Posts by Godfrey

Since there is ambiguity surrounding the original Greek words and the dearth of extant texts (made worse, as you point out, by rival misinterpretations and the undue acceptance of these) it would seem that the best clarification of pleasure would be in outline form that builds up to a precise explanation.

I'm time crunched at the moment, but post #13 would be a piece of that: relating pleasure to the doctrines of desire and to modern understanding as well as to the extant texts. Having a document showing how the pieces fit together in the comprehensive philosophy, but focusing on the ethics of pleasure to present a logical argument.

Two approaches to clarify an approach to the ultimate goal come to mind offhand:

1) Is the healthiest functioning of an organism stress free? Not entirely. Being stress free means that one's needs are met, but stress indicates a need for change and is a healthy response to stimuli. As humans, we can arguably be happier and more productive if we subject ourselves to a certain amount of stress (exercise, thinking about the value of serenity &c). But certain baseline mental stresses (fear of gods, fear of death &c) work against healthy functioning; eliminating these produces a baseline of serenity that allows for healthy functioning regarding other stressors.

2) Looking at the desires: to my understanding the necessary desires are pretty much a given that are specific to each individual at a specific time and are relatively easy to satisfy to maximize the specific individual's pleasure. The unnatural desires are, also, pretty much a given to each individual at a specific time and need to be fled from to maximize the individual's pleasure. This leaves the natural and unnecessary desires (Emily Austin's extravagant desires) as a potentially huge group of possibilities for pleasure, and the most active field of choices and avoidances (or engaging and fleeing). If we were to do nothing but seek serenity and avoid pain, then this category would be nonsensical.

It's certainly not Epicurus on the cover. Looks more like Hermarchus than Metrodorus; the source photo is probably online somewhere, but I haven't found it.

I probably shouldn't have led with "absence of pain".... I did so knowing that it's a hot-button issue here, and hoping to demonstrate that he presented an interesting view of it.

Having said that, Guyau does make an emphatic case against "absence of pain." Where I get uncomfortable (in a good way ) is with his narrowing the goal to a single focus of serenity. However, and I think Don might have something to say about this, it's not wrong to pursue serenity. Especially if you're thinking of it as homeostasis. A singular focus on serenity may not be correct, but serenity allows for maximal appreciation of a variety of pleasures. I think Epicurus repeatedly makes the latter point.

Part of what's interesting to me is that Guyau wrote in French (which I don't speak) and naturally interpreted some of the tricky Greek words differently than we might. At the same time, much of what he wrote aligns well with my current understanding. Reading this book is making me think deeper, and in a new way, about a variety of ideas.

Very well done Joshua !

For me, this book isn't about climbing aboard. There seems to be more nuance to his position than what that summary indicates, and that's what makes it interesting to me.

Quote from Guyau

Finally, another strongly positive term that is employed by Epicurus confirms our interpretation: it is the term hugieia; that is, the healthy and good proportionate state of the being as a whole, body and soul, in order and harmony. This is undoubtedly the happiness that the Epicurean sage finds within himself once he has eliminated all trouble. 51

This sounds to me like homeostasis, in current terms.

Further:

Quote from Guyau

51 ...That which also helps refuting Ravaisson’s position is the consequences that he extracts from his hypothesis: ‘If the end goal of happiness is not suffering or perceiving any pain, doesn’t this mean that what is most desirable for man is to die – and, what is more, to never have come into existence in the first place?’ (Essai sur la Métaphysique d’Aristote, II, 113).... Moreover, Ravaisson writes, ‘Pleasure is nothing but the end of pain, and whenever pain comes to an end only by means of death itself.’ – Believing that Epicurus did not see these consequences or simply accepted them means attributing to him incredible naivety and absurdity. Let us look, by means of contrast, to a text by Epicurus: ‘Death is indifferent to us, because all good and all evil reside in the action of feeling, and death is the privation of sensibility...’ (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, X, 124). How could one [after reading this passage] still defend the thesis according to which Epicurus thought that insensibility and negation found in sterēsis (privation) consisted in achievement and perfection, or the sumplērōsis (plenitude) of the good? Neither insensibility nor death are good for Epicurus, and he clearly responds to all those who attribute this idea to him."

After giving Epicurus' view of death, this:

Quote from Guyau

" ‘From the moment when we are freed from pain, we enjoy the deliverance itself and exemption from every kind of constraint.’ (Cicero, De finibus, I, xi, 37; I, xvii, 56) To live in freedom, in rest and harmony with oneself, to have the inner feeling that one lives, this is supreme pleasure, in comparison to which all the others are but so many changing forms. Forever the same, this pleasure can exist independently and subsist above all others."

Which sounds something like what we often say, that we only have one life to enjoy so we should appreciate and make the most of it. And perhaps another version of homeostasis?

Quote from Guyau

It is to restrain and restrict all the fugacious and superficial enjoyments to just one, an indestructible and profound one, which is an enjoyment of life itself. The good, then, is serenity."

I'm not sure that I would equate "an enjoyment with life itself" with "serenity." My focus in this quote was the former, not the latter. And I was again comparing this to homeostasis. The quote itself seems contradictory, so one has to piece together the totality of his argument at look at the wording, knowing that it's a translation from Greek (or Latin) to French to English.

This is one reason why I feel that there's much to get from this book. He says a lot that I agree with, some things that I don't, and many that I need to think about more. It may be a little maddening, but at least for me, it's not a book that you can home in on one sentence or paragraph and draw a final conclusion, but an opportunity to consider the puzzle pieces and perhaps come away with a deeper understanding of my own interpretation even if I don't fully agree with him. There's a lot there to dig into, and he's quite sympathetic to Epicurus. So, another source to be aware of!

I downloaded this from Amazon. I think the French version is from 1874, I'm not sure when the English translation was done. But it's readily available.

For Cassius , here are some excerpts from the end of Book 1 regarding the absence of pain:

"We conclude then that the sovereign pleasure and the sovereign good is the absence of pain and trouble, aponia, ataraxia; it is rest itself and tranquillity, katastēma.

"Should we believe, following most critics, that Epicurus understood absolute imperturbability to be a state similar to sleep and death? – The idea of trouble, which Epicurus strongly conceived and developed, has its natural principle in the idea of harmony. One can only disturb that which is harmonious, and one only fears turmoil and trouble because one wishes to preserve harmony. The last word of Epicureanism, therefore, should not be aponia, the absence of pain, but rather the conservation of pleasure: it is with a view to conserving pleasure that we must avoid every change, every movement coming from the outside. It is to preserve pleasure that we must reduce ourselves to [a state of] imperturbability regarding the outside. This imperturbability is itself only a means – indeed, an infallible one – with the help of which one preserves oneself, one maintains oneself, one persists in being and in the harmony of being.

"To summarize, the good according to Aristippus consists in moving, in changing oneself, running from pleasure to pleasure, enhancing past enjoyment with a new enjoyment. In contrast, to possess the good, Epicurus says, is to rest immobile in oneself. Instead of concerning oneself with gaining [new enjoyments] we need to make every effort not to lose anything. It is to restrain and restrict all the fugacious and superficial enjoyments to just one, an indestructible and profound one, which is an enjoyment of life itself. The good, then, is serenity."

"To express the ineffable enjoyment that Epicurus experiences when elevating himself above what is accidental and variable, he finds the word euphrosunē insufficient. The etymology of this term is eu-phrēn, and it expresses a fortunate disposition of the soul, a sort of fugitive chance. He situates the euphrosunē among the inferior pleasures of movement. Additionally, he even demotes to a second rank the chara, that is to say, the joy, elation, that has its source in movement (kata kinēsin) and in the tension of muscles or energy (energeia). The only really profound pleasure is constitutive pleasure, which is, as we have seen, the one that engenders the absence of pain and trouble: aponia and ataraxia. The Epicurean sage does not rejoice himself, rather he enjoys. – If Epicurus excludes everything that appears to imply movement and change from happiness, he does not limit himself to express his conception negatively. First, the term hēdonē katastēmatikē (stable and constitutive pleasure), which constantly appears in his writings, expresses something different from the absence of trouble and absolute imperturbability; it seems to designate a pleasure that is at the same time stable and profound, inherent in our nature, in our sensible constitution. Epicurus employs another term which is even more positive, eustathes katastēma sarkos (stable constitution of the flesh). We have seen him employing another expression that is not less striking: sumplērōthēsetai to tēs psuchēs kai to tou sōmatos agathon (will fulfil the good of soul and body). This plenitude of good cannot be the void defining insensibility. Epicurus uses words like pistis bebaios, pistōma bebaiotaton, which are anything but negative: the unshakable assurance of the sage is not the laisser-aller of apathy. We will see him speaking elsewhere of the courageous struggle of the sage against fortune, tuchē antitattesthai. How could this conscious struggle be considered as that passive and empty resignation, which is so often attributed to the Epicureans? Finally, another strongly positive term that is employed by Epicurus confirms our interpretation: it is the term hugieia; that is, the healthy and good proportionate state of the being as a whole, body and soul, in order and harmony. This is undoubtedly the happiness that the Epicurean sage finds within himself once he has eliminated all trouble. 51"

Footnote 51: "Félix Ravaisson (Essai sur la Métaphysique d’Aristote, II, 105, 106) seeks to refer [or reduce] hugieia and aponia to the mere absence of peine and trouble. Having this identification [of hugieia and aponia] as his starting point, this is Ravaisson’s conclusion: ‘The goal of wisdom and the art of living is, according to Epicurus, to reach a point where one no longer feels anything … Epicureanism finds sovereign good in a state of absolute impassibility, which is an abstraction, a negation, in a word, nothing.’ – Impassibility in relation to the exterior, maybe; but inner insensibility? – The [Epicurean] texts we have quoted prove the opposite. Ataraxia is, without any doubt, the negation of all that which is foreign to [a certain] being; but what is left is the being itself, which affirms itself in face of the exterior: the ineffable enjoyment of intimate harmony – spiritual and material – is this an abstraction, is this nothing? It seems much more logical to refer, by finding support in [Epicurus’] texts, aponia (the absence of ponos, pain or suffering) and ataraxia (the absence of trouble or turmoil) to hugieia (health) than to reduce, without a clear reason, hugieia to aponia. Epicurus does not say anywhere that the absence of pain [peine] constitutes pleasure all by itself. He rather says that ‘pleasure is perceived as soon as all pain is subtracted [enlevée],’ percipitur omni dolore detracto (Cicero, De finibus, X, xi, 37). Epicurus’ originality in relation to his predecessors – Aristippus, on the one hand, and Hieronymus, on the other –is precise to have denied the existence of a purely negative or neutral state, in which one would only find absence of pain: Epicurus this intermediate state, this medium quiddam (Cicero, De finibus, I, 38); it is not, therefore, turning it into his ideal. That which also helps refuting Ravaisson’s position is the consequences that he extracts from his hypothesis: ‘If the end goal of happiness is not suffering or perceiving any pain, doesn’t this mean that what is most desirable for man is to die – and, what is more, to never have come into existence in the first place?’ (Essai sur la Métaphysique d’Aristote, II, 113). – We will [later] see the verse of the poet that Ravaisson mentions attacked by Epicurus himself. – Moreover, Ravaisson writes, ‘Pleasure is nothing but the end of pain, and whenever pain comes to an end only by means of death itself.’ – Believing that Epicurus did not see these consequences or simply accepted them means attributing to him incredible naivety and absurdity. Let us look, by means of contrast, to a text by Epicurus: ‘Death is indifferent to us, because all good and all evil reside in the action of feeling, and death is the privation of sensibility: mēthen pros hēmas einai ton thanaton, epei pan agathon kai kakon en aisthēsei, sterēsis d’ estin aisthēseōs ho thanatos’ (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, X, 124). How could one [after reading this passage] still defend the thesis according to which Epicurus thought that insensibility and negation found in sterēsis (privation) consisted in achievement and perfection, or the sumplērōsis (plenitude) of the good? Neither insensibility nor death are good for Epicurus, and he clearly responds to all those who attribute this idea to him."

" ‘From the moment when we are freed from pain, we enjoy the deliverance itself and exemption from every kind of constraint.’ (Cicero, De finibus, I, xi, 37; I, xvii, 56) To live in freedom, in rest and harmony with oneself, to have the inner feeling that one lives, this is supreme pleasure, in comparison to which all the others are but so many changing forms. Forever the same, this pleasure can exist independently and subsist above all others."

Lots to chew on!

Here are some excerpts from the Editors Introduction, considering utilitarianism. Note that EP is being discussed in the introduction as utilitarian, not Utilitarian. Further, in Book 1 it's hardly mentioned: the focus is EP (as it appears to be throughout the book).

"In a way, one could say that utilitarianism is but a chapter (although an important one) in a broader history of Epicureanism."

"Against the traditional reconstruction of Epicureanism as an egoistic and apolitical morality, characterized by a lack of attention to social concerns and a withdrawal from politics, Guyau shows that it was within the Epicurean tradition that important notions of modern political thought were first developed, such as a society founded on mutual agreements and the idea of social progress. To the Stoic tradition of natural law Guyau opposes the Epicurean ‘pact of utility’, which embodies the natural right of not harming and not being harmed by others. The pact, as Guyau sees it, is a way to come to terms with the tension existing between individual and society, between egoism and altruism."

"For Guyau, Epicureanism’s distinctive character resides in also considering the future when acting in the present. For the Epicurean, the present must be linked to the future, and both present and future converge in the composition of a ‘whole of life’. It is this encounter between present and future in enjoyment that Guyau calls ‘utility’: utility is pleasure fecundated by the idea of time."

This is a fascinating read: Guyau, at the age of 19, wrote a 1300 page critique of Utilitarianism as an entry to a competition. The dissertation was very well received at the time; subsequently it was revised into two volumes, of which this is the first. This volume (240 pages or so) is dedicated to Epicurean philosophy.

This volume is divided into four books:

Book 1: The Pleasures of the Flesh

Book 2: The Pleasures of the Soul

Book 3: Private and Public Virtues

Book 4: The Modern Successors of Epicurus

Apparently the second volume deals with utilitarianism.... However, Guyau considers Epicurus to have been the first utilitarian philosopher. I've just finished Book 1, but already I think that this would be a great book for more people here to read and discuss. Not so much for utilitarianism, but because it's an excellent treatment of Epicurean philosophy. By virtue of being originally written in French, it has a slightly different linguistic approach to ours which will potentially depth to our understanding.

Joshua have you tried GIMP instead of BeFunky? It's an open source program similar to Photoshop, if that's what you're looking for.

Sounds like it's a multipurpose bundle of goodies! Basically an open source version of Maya? Most of the people who I've run across that use Maya use only a tiny bit of it: it's so comprehensive that nobody can master the whole thing.

I've been interested in Blender for 3D modeling, but haven't tried it yet. I didn't even know that it does what you're doing with it, Joshua . Thanks for posting!

Don I agree wit your conclusion. To me, Epicurus was actually much more specific in defining his philosophy than the humanists (or Humanists), and since I agree with him, it makes the most sense to go with the more specific philosophy.

Some brief highlights from The Birth of Hedonism, which I read and highlighted a few years ago....

From chapter 3.4. The Cyrenaic Theory of the Experiences:

their most fundamental set of doctrines concerns the division between their experiences (pathē) and what causes those experiences.

...the Metrodidact... explained that there are three states in our constitution. In one, which is like a storm at sea, we feel pain. In another, which is similar to a smooth undulation stirred by a favorable breeze, we feel pleasure (for pleasure is a smooth motion). The third state, in which we feel neither pain nor pleasure, is in the middle and is like a calm sea. And he used to say we have perception of these experiences alone. (SSR 4b.5 = Eusebius PE 14.18.32)

The most straightforward reading of this terminological shift is that by “these experiences” (pathē), Eusebius means the experiences of our own states: it is solely of these that we “have perception.”

Whether the Cyrenaics’ own term was “perception,” “knowledge,” “apprehension,” or something else again, its meaning is tolerably clear from our sources. This is that our sensations of vision, hearing, taste, and touch do not vouch for whatever they appear to represent; they only vouch for themselves, and they do so inwardly, unmistakably, truly, and incorrigibly.

Cicero testifies to their inwardness by distinguishing the “inner touch” from all our exterior sensations. We have interior contact with our pleasure and pain, just as we have interior perception of our own yellowing, burning, or embittering. Plutarch employs similar rhetoric in saying,

These men placed the experiences and appearances in themselves; they didn’t think the proof from these sufficed for the confirmation of real things. As if in a siege, they withdrew from what is outside and locked themselves into their experiences. (Mor. 1120c–d = SSR 4a.211)

But the Cyrenaics do not believe we can work through these disagreements and thus reveal the truth about external reality. They not only want to argue that we are less certain about the external world than about our own experiences, they want to argue that that we cannot know external reality at all.

This is a pretty comprehensive book for anybody interested in the Cyrenaics. There are some nuances separating various Cyrenaic schools which the book examines; as it's been a while since I read it, I'll shy away from getting into any detail in these matters.

Happy 20th!

That's an interesting take on it.

Is the argument of Chrysippus specific to pleasure, or is it regarding the highest good? I'm again thinking of virtue: do Stoics consider that you can reach a state where you are virtuous, and therefore don't long for it any more? This could be analogous to a homeostatic state of pleasure, in his mind. But that doesn't seem to work in this case either, although it does work for an argument against virtue as the greatest good.

Does anybody know a Stoic to ask about this? Personally, the argument seems to me to be so absurd as to be meaningless but that's probably not the case for somebody serious about Stoicism.

Quote from Don

Chryssipus is saying that if the hand didn't "want" anything, if it didn't "want" pleasure, then pleasure can't be the supreme good because we should always strive to gain the supreme good.

Very well said. So another mistake by Chryssipus is that according to his argument, virtue can't be the supreme good. For that matter, nothing can be. But I may be missing something: it's been a long day.

This also gets to the question of whether, in a purely material universe, there is a supreme good. Organisms have a highest level goal, but that's quite different from an idealized supreme good.

It seems as if he's trying to make a case for a neutral state as a way of disproving pleasure as the highest good. But, if that's true, his argument makes no sense. If there's no neutral state, and the hand feels no lack, then it is experiencing pleasure. He's set up a false argument with "if pleasure is the supreme good, it would feel a lack," complete with a Platonic stooge to agree with the incorrect assertions.

At least that's all I can get out of it