right. To me you get almost a direct reflect of the first part of PD3 when you do that; “PD3. The magnitude of pleasure reaches its limit in the removal of all pain.” Here is more context to give you the background: SOCRATES: And now, having fairly separated the pure pleasures and those which may be rightly termed impure, let us further add to our description of them, that the pleasures which are in excess have no measure, but that those which are not in excess have measure; the great, the excessive, whether more or less frequent, we shall be right in referring to the class of the infinite, and of the more and less, which pours through body and soul alike; and the others we shall refer to the class which has measure. PROTARCHUS: Quite right, Socrates. SOCRATES: Still there is something more to be considered about pleasures. PROTARCHUS: What is it? SOCRATES: When you speak of purity and clearness, or of excess, abundance, greatness and sufficiency, in what relation do these terms stand to truth? PROTARCHUS: Why do you ask, Socrates? SOCRATES: Because, Protarchus, I should wish to test pleasure and knowledge in every possible way, in order that if there be a pure and impure element in either of them, I may present the pure element for judgment, and then they will be more easily judged of by you and by me and by all of us. PROTARCHUS: Most true. SOCRATES: Let us investigate all the pure kinds; first selecting for consideration a single instance. PROTARCHUS: What instance shall we select? SOCRATES: Suppose that we first of all take whiteness. PROTARCHUS: Very good. SOCRATES: How can there be purity in whiteness, and what purity? Is that purest which is greatest or most in quantity, or that which is most unadulterated and freest from any admixture of other colours? PROTARCHUS: Clearly that which is most unadulterated. SOCRATES: True, Protarchus; and so the purest white, and not the greatest or largest in quantity, is to be deemed truest and most beautiful? PROTARCHUS: Right. We can do the same substitution exercise with this example from Socrates: “How can there be purity in [pleasure/whiteness], and what purity? Is that purest which is greatest or most in quantity, or that which is most unadulterated and freest from any admixture of [pain/ other colours]? Answer: “clearly, that which is most unadulterated.”
      2. Two
   2. Philebus' improper response:
      1. One
      2. Two
   3. Epicurean Proper Response:
      1. One
      2. Two
3. Plato's argument from "continuity" - Pleasure cannot be the goal or guide because it is not continuously present. (Need to check whether this in Philebus, or in another Platonic work, or Plutarch?)
   
   1. Plato's argument in detail
      1. DeWitt: "Neither was he in debt to his teachers for his hedonism. None of them was a hedonist. He was in debt to Plato for suggestions concerning the classification of desires and the calculus of advantage in pleasure,47 but differed from both Plato and Aristippus in his definition of pleasure. To neither of these was continuous pleasure conceivable, because they recognized only peaks of pleasure separated either by intervals void of pleasure or by neutral states. In order to escape from these logical dead ends Epicurus worked his way to a novel division of pleasures into those that were basic and those that were decorative.48 The pleasure of being sane and in health is basic and can be enjoyed continually. All other pleasures are superfluous and decorative. For this doctrine, once more, he was in debt to no teacher.
      2. DeWitt; Still need to track down cite in Plato: "The apex of the new structure of ethics erected by Epicurus consists in the teaching that pleasure can be continuous. The discovery of a logical basis for this proposition was essential for the promulgation of hedonism as a practical code of conduct for mankind. No philosophy that offered merely intermittent intervals of pleasure would have possessed any broad or cogent appeal for those in quest of the happy life. The predecessors of Epicurus had spent considerable thought upon the analysis of pleasure, but their attitude was in the main merely analytical and academic, lacking relevance to action. Their zeal was not for promoting the happiness of mankind. They were rather in the position of men who give themselves to the study of anatomy without contemplating the practice of medicine. The attitude of Epicurus, on the contrary, was pragmatic from the beginning. The declaration that "Vain is the word of that philosopher by which no malady of mankind is healed" has already been quoted.51 The desired logical basis for the continuity of pleasure was afforded by the discovery of natural ceilings of pleasures. From this is derived the division into basic and ornamental or superfluous pleasures, corresponding respectively to natural and necessary desires and those that are neither natural nor necessary.
      3. Example in Cicero: "Since, then, the whole sum of philosophy is directed to ensure living happily, and since men, from a desire of this one thing, have devoted themselves to this study; but different people make happiness of life to consist in different circumstances; you, for instance, place it in pleasure; and, in the same manner you, on the other hand, make all unhappiness to consist in pain: let us consider, in the first place, what sort of thing this happy life of yours is. But you will grant this, I think, that if there is really any such thing as happiness, it ought to be wholly in the power of a wise man to secure it; for, if a happy life can be lost, it cannot be happy. For who can feel confident that a thing will always remain firm and enduring in his case, which is in reality fleeting and perishable? But the man who distrusts the permanence of his good things, must necessarily fear that some day or other, when he has lost them, he will become miserable; and no man can be happy who is in fear about most important matters.” [need to re-find this cite]
   2. Philebus' improper response
      1. One
      2. Two
   3. Epicurean proper response:
      1. One
      2. Two

Jumping ahead when we peel this back far enough we are going to see that this all comes down to feeling vs logic. Life is about feeling / sensation and logic alone is worthless, but Plato through wordplay is attempting to reverse that natural priority and convince us that logic has primacy. This is why Epicurus' canonical analysis is so important.

But we have come so far down the wrong path for so long that today we have to walk back step by step through the argument in order to see how the Platonic / Stoic / Virtue / Dialectical Logic crowd led us astray.

I believe it is also useful to analogize this question to Epicurus' analysis of the boundlessness of space. We can throw the javelin endlessly and never hit the end of space, and yet the universe has a logical limit in being composed of only matter and void, outside of which nothing exists or can be conceived to exist as possibly entering the universe from outside to change it.

Pleasure and pain stand in the role of matter and void - it is useful to consider them from the perspective of quantity for some purposes, but no one should be so foolish as to forget that the matter and space composing my body and my mind are much different to me, and of much more concern, than the matter and space composing a rock on the far side of the moon.

The rock and my mind may be equivalent in quantity (weight) but they are dramatically different in most other,and most important respects, about which"quantity" tells us nothing.

Why are we talking about these absurdities? Only because Plato and the logicians seek to avert us from pleasure by arguing that the greatest good in life must have a "limit."

Poster GFL: "If you maintain that there is pleasure beyond the absence of pain, then you are not an Epicurean, but a Cyrenaic."

Cassius:

In the Epicurean system where all feelings are either pleasure or pain, there would be no possibility of adding another type of feeling once pleasures expand to occupy all feeling. However I am not aware of a Cyreniac statement which would assert such a thing, are you? The word "beyond" in that statement would need explanation, because if we are talking quantity in the way Epicurus stated it, there is no quantity of pleasure other than "absence of pain." Unless we are more clear about what we are talking about the entire conversation becomes a word game --- which is exactly what it was in its original Platonic context.

What does "quantity of pleasure" mean anyway except in context as an answer to a logic puzzle? That is why it appears to me that this entire discussion must be kept in mind as linked to Plato / Philebus for us to even understand what we are talking about. The original issue, as queried by Plato in Philebus, started with the question "Does pleasure have a limit?" Are we measuring the pleasure from ice cream in inches or pounds? What is a "limit?"

Unless you in know the reasoning behind the question, the discussion is meaningless -- and worse: deceptive. Of course that is just how Plato intended it, as wordplay to deflate those who see pleasure as the goal of life.

Excellent! Too late at night for me to absorb at the moment but I will read! This is probably a situation calling for a "collapsible" outline hierarchical format with headings and subheadingsat increasing levels of detail the further out it is opened. Otherwise we deal with the "wall of text" problem you mentioned earlier.

The Jowett intro is helpful bit it ends up being a wall of text too.

"But with everything from Gutenberg, it becomes a large wall a of text."Yep. We ultimately need an outline of the major arguments.

Oh geeze i forgot how the "mixture" issue is also mixed in to the package. Something about how if there are types of pleasure, of which some are better than others, or which are judgeable by outside standards, then that is proof that the knowledge/ wisdom of this outside standard is more important than pleasure itself, since you need it to recognize the best pleasure. If admitted, this once again dethrones pleasure from the top spot as the greatest good. And which therefore means that it is a fatal error to ever admit that there are types of pleasure which are judgeable by anything other than the feeling of pleasure itself. No doubt this is related to the "unity of pleasure" discussed by Dewitt.

i think the Jowett version is probably the standard english version, and i found his intro useful. I also made a copy for cut and paste purposes here : https://epicureanfriends.com/wiki/doku.php?id=plato_-_philebus

Thank you Charles! I am certainly no Plato expert myself, but i think Philebus is fairly manageable. If i recall correctly i got some good leads from the Gosling and Taylor book, but Philebus pretty much stands on its own and is written to supposedly be pretty focused.

I think the 2 big arguments about (1) to be the best, a thing must have a limit and (2) something that is "pure" is better than having more of something that is adulterated, are both profoundly relevant to the Principal Doctrines. I am pretty sure that I have a good handle on how the "limit" argument relates to PD3 and absence of pain, but the "purity" issue may have even deeper implications for the "fullness of pleasure" and "pure pleasure" arguments of other PDs

Godfrey, while this is on my mind, I recall also thinking that the parts of Philebus that I pulled out to the "limits" as relevant are pretty clear, but the version of the argument made by Seneca is even *more* clear. To me that's especially true with Seneca's formulation that "THE ABILITY TO INCREASE IS PROOF THAT A THING IS IMPERFECT.” I think Plato says the same thing in different words, but Seneca's version is extremely precise. A thing which has no limits cannot be "perfect" and therefore it cannot be the "highest" anything, and since we're talking about the "highest" good - that rules out pleasure!

Once someone gets a handle on the argument that is being made, PD3 and the otherwise troublesome passages of the Letter to Menoeceus as to "limits" make perfect sense.

And the continuation of the argument into the discussion of "purity" is also extremely important, and bears on some otherwise very obscure parts of the Principal Doctrines.

But this is going to take a long and dedicated campaign to bring this observation into wider view.

_Seneca’s Letters – Book I – Letter XVI: This also is a saying of Epicurus: “If you live according to nature, you will never be poor; if you live according to opinion, you will never be rich.” Nature’s wants are slight; the demands of opinion are boundless. Suppose that the property of many millionaires is heaped up in your possession. Assume that fortune carries you far beyond the limits of a private income, decks you with gold, clothes you in purple, and brings you to such a degree of luxury and wealth that you can bury the earth under your marble floors; that you may not only possess, but tread upon, riches. Add statues, paintings, and whatever any art has devised for the luxury; you will only learn from such things to crave still greater. **Natural desires are limited; but those which spring from false opinion can have no stopping point. The false has no limits. **

Seneca’s Letters – To Lucilius – 66.45: “What can be added to that which is perfect? Nothing otherwise that was not perfect to which something has been added. Nor can anything be added to virtue, either, for if anything can be added thereto, it must have contained a defect. Honour, also, permits of no addition; for it is honourable because of the very qualities which I have mentioned.[5] What then? Do you think that propriety, justice, lawfulness, do not also belong to the same type, and that they are kept within fixed limits? The ability to increase is proof that a thing is still imperfect.”“THE ABILITY TO INCREASE IS PROOF THAT A THING IS IMPERFECT.”

Here Seneca explicitly links PD3 to the “limits” argument, but Seneca being the Stoic that he was, chose to focus on the “Tranquility” rather than viewing the result as the uninterrupted enjoyment of the pleasures that filled the cup in the first place:

Godfrey just FYI I split off your comments about Philebus into THIS new subforum / thread: Philebus - Plato's Arguments Against Pleasure and Epicurean Responses

Of course I have my notes and excerpts that I collected on my original"Full Cup of Pleasure" page at NewEpicurean.com but the subject demands a much more detailed analysis, starting with just a basic outline of Plato's arguments against pleasure, and a basic summary of how he tricks Philebus into making admissions that make it impossible to maintain pleasure as the goal.

I know that there are other Platonic dialogues that contain other relevant arguments, but Philebus seems to be the ultimate summary of Plato's anti-pleasure argument, and as such it would not be surprising if Epicurus organized his arguments against that document in particular.

Godfrey I would be extremely grateful if you could help me get discussion going about this, as i have generally not succeeded in getting much followup comment in the past. If you made any note of important sections or just general comments that would be great and we can split the discussion off into the Philebus thread. There is a TON of important stuff there - not just "quantity" but also "purity" argument and it would really help if we could get some readable commentary going on that.

I suggest THIS location for discussion of Philebus in detail: Philebus - Plato's Arguments Against Pleasure and Epicurean Responses

More of my ill will toward Cicero: Cicero was nothing if not intelligent, and he had the means at his disposal to get to the bottom of the issue, and, if necessary, consult the two opposing sides for their own explanation of the apparent conflict between Heironymous and Epicurus. Yet rather than present a sympathetic explanation from an Epicurean (or from a Heironymian) as to why their positions were in conflict, he simply stated the alleged inconsistency and left it unanswered, planting in the mind of his readers that Epicurus was a sloppy thinker and did not even know how to make a coherent argument about pleasure.

Once again the DeWitt statement about Cicero rings in my ears:

The bottom line is that Cicero took out of context the building-block discussion of "limit of pleasure" - which has a perfectly legitimate place in the *foundation* of the logical structure that Epicurus was erecting - and placed that building-block at the *apex* of the structure instead of in its proper place as a supporting explanation of why Pleasure is the ultimate goal. That's why it ("absence of pain") standing at the apex of the philosophy looks silly or ridiculous or even offensive to neutral normal people, but still is absolutely correct as written when viewed in its proper subordinate context.

According to Wikipedia, Hieronymous of Rhodes lived from c. 290 – c. 230 BC, while Epicurus lived from 341–270 BC. That means that Hieronymous lived after Epicurus, and had Epicurus' works to reference, but Epicurus was no longer around to respond to Hieronymous. If indeed Epicurus had taken the position that "absence of pain" is a correct and full statement of the goal of life, why would Hieronymous have had to deviate from Epicurus, and why would Cicero have had to set them up as opposites? the tragedy is that we don't have the works of contemporaneous Epicurus who would certainly have written to clear up this conflict. All we can go on now is that Cicero and those who knew at the time, knew that Hieronymous advocated "absence of pain" and deprecated pleasure, and that that was *not* what Epicurus had taught.

We will eventually straighten out the posting here, but in the meantime, here is the point: it is absolutely true that all these references to "absence of pain" do exist. The issue is "What do they mean?" and "What do they tell us about the goal of life?" For each reference to "absence of pain" we can find MORE references to "Pleasure," and so it is necessary to determine the relationship between the two. Cicero and Hieronymous and the Greeks knew that the two are absolutely not the same thing. Epicurus had a reason for saying what he said, and it is up to us to figure out what the Epicureans meant from the fragmentary texts that are still available.

Quoting over and over the same passages does nothing to explain to an honest inquirer how to reconcile these things, and the bitter truth for the Hiernonymous crowd is that "absence of anything" tells us NOTHING about "what is present" unless we define the terms of the discussion first. Epicurus had already done that - many times it appears - by making the point that there are only two feelings - pleasure and pain. When there are only two of anything, the "absence of one" means that the space formerly occupied (if any) by that thing is now occupied by its opposite.

If you re like Hieronymous and think that "absence of pain" tells you anything specific and practical about how to spend your life, then more power to you, but have the grace to identify yourself as Hieronymian, and allow the Epicureans to pursue the pleasure which Epicurus, and more importantly Nature, calls us to pursue.

Once we have that ground rules of the debate established, we can then discuss with intelligence what the "absence of pain" references do mean, by referring to Plato and the other anti-pleasure philosophers who suggested that "gods" or "virtue" or "ideal forms" give us the standard by which to live our lives.

Poster A:

Even Cicero continues:

Fourth, we do not agree with those who allege that when pleasure is withdrawn, anxiety follows at once.

That result is true only in those situations where the pleasure happens to be replaced directly by a pain.

The truth is, in general, we are glad whenever we lose a pain, even though no active sensation of pleasure comes immediately in its place.

This fact serves to show us how life itself, WHEN LIVED IN THE ABSENCE OF PAIN, IS itself so GREAT a PLEASURE.

Poster GW:

Yes indeed that is a principal doctrine, and that has a meaning within the full context of Epicurean philosophy which does not contradict the bottom line that PLEASURE is the goal. That is what this thread is about, Garrett, that it is not possible to take things out of context and still understand the full picture.

And nothing that Poster A just wrote contradicts the point either, Poster G. As A writes, Epicurus endorsed both pleasures that some term as "at rest" and some term as "active" -- but both types are PLEASURE. the key observation is that there are only two feelings - pleasure and pain - and that therefore as a matter of quantity, the "absence of one" is the same as "the presence of the other." This has everything to do with quantity and nothing to do about what type of feeling is actually happening at the time.

Poster G, (and anyone else reading along) - just read Cicero's words closely and you'll see the issue. Cicero was a master of the details of all of these philosophers, and he knew very well that Epicurus' view of the goal of life was pleasure, and that Heironymous' view of the goal was "absence of pain" and that these are two totally different things and are not reconcilable. That means that PD3 does NOT mean that "absence of pain" is the ultimate goal, or even "the ultimate pleasure." The key words are "maximum limit" or as others translate "the limit of quantity." This is not a discussion of the goal of life explicitly, but a discussion of a specific objection to pleasure that had been raised previously by Plato / other philosophers. The objection was that "pleasure has no limit" (we always want more) and Plato thought that was an effective argument because the logicians had decided that nothing could be an ultimate goal if it can always be made better (meaning that it has no limit). This is set forth in Philebus and elsewhere.

Epicurus pointed out the error in this reasoning by showing that pleasure DOES have a limit - and that limit is reached when our total experience is filled with pleasures of any time such that there is no more room for the experience of any pain -- all pain has been "crowded out."

And thus in another context Cicero described the Epicureans as holding that "nothing was preferable to a life of tranquility crammed full of pleasures." In Defense of Publius Sestius 10.23

Poster GW: "But is it not a Principal Doctrine that, "Pleasure reaches its maximum limit at the removal of all sources of pain. When such pleasure is present, for as long as it lasts, there is no cause of physical nor mental pain present – nor of both together."?

Poster A:

"...the complete removal of pain has correctly been termed a pleasure.

Even Cicero forwarded Torquatus' writing:

The happiness we pursue does not consist solely of the delightful feelings of physical pleasures.

On the contrary, according to Epicurus, the greatest pleasure is that which is experienced as a result of the complete removal of all pain.

When we are released from pain, the mere sensation of complete emancipation, and relief from distress, is itself a source of great gratification.

But everything that causes gratification is a pleasure, just as everything that causes distress is a pain.

Therefore, the complete removal of pain has correctly been termed a pleasure.

For example, when hunger and thirst are banished by food and drink, the mere fact of getting rid of those distresses brings pleasure as a result.

So as a rule, the removal of pain causes pleasure to take its place.