launching off in a Platonic-style dialog on "what is the highest good" before answering all sorts of other questions first.
From a historical perspective, I think the highest good idea was a relic of idealism
Epicurean philosophy should reject the entire concept of the highest good.
I won't presume you are endorsing my quotes, but that was one of my very first points! (this morning)
Don To try to put that into the terms you are using, I would say the following:
Pleasure is the highest good. (I disagree, but I'll set this aside this for the sake of getting to the other things.)
If I accept that pleasure is the highest good, then of course I can't say that producing the most pleasure is the only criteria for a thing to be the highest good. That would be nonsense.
Then there is the slope. My understanding is the goods are arranged in a sort of "telos" order, not "magnitude of pleasure produced" - that would also make no sense. How could pleasure be at the top then? By "telos" order, I mean the next highest good is the "motivation" for the good below, until you get to pleasure, and then you can't continue because it is The End. Is that more or less correct?
My disagreement on prudence is probably more straightforward, but I'd like to straighten out the other stuff first (by that I mean understand where we disagree).
@Don...can we back up a second.
According to Nate (and I), pleasure is NOT the highest good or a lower-case good at all.
It is in that context that I went on to say the things you are disagreeing with.
Perhaps that was not clear? I'm surprised by all the disagreement.
I understand that you don't even agree on the first point, so I would not address the things I said there to you.
I think there is one non-semantic disagreement between Nate and I.
That is use of the term "highest good". I'm not calling pleasure any sort of good. Nate is calling it The Good, but by that he means something in a different category than "goods". Fine by me, I just think his word choice is confusing.
But then he goes on to say that the highest good is prudence. It seems that Epicurus said this, so he's on solid ground there.
Nevertheless, I think it is useless and counter-productive to even discuss a "highest good" once you have established that pleasure is not it.
The problem I have is that whatever good would provide the most pleasure to one person is probably not the same for another person. If I'm already a very prudent person, being even more prudent would probably not provide me much additional pleasure. Going to a casino might, though. More prudence might even be a bad in that situation, rather than a good (you could argue that excessive prudence is something other than prudence. Fine, (Aristotle?) but I think the point is valid. I can come up with examples all day long.)
And providing the most pleasure is the only criteria we have to consider a good "highest", right?
And even if you could find one "highest good", so what? Are there some important goods that almost everyone will want to have? Sure. And Epicurean ethics should talk about those. But there is no need for a universal ranking to apply to everyone in all circumstances.
Pleasure is The End, and the virtues are means by which to acquire that end.
This is what I was moving toward (pun intended), but I wanted to focus on pleasure and goods/The Good before dragging the Telos in. (They're my rules, and I can break them if I choose.)
In the context of an action, pleasure is always the ultimate end. Never the immediate end, because there is no way to just go get some pleasure. But The End, if you like - the motivation. I think I'm fully on board with you there.
Also with your most recent post. As long as all those distinctions are kept in mind, that is exactly what I'm saying. It's just not the words I would use.
I guess there does have to be a balance though, because it would also be awkward to translate between the Epicurean texts and the "modern, plain English" meanings.
But don't you think all these different meanings of "good" is contributing to the problem?
Of course, we do need to untangle all that and understand what Epicurus was actually saying. Definitely.
But I think we need better terminology if we're planning to make any kind of outreach.
I've found it instructive to always go back to the source texts and the words used
If your goal is to understand someone else, what choice do you have?
But I'm not trying to understand someone else right now (mostly), I'm trying to clarify my own ideas. Introducing foreign words with different shades meaning doesn't seem helpful.
To me, "good" is a simple word. Whether you say "some goods", "very good," "good job," "a good,", "the good," "the highest good." To me, those all have nearly identical meanings and connotations. (They are things that provide pleasure.) I'm happy to throw all those forms around without having to make fine distinctions and endless clarifications about what kind of "good" I'm talking about in a given context.
Edit: I feel like I'm taking the Epicurean approach here.
That why pleasure needs to be separate. Otherwise it would be a circular definition.
Now, if you are saying there is something in Aristotle that I need to understand that will help me, that is another thing. Is that what you are saying?
In other words, if they are held up as an IDEAL, then that is a problem
It's a problem for the same reason I don't want to think of pleasure as a good.
By what standard have you chosen to single out this one part of nature to use as a norm? Nature is everything.
See, you must have a standard when you're doing that. And you do have one. You're just not thinking about what it is. The standard you are using is that nature in its original state is superior to nature as it has been changed by humans. Now, you may well be right in the case of any particular change. But to elevate that to the level of a principle is a philosophy of poverty and death.
And sure, you can try to save the argument by saying you only look to babies as an ideal in this one particular respect, which maybe I will agree that you are right about. But we're relying on a lot of reasoning to get to this point. Is this really the best way to establish a foundational principle of Epicurean philosophy?
Last edit, I promise: when I keep saying "you" there, especially wrt not thinking, I don't mean you, Cassius, or anyone else here. In genenal, when people are making these kind of arguments.
What would you call it then? And that's not meant as sarcasm! I'm just wanting to see what word you'd use to describe it.
I would call pleasure a feeling, first and foremost.
Then, for the purpose of this discussion, I would go on to say that pleasure (the feeling) is nature's standard for judging what is good.
And I have one more thing to say about babies.
I feel like the cradle argument is now sort of a distraction from a more important issue. But since you brought it up, I will summarize my current view on that too.
The concept of the argument appears to be fine. I'm a bit hesitant to fully endorse it, because someone hearing the argument might make some inferences that I would not approve of.
The issue to me is WHY are we looking at babies? If the answer is because they're a simple, easy-to-understand, real-life example that we can extrapolate to more advanced humans, then that is perfectly fine.
If the answer starts hinting at purity, uncorruption, unbias, superiority, etc. In other words, if they are held up as an IDEAL, then that is a problem. I see this as another example of idealism being snuck in via the back door.
But I don't think it is merely semantic. I think it's also procedural, as the Aristotle example illustrates.
You don't just have a bunch of things lying around that you call goods, one of which happens to be pleasure. And you start classifying them.
You have to START with identifying pleasure as something special, and work from there.
Aristotle seems to be putting the cart before the horse. He just takes for granted that all these different things are goods, and sets about investigating, in Aristotle fashion, which is the ultimate one.
I don't think I'm going to budge on this. Pleasure isn't just a good. You can't even talk about goods until you have a standard to determine what is a good anyway.
Maybe this is just a semantic disagreement, but I think the clarity of the terminology is important when we want to make further claims. Treating pleasure as a good isn't going to be helpful there.
I was with you up until the end but let me try to at least explain why I don't *fully* embrace your post there.
I'm not exactly clear where we part ways.
If you're with me up to "pleasure is a standard, not a good"...but you still want to talk about pleasure as if it's a good?
Your metaphor seems unobjectionable to me, as metaphors are imprecise by nature. It makes a nice visual. But I'd still say the thing you find at the summit is not of the same category as the things along the way. And I think it confuses things (ref. this thread) to talk about them as if they are similars. For me at least, that realization clarified many things.
From a historical perspective, I think the highest good idea was a relic of idealism (probably can't even blame Plato for that one) that crept in unnoticed. Maybe an example of "you become what you fight".
Also, I'm not endorsing DeWitt on this topic (yet, at least). Need to read that too.
(Haven't read your commentary yet either...will do so now.)
As per the title, of this thread, I think I have reached a final conclusion:
PLEASURE IS NOT THE HIGHEST GOOD! (click-bait, but bear with me)
Pleasure is not a good at all.
Pleasure is the standard by which all other things are judged to be good.
Nature knows nothing of good or bad. Nature gave us only pleasure and pain as standards.
To ask if pleasure is the highest good is making a category error - like asking if a horse is faster than time.
To say pleasure is the highest good is not to advocate hedonism, it is to undermine it. It is demoting pleasure to the realm of goods, where it is merely one of many. Maybe the highest or greatest, but still one of many.
Epicurean philosophy should reject the entire concept of the highest good.
Note: DeWittt has a section titled "The Summum Bonum Fallacy", which I have probably read dozens of times, but I never got the impression that this was what he was talking about. Will have to re-read with this in mind and see.
Thanks, Charles. I did scan through DL a few minutes ago, but I didn't catch that line.
I actually have no problem with that formulation either. He's stating it as a simple data point, like Don was.
Maybe I just have an issue with the the Torquatus language, and the implication that we should only look at newborns and animals because mature humans are too corrupt.
It's interesting that you seem not to have read the full or main part of the Torquatus dialog. Probably you'll have much more to say when you do!
I have not read Torquatus in a long time, maybe never. If I once did, it was before I had any interest in Epicurus. I guess I will have to remedy this deficiency before I take up more of your time.
And how do YOU arrive at the conclusion that pleasure is the highest good?
Well, I haven't been thinking about it in terms of the highest good, but that's a good idea.
Off the top of my head, I'd say pleasure is the highest good because for any other good, you can always ask why is it good, and you should get an answer. When you get to "because it gives me pleasure", that's the end of the line.
Hmm...maybe that's all that's necessary?
Todd can you clarify for me what your own current views are as to whether "pleasure" is the highest good, and the role of "reason" in the establishment of truth?
Easy.
1) Pleasure is the highest good.
2) The role of reason is to interpret the data provided by the senses.
"Interpret" might be doing a lot of work there, I would include making judgements of value as part of that - deciding what pleasures are to be chosen or avoided, for example.
Others again, with whom I agree, finding that many arguments are alleged by philosophers to prove that pleasure is not to be reckoned among things good nor pain among things evil, judge that we ought not to be too condent about our case, and think that we should lead proof and argue carefully and carry on the debate about pleasure and pain by using the most elaborate reasonings
"I" here, I presume is Torquatus. He hardly even sounds like an Epicurean. They're talking about pleasure, and he's like, well, I agree with the people who think there are good arguments on both sides, blah, blah, blah. So we shouldn't be overconfident. Oh, but we need to be sure to use the most elaborate reasonings! (At least he wants to use them carefully!)
This guy is a joke. Next.
If this is the best evidence we have for the cradle argument, then I'm getting ready to declare victory. I bet Epicurus never used any such argument. Maybe he said something like, "Its pleasure. Not open for discussion." But maybe he didn't try to drag the babies into it after all.
