Posts by Cassius

This past weekend I listened to a computer tech podcast (The "Ask Noah Show") which mentioned the use of Googles' "Notebookllm" for generation of AI summaries.

The podcast discussed many ethical issues surrounding AI, and I very much recommend their discussion. The podcaster who gave most of the discussion is an employee of "Red Hat" (a major linux/computer company owned by IBM). and their episode can be found here.

Those podcasters decided to see what AI would do with their own work, and based on their example, I did the same thing with two of our Lucretius Today podcasts.

Of course I think our own live podcasts are better, but if you compare the summary to original I think you'll find that the Ai summary is shockingly good. And this is not just a text summary -- this is a live dialogue between two very professional sounding AI voices.

While the result is far from perfect, the ease with which this was produced is very worrying.

Here are the links:

Both episodes revolve around the absence of pain issue, with 295 devoted to Plutarch and 294 devoted to Cicero. I am not making these videos publicly findable on the Youtube page, but the private links above are available for comparison.

These are great questions! Let me go through them and give you what I think is the answer. Not everyone is going to agree with me, but I think what I am about to say is the clear implication of what Torquatus was explaining to Cicero:

I think we better start here:

Quote from Rolf

1) There is only pleasure and pain.

This is not so simple that we can stop without explanation, and failure to clarify it is a source of much problem. Yes, Epicurus says that nature gives us only pleasure and pain as feelings by which to know what to choose and what to avoid.

But you are asking a series of questions about "Pleasure" and "Pain" with capital "p's" -- You are asking about the concept of pleasure and the concept of pain. As a concept which serves as a stand-in for the "goal of life," "Pleasure" is a conceptual term which encompasses all possible experiences of pleasure, from the longest and most intense to the shortest and least intense. All pleasures are conceptually part of "Pleasure," but all pleasures are not by any means identical. The same thing goes for pain.

A large part of the problem in general discussions of Epicurus is that people are talking about "Pleasure" as the conceptual goal of life without making clear that the goal of a real person's real life is not a "concept," but a set of real experiences that cannot be described completely in the term "Pleasure" any more than a map constitutes every detail of an area of land that is being mapped.

And not separating those two contexts leads to most of your questions:

Quote from Rolf

3) Let’s say my hunger and thirst are satiated, my body is healthy, I have good friends, and I fear neither gods nor death.

4) This being the case, I am experiencing the absence of pain/fullness of pleasure, am I not?

The answer to (3) is "not necessarily." We are philosophers, and you have not stated in 3 that you are not suffering any pain. Torquatus' examples, including the comparison of the host pouring wine and the guest drinking in, are stated in the context that the example includes as a premise that they are otherwise without pain. Anyone who is "without pain" is therefore definitionally and conceptually at the height of pleasure, because you are speaking in broad definitional terms. Pure pleasure - 100% pleasure - cannot be made more pleasurable by removing impurities, because "pure" means without impurity, and 100% means a mathematical limit for any given subject.

So I would say that your conclusion in (4) is not properly established by (3). you have listed a number of pleasurable conditions, but you have not by so doing confirmed that your "jar is full" and that there is not more room for more pleasure in your life.

Quote from Rolf

Do you agree that the conditions listed in point 3 are all that is necessary to experience the absence of pain? If so, and if that is the limit of pleasure, why do you also press that these things are not enough, and that Epicurus also encourages these “active pleasures” like playing and dancing?

So the answer here is that I do not agree that the points listed in 3 are "all that is necessary to experience the absence of pain" in total. They could be if you also stated that the person was without pain, but unless someone is affirmatively stating that the person is "without pain" then you don't know.

This would apply to the Chrysippus hand challenge. We know that the hand was at the "height of pleasure" only because the hypothetical was that the hand was "in its normal condition" and not in pain. Could any particular hand get more pleasure from a warm massage rather than in its normal condition? I think the answer is clearly yes, but that doesn't mean that the point made by Torquatus is incorrect. "Pure" pleasure does not necessarily equate to "most intense," or "longest duration" or "largest part of the body affected." Torquatus did not say that the hand was experiencing any of those -- not the most intense please, nor the longest, or the most extensive. The debate about the hand was in terms of the "height," or as in PD03, the "limit of quantity." These are technical terms suitable for philosophical debate, but they don't tell you the difference between good heath and a good massage.

Quote from Rolf

If some pleasures are more pleasurable than others, wouldn’t that make my jar “more full”?

Per PD09, pleasures differ from each other in at least the qualities of intensity, duration, and part of the body affected. Some particular pleasures ARE more intense, or last longer, or involve different parts of the body, and only an idiot would deny that. But all pleasures are unified in being feelings that we find desirable, and thus one of them is not more conceptually "pleasure" than is another.

This is Pleasure with a capital "P" - conceptual pleasure - all of which carries the same definition of a desirable feeling. The concept never changes, even though the particulars can and do change.

Quote from Rolf

If some pleasures are more pleasurable than others, wouldn’t that make my jar “more full”? How does this fit together with absence of pain being the limit of pleasure? And if the jar can be full while containing different levels of pleasure, then what is it even measuring?

A jar which can contain only "Pleasure" and "Pain" cannot be defined as full containing different levels of "Pleasure," for reasons that are obvious - we are defining the possibilities and there are no options outside our hypothetical. But different jars of "Pleasure" can and certainly will contain very different mixtures of difference types of pleasurable experiences.

We all know this to be true, but what you're asking is the right question. How can different jars be other than the same if they all are full of "Pleasure?" And the answer is that pleasures are not "just" concepts. Pleasurable experiences are what is real, while "Pleasure" is a concept that philosophers use in debate. The same goes for "Happiness." The wise man can by "Happy" even which tortured on the wrack or in the throws of dying from kidney disease, because "happiness" is a concept we can define as an overall assessment of more reason for joy than for vexation, while "a feeling of happiness" is not what is generated by torture machines or kidney stones.

Quote from Rolf

I’m playing devil’s advocate a little here in order to understand the logic. Again, I agree with the conclusions. But I’m having trouble seeing how it all fits together. It feels almost a little contradictory.

Everyone ought to be asking these questions, because unless you demand consistency and clear answers, no one ever gets anywhere. And far too many people outside this forum are ignoring these issues and thinking that they can wink and smile and fool others - and themselves - into thinking that Buddhist nothingness / Stoic apathy really is super pleasurable.

And that's in my view why Epicurean philosophy has been stuck in the mud ever since the last of the ancient Epicureans passed away.

No one except a confirmed Buddhist or Stoic or Sadist really believes that "absence of pain" understood as 99% of the world understands it is really worth being a goal in life. But the majority of Epicureans have fled from the idea that "absence of pain" really means "pleasure" because that would not be respectable, or virtuous, and to say so would earn them the disapproving frowns of the intelligentsia.

In my view, you can either demand consistency and clarity, in which case you come around to seeing that these are definitional and philosophical issues. Once you accept that, "absence of pain" becomes nothing more than technical terminology for exactly the same thing expressed by the word "pleasure."

The reason you've chosen technical terminology like that is because you are philosopher, and you're dealing with technical objections from the Platonists and others who demand to know "the limit" of pleasure. Absence of pain is highly useful for answering that question - for identifying the theoretical limit.

But "absence of pain" in this context is conceptual, and this conceptual answer does not tell you whether to stop when you're not thirsty or hungry. You have to apply also the rest of the conceptual framework, in which you're previously identified that all pleasure is desirable, and that there would never be any reason whatsoever ---but one -- not to seek to obtain all the pleasure you can. And that single reason not to pursue a particular pleasure is that you evaluate that pursuing that pleasure would result - in the end - with bringing you more pain than pleasure.

I suppose I should address too the related question of how long you wish to live, or how much pleasure you wish to experience while you are alive. To me, the answer Epicurus points to is that "satisfaction" comes from realizing the limit that you are human and mortal and that nature allows you to live and pursue pleasure for only a certain period of time in good heath. You don't need to be king or the most famous person in the world to consider your jar of life to be full of pleasure. But if you have consciously avoided, through fear or otherwise, stepping up to experience the pleasures that are possible to you, then the reasonable and thoughtful person is going to naturally feel regret at passing over pleasure for no good reason. And "regret" is a pain.

Edit: As always, I'm not Epicurus and can't speak for him. These answers are just the best I can do today given my state of analysis and reading from all the various materials.

Quote from DaveT

I am enjoying this discussion. I recently read that a distinction between the Stoics and the Epicureans was that the Stoics focused on a public, civic-minded orientation, and thus a belief in virtue as a goal to that end. And that the Epicureans’ belief in more private life promoted pleasure etc. and friendship for personal happiness. I know this may sound simplistic, but that comparison helps me understand why the two philosophies were so different in the view and uses of virtue.

I think that's definitely true - that they had a different orientation toward public life. That seems like an innocuous enough distinction, but then you get to the question of "why' they had a such a different attitude. And I'd say that stems directly from the physics as to the nature of the universe. If you think there's a "Providence" that has designed the universe and everything in it intelligently, then you're going to want to work to bring not only yourself but also your society into conformity with those views.

If you think that there is no central intelligent designer, and that nature works through practical experience in many different ways according to circumstances, then you're going to be much more willing to "live and let live" and let each person pursue their own personal view of what makes them happy.

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Quote from Matteng

Another caveat is that these classifications were often made by philosophers for whom virtue represented the highest good (so be careful when it is about Pleasure or Piety for Gods) .

I would say that's the most important point, and if forgotten it turns the whole classification process into a problem rather than a help. I like to outline and classify things too - so long as I don't forget they the purpose of the outline is to help in application, and not to uncover some hidden power from the classification itself. It's easy to get lost in classifying and the Stoics are a great example of not seeing the forest because they spend too much time classifying the trees.

Quote from DaveT

A general usage to me is that I’m skeptical of any proposition that seems to lack proofs, and I’m willing to suspend my belief or disbelief until I see enough proof to satisfy me

I would say that is exactly the right attitude, but unfortunately in philosophy skepticism has a very specific logical extreme which is a well established school of its own and which goes far beyond the common sense version you're describing.

Quote from Pacatus

Who wants a GPT Epicurus?

If there's not already one, there almost certainly will be. And that's going to put the ball in the court of those who think that the available Epicurus-bots aren't the place to get info about Epicurus.

I have com across several things I want to post about just in the last 24 hours, and I am thinking of taking this thread and perhaps several others on the topic and moving it into a special section. i'm debating whether to keep that special section as "Level 3" (where the general public won't see it) or move into a more public area given the importance of the concerns. Many of the posts made already are excellent and of general interest and importance. If anyone has posted anything in this thread that they would prefer to remain in Level 3, please let me know. Otherwise I think this is such a hot topic that we ought to make these posts, and the development of an "Epicurean based strategy for dealing with AI" easier to find.

I have to repeat how much I agree with this chart from Don's post above, and I'm going to post it at the Epicurean facebook group with this comment:

A friend has pointed me to the graphic I am posting below. It comes from an article against the dangers of AI. The article has a small amount of political content that is against our group rules to highlight, and I deliberately omit referring to that here. But the majority of the article is non-political, and it describes the real--world effects of "collapse of confidence in reality" which AI has the potential to encourage

The reason I am posting this is not to comment on AI, but that I don't think this chart is limited to describing problems with AI. I'd say this chart is exactly what has happened to the West as a whole since about 100 AD and the wide suppression of the growing Epicurean movement. It's just this series of disasters described in the chart that Epicurean philosophy was developed to oppose. The big issue is that we shouldn't see this as a modern phenomena that began or got worse with AI. These disastrous attitudes are inherent in every form of skeptical / mystical / absolutist philosophy such as what Epicurus revolted against. And these problems are inherent in post-Epicurean western civilization for the last two thousand years.

THESE PROBLEMS are the enemy that Epicurus fought against with his physics and canonics, and it's why we need to emphasize all aspects of his philosophy. If we understand Epicurean physics and canonics we'll end up with a sound understanding of Epicurean ethics. If we don't understand the physics and canonics, Epicurean ethics is arbitrary and can be twisted into something far worse than worthless, as it has become in the writing of many commentators.

Over on Facebook someone posted this. There are certainly people here who are much more familiar with Hobbes than am I. Anyone want to propose some comments in answer:

Quote

In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes seems to follow a materialistic philosophy that aligns with Epicurean thought. Since he was writing in a Christian context, he couldn’t be completely open about it, often couching his materialism in scriptural language. His reduction of spirit to matter and denial of incorporeal entities was viewed by his contemporaries as dangerously close to atheism. Would you say Hobbes’ philosophy is in harmony with Epicurean philosophy?”

I'd say Epicurus identifies some very important situations where there are only two choices, so all binaries are not false:

- atoms and void

- pleasure and pain

Welcome to Episode 296 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.

Once again this week Joshua is away, and in the absence of our other podcasters today I want to use the time we have to take a look at some of the extensive comment and discussion we've had as a result of last week's episode.

The topic we'll focus on this week is primarily Plutarch's allegations in Section 7 and 8 of his essay "That Living According to Epicurus is Not Possible. In those sections Plutarch alleged that even the animals pursue joy and delight when they have satisfied their essential needs of life such as for food and water, but that Epicurus - according to Plutarch - would deny his followers those same pleasures, on the grounds that the Epicurean goal is "absence of pain" rather than pleasure in the sense of joy and delight.

We had many good comments from our forum members since the release of that podcast, and we'll discuss a number of them here today.

In responding to the same allegations made by Plutarch, we'll also consult a reference that professor Norman Dewitt. In his book "Epicurus and His Philosopher," DeWitt cited an allegation by P.E. More, an academic authority who wrote in his 1923 book: "What, in a word, is to be said of a philosophy that begins with regarding pleasure as the only positive good and ends by emptying pleasure of all positive content?"

The full passage will examine is quoted in last week's discussion here:

Post

RE: Episode 295 - Plutarch's Absurd Interpretation of Epicurean Absence of Pain

This is a long quote but think the forum software will provide a collapsible box so it doesn't break the flow of the thread. The analysis is perverse just as DeWitt describes it, but it's well worth reading in full as an expansive interpretation in modern language of Plutarch's criticism. This is a position that is widespread and if you're a fan of Epicurus you need to understand the argument and have a position on why it is wrong. Rolfe who is asking the question and Don who read Plutarch…

Cassius

August 22, 2025 at 8:38 AM

In the absence of Joshua and Don I'll probably provide more questions than answers, but we can discuss these issues on the forum and in future podcasts when Joshua and Don return. Even if we don't provide any brilliant new insights today, the material we'll discuss present questions that have stark and conflicting possible answers, and every student of Epicurus has to answer these for themselves if they really want to understand what's at the heart of Epicurean philosophy.

[media]https://www.spreaker.com/episode/67558282/media

One way to frame the question (and rehabilitate Horace's statement) might be:

It's clear that Epicurus held the term "pleasure" to include many more experiences in life than what most people include when they think of pleasure. Is it also true that Epicurus held the term "pain" to include many fewer experiences in life than what most people include when they think of pain?

Quote from Don

Now, if you want to compare it to taking pleasure in a sunset that was unplanned and due to random fluctuations in the atmosphere... okay? In relation to that AI poem, you - the reader - are imbuing that poem with meaning. The "author" of the poem is NOT trying to communicate their feeling to you. The AI poem is a Rorschach Test. A random inkblot that you can look at and say "that looks like a bee resting on a flower" or read a poem and say "Oh, this reminds me of a day I spent in the sunshine." YOU are imbuing algorithmically-selected words with meaning. Granted, we do SOME of this with all poetry, but the author has an intention of what they wrote if it's a human author.

You and Pacatus are building a strong argument in favor of judging whether you want to participate in a pleasure by an across-the-board requirement that the source from which it comes NOT be AI.

I definitely sign on to that viewpoint to the extent that you have to understand the source of a pleasure in order to evaluate whether in the end it is going to cause you more pleasure than pain.

But isn't that just the same question just stated differently(?) Don't we have to be certain that *all* AI generated pleasure is going to harm us more than help us in order to reach that conclusion? Because certainly there are *some* major benefits to AI or else it would not be "taking the world by storm." Are we to adopt Cicero's viewpoint on Epicurean philosophy and go on a crusade against AI? I'm all for crusades in the right context.

But that's where I think the debate is still open. I don't yet have the sense that by necessity all use of AI is so dangerous that it should be banned (and we're not just talking the forum but society as a whole). I would think that there's a lot of subtlety on where to draw the line.

And my gosh this debate is everywhere. It's hard to read a list of articles on any subject at any time day or night without some part of this debate being brought up.

Thanks again Don, those are very helpful leads and we can pursue this into the future as time allows.

Yes it seems to be commonly noted that Horace was more Epicurean when younger than older, but I've never seen much explanation behind those general comments.

Below is more of the Latin from your wikisource link. So there's clearly a first imperative clause that reads spurn pleasures / "Sperne voluptates.... followed by a new thought.

I would think that the best hope for a saving construction would be that the clause/phrase after that is intended to restrict the meaning to "spurn those pleasures that cause more pleasure than pain." My Latin is not good enough to be confident of any construction, but it sure doesn't look at first glance like his choice of words goes in that direction. In fact at this point it's hard to imagine much of a different construction - everything adds up to something like "Spurn pleasures; pleasures acquired by pain are harmful." And I see that as entirely contrary to the heart of what Epicurus was saying. Life constantly presents options where choices have to be made whether to engage in activities that are painful in order to acquire pleasures that are more worthwhile.

It's possible that as a mirror to the redefined meaning of "pleasure" there was also a redefinition of "pain" so that all sorts of effort that we would consider struggle and involving pain might fall outside the Epicurean definition of pain. However I don't see the texts going in that direction - does anyone? Given the expansive definition of pleasure we should probably be open to concluding that Epicurus had a narrow reading of "pain," but if so I'm not sure the texts we have really indicate that interpretation. I know there's reference to not needing to pursue desires involving "struggle" so maybe the possibility exists that the argument was being made, by Horace or others, to the effect that painful exertion which causes greater pleasure in the end should not be considered pain at all. But at the moment I don't see that as likely.

If so that's definitely something for us to pursue and clarify, but it seems more likely that this is more attributable to Horace being depressed post-Philippi.

Nodictionaries has the component words as:

More of the Latin:

Quote

Non domus et fundus, non aeris aceruus et auri
aegroto domini deduxit corpore febris,
non animo curas; ualeat possessor oportet,
si comportatis rebus bene cogitat uti. 50

Qui cupit aut metuit, iuuat illum sic domus et res
ut lippum pictae tabulae, fomenta podagram,
auriculas citharae collecta sorde dolentis.

Sincerum est nisi uas, quodcumque infundis acescit.

Sperne uoluptates; nocet empta dolore uoluptas. 55

Semper auarus eget; certum uoto pete finem.

Inuidus alterius macrescit rebus opimis;
inuidia Siculi non inuenere tyranni
maius tormentum. Qui non moderabitur irae,
infectum uolet esse, dolor quod suaserit et mens, 60
dum poenas odio per uim festinat inulto.

Ira furor breuis est; animum rege, qui nisi paret,
imperat, hunc frenis, hunc tu compesce catena.

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Thanks Don! Lots of clearly correct material in there. But this crucial line in narrower context still seems objectionable to me, so I'll try to dig further into whether the Latin justifies it. If the Latin does, I would still fault Horace for this formulation, which is perhaps worse even that the first suggested translation:

Unless the vessel be sweet, whatever you pour into it turns sour. Despise pleasures, pleasure bought with pain is hurtful. The covetous man is ever in want; set a certain limit to your wishes.

The P.E. More book "Hellenistic Philosophies" concludes a section on Epicurus with this quote:

"Speme voluptates, nocet empta dolore voluptas" which is suggested to be translated as "Hope for pleasures, but pleasure bought with pain is harmful."

I'm looking for the original without much success so far - I cannot confirm this search result below, but it should be relatively easy to trace this further.

If the suggested translation is correct, then I have to think that this may be an indication of Horace's fall from Epicurean grace, so to speak, because this would in my view contradict the explicit words of Epicurus in the letter to Menoeceus, and contradict the way Torquatus explains the issue in "On Ends."

The issue would be that a flat condemnation of every undergoing any pain for the sake of a greater pleasure, would indeed bolster the ultra-minimalist argument that we should never seek any pleasure that costs any amount of pain, a view to which i think most all of us here on the forum would object.

Hopefully when we trace the origin of this back there will be additional context to explain this. Further, a simple tweaking of the verb from "is" to "can be" or "sometimes is" would solve the problem. But a flat prohibition against every undergoing any pain for the sake of pleasure would in my mind be irreconcilable with correct Epicurean doctrine. If there is no way to redeem this quote, it may prove to be an excellent citation to establish that Horace cannot be relied on for correct Epicurean interpretations. And such a viewpoint would also help explain why Horace was indeed reputed to have let go of his Epicurean views later in life - he didn't understand or apply them properly.

Here's the first search results:

The Latin phrase "Speme voluptates, nocet empta dolore voluptas" can be translated into English as "Hope for pleasures, but pleasure bought with pain is harmful."A reliable source for this translation is the work of Horace, a Roman poet, as this phrase is derived from his writings, specifically from his "Epistles" (Book I, Epistle II, line 55). The Latin text and its English translation can be found in reputable classical literature databases or translations of Horace's works.For a reliable source, you can refer to:

• Perseus Digital Library (Tufts University): This provides access to Horace's original Latin texts and translations. The specific line can be found in Horace's Epistles (Book I, Epistle II).
  Link: Perseus Digital Library - Horace's Epistles

This source includes the original Latin text and reliable English translations, ensuring accuracy for your query.

This is a long quote but think the forum software will provide a collapsible box so it doesn't break the flow of the thread. The analysis is perverse just as DeWitt describes it, but it's well worth reading in full as an expansive interpretation in modern language of Plutarch's criticism. This is a position that is widespread and if you're a fan of Epicurus you need to understand the argument and have a position on why it is wrong. Rolfe who is asking the question and Don who read Plutarch recently for the podcast will definitely see how it tracks.

Quote from P.E. More - "Hellenistic Philosophies"

The difficulty that confronts us when we try to understand Epicurus is the extraordinary paradox of his logic. What, in a word, is to be said of a philosophy that begins with regarding pleasure as the only positive good and ends by emptying pleasure of all positive content? There is no possibility, I think, of really reconciling this blunt contradiction, which was sufficiently obvious to the enemies of Epicurus in antiquity, but it is possible, with the aid of Plutarch’s shrewd analysis, to follow him step by step from his premises to his conclusions, and so to discover the source of his entanglement. [Note 1]

Epicurus began with the materialistic and monistic theses which had allured Aristippus, and which, mingled in varying proportions from the teaching of Heraclitus and Protagoras and Democritus, had come to be the prevailing belief of the Greek people; they were, indeed, no more than the essence refined out of the voluble lecturing and debating of the so-called sophists against whom Socrates and Plato had waged a relentless but unsuccessful warfare. This visible palpable world of bodies is the only reality, and the only thing which to man, in such a world, has any certain value is his own immediate physical sensations. Pleasure we feel and pain we feel, in their various degrees and complications; and we know that all men welcome pleasure and shrink from pain by a necessity of nature. Pleasure, in fact, is simply a name for the sensation which we do welcome, and pain for the sensation from which we do shrink. The example of infants and animals is before us to nullify any attempt to argue away this primary distinction.

These are the premises of Epicurus, as they had been of Aristippus, and to these he will cling through thick and thin, whatever their consequences may be and however they may entangle him in self-contradictions.He seems even to have gone out of his way at times to find the grossest terms to express the doctrine, whether his motive was to shock the Philistines of morality or to fortify himself and his friends in their positive belief. The avowed programme of the school was “not to save the Greeks, but to indulge the belly to the limit of safety with meat and drink”; and in a letter to a friend Epicurus says: “I invite you to continuous pleasures, not to virtues that unsettle the mind with vain and empty hopes of fruition.”

The programme is simple enough in all conscience, and might satisfy the most cynical votary of the flesh, but, desiring like his predecessor to be a voluptuary, Epicurus was driven despite himself to be a philosopher, even more a philosopher than the Cyrenaic, whether his wisdom came from deeper reflection or greater timidity. His experience might be described as the opposite of that of Johnson’s humble acquaintance who had been trying all his life to attain philosophy but failed because cheerfulness would break in. Aristippus could make a boast of his Habeo, non habeor, but, however he might twist about, his dependence on the fleeting sensation of the moment left him at last a prey to the hazards of circumstance.

Clearly the hedonist who was enough of a philosopher to aim at liberty and security must embrace a wider view of life than the Cyrenaic; and so the first step of Epicurus was to take happiness, conceived as a continuous state of pleasure, rather than particular pleasures, for the goal. This is the initial, and perhaps the most fundamental, difference between the strictly Epicurean and the Cyrenaic brand of hedonism.

But how, taking individual pleasures still in the grossly physical sense, was a man to assure himself of their consummation in happiness? It was well to make a god of the belly and, in the Epicurean language, of any other passage of the body that admitted pleasure and not pain, but, as soon as he began to reflect, the philosopher was confronted by the ugly fact that the entrances of pain are more numerous than those of pleasure, and that the paroxysms of pain may surpass in intensity any conceivable pleasure. He saw that there was something ephemeral and insecure in the very nature of pleasure, whereas pain had terrible rights over the flesh, and could dispute her domain with a vigour far beyond the power of her antagonist. Evidently, in a world so constituted, the aim of the philosopher will be lowered from a bold search for sensations to the humbler task of attaining some measure of security against forces he cannot control; and so, I think, we shall interpret the curious phenomenon that the greatest of all hedonists was driven to a purely defensive attitude towards life.

On the one hand he knew, as Plato had shown, that the recovery from disease and the relief from anguish do bring a sense of active well-being, and hence it was possible for him to define pleasure in negative terms without seeming to contradict flagrantly his grosser views about the belly and other bodily organs. Again, since positive pleasure and pain by some law of nature are so intimately bound together that the cessation of one is associated with access of the other,[2] then, clearly, the only pleasure free of this unpleasant termination is that which is itself not positively induced but comes as the result of receding pain. For the content of happiness, therefore, the Epicurean will look to sensation of a negative sort : “The limit of pleasure is reached by the removal of all that gives pain,” and “Pleasure in the flesh admits no increase, when once the pain of want is removed; it can only be variegated.”[3] But the philosopher cannot stop here, Such a state of release, though in itself it may not be subject to the laws of alternative pleasure and pain, is yet open to interruption from the hazards of life. And so Epicurus, in his pursuit of happiness, is carried a step further.

Not on the present possession of pleasure, whether positive or negative, will he depend for security of happiness, but on the power of memory. Here, at least, we appear to be free and safe, for memory is our own. Nothing can deprive us of that recollected joy, “which is the bliss of solitude” ; even what was distressful at the time may often, by some alchemy of the mind, be transmuted into a happy reminiscence:

‘Things which offend when present, and affright, In memory, well painted, move delight." [Note 4]

The true hedonism, then, will be a creation in the mind from material furnished it by the body. Plutarch describes the procedure of Epicurus thus, and exposes also its inadequacy: Seeing that the field of joy in our poor bodies cannot be smooth and equal, but harsh and broken and mingled with much that is contrary, he transfers the exercise of philosophy from the flesh, as from a lean and barren soil, to the mind, in the hopes of enjoying there, as it were, large pastures and fair meadows of delight. Not in the body but in the soul is the true garden of the Epicurean to be cultivated. It might seem as if by the waving of a magic wand we had been translated from a materialistic hedonism to a region like that in which Socrates and Plato looked for unearthly happiness.

But in fact there is no such magic for the Epicurean. The source of the pleasures which compose our happiness is still physical, and only physical; the office of the soul, so-called, is merely to retain by an act of selective memory the scattered impressions of sensuous pleasure and to forestall these by an act of selective expectation. If you hear the Epicurean crying out and testifying that the soul has no power of joy and tranquility save in what it draws from the flesh, and that this is its only good, what can you say but that he uses the soul as a kind of vessel to receive the strainings from the body, as men rack wine from an old and leaky jar into a new one to take age, and so think they have done some wonderful thing.

And no doubt wine may be kept and mellowed with time, but the soul preserves no more than a feeble scent of what it takes into memory; for pleasure, as soon as it has given out one hiss in the body, forthwith expires, and that little of it which lags behind in memory is but flat and like a queasy fume, as if a man should undertake to feed himself today on the stale recollection of what he ate and drank yesterday. What the Epicureans have is but the empty shadow and dream of a pleasure that has taken wing and fled away, and that serves but for fuel to foment their untamed desires, as in sleep the unreal satisfaction of thirst and love only stings to a sharper lust of waking intemperance.

Memory, though it promise a release from the vicissitudes of fortune, is still too dependent on the facts of life, too deeply implicated in the recurrence of passionate desires. There is no finality of happiness here, and so the Epicurean is driven on to further refinement. If pushed hard, he will take refuge in imagining a possible painlessness of the body and a possible stability of untroubled ease. Life itself, in some rare instances, may afford the substance of this comfort, and memory then will be sufficient; but if the substance eludes us, we have still that within us which by the exercise of free will can lull the mind into fancying it remembers what it never possessed. Step by step the reflective hedonist has been driven by the lessons of experience from the pursuit of positive pleasure to acquiescence in pleasure conceived as the removal of pain; from present ease in the flesh to the subtilizing power of memory in the mind, and, when memory is starved, to the voluntary imagination that life has gone well with him. The fabled ataraxy, or imperturbable calm, of the Epicurean turns out to be something very like a pale beatitude of illusory abstraction from the tyranny of facts, the wilful mirage of a soul which imagines itself, but is not really, set apart from the material universe of chance and change.

Habeo non habeor, was the challenge of Aristippus to the world; the master of the Garden will be content with the more modest half : Non Habeor. There is something to startle the mind in this defensive conclusion of a philosophy which opened its attack on life under such brave and flaunting coIours. There is much to cause reflection when one considers how in the end hedonism is forced into an unnatural conjunction with the other monistic philosophy with which its principles are in such violent conflict. For this ataraxy of the avowed lover of ease and pleasure can scarcely be distinguished from the apathy which the Stoic devotees of pain and labour glorified as the goal of life. This is strange. It is stranger still, remembering this negative conclusion of Epicurean and Stoic, by which good becomes a mere deprivation of evil, to cast the mind forward to the metaphysics of another and later school of monism which led the Neoplatonist to reckon evil as a mere deprivation of good. Into such paradoxical combinations and antagonisms we are driven as soon as we try to shun the simple truth that good is good and evil is evil, each in its own right and judged by its immediate effect in the soul. It may appear from the foregoing that the hedonist, in his pursuit of the summum bonum, argues from point to point in a straight line; in practice he seems rather to follow no single guide, but to fluctuate between two disparate yet inseparable motives.

At one time, in a world where physical sensation is the only criterion of truth, the basis of all reality, the liberty of enjoyment is the lure that draws him on; at another time, in a world of chance and change or of mechanical law which takes no great heed of our wants, it seems as if security from misadventure must be the limit of man’s desire. Other philosophers, the Platonist in his vision of the world of Ideas, the Christian in his submission to the will of God, may see their way running straight before them to the one sure goal of spiritual happiness, in which liberty and security join hands. The path of the hedonist wavers from side to side, aiming now at positive pleasure and now at mere escape from pain; and this, I take it, is one of the curious reprisals of truth, that the dualist should have in view a single end, whereas the monist should be distracted by a double purpose. Whether one or the other of the revolving objects shall stand out clearer before the hedonist’s gaze, will depend perhaps chiefly upon his temperament. With an Aristippus the pleasure of the moment is supreme, though he too will have his eye open for the need of safety; with an Epicurus, more timid by nature and more reflective, the thought of security at the last will almost, if never quite, obliterate the enticement of pleasure. It was still as a good Epicurean that Horace could write:

Speme voluptates, nocet empta dolore voluptas.

_____________

[Note 1: Non Posse Suaviter Vivi Secundum Epicurum, I draw freely on the racy language of the old English translation.]

[Note 2: This association of pleasure and pain was familiar to Plato, He refers to it in Phaedo 60b, and deals with it at greater length in the Philebus.]

[Note 3: Sayings 3 and 18. In my quotations I sometimes adopt the language of the excellent versions in R. D. Hicks’s Stoic and Epicurean.]

[Note 4: Cowley, Upon His Majesty's Bestoration.]

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Quote from Don

PS. I am more than happy to have this deleted or delete it myself if this veers too political for the forum.

I haven't clicked through to the article but will do so now. Certainly it seems to me what you've posted is helpful, so I think the post itself certainly should stay up. I'll read the link and come back and comment further if it seems additional warning on following the link is appropriate.

Update: Just read the article. Aside from a passing reference to the current president and to past events in Stalingrad which adds nothing important to the article, there's not much partisan politics in it at all. I didn't follow all the links or watch the linked videos, but the great majority of the article seems to contain a lot of useful information and argument - some of it stated in a colorful way, but nothing that would cause me to think that the link strays from our posting policies. It's a good collection of issues arising from AI.