REMINDER: SUNDAY WEEKLY ZOOM - December 21, 2025 -12:30 PM EDT - Ancient Text Study: De Rerum Natura by Lucretius -- Meeting is open to Level 03 members and above.
Another explanation to add to my post 14 above:
5) Since the purpose of the inscription was evangelism, saying that we've excised and minimized pains is much more appealing to the average passersby than saying we've excised and minimized desires. Working with desires is a way that pain can be minimized, but that detail can come later.
Quote from KalosyniThe word "desires" has a sound of adding in something. Where as "removing pains" is getting rid of something.... And we may have differences in which direction we tend to go in (removing pain/adding in pleasure).
Kalosyni could you elaborate on this? Are you saying that desires add in pleasures? Or that desires equate to pleasures? Or desires are additional to pleasures and pains? I'm not clear as to what you're thinking here.
I'm joining late as I've had post-booster brain fog for most of the day.
These medicines we have put [fully] to the test; for we have dispelled the fears [that grip] us without justification, and, as for pains, those that are groundless we have completely excised, while those that are natural we have reduced to an absolute minimum, making their magnitude minute.
The way that I read Epicurus, as a Feeling a pain can never be groundless, nor can a pleasure. All pains and pleasures are natural and are true. Only what leads to a pain or a pleasure can be groundless. Also, if some desires are to be considered pains, some must also be considered pleasures. But to do that invites Ciceronian obfuscation and should be avoided.
So, using multiple explanations, since I'm not very familiar with Diogenes: 1) Don has probably the best explanation in the previous post. 2) Diogenes seems like an enthusiastic student and not a teacher, so his terminology may be looser than we're accustomed to from the other extant texts. 3) It could be that Joshua is correct and desires are pains. To some extent this is correct, but with all due respect I don't see this as being what Epicurus was saying. 4) It could also be that by the time of Diogenes, EP had evolved to include desires as pains.
Until we have more evidence, my guess is that the wording comes partly from the translator and partly from the use by Diogenes of less specific word choices.
Thanks, Cassius, and everyone else who has participated in these. Great work!
Cassius has said much of what I've been thinking. I'd just add as a synopsis to what he has written above that Epicurean philosophy meets people where they are, and gives a clear statement of how to live. The confusion comes from the fact that the statement isn't a strict formula, but one that each individual can adapt to their circumstances. (Of course the confusion also comes from the multitude of misrepresentations of the philosophy.)
1. The goal is pleasure. Pleasure is a Feeling, not a destination.
2. Understand desire, and act accordingly. There's nothing wrong with desire! You just have to balance the pursuit of desires with the goal of pleasure. A tool to use for this is the categories of desires: this is a tool for deciding for oneself which of one's desires might be fruitful to pursue, and which ones are likely to divert one from the goal. It's also helpful to think of the goal as the fullness of pleasure when evaluating desires.
So what do you think that means for us moving forward? Does it seem that the word "Epicurean" in some sense is already taken to mean something different. Even if we say "Epicurean Philosophy" the common person will think "Food Philosophy"?
One option that comes to mind is to use "Lucretian" rather than "Epicurean". As far as I know, that hasn't been co-opted yet. But I agree with Cassius that a new term shouldn't be introduced. Probably best is to use "Epicurus" rather than "Epicurean" as in the previous post.
Well put again! I would add - from my perspective - one of the goals is to increase those "segments of time" to be both longer and more frequent. And - again from my perspective - that's why cultivating "tranquility" and "peace of mind" is important: it allows us to have a "tranquil" baseline and to be less easily perturbed/disturbed. We will experience the bites of anger, annoyance, etc., but we won't be swept away by them.
Practically speaking, I completely agree with this. "Cultivating tranquility" is both mental and physical as well: it only makes sense since the mental is actually based in the physical. There's nothing mystical about this and such cultivation might include things like studying natural science, contemplating philosophy, doing deep breathing exercises, taking a hot bath, spending time in a hammock with a cold drink while feeling a breeze and observing the scenery. Or watching the stars and night. Or fully concentrating on a simple task... &c.
From the above linked paper "Emotions in Plato and Aristotle", discussing Aristotle: (the author uses "affections" in place of "emotions")
"The two Ethics introduce pleasure or pain, or pleasure and pain, in order to generalize from lists of affections. Thus we read, ‘By the affections I mean desire (epithumia), anger, fear, confidence, envy, joy, love, hatred, longing, emulation, pity, and in general things that are accompanied by pleasure or pain’ (NE 2.5.1105b21-3); but also, ‘By the affections I mean such things as anger, fear, shame, desire, and in general things that, as such, give rise for the most part to perceptual pleasure and pain (EE 2.2.1220b12-14). Presumably it is not a coincidence that the Eudemian Ethics adds both the qualification ‘for the most part’ and the specification ‘perceptual’: Aristotle must think that a special kind of pleasure or pain attaches to most affections, though not all. The Physics identifies the affections with changes in the soul’s perceptual part (to aisthêtikon morion) that involve bodily pleasures and pains excited by action, memory, or anticipation (7.3.247a3-9). Such pleasures and pains are excited by sensible things through perception or imagination (a9-17). They arise from their location within that part of the soul which Aristotle elsewhere calls ‘the perceptual and desirous’ (EE 2.2.1219b23): they are not merely sensible because conscious, but sensory in that they connect closely with sense-perception and imagination within the affective soul (to pathêtikon morion, Pol. 1.5.1254b8). Many of the affections involve imagination (phantasia) in the service of memory and expectation; this connects them with the pleasures that follow on imagination as a weak form of perception (Rhet. 1.11.1370a27-32)."
"It is true that there is no explicit mention of belief in the initial definition of anger (2.2.1378a30-2); but belief is implicit in mention of desire (orexis), given that such orexis is equated with ‘aiming at’ (ephiesthai), which is taken to presuppose believing, and not just imagining, that an end is attainable."
Quote from renelizaI know Epicurus speaks about remembering past pleasures. Does he ever say anything about thinking ahead to future pleasure as a form of pleasure? (Or anything remotely related)
Regarding future pleasures, I think there's a passage somewhere in which Epicurus says something about the remembering of past pleasures and anticipation of future pleasures and you will live like a god among men... I thought it was in a letter or a fragment, but all I can find is this from Cicero....
Tusculan Disputations 5.95-96. The upshot of his entire discussion of pleasure is this. He holds that pleasure itself should always be wished for and pursued for its own sake because it is pleasure, and that by the same reasoning pain should always be avoided, just because it is pain; and so the wise man will employ a principle of compensation, and will avoid pleasure if it will produce a greater pain and will endure pain if it produces a greater pleasure; and that all pleasing feelings are to be referred to the mind, although they are actually judged by bodily senses. 96. As a result the body is pleased for only so long as it perceives a present pleasure, while the mind perceives a present pleasure just as much as the body does, but also foresees a pleasure which is coming in the future and does not let a past pleasure slip from its grasp. So the wise man will always have a continuous and interconnected [set of] pleasures, since the expectation of hoped-for pleasures is linked to the memory of pleasures already perceived.
How is having an unmet longing NOT painful? I'd love to figure out where the misunderstanding between the two sides is occurring.
Right now there's some pineapple in our refrigerator, which I'm going to snack on in a little while. I'm experiencing a desire for some of that pineapple, which I don't experience as a pain but as an anticipation of a future pleasure. Before that, however, I desire to take a nap; I'm experiencing this desire as a reaction to the pain caused by a bad night's sleep last night.
For me, desire is intricately tied to both pain and pleasure; it can have elements of either or both. My practical Epicurean take is that desire provides the stimulus to action, while pleasure/pain provides guidance in how to act. Practice involves being aware of and responsive to all of these: desire, pleasure, and pain.
The concluding paragraph from the paper that Don posted previously in this thread:
"Without separating off emotions as such, Plato and Aristotle alert us to their compositional intricacy, which involves body and mind, cognition and desire, perception and feeling. Even the differences of interpretation to which scholars are resigned focus our minds upon the complexity of the phenomena, and their resistance to over-unitary definitions. Emotions, after all, are things that we feel; at the same time, emotionally is how we often think. Discarding too simple a Socratic focus upon contents of thought, Plato and Aristotle embrace the interconnections, within the emotions, of body and soul, and of perception, imagination, feeling, and thinking. Theirs was not the last word; but, after them, there was no going back to first words. We should still read them, for the reason that what demands clarification in them demands clarification in itself. The questions that they bring alive for us are our questions."
In other words, we've happened upon a very juicy topic 
I'd like to propose again that a desire is not a pain, but it may produce pain or be a response to a pain.
To test a somewhat muddled analogy: fire is not a pain, but if you put your hand in it, it will lead to pain. Moving on from the analogy: if you keep your hand in the fire, you will have a desire (in this case a response to pain) to remove your hand from the fire. If someone offered you a large sum of money to keep your hand in the fire, the natural desire to remove your hand will be fighting with the (vain? depends on the circumstances) desire to get the money (choices and avoidances: which resultant pleasure/pain leads toward a better outcome?).
If desire is a pain, then per PD03 the limit of the magnitude of pleasure would include the removal of all desire. Is this what Epicurus had in mind? Then why would he describe natural and necessary desires? Does he say somewhere that gods have no desires?
Can we even experience pleasure without desire? Certainly we can by stumbling into something pleasurable. But Epicurus is very clear that prudence is of critical importance; this is how we live our lives with intention and not by chance.
As I recall from an experiment described in the book Dopamine Nation, rats with their dopamine blocked would starve to death. They weren't motivated by the pleasure of food or by the removal of the pain of hunger, but by dopamine. So if dopamine equates to desire (does it?) then it would clearly not be a pain or a pleasure. Desire would be a stimulus to action as opposed to pleasure and pain, which serve as guides to action and results of action. (OK I'm mixing modern and ancient here)
Sadly, I don't. But I hope that it does.
BTW post #36 is a great start toward pinning down the details of desires v feelings!
I'm inclined to think of hope and desire as degrees of the same thing. For a pop culture reference, consider the Ted Lasso episode "The Hope That Kills You". Any sports fan hopes that their team wins, but isn't that really a desire? And in that case, even a vain desire as they have no control over the outcome.
Likewise, do I desire world peace or hope for it?
The only things which are intrinsically "good" or "bad" are pleasure (good) and pain (bad). Everything else, including desire, only lead to greater or lesser pleasure or pain.
So just like Pleasure, some Desires are to be pursued in certain circumstances, and some should not be pursued, but at no point do we consider either "Pleasure" or "Desire" to be tainted terminology. In fact I would come very close to applying the same phrasing as in the letter and paraphrase the result as: "All Desires are good, because they are desirable, but some desires may lead to more pain than pleasure and thus should not be chosen."
Rather than being a question of what the good is, to me this approach invites confusing desires with pleasures. Martin 's description seems quite accurate. The confusion might come about because, as far as I can tell, Epicurus didn't define desire. He only gave categories of desires. But if we look to modern science (to my understanding) we see that desire is different from pleasure or pain. Even though he didn't define desire, by his treatment of the various ideas I think it's clear that Epicurus was in basic agreement with modern science.
Did Aristotle or Plato define desire? Maybe Epicurus felt no need to define it because he had no objection to the common notion of it.
Quote from Joshua...I don't think that pain is necessarily "bad" or "evil".
I agree with much of Joshua 's post. A point to clarify, at least in my mind, is that rather than being bad or evil, pain is a guide pointing away from health. Pleasure is a guide pointing toward health. If you ignore your pain (or have CIP) then you can expect results harmful to your well-being. When you overdo pleasure seeking, pain will generally guide you back to reasonable pleasure seeking.
Pleasure is a guide toward healthy outcomes, pain is a guide away from unhealthy outcomes. Desires are neither. Or both. In this way they are different from pleasure and pain; they're more like attractions rather than guides.
The question remains whether they are feelings, sensations, thoughts, or something else....
Joshua made an interesting point when he said, if I'm quoting correctly, that desire is a Feeling of pain.
My understanding is different, but I think that it's a valuable point to discuss. I've made the point in other threads that desire and pleasure should not be confused. However I've been on the fence about desire and pain. For now I'll push the idea that desire is not a pain but that it leads to pain. I think that current neuroscience shows pleasure/pain and desire to be caused by different chemical processes: maybe Don or reneliza would care to weigh in on this.
PD10 and PD11 both mention pain and desire, which is why I was previously on the fence. But as I read them now, it appears that these PDs treat them as different things.
PD10 "If the objects which are productive of pleasures to profligate persons really freed them from fears of the mind—the fears, I mean, inspired by celestial and atmospheric phenomena, the fear of death, the fear of pain—if, further, they taught them to limit their desires, we should not have any reason to censure such persons, for they would then be filled with pleasure to overfowing on all sides and would be exempt from all pain, whether of body or mind, that is, from all evil.” Hicks (1910)
This seems to be making a clear distinction between pain and desire.
PD11 "If we had never been molested by alarms at celestial and atmospheric phenomena, nor by the misgiving that death somehow affects us, nor by neglect of the proper limits of pains and desires, we should have had no need to study natural science.” Hicks (1910)
However this one isn't so clear. But for now I'm sticking to the idea that desire is not a Feeling.
Quote from KalosyniThe goal of existential therapy is to assist individuals in accepting and overcoming existential fears that are inherent in being human. An example of these existential fears includes freedom and responsibility, isolation, meaninglessness, and death.
This seems to be in line with what Epicurus was doing. However I'm not familiar with the nuances of existentialism. It seems to me that its starting point is dealing with how to live in a fully material universe, but I have no idea where it goes from there. My impression is that quite a bit of variety is included under the existentialist umbrella.
