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So, my interpretation has been that pleasure *is* good but it's the *context* within which that pleasure is experienced (and the personal responsibility we take for that context) that makes all the difference.
Ex., Drinking wine with friends is pleasurable.
Drinking wine to excess party after party is going to be... let's say less than optimal for your pleasurable existence.
"flourishing" and "wellbeing" and similar terms
I'm personally fine with Epicureans using terms like that as long as they're in the context of eudaimonia and in the larger context of pleasure/pain, etc.
Anytime we start de-emphasizing the term "pleasure" with other wording we are in dangerous territory.
See that's why I find that Plutarch quote so interesting with him claiming that the Epicureans went "back and forth" using pleasure, aponia, and eustatheia. However, my take on that is that it all referred back to pleasure. Aponia is "absence of pain" (sort of, but that's another thread) because pleasure replaces it. Eustatheia is pleasure because it's that internal, stable tranquility that we can be sure of. Pleasure is the key in the philosophy, so whatever terms one uses, they have to return to a framing of pleasure.
I should echo Cassius 's respect for Dr. Yapijakis' efforts in establishing the Gardens in Greece and the conferences in-person and online and the publishing efforts. I did watch most of the online conference in which Cassius participated (I am remembering correctly that you gave a talk, correct??), and I have an idea what it takes to coordinate events like that. So, that all is impressive in the evangelizing - the spreading the good news - of Epicurean philosophy.
However...
I'm a little uneasy about how some of that paper is phrased, especially (emphasis added):
Therefore, the Epicureans aimed at eustatheia, the good psychosomatic balance, since they believed that “the consistently good condition of the flesh and the relating hope for its preservation offer the ultimate and surest joy to those who are able to contemplate it.”30 Epicureans were taught to ascend the scale of pleasure by intensifying its continuity and to control its discontinuity. They became more interested in quality than in quantity by taking into account (συμμέτρησις, symmetrisis) useful and useless pleasures.
The "aiming at eustatheia" is interesting. It's most prominent in the Usener 68 fragment from Plutarch:
[ U68 ]
Plutarch, That Epicurus actually makes a pleasant life impossible, 4, p. 1089D: It is this, I believe, that has driven them, seeing for themselves the absurdities to which they were reduced, to take refuge in the "painlessness" and the "stable condition of the flesh," supposing that the pleasurable life is found in thinking of this state as about to occur in people or as being achieved; for the "stable and settled condition of the flesh," and the "trustworthy expectation" of this condition contain, they say, the highest and the most assured delight for men who are able to reflect. Now to begin with, observe their conduct here, how they keep decanting this "pleasure" or "painlessness" or "stable condition" of theirs back and forth, from body to mind and then once more from mind to body.
Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, IX.5.2: Epicurus makes pleasure the highest good but defines it as sarkos eustathes katastema, or "a well-balanced condition of the body."
....
Fragment 68: To those who are able to reason it out, the highest and surest joy is found in the stable health of the body and a firm confidence in keeping it. τὸ γὰρ εὐσταθὲς σαρκὸς κατάστημα καὶ τὸ περὶ ταύτης πιστὸν ἔλπισμα τὴν ἀκροτάτην χαρὰν καὶ βεβαιοτάτην ἔχει τοῖς ἐπιλογίζεσθαι δυναμένοις.
See also VS33
The body cries out to not be hungry, not be thirsty, not be cold. Anyone who has these things, and who is confident of continuing to have them, can rival the gods for happiness (eudaimonia).
Metrodorus also echoes these thoughts, almost exactly in his Fragment 5.
However, Plutarch's text is interesting: they keep decanting this "pleasure" or "painlessness" or "stable condition" of theirs back and forth. He seems to imply that the Epicureans used "pleasure" or "painlessness" or "stable condition" almost interchangeably: ἡδονὴν (hēdonēn) ταύτην εἴτ᾽ ἀπονίαν (aponian) ἢ εὐστάθειαν (eustatheian). But this is the first time I've seen the word eustatheia. It's not a bad word to use, but I can surmise some may have an issue with it being "aimed at." It might be interesting to delve into that term more. So, I applaud Dr. Yapijakis for calling my attention to that.
I'm more concerned with the phrasing "ascend the scale of pleasure" and "useful and useless pleasures." I agree with Godfrey that that should be "useful and useless *desires*" at best. The "ascent" doesn't strike me as appropriate either.
In the end, as I said, I can appreciate his work over the years, but I'm not entirely comfortable with some of his emphasis and his framing.
I noticed that Conatus is open-access (hooray!), and the studies Yapijakis references in the introduction are contained separately in the issue:
Epicurean Stability (eustatheia): A Philosophical Approach of Stress Management
I realize Dr. Yapijakis is a Associate Professor of Genetics, but his use in this paper of the outdated "triune brain" - even as a metaphor - stopped my reading in its tracks. I have been familiar with this reptile/ mammal/ primate brain "theory" since Carl Sagan's Dragons of Eden. But, first in Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett's work then following up with others, I found out that this idea, even as a metaphor, is outdated and simply factually wrong. For example:
MacLean’s basic premise—his “‘hats on top of hats’ view” that brain systems were added by accretion over the course of evolution—was mistaken.
Does it matter if we use the ‘reptilian brain’?
TL:DR. YES!
We are not born with hard-wired pre-packaged emotions emerging from a lizard brain. The human brain is not a tripartite-series of separate complexes. We are not at the mercy of our lizard brain when we experience threat. We’ve established that.
“Scientists have known since at least the 1970s that the idea of a lizard brain is a fiction of neuroscience,” Barrett says. “The problem here is that is takes 10, 20, sometimes 50 years before discoveries in science make it to the public.”
And so on. I could paste a number of articles, but I think that makes the point. I also vaguely remember making this point about his using the triune brain a year or so again. I didn't like it then, and I don't like it now. Even if "lizard brain" is in quotes, it's factually wrong and metaphorically misleading. It's not necessary to explain Epicurean philosophy. Just leave it out.
Bad news Nate, it looks like they did NOT do their own version. This is from the page introducing them:
Well, ya know what that means, Eikadistes 
Someone's gotta do it now.
I was curious what footnote 92 referred to, and it's simply the fact that that quoted section is from his other paper. That seems a little circular, but at least it's referenced.
Sedley, in Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom, posits that the swerve doesn't show up in the letter to Herodotus because the letter only covers On Nature books 1-10. He further conjectures that the swerve showed up in book 25 or books in that area, but there's no surviving fragments of book 25 that contain mention of it.
I doubt Lucretius would have included the swerve without justification from a source text. That said, it certainly doesn't seem pivotal or foundation to Epicurus's philosophy. It could be part of a specific argument against Democritus and his physical determinism but may have become overblown with later commentators and critics.
I admit to having on occasion approached the question of providence with kid gloves in the past, chiefly because many of the people I care about accept providence. Hell, they even accept petitionary prayer.
I hear you. I would never (probably) share these sentiments with certain family members, but it does feel pleasurable to me to vent them here 
1) lapse into Epicureanism without knowing it (see, for example, the Irvine passage attached, which is pretty much textbook Epicureanism)
I certainly see where you're going with that. Some modern Stoics I've read sound very Epicurean in their attempt to contort "their" philosophy into something palatable.
a new presentation by Emily Austin of several major points from her "Living for Pleasure" book
I just finished listening to The Next Big Idea audio, and 
Yes! Yes! Yes!
The format only allows literally for "5 Big Ideas" and Dr. Austin nailed the presentation with a friendly tone, approachable language, and the best defense I think I've ever heard in a mainstream forum for the Epicurean position. Kudos!
Some may quibble with her use of responses to the COVID pandemic as "too political" but I disagree. She couches those within a "respect for science" framework which is spot on. There are charlatans peddling ignorance and there are scientists and experts.
She gives tranquility its proper place in the philosophy but not to the exclusion of "extravagant" pleasures. She never endorses a minimalist Epicureanism! I fully embrace and endorse her perspective on tranquility (i.e., "ataraxia" I'm assuming).
She gets in some good, well-deserved digs at the Stoics! It's about time in my opinion.
First rate... Now that I've heard her voice, I'd like her to do her own narration of an audiobook version 
Thank you for being an eloquent, down to earth spokesperson for Epicurus!
...the big issue, which appears to be at least in part that the question is how "much" of a deviation occurs.
Is this really a big issue?
I would agree that these are inside baseball discussions. Fun, but we're definitely in the weeds on this thread.
And my take is that this was the primordial situation with all atoms falling in parallel "straight down." However, once a couple collisions happened, the order was interrupted by collisions and conglomerations in parts of the cosmos. In other parts, the parallel falling continued. And so on.
I'm saying 4 with the caveat that that motion can happen more than once over time but not as often as 2.
The atoms, as their own weight bears them down
Plumb through the void, at scarce determined times,
In scarce determined places, from their course
Decline a little- call it, so to speak,
Mere changed trend. For were it not their wont
Thuswise to swerve, down would they fall, each one,
Like drops of rain, through the unbottomed void;
And then collisions ne'er could be nor blows
Among the primal elements; and thus
Nature would never have created aught.
...
The atoms must a little swerve at times-
But only the least, lest we should seem to feign
Motions oblique, and fact refute us there.
For this we see forthwith is manifest:
Whatever the weight, it can't obliquely go,
Down on its headlong journey from above,
At least so far as thou canst mark; but who
Is there can mark by sense that naught can swerve
At all aside from off its road's straight line?
Again, if ev'r all motions are co-linked,
And from the old ever arise the new
In fixed order, and primordial seeds
Produce not by their swerving some new start
Of motion to sunder the covenants of fate,
That cause succeed not cause from everlasting,
Whence this free will for creatures o'er the lands,
Whence is it wrested from the fates,- this will
Whereby we step right forward where desire
Leads each man on, whereby the same we swerve
In motions, not as at some fixed time,
Nor at some fixed line of space, but where
The mind itself has urged? For out of doubt
In these affairs 'tis each man's will itself
That gives the start, and hence throughout our limbs
Incipient motions are diffused.
I'm trying out the idea that particles are "twitchy" and "tweak" when they move. I'm finding that "twerks", "wiggles" and "wags" imply a patterned rhythm that does not reflect the spontaneous, irregular quality of the ΠAPEΓKΛIΣIΣ.
Well, I applaud you for making the observation of intentionally with "swerve." So, kudos there. Wiggle is the most fun, but still misleading. 
Some random synonyms:
veer
drift
pivot
turn
.... Sigh.... Harder than it sounds like it would be!
PS: Do we know if the clinamen is supposed to be a fast swerving all of a sudden or a drifting off to one side or the other?
I'd describe most of us as "earnest students" of the philosophy. How does that sound, Cassius ?
And why twelve fundamentals of physics (if that is the correct classification), but not a numbered list of anything else?
See, that's the issue. We have no way of knowing if it was a list of 12 physics propositions or 12 ways of sensing things or 12 basic particles or 12 fill in the blank. All the text does is quote 1 to 3 sentences (the text is unclear) that were somewhere "in the 12 basics". Whether that or those were actually "in that list" or whether they were contained in an explanation of the 12 or in the introduction to the list, we have *no way* of knowing.
PS
Quote from Cassiusnot a numbered list of anything else?
We have no way of knowing how many lists, summaries, etc that Epicurus wrote and shared. We've lost too much.
I'm also not sure we should imbue "12" with some sort of significance lest we go down a Pythagorean path. My personal take was that that was just the number of basic principles of... Something (perception, sensation, physics, etc?) that Epicurus felt was sufficient in a summary to explain what he needed.
Good work, Eikadistes . That's a good summary list. I started doing this a while back and never went back to finish. Thanks for taking the bull by the horns!
A question and an observation:
Are you positing a difference between these two?
Everything radiates tiny, sensible particles. (EH 46.1-47.2)
Particles flow from things constantly. (EH 48.1-6)
Those seem to be the same. I didn't realize that section on images/eidolon was so long.
I'm still curious (and a curiosity likely never assuaged) as to what the 12 basics referred to: physics, sensations, etc. We have nothing other then those words εν ταις δοδεκα στοιχείωματα.
the 40 ΔOΞAI,
I'm still not convinced that there are actually 40 Principal Doctrines. With the text initially being in prose form, I think some of those 40 split up thoughts needlessly, creating arcane sounding principles where it's better understood in the context of a paragraph. There was 12 something referred to in the text, but I don't remember ever reading an ancient source referring specifically to 40 Doctrines.
Another good task for someone would be to reestablish the PDs in textual form and not a list.
After reading my post from last night in the light of day, I can still feel my visceral reaction to that Stoic article. However, I ask the forum: Am I being too harsh?
Epicurus certainly didn't spare his barbed words for people he disagreed with, but he also said it's better to believe in the gods than it is to accept hard determinism.
To me, though, it seems like accepting one's Fate decreed by Providence is combining *both* the gods *and* determinism and trying to sit that fence must surely be uncomfortable in the end. But if they find pleasure in "believing" that, am I to point out the precariousness of their position?
It seems to me that Epicurus also held that the best way to live was to understand how the universe actually works in reality.
Thoughts welcomed (at the risk of hijacking this thread).
