Posts by Godfrey

So, to paraphrase PD03:

"In terms of an entire organism, the maximum pleasure is the absence of pain throughout the organism. In any part of the organism, any degree of pleasure removes all pain in that part for as long as it is there, because pleasure is equal to the absence of pain."

In trying to understand Hieronymus' assertion that the absence of pain is not pleasure, the only way that it makes sense to me is if there's a neutral state dividing pleasure and pain. A neutral state does exist according to Cicero, but it would seem that he's ignoring it here in the interest of obfuscation.

Great discussion in this episode!

Well stated Cassius !

I interpret these PDs slightly differently, especially PD09. I see each as listing things that Epicurus considers to be of key importance in his ethics, even though they're expressed as counterfactuals.

Don , the way that you interpret PD09 seems to be the way that many translators interpret it, but to me this is incorrect. I say this as somebody who knows no Greek: I'm reasoning out the ramifications of the English wording as they apply to my experience. I think that it's incorrect to separate "condensed" from "time" and "parts". I think that the conclusion that pleasures differ from one another is common to both interpretations and is correct, but I think that it's incorrect to say that pleasures cannot be condensed (I read "condensed" as "intensified").

I paraphrase the PD as "the three components of pleasures are intensity, duration and location. If every pleasure was the same in these three ways, all pleasures would be the same. Pleasures are not the same in these three ways, but in fact these three components are the most useful ways of analyzing pleasures." In fact, the translation in post #8 reads to me as being interpreted in this way (although far less verbose!)

PDs 10 & 11, to me, are similarly structured but not open to misinterpretation in the way that #9 is. They're listing things that are important to understand for Epicurus' ethics, but they’re expressed as counterfactuals, which allows them each to be read in two ways.

I guess my primary quibble, then, is with separating "condensed", and saying that pleasures cannot be condensed. Other than that, the use of counterfactuals allows each of these three PDs to be read in two ways: 1) that the things listed are important to understand, and 2) that it's very unusual for the "ifs" to occur.

PD09 "If every pleasure were condensed and were present at the same time and in the whole of one's nature or its primary parts, then the pleasures would never differ from one another."

Cassius ' description in post 1 does a great job of clarifying this PD as well. It's describing the individual components of pleasures, and at the same time saying that it's pretty unlikely that a person can experience 100% pleasure.

Quote from Cassius

We refuse to believe, however, that when pleasure is removed, grief instantly ensues, excepting when perchance pain has taken the place of the pleasure; but we think on the contrary that we experience joy on the passing away of pains, even though none of that kind of pleasure which stirs the senses has taken their place; and from this it may be understood how great a pleasure it is to be without pain.

This quote is of major importance in terms of the way that I've been trying to visualize PD03. I had been thinking in terms of the affective circumplex [here](RE: How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett) and trying to reconcile that with PD03 by using a graphic representation. What I find puzzling is that pleasure has a maximum, but pain seems capable of increasing until one passes out or dies.

With the circumplex, maximum pleasure are at opposite ends of an axis of affect, the zero point of the axis would be the imaginary "neutral state":

max pain max pleasure

<-----------------------------0--------------------------------> [1]

PD03 "The limit of enjoyment is the removal of all pains. Wherever and for however long pleasure is present, there is neither bodily pain nor mental distress." This could imply that if pain decreases to the right in this illustration, the "/" point, where pain is removed, denotes maximum pleasure. But pleasure then decreases to the right from the "/" point, which doesn't seem to make much sense.

<------------------------------/<----------------------------- [2]

Or you could have an illustration where pain and pleasure have an overlapping relationship:

<---------------------------------------------------- [3]

---------------------------------------------------->

At which point I become totally befuddled, and I realize why Epicurus didn't give mathematicians and geometricians any credence: math and geometry aren't very useful for describing biological phenomena. But the quote above is quite concise in describing the relationship of pleasure and pain.

Peter Konstans , it would be extremely helpful if you would break up your writing into proper paragraphs. With all due respect, I can't even read what you just posted: it just comes across as an overwhelming stream of words.

In the interest of respecting the ideas that you're expressing, please consider giving some time to formatting your posts in such a way as to maximize what could prove to be a very interesting discussion.

Thanks! Godfrey

Interesting. Are you saying that you would raise young members to entertain the possibility of idealistic myths such as an afterlife? I'm curious to hear your reasoning in this regard.

Quote from Cassius

Quote

Quote from Godfrey I'm leaning toward the idea that katastematic/kinetic is really just a description of durability. Breadth is important, but not katastematic or kinetic. Breadth would be something like "does this thing bring me both physical and mental pleasure? Does it affect one part of my body, or is it a more widely distributed feeling? Does it give me mental satisfaction in one way or in a variety of ways?"

I'm not sure I follow what you are saying here. I see why you are saying that breadth is important but why is "duration" not important

What I'm saying is that katastematic/kinetic (k/k) involves duration but that I don't think that k/k involves breadth. Both duration and breadth are important in order to maximize one's pleasure. The combination of the two, to my current way of thinking, is more important, both practically and theoretically, than the concept of k/k pleasures.

Basically I'm toying with the idea that k/k may not deserve the amount of attention that it gets. My thinking is that k/k is really just a way of describing duration, and we don't have any existing texts from Epicurus to which would give it any more importance.

An existing text that we do have is PD09. I'm currently interpreting it as defining the three components of pleasure as intensity, duration and location. The more I think on it, the more useful these seem to be for working with maximizing one’s pleasure. And if I'm interpreting PD09 correctly, which is open to debate, then to my mind it has more relevance than the texts dealing with k/k, as it is directly attributed to Epicurus.

So I'm suggesting that the three components of pleasure as described in PD09 are a more valuable topic of study than katastematic and kinetic pleasure. As far as I can tell, PD09 has been pretty much ignored, possibly due to its confusing wording, while k/k is the subject of endless, and endlessly open-ended, discussion. And I'm wondering if the focus on k/k is more useful to opponents of Epicurus than to practicing Epicureans.

(Note that I'm not in any way disparaging Epicurean discussion of k/k! I'm just thinking that, once again, opponents such as Cicero and his ilk have cynically sent us off on a wild goose chase!)

Re post 27, I'm saying that we plan ahead by imagining how a particular pleasure will feel, but that we can only confirm our "hypothesis" by actually experiencing the pleasure. Basically just a common sense statement, but poorly worded. I began the statement with a double negative: "All this is not to say that I can't plan ahead..." meaning "this is how I plan ahead". Kind of like some of Epicurus' wording

One thing that strikes me about this picture, Don , is that it seems very similar to descriptions of the effects of meditation that I've read. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it seems to me to be somewhat limiting when it comes to pursuing pleasure.

I've been attempting to complement this picture of katastematic pleasure by looking at the components of pleasures/pains as I've described in my above posts. Also, katastematic pleasuinvolves both a durable presence of pleasure and a durable absence of pain. On the one hand these are by definition the same thing. On the other hand, they provide two different viewpoints for maximizing pleasure.

Katastematic and kinetic seem to me to be relative concepts for describing the duration (durability?) of a pleasure or pain, and perhaps to describe the extent of location (breadth?) of a pleasure or pain.

I'm leaning toward the idea that katastematic/kinetic is really just a description of durability. Breadth is important, but not katastematic or kinetic. Breadth would be something like "does this thing bring me both physical and mental pleasure? Does it affect one part of my body, or is it a more widely distributed feeling? Does it give me mental satisfaction in one way or in a variety of ways?"

What I'm thinking is that looking at feelings in terms of the particular components of intensity, duration and location gives us a practical set of tools. Katastematic/kinetic is just a way of talking about the tool of duration. This line of reasoning was prompted by the texts, but I haven't yet gone back through the existing texts (studiously excluding Cicero) to see how fully it's supported.

One quick thought regarding the location of a pleasure.... Once it has been established that pleasure is a feeling, location gives it a degree of specificity that is useful in debating the subject. For any pleasure to be real and, further, to be evaluated, it needs to be felt. In order for me to evaluate pleasures, they need to be (or have been) located in my body and/or mind. Furthermore, ranking "universal pleasures" is meaningless, as these are nothing but concepts which aren't actually felt by anyone. And the feelings that these concepts refer to can be experienced differently by everyone.

This brings to mind duration, which can also be expressed as "time". If I've never experienced a particular pleasure, then I can't accurately compare it to another pleasure through some abstract ranking.

All this is not to say that I can't plan ahead by imagining how a particular pleasure will feel to me if and when I were to experience it, and compare that to how another imagined pleasure will feel to me. This is pretty much a necessary exercise in all sorts of situations. But the appropriateness of my comparison can only be accurately assessed during and after actually experiencing the pleasure. There needs to be a feeling, which occurs with a particular intensity, at and for a particular time, and at a particular location in my body and/or mind.

This is all true as far as it goes. But, to my understanding, Epicurus didn't stop there. He realized that opponents would ridicule this for being too broad, and that adherents might need a more systematic approach to living a life of pleasure. This is one reason why he discussed the categories of desires. It's also why he didn't stop at PD03, but continued with PDs 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25 and 27, as well as the extant letters and further writings which no longer exist.

Far from being a ranking of pleasures, these texts of Epicurus' are, to me, practical descriptions and instructions for living a pleasurable life. I'm currently interpreting PD09 in particular in this way. Regardless of what words Cicero put into the mouth of Torquatus, as individuals we each need to find a more personal, targeted approach to the goal than "a life crammed full of pleasures" (or whatever the exact words were that Cicero used). (As an aside, this is one reason that so many people new to the forum ask about "exercises".) Epicurus gives us these tools, if we reason them out.

"A life crammed full of pleasures", while technically correct to some degree, smacks of snark and sarcasm, and is totally useless in refining an ethics of pleasure. Distinctions such as intensity, duration and location aren't categories of pleasure, but are components of pleasures. I understand that this may be a controversial interpretation, but I think that it's a correct one. Or at least one worth giving more thought to.

You don't learn to play the flute by producing the most sounds, but by understanding the components of the flute and reasoning out how to produce the sweetest and/or most expressive sounds. You don't live a life of pleasure by cramming in the most pleasures or pursuing illusory, infinite pleasures. You live a life of pleasure by pursuing what, for you, are the sweetest pleasures. To this end Epicurus gives us means to subtle understanding. To undermine this end, Cicero gives us snark that gets us to argue among ourselves.

Quote from Don

Don't take this as personal, but

Not at all Don , I was just too lazy to type "katastematic"! Which I've now done. Which just shows that it doesn't pay to be lazy

To show that I don't learn from my mistakes, I'd now like to put a thought which isn't fully formed out there.... If one accepts the assertion that pleasures/pains can vary in intensity, duration and location, can the concept (for that's really all that it is) of katastematic pleasure be clarified in any useful way by examining these categories?

At first blush I don't see intensity as being particularly relevant for katastematic pleasure, so I'll skip over it for now.

It would seem that duration is a key part of the concept: a pleasure that lasts a relatively long time seems to me to be katastematic, whereas a brief pleasure seems to be kinetic.

Location would also seem to be a critical part of the concept. Is it worthwhile to speak of katastematic pleasure in your toe? Or in your hand, as in the infamous Chrysippus quote? Pleasure located in the mind can be katastematic. However, I think that the reason for that is that once you've reasoned something out, the pleasure obtained with the conclusion is of relatively long duration. What if you define magnitude of location as "breadth" of location? For instance a general sense of physical well-being. Or a pleasure located in several "areas" of the mind? Such as something that you enjoy while you're doing it, but also gives you a sense of lasting connectedness or purpose.

This is leading me to an amorphous thought that katastematic pleasure is something that maximizes an individual's duration and breadth of pleasure. Everybody has a different way of achieving this, but the goal in striving for katastematic pleasure would be to maximize the breadth and duration of the individual's pleasure.

What I'm trying to get at is a reasoned description of katastematic pleasure that not only is useful in daily life, but that also emphasizes that katastematic pleasure is a practical concept and not a "fancy pleasure" or a woo-woo state. Any thoughts?

Quote from kochiekoch

Sounds like pleasure is a feeling, pre-rational and universally desirable rather than concept with a specific definition.

Quote from Cassius

Epicurus seems to be labeling every mental or physical living experience as "pleasure" so long that experience is not explicitly felt to be painful.

Well said. I may have been asleep, but I don't recall hearing it stated quite like that.

When you look at it like this, which is how it should be looked at, I suppose the first concern is to prove that there's no neutral state. This can be done in at least two ways:

- attending to one's experience, and noticing that what was originally thought to be neutral, upon more careful attention, always has an element of either pleasure or pain in it

- examining a circumplex, which shows that 0,0 is the only place where pleasure or pain don't occur. And realizing that 0,0 is so infinitesimally tiny as to be meaningless in practical terms.

Then you need to figure out how to get practical benefit from such a broad range of experience. Epicurus did this by defining the categories of desires. These can then be used to examine one's personal desires. Once one has examined their desires and becomes increasingly aware of their personal pleasures and pains, they can think about prudent ways to increase their pleasure. Epicurus' extant texts give these criteria in that regard, at least to my understanding:

- all pleasures are finite, because one's life is finite

- pleasures and pains can be broken down only into intensity, duration and location. Their magnitudes can be varied in each of these ways.

Only at this juncture and in this context does it make sense to discuss things like mental v physical pleasures or static v kinetic pleasures.

Punk Rock Latin Poetry... who would have known?

You're welcome Joshua ! BTW that Lucretius quote is one of my favorites

The attached article showed up in my inbox this morning. I think it's worth reading, although Mecci seems to have relied too much on The Great Obfuscator (that would be Cicero) and, perhaps, Wikipedia. Particularly for his presentation of pleasure. However as he gets further into his article his take on the gods seems reasonable to me: what I would call a combination of the realist and idealist viewpoints.

There are copious footnotes, but I didn't dig into them.

Back at you!

Don I just have to ask if there's any particular meaning to the name Surupice