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According to Wiktionary, ξενία can mean hospitality – so, close.
Γείτονας means neighbor – and γειτονεύω means to be neighbors, or to border on. I also found a reference to γειτονικός, meaning neighborly.
Could you combine the terms into a phrase meaning “neighborly hospitality” perhaps? 
Thinking about this, it struck me that – like ripples spreading out on a pond – there might be a notion beyond a core circle of like-minded friends, but before the idea of community or society (a community of communities?) sustained by social contracts of mutual benefit.
I’ll call it neighborliness.
We are not close friends with our neighbors in our apartment building. We have seldom shared meals or entertainments. We seldom know their religion, if any (though our neighbors across the hall are Hindu) – or their personal or social philosophies. But we respect one another’s’ presence: e.g., keeping the noise volume down – whilst, at the same time, tolerating the running feet of our upstairs neighbors’ small children; as well as the occasional Saturday night party (which we also had in our youth). We help one another with doors, and carrying garbage bags to the dumpster.
We greet one another. We are a bit like Rilke’s “solitudes that border and greet and protect one another.”
Our closest neighbor was a young woman who lived in the apartment next to ours for a few years. She is a staff sergeant in the Army (who relocated to Washington, D.C. – where she now has some classified position). Once she was locked out of her apartment, and spent some hours with us, talking and sipping wine, while waiting for the locksmith. She helped us move some heavy items (we’re in our 70s and I have a bad back; she was incredibly physically fit: one of her passions). My wife looked after her cats when she had to go on some training missions. She was always on call if we needed anything. She still texts my wife once in awhile, just to keep touch.
Were we friends, in Epicurus’ sense? Not like our few close friends; not like Epicurus’ circle as I understand it.
But we were good neighbors for one another. “Solitudes that border and greet and protect one another.” I have known others.
I want to add that, for much of my life, I let the (unattainable) “perfect” both keep me from progressing from simple good to good – and be the condemnatory judge of wherever I happened to be in my life’s course. Never “good enough” – in the kind of Puritan/Kantian/Stoical milieu I had absorbed.
I had “good” programming for that in my early and formative years. And I compulsively (co-dependently) attached myself to people who would re-enforce/abuse/manipulate that tendency.
It was only in my 40s that (with the help of new friends) I was able to begin the process of extricating myself from that psychological morass. But it still lurks in my subconscious, rearing its head on occasion (especially in occasional nightmares).
Epicurus – after long searching in various spiritual and philosophical traditions (some helpful along the way) – gives me a sturdy base from which to examine and pragmatically address those tendencies. And that is why I am grateful to everyone on this site (even as I stumble along).
Maybe some of the newcomers here will not have to endure the years that I did.
You can FEEL The Good. It's right here, now, in our bodies and our minds.
Ah! That dovetails with Cassius’ response to my post in the Pleasure vs Pain thread.
Aristotle, as I recall, said that the highest good is eudaimonia (which I render as happy well-being). But what is a eudaimonic life but one that is the most pleasurable/pleasant (including ataraxia)? Eudaimonia is just that – not some additional state to which pleasure and pleasantness lead (contra Aristotle, I think).
And it is an affair of pathe …
It is of paramount importance to *always* adhere to VS71: Ask this question of every desire: what will happen to me if the object of desire is achieved, and what if not?
This is the kind of talk that always makes me tense up. 
“Stop calculating, Boss,” Zorba continued. “Forget numbers, break those disgusting scales, close the grocer’s shop.” (Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek – I am, perhaps helpfully, far more the introvert than Zorba.)
Now, I would not advocate for an “unaware life” – quite the contrary. But neither do I want to be continually working an abacus in my head to calculate, calculate, calculate (nor a set of scales to weigh, and weigh and weigh) – or even to think, think, think. 
I admit (unapologetically) that I have some Cyrenaic tendencies (while recognizing errors in Aristippus’ philosophy that I think Epicurus corrects). And, between the Scilla of ascetism and the Charybdis of tranquillism – as tendencies toward a shipwreck of possible error – I am unlikely to err toward asceticism (though I do value a certain simplictas in how I live).
With that said: although it might be “a bit early,” I’m going to enjoy an afternoon martini (even if it leads to an unplanned nap 
).
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Apologies Don if I am misinterpreting/misrepresenting you here. 
However the imagery of how the best life involves action, rather than being simply a floating disembodied mind, is useful for our purposes, I think.
I will add, though, that "living full measure" also includes (for me at least) a lively imagination (to which memory is also related): "At its most basic, every memory recall is imagination, because memories are reconstructed every time they are retrieved." [Davies, Jim. Imagination: The Science of Your Mind's Greatest Power (p. 19). Pegasus Books. Kindle Edition.]
(not to spoil the plot, but the lead character ends up dead)
Epicurus was into "pleasure" and that can come in many ways, simple and luxurious, and the trick is to maneuveur through your personal context to focus on pleasures that do not cause you more pain than you are willing to experience for the sake of those pleasures.
I like what the translator says about Guyau taking an evolutionary view of any philosophical system – while recognizing the importance of trying to identify the associated germinal ideas at the foundation. I would add: a dialectical-evolutionary approach, taking into account multiple perspectives (a kind of dialectical perspectivism).
I wanted to add to my comment about Guyau’s evolutionary approach …
Here’s what I mean by “dialectical perspectivism”* (which is not the simple thesis-antithesis-synthesis):
There is no “view from nowhere – or from everywhere” (the so-called “God’s-eye view”): there are only multiple perspectives. A metaphor –
First you look through this window into the room; then another window, etc. Maybe you get in through an open door. Even if you get to stand in the center of the room, your view as you turn around changes. No one of those views is the sole “right one.” But false perspectives (e.g. manipulated with mirrors, in this visual metaphor) are possible.
My perspectivism is more that of the Spanish existential philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset than of Nietzsche – but the idea is that the best we can really do is to allow ourselves as many perspectives as possible, sort through them, form the best picture for ourselves (which will itself be a personal, existential perspective), and be willing to change our “view” as new views come to fore for us.
In terms of Epicurus and the evolution of Epicureanism, I think we need to approach it the same way, as we each personalize our application. And always read critically, every source. I might find a given viewpoint or quote personally helpful: but that doesn’t mean it is some definitive summation – just a helpful perspective. (I don’t know yet how Guyau presents his evolutionary analysis; have to keep reading … 😊 )
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* The method is how I recall one writer describing Marx’s dialectical approach in Capital: analyzing from such conceptual viewpoints as use-value, labour-value, exchange-vale and value.
but I continue to think there is something missing when someone seems to be seeking to wrap up in a single word
Especially in a translation. But I do recall Luther's "solas": sola gratia, sola fide, sola scriptura -- grace alone, faith alone, scripture alone.
Epicurean version: sola hedone, sola aponia, sola ataraxia. 
Don: apologies for mixing Latin and Greek. 
Twenty-odd years ago, a philosopher friend of mine suggested that I read Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (though my friend was thoroughly Aristotelian). In the attempt, I had such a strong, negative emotional reaction that I kept throwing the book on the floor and (literally) kicking it across the room. I never got close to finishing it.
Kant claimed a kind of axiomatic “self-evidence” for duty as the basis for all morality and moral agency. The book hit me in the face with the very "Pavlovian" social programming that informed my childhood and formative years – and remained locked in my subconscious, to be triggered (most often with anguishing guilt, sometimes nightmares) by whatever “post-hypnotic” triggers were embedded. (Some therapy helped alleviate that – but, likely due to my own failings on follow-through, did not eliminate it.)
Even after discovering Epicurus, I have not been adept at putting together all the “clues” to complete the puzzle in a therapeutic way (again, my failings). But Guyau takes on that debilitating Stoic/Kantian virtue/duty driven morality (calling Kantianism a “new Stoicism) mano y mano – in a way that just toggled all the right switches in my slow-to-learn brain.
I can honestly say that, had I read Guyau 20 years ago, I would have become an Epicurean 20 years ago. (This is not to in any way deprecate all that I have read on Epicureanism in recent years – including the wonderful stuff on here: Guyau simply hits me directly where I have lived.) Fortunately, as Epicurus said (in other words), it is never too late.
So, Godfrey, I am profoundly grateful! 😊
I finished reading the chapter in which Guyau says “The good then is serenity.” The preceding pages of the chapter contrast Aristippus’ notion that there exists an indeterminate state between pleasure and pain – and Epicurus’ rejection of such a state. For Epicurus, hedone/aponia/atarxia (and eudaimonia) congeal, as it were – sometimes subsumed under the heading of just hedone (or perhaps eudaimonia*).
In this schema, so-called kinetic pleasure is the active (and enjoyable) response to some pone – such as hunger. Pleasure comes from both satisfaction of the hunger and from the sensual taste of the food (however simple). The afterward feeling of satisfaction and contentment is also pleasure (so-called katastemic?).
In rejecting Aristippus’ neutral state, Guyau uses the word “serenity” to refer to the ability to generally sustain that state of hedone/aponia/ataraxia/eudaimonia. That is, for him, the ultimate hedonic telos – even if perfectly achievable only by an archetypal Epicurean “sage.” (Though Guyau also seems to affirm that – with attention to a due natural frugality/simplicity – such an ideal is within the grasp of most of us, which Epicurus intended.)
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* I do not see hedone/aponia/ataraxia as instrumental virtues aiming at eudaimonia – as if that were some other value-in-itself. I rather see a eudaimonic life as constitutive of the most pleasurable/pleasant life I can put together. Eudaimonia is not separable from hedone.
I like what the translator says about Guyau taking an evolutionary view of any philosophical system – while recognizing the importance of trying to identify the associated germinal ideas at the foundation. I would add: a dialectical-evolutionary approach, taking into account multiple perspectives (a kind of dialectical perspectivism).
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Okay Godfrey! You got me: I had to buy the book! 😊
Added note:
I also think that we do well to understand that pleasures do not (necessarily, or even usually) come “single file” as it were – but can (and maybe mostly do) combine in ways to enhance each other in an overall experience. Then it would seem generally to be a misguided reductionism to try to separate and isolate each individual pleasure in some “utilitarian” quest to identify how many “utils” each one contributes.*
I can be serene while robustly cheering on my favorite NBA team, while enjoying a quiet martini on our deck overlooking the lake, while enjoying a good meal or congenial conversation (even friendly debate). Each of those pleasurable experiences is made up of any number of pleasures – and ataraxia/serenity.
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* This is not say that contemplating those individual pleasures might not be useful sometimes – but not, for me, as some kind of abacus-like hedonic “calculus."
Again - presuming "serenity" means what most people interpret it to m\be, as largely denoting mental and physical inactivity. No one generally says "I want to live a serene life" and expects the listener to understand a normal healthy active life.
Just a brief interjection as I work more through this discussion (and am reading the Kindle free sample of the book):
Personally, I have never thought that's what serenity means – and I'm not convinced that most people do. I think it would be an extremely narrow (mis)interpretation.
Apparently, it was originally related to weather: clear, calm, bright. Figuratively, the Latin serenitas was also used to mean “cheerful, glad or joyous.”
In any event, I suspect that Guyau (knowledgeable in philology I think) would have had the notions outlined in etymonline in mind. Nevertheless, if he left it at “The good then is serenity” – without qualification – even in French, I think we would all agree that that is a one-sidedness of the kind sometimes applied directly to the Greek ataraxia (and which has been discussed often on here).
By virtue of being originally written in French, it has a slightly different linguistic approach to ours which will potentially depth to our understanding.
This, I think, is an oft-overlooked principle. I corresponded online for years with a guy whose 1st language was Portuguese; he was also fluent in Spanish and English (and, as I recall, had a good grasp of French). His English was impeccable, better than a great many native-English speakers we also corresponded with – in fact, he wrote his PhD dissertation (economics) in English.
I once asked him if changing languages changed his thinking. His response: Absolutely. In fact, he would often switch languages (at least in his mind) to evoke new perspectives/insights to whatever he was thinking about.
I am sure that translation from, e.g. Greek, through different languages also adds to insight.
[Sadly, I am mostly restricted to English; used to know a bit of Hebrew and a much-impoverished Spanish. All lost in the mists of Lethe.]
Oh, thank you so very much!
Given my use of the word “prolepsis” here, I revisited a paper by David K. Glidden. The following are just brief – but I think relevant – excerpts:
“Given Epicurean epistemic realism, these claims on the character of some thing or state must be seen as claims on the world, so that prolepsis, like aisthesis for a realist, is ambiguous between the psychological act of apprehension and the content discerned, some feature of the world. In the case of prolepsis what is discerned should be some abiding character in things, as opposed to some temporary appearance. …
“Such recognitions are part of the evidence, not part of our inferences· And prolepsis, it seems, constitutes such recognitions.” [My emphasis]
https://orb.binghamton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1108&context=sagp
There is a link and some discussion of Dr. Gliddens’ longer paper as well, here:
