Posts by Godfrey

Lately, as a way to encompass the idea of the full range of pleasure, I've been equating pleasure with "a good feeling" (or feeling good, or a good Feeling). Similarly, equating pain to "a bad feeling".

A good feeling might come from simply taking a deep breath. It might also come in the midst of wrestling with intensely painful (feeling really bad) emotions or other struggles. Or a good feeling might come after a day of intensely focused or otherwise effortful work. Or after earning a PhD in ancient Greek philosophy. Or raising a child. Or an exceptionally sweaty workout, or a victorious competition. Or while viewing art that you connect with. Or seeing a random act of levity on your drive home from work.

Looking at it in this way, maybe the amount of effort involved in pursuing pleasure isn't necessarily the effort involved in performing the activity leading to a good feeling, which obviously can vary greatly from one activity to another. Instead, the effort involved in pursuing pleasure is the work to be done to make available the mental bandwidth to notice and appreciate good feelings and to weigh potential good feelings against potential bad feelings. If this work is done, joy can be had in even the most intense effort applied to a specific task, in enduring intense anguish or in the briefest moment of perception.

This comes to mind from Lucretius book V: 1198-1203 ish:

It is no piety to show oneself

Bowing with veiled head towards a stone,

Nor to be seen frequenting every altar,

Nor to fall prostrate on the ground, with palms outspread 1200

Before the shrines of gods, nor deluge altars

With streams of blood from beasts, vow piled on vow.

True piety is for a man to have the power

To contemplate the world with quiet mind.

Quote from Cassius

This is probably a good time for a reminder that the only authoritative explanation (so far as I recall at the moment - are there others?) of the natural/necessary classification (aside from the scholium in DL which is of uncertain source) is that of Torquatus in On Ends (Reid translation).

Cassius I'm not sure that I'm reading your post #30 correctly but, for reference, here are PDs relevant to the categories of desires:

PD26 The desires that do not bring pain when they go unfulfilled are not necessary; indeed they are easy to reject if they are hard to achieve or if they seem to produce harm.

PD21 One who perceives the limits of life knows how easy it is to expel the pain produced by a lack of something and to make one's entire life complete; so that there is no need for the things that are achieved through struggle.

PD29 Among desires, some are natural and necessary, some are natural and unnecessary, and some are unnatural and unnecessary (arising instead from groundless opinion).

PD30 Among natural desires, those that do not bring pain when unfulfilled and that require intense exertion arise from groundless opinion; and such desires fail to be stamped out not by nature but because of the groundless opinions of humankind.

Rolf I'll riff on your questions without, at least for the moment, any specific citations other than to say that everything I'm about to refer to is in the PDs. For me, the PDs have been tricky. At the beginning they sounded rather obscure, but as I have read, paused and returned to them over various intervals they seem to be pretty straightforward, although incredibly insightful. They require time and percolation.

First, living with chronic pain is a case study in the way in which it is unhelpful to imagine that there's a neutral state. The neutral state is, to me, a product of laziness and lack of rigor. When I've found myself thinking that I'm in a neutral state, I've repeatedly noticed that it really means that I'm not paying attention. Once I pay more attention to my feelings, I invariably notice subtle pleasures and pains at various places in my body and mind.

From this it becomes evident that, as stated in the PDs, pleasures and pains have intensity, location and duration. I often find that some of my parts are in pleasure or pain, but others not so much, or quite the opposite. And a feeling in one part might be drowning out a feeling in another part. A feeling may spread from one part to others: sciatica that comes and goes may prompt mental anticipation of pain, which causes muscles to tense, which lights up the sciatica... &c. (This could be thought of as an example of "pain v suffering".) Or a subtle feeling of pleasure might spread, thus increasing in location and perhaps duration.

Eventually, it becomes apparent that none of the feelings are constant, at least up to an extreme point as per PD04.

For me, part of the beauty of Epicurus' analysis of pleasure and pain is that it is exceptionally nuanced and provides the Epicurist so much to work with. We can offset various pains by noticing and dialing in to pleasures in other parts, and we can work at increasing these pleasures even if we can't seem to diminish the pains. We can seek pleasure strategically when we understand what, for each of us, provides the greatest payoff in terms of maximizing our pleasure and minimizing our pain. Sometimes this takes time. Lots of time. But we humans are intricate instruments, not the golems that Cicero and the Stoics imagine us to be.

Apologies for lurking; lots going on in my life these days. I just want to toss in the observation that both pleasure and pain are guides to choosing and avoiding. We strive for pleasure and consider pain an "evil". But even as we sometimes choose a pain in the service of greater pleasure, even being more aware of our pains can provide us with guidance to greater pleasure.

Complete absence of pain, which is the fullness of pleasure, while it sounds great, is for "the gods". The rest of us may enjoy it from time to time, and the rest of the time it's a goal to strive for.

Of course there's VS41:

One must laugh and seek wisdom and tend to one's home life and use one's other goods, and always recount the pronouncements of true philosophy.

A few years ago, my wife and I read the Marie Kondo book before we did some purging. Our key takeaway was to ask the question "does this bring me joy?" of each item being considered. Which reminds me of VS71: Ask this question of every desire: what will happen to me if the object of desire is achieved, and what if not?

Quote from Rolf

Accept what you cannot enjoy

This is very instructive to think about, and first I'd like to second what Cassius had to say.

As to the Tetrapharmakos... for me, there's a big difference between "what's bad is easy to endure" and "Pain does not last continuously in the flesh; instead, the sharpest pain lasts the shortest time, a pain that exceeds bodily pleasure lasts only a few days, and diseases that last a long time involve delights that exceed their pains." (St-Andre) The first is a pablum, but PD04 offers a guideline with which to examine our pain.

A better way to say this might be that the first offers a way to distract the mind, the second offers a way to engage the senses to arrive at a deeper truth. And, really, this is at the core of Epicurean philosophy.

Relating to this is the experience of intensity, duration and location, which is expressed in other PDs. Examine where the pain resides. Is it physical, mental? Where? Is it an "organic" sensation or a reaction to sensation (fearing, anticipating or dwelling on it)? Are there gaps? Can pleasure be found in the gaps? Can this pleasure be increased? Are there prudent ways to directly decrease the intensity of the pain? Can the pain be expected to subside at some point? &c... The feelings are two, not one, and both are guides to living our best lives.

Living as an Epicurist requires a generally unacknowledged degree of mental and physical strength: we're not offered formulas for living our lives, we have to come to an understanding that we thrive through asking difficult questions and facing difficult experiences. We don't try to cast them off as "indifferents", as some would have us do.

Of course there are different genres, subjects, moods &c of movies, and innumerable but not infinite choices of what to watch. Too, one can enjoy the design, the cinematography, the music, the sound design, the special effects and the computer generated effects and, of course the nuance of the acting and the structure of the writing among other things. A wealth of pleasures are waiting to be had, if one chooses wisely.

Quote from The Dude

The entire cosmos lets its massive balls swing in the intergalactic breeze, man.

What can you say after that? That's quite an image, probably not suitable for the Epicurean symbol discussion going on.

Great letter, dude

I keep leaning toward a field of random dots representing particles. Maybe this could be incorporated into the moon symbol, either on the dark or the light side.

Jumping threads here, but I see that Aphrodite is "Goddess of love, beauty, and desire, embodying grace and passion." Not sure of the relevance to that thread, but that seems to put desire in quite pleasurable company. I admit that's a very shallow view, oversimplifying the matter. But it seems worth pointing out.

Time warping from ancient Rome to the recent past... Several years ago I took some notes from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…58/#!po=31.0811; here are some select quotations:

“From sensory pleasures and drugs of abuse to monetary, aesthetic and musical delights, all pleasures seem to involve the same hedonic brain systems, even when linked to anticipation and memory. Pleasures important to happiness, such as socializing with friends, and related traits of positive hedonic mood are thus all likely to draw upon the same neurobiological roots that evolved for sensory pleasures.”

“We note the rewarding properties for all pleasures are likely to be generated by hedonic brain circuits that are distinct from the mediation of other features of the same events (for example, sensory, cognitive) (Kringelbach 2005). Thus, pleasure is never merely a sensation or a thought, but is instead an additional hedonic gloss generated by the brain via dedicated systems (Frijda 2010).”

“Identification of hedonic substrates has been advanced by recognizing that pleasure or “liking” is but one component in the larger composite psychological process of reward, which also involves “wanting” and “learning” components (Smith et al. 2010).”

“In conclusion, so far as positive affect contributes to happiness, then considerable progress has been made in understanding the neurobiology of pleasure in ways that might be relevant. For example, we can imagine several possibilities to relate happiness to particular hedonic psychological processes discussed above. Thus, one way to conceive of hedonic happiness is as "liking” without “wanting.” That is, a state of pleasure without disruptive desires, a state of contentment (Kringelbach 2009). Another possibility is that moderate “wanting,” matched to positive “liking,” facilitates engagement with the world. A little incentive salience may add zest to the perception of life and perhaps even promote the construction of meaning, just as in some patients therapeutic deep brain stimulation may help lift the veil of depression by making life events more appealing. However, too much “wanting” can readily spiral into maladaptive patterns such as addiction, and is a direct route to great unhappiness. Finally, happiness of course springs not from any single component but from the interplay of higher pleasures, positive appraisals of life meaning and social connectedness, all combined and merged by interaction between the brain’s default networks and pleasure networks. Achieving the right hedonic balance in such ways may be crucial to keep one not just ticking over but actually happy.” [I cringe at the use of "higher" pleasures, but overall, I'm seeing a distinction between pleasure networks and wanting (desire) networks.]

So I gather that the pleasure/pain network is separate from wanting (desire), but that they are integrally intertwined. This makes sense in light of our difficulty in determining whether desire is pain. It also reinforces the idea of desires not being the same as pleasure/pain when considered in regard to the categories of desires.

Another way to look at this might be that ice cream and desire both can lead to pleasure/pain, but neither are pleasures or pains. Ice cream and desire are different types of things from pleasure/pain, as well as from each other.

Is desire really only a function of the mind? Isn't it often physical... maybe even primarily physical? It ultimately has to be as everything is physical, even the mind.

One thing that's important, per my understanding of Epicurus, is to not conflate desires with pleasures. I interpret this, rightly or wrongly, as desires are not feelings and therefore not pains. Pleasure/pain is one biological function, desire is another.

I also think that it would be instructive to review modern biochemistry in this regard; it may or may not clarify Epicurus, but we have more information than he did and so it's worth reviewing the ideas from a contemporary standpoint. It's of note that our contemporary standpoint often validates Epicurus' thinking to a large degree, which is one reason why I for one find EP so appealing.

I particularly like this pig graphic. But of course I'm the guy with a toy monkey for an avatar.

I'm a bit late but, to me, practical v philosophical isn't a useful distinction as they are ideally one in the same for an Epicurist. Maybe surface v in depth, dilettante v serious student or something along those lines provides a better comparison?

I can't help but speculate that the formulation of the categories of desires is a reaction against asceticism and a defense against the enemies of pleasure. To me the categories are an improvement upon the philosophies that seek removal of all desires, which could be the very definition of asceticism.

Quote from Cassius

Neither Godfrey nor Titus have for a moment (as far as I know) entertained the idea of living in cave.

Well I do have a man cave, but I'd prefer not to live in it....

Not sure if this is helpful but, for me, natural/unnecessary desires are the "sweet spot" of living as an Epicurean.

At some point a person has reasoned through what is unnatural for them and ruled those things out for themself as something to pursue. Similarly, at some point a person has (hopefully) secured their natural and necessary desires for the foreseeable future. The natural/unnecessary desires, then, are everything that's left, and these are the desires that we work with every day. Do I want to do something extravagant, just for the fun of it? This is a practical opportunity to examine my desire and evaluate how it might affect me in terms of pleasure/pain. Am I embarking on a large project? Say, perhaps, a home remodel. How can I maximize my pleasure in this instance, both in terms of the experience and the outcome. Am I deciding between two jobs? Do I want wine with dinner? Paper or plastic?

As Epicureans (or Epicurists) we don't just set up our lives and proceed on autopilot. And working with natural/unnecessary desires is one way to intentionally live day to day with the philosophy to consistently and responsibly maximize our pleasure.

I'm asking this in complete ignorance on the subject, but is it possible that ancient Greek wine was made through a different process than today's French and California wines? Some type of extremely strong retsina? Something that needed water mixed in just to be palatable as well as safe to drink?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_G…fore%20pressing.

https://www.badancient.com/claims/ancient…oman%20cultures.

https://greekreporter.com/2022/05/09/why-ancient-greeks-mixed-wine-with-seawater/