Posts by Max DuBoff

Thanks, Don, the above is fantastic. I've not really thought about that Metrodorus fragment, that's great--and it's very similar to Plutarch, Non Posse 1089d, which I have thought about much more. I've often been a bit unsure how to understand this claim. It's similar to PD 18 in establishing mental katastematic pleasure on the foundation of bodily katastematic pleasure. But, as Plutarch points out in Non Posse 1089e-f, that's an extremely unstable foundation for katastematic pleasure, both because lots of conditions disrupt bodily katastematic pleasure, and because it's possible for bodily katastematic pleasure to be disrupted at any time so we can't actually securely anticipate it (whereas we can anticipate mental katastematic pleasure more easily). (I have a paper in progress on that Plutarch argument.)

Your proposal about katastematic pleasure is very plausible. To be honest, I want to believe it, but (in addition to the problem in the last paragraph) I don't know how it can allow pleasure to be stable or to be a limit. The Diogenes of Oenoanda passage is helpful (and sounds like the end of the Letter to Herodotus). The question is just what's up with pain there. Epicurus does clearly care about bodily pain, and it's hard to eliminate the fear of that. So the challenge for your position (which I think is the most popular) is to explain what's stable about the state that results once we remove mental fears and anxieties. (I think I mentioned upthread that I think the best way to do this is to claim that bodily katastematic pleasure is only the fulfillment of needs, not the absence of other pains; but most people find this proposal wildly implausible.)

Quote from Cassius

Quote from Max DuBoff

To be clear, though, I think Epicurus absolutely endorsed the claim that a good (i.e., blessed) life is a perfect/complete one. But that was a choice. And it's a choice that fits uncomfortably with hedonism. Personally, I'm very convinced that Epicurus was right about hedonism and right that the absence of pain is a pleasure. I'm less convinced he was right that a blessed life is a perfect/complete life.

Max in my case I like to build up from the earlier premises to the higher ones, so before we even get to the implications of PD3 and PD4 there is PD1 and PD2. Where do you land there? Do you agree or disagree with Epicurus that there are no supernatural gods, that gods do not reward friends and punish enemies, and that there is no existence after death? In my case, it is because I strongly agree with him on those first two doctrines that I find it inconceivable that - despite all his other statements about active pleasures - he would have held katastematic pleasures to be the only ones that contribute to a blessed life, as you are claiming.

Yes, I strongly agree with PD 1 and 2. How would that support your claim, though? What makes the gods blessed is that they're not troubled--i.e., they have katastematic pleasure. And the reason to be extra certain about the Epicurean view of death is so we don't think we'll suffer after death. So even there katastematic pleasure is forefront.

(And yep, meant to say NOT pleasure vs. ataraxia, thanks.

Don what you said in that older thread seems generally right to me--thanks for mentioning it here. I especially agree with the point that tranquility is a pleasure, among other pleasures, but which is more worthy of pursuit, and other pleasures are added to a blessed life on top of it.

I might disagree about exactly how much ataraxia is under our control--it's quite unclear, I'd say. Clearly there are some sources saying we can have it under many different circumstances; but PD 4 seems to imply that fatal pains might be pretty rough for a short time, and there's the evidence in DL 10 that not all circumstances can lead to a good life.

Quote from Cassius

What is accurate is a claim about frequency and rank, not absence. Pleasure is named as the criterion of choice and avoidance in over a dozen doctrines (PD 3, 5, 8–10, 18–21, 25–26, 29–30, 40). Undisturbedness in this technical sense surfaces explicitly only once, in PD 17. And nowhere — including PD 17 — is it treated as a good in its own right or ranked above pleasure. In PD 17 it describes a consequence of justice, and justice is itself instrumental to living pleasantly (PD 5). Tranquility is never the measuring stick; pleasure remains that throughout. ...

Where later interpreters and many modern summaries treat ataraxia as Epicurus’s stated goal, the Doctrines give that reading a real but narrow foothold — PD 17 — rather than the broad support it’s often assumed to have. The dominant, explicit standard throughout the Principal Doctrines is pleasure. Tranquility appears, but only once, only in service of that standard, and never above it.

This generally seems right, but what it misses is that the absence of pain is a pleasure according to Epicurus. So it's pleasure vs. ataraxia for Epicurus; it's a question of how ataraxia fits into the landscape of pleasures. We need to ask and answer that question in order to figure out what to actually pursue, among the many pleasures that call out to us. I never wanted to deny that, for Epicurus, pleasure is the goal. What I do claim is that, for Epicurus, only some pleasures (katastematic ones) determine whether a life is blessed--and that's because the absence of pain is the only pleasure that can be complete.

Now, regarding your point about Plato and Seneca, what you quoted doesn't appear to be an argument that the best good has to be complete/perfect, but certainly Seneca thinks that and Plato (elsewhere) probably thinks that. Aristotle is a clear source for this view as well (one a swallow doesn't make a spring, in Nicomachean Ethics 1). So there were lots of folks who thought it. But hedonism doesn't require this view; the Cyrenaics adopted hedonism and rejected the claim that a good life is a complete/perfect one. See Diogenes Laertius 2.87 and 2.91 for the mainstream Cyrenaic position (trans. White):

"They also maintain that the end differs from happiness: the end is a particular pleasure, and happiness is the aggregate consisting of particular pleasures, which include both past pleasures and ones to come."

"They hold that a wise man’s life is not entirely pleasant, nor a foolish man’s entirely painful, only mostly so. It is enough if someone stays focused on the pleasures he encounters one by one."

By the way, Sextus Empiricus is clear that Pyrrhonist ataraxia isn't the complete lack of pain (Outlines of Pyrrhonism 1.29-30).

To be clear, though, I think Epicurus absolutely endorsed the claim that a good (i.e., blessed) life is a perfect/complete one. But that was a choice. And it's a choice that fits uncomfortably with hedonism. Personally, I'm very convinced that Epicurus was right about hedonism and right that the absence of pain is a pleasure. I'm less convinced he was right that a blessed life is a perfect/complete life.

Ahh, good, yes. Your interpretation is certainly a plausible one. But Torquatus's argument in 1.37, as I understand it, is trying to show that katastematic pleasure is a pleasure. He uses that general principle to make this conclusion. We rejoice at katastematic pleasure; therefore it's a pleasure. (He also thinks this is true for kinetic pleasure, but he doesn't need to say it because it's obvious.) The "equivalent to" in the translation you cited isn't in the Latin (omne autem id, quo gaudemus, voluptas est).

My translation is: "For—since, once we are deprived of pain, we rejoice in that very freedom and absence of all pain, and moreover everything in which we rejoice is a pleasure, as everything by which we’re displeased is a pain—the absence of all pain has been rightly called 'pleasure.'"

Woolf's translation is: "Now everything in which one takes delight is a pleasure (just as everything that distresses one is a pain). And so every release from pain is rightly termed a pleasure."

(Woolf translates "every release" rather than "all pain" and I think he's incorrect; my version is also in several other translations.)

I'm not sure we disagree on the variation point. Kinetic pleasures are variation no matter whether they're separate from katastematic pleasure in any meaningful sense. Either way they make things different without increasing the total quantity of pleasure.

Thanks for these points, Don and Cassius! Cassius, to be clear, I really was not saying Epicurus is (or was ever understood to be) a value dualist. I was providing a friendly amendment to his view. On Moral Ends 2.9 is a very interesting passage, about which I have a lot of thoughts. But indeed, it shouldn't be taken to mean that all pleasure is absence of pain, because it conflicts with 1.37: "For we don’t pursue only this pleasure which excites our nature itself by some pleasantness and is apprehended by the senses along with a certain pleasantness, but we regard as greatest that pleasure which is apprehended once all pain has been removed" (my translation).

Thanks for those interpretations, Don! Those definitely make sense. My main concern is that, when you say these passages are trying to show that pleasure is the goal, the features they're pointing to are characteristic of katastematic pleasure, not of kinetic pleasure. Now, if you have a G&T/Nikolsky view, pointing to katastematic pleasure is enough to show it's kinetic too. Kinetic pleasure doesn't have a limit, but katastematic pleasure does. (That's one of the challenges to G&T's view.)

Quote from Cassius

The vacation example is useful to discuss. You've told us that on your own reading that small ordinary statistically real risks taken for an "unnecessary" pleasure can't be justified. You admit that this troubles you, but that you can't find another way to read PD3/18/20-21 and Men.128/131.

I'd ask you to consider the possibility that this is the texts correcting themselves. When a sincere, careful interpretation produces a result even its author finds radical and troubling, that's usually evidence against one of his premises. We've already identified the likely origin of your problem - the completeness requirement that you've twice said you can't ground in Epicurus.

Epicurus taught people who drove no cars but rode roads and sailed seas that were, if anything, more dangerous than a modern highway, and nothing in the record suggests he told them not to travel to see a friend.

As to the deathbed letter - saying the pain "doesn't interfere with blessedness" because Epicurus reports being happy - that's a conclusion, not a test. This tells us the rule after the fact, but gives no way to predict a result before the fact. What would you have said in advance, not knowing the outcome, about whether that pain would interfere?

Is the position you're defending your account of what Epicurus's texts actually say, or is it your own preferred view? You say that Epicurus should have been something other than what he was.

People here on this thread need to understand clearly to what extent you yourself admit that your argument is not required by the texts themselves.

Quote from Max DuBoff

(Separately, I think Epicurus should've embraced value dualism rather than hedonism, arguing that the absence of pain and pleasure are both intrinsic goods; but my interpretation above stands even without this point.)

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As I said above, "I think the evidence that Epicurus believed a complete life can't get any better is clear; I don't know how else to interpret KD 3, 18, and 20-21, and Men. 128 and 131." To reiterate, I think there's strong evidence that Epicurus thought this; I personally don't know why he was so committed to it. But that doesn't change that, as far as we can tell, he was really committed to it. I don't necessarily disagree with your point about reaching an implausible interpretation; but, at least as things stand now, your approach seems to me to have more problems.

Well, Epicurus's deathbed letter gives evidence that, in other cases of extreme pain, that pain won't interfere with blessedness. (Ditto for the, perhaps implausible, claim in Diogenes Laertius that the sage will be happy under torture.) If I didn't have this evidence, I'd predict that that pain would interfere with blessedness; and I worry that it does despite the claim that it doesn't. But I really believe Epicurus thought the pain didn't interfere, and the challenge is explaining why.

For almost the entire thread, I've been saying my interpretation of Epicurus himself. The comment about what I think he should've said was my own position, different than Epicurus's. The rest of my points are all my interpretation of Epicurus.

Thanks, Cassius--great points. I don't think the textual evidence supports the G&T/Nikolsky interpretation, but I grant that your arguments are quite plausible if they're right.

Pleasure and pain are mutually exclusive at the same time and in the same respect, but one can experience both in different respects. "Interfere" could mean distracting ourselves from pain, and/or it could mean being able to experience katastematic pleasure even though we're also experiencing pain. My (extremely controversial) view is that bodily katastematic pleasure is only the fulfillment of needs. And (less controversially) I'm sympathetic to Long and Sedley's distraction model of recollection/anticipation. To experience katastematic pleasure is just to sense the absence of pain and recognize it as good; it doesn't require a positive sensation beyond that.

I apologize if I'm not being clear, but let me try this again: the problem with "weigh total pleasure against total pain" is that it doesn't say anything about the absence of pain. But the absence of pain is really important, not just some general ideaof pleasure. The absence of pain is a pleasure, and our understanding of pleasure needs to give a large role to the absence of pain, as do our decision standards. "Weigh total pleasure against total pain" licenses a life with lots of pain, and it doesn't provide any way to criticize a raucous banqueter who has just a bit more pleasure than pain in their life, or someone who goes into politics because they think it'll be fun.

Your point about the variety of ways that friendship might contribute to blessedness is fair. My biggest point, throughout all of this, is that there's no way to "count up" katastematic pleasure. You can look at a whole life and the balance of pleasure or pain, but what that requires doing is basically ignoring katastematic pleasure. There are interpretations that make this move make sense; but when I read several of the core sources, the absence of pain plays such a crucial role, and it's really important to accommodate that role (or totally reinterpret those sources, but I'm not sure how one would do so).

I've really appreciated this discussion--your ideas are always keen.

Quote from Max DuBoff

No, I want to nuance my previous point: choose against pain if it'll interfere with enjoying katastematic pleasure. It's totally fine to accept some pain if it promotes katastematic pleasure. That's why we should run some risks for the sake of friendship (VS 28). And if there's a pain that won't interfere with enjoying katastematic pleasure (because anticipation/recollection allows us to manage it, and it doesn't prevent the fulfillment of our needs), it's fine to accept that pain. That's why junk food (which doesn't satisfy hunger) is a problem even if it's very pleasurable, but overeating a bit of something nutritious could be ok.

But in general, yes: don't take on risky kinetic pleasures, which might foreseeably prevent enjoying katastematic pleasure.

I've been uneasy with this claim for a few years now. It seems to create a problem for lots of everyday activities, such as driving for a vacation (vacation is unnecessary fun, and driving is risky because accidents are common). I realize my interpretation is radical here. But I can't understand what else KD 3, 18, and 20-21 and Men. 128 and 131 might mean.

Quote from Cassius

As to what that would mean, Epicurus wrote on his last day, in real physical agony, that the joy of memory and friendship that day outweighed (or arrayed against in the military metaphor) the pain in his body. This is a direct claim that a great pleasure was worth to him a very great pain, in full net balance. Regardless about what we think of whether he changed his calculation as the pain got worse (which would be entirely reasonable to do), Epicurus did not avoid or forfeit those pleasures in advance just because great pain was involved.

...

Second thing, maybe even more important. You've now stated at least twice that you don't know why Epicurus would be committed to the claim that a blessed life has to be complete or perfect in the Platonic sense. Everything you're saying after that , that additive pleasures can't confer blessedness, friendship is instrumental rather than itself a pleasure/good , seems built entirely on that starting point. If you can't explain that reasoning, why would we find it persuasive to overturn all the many statements commending Pleasure as the goal?

...

I don't think "tranquility as prime directive" survives contact with either the deathbed letter or PD27. I'd like to hear you take those two head-on., because that's what is of most benefit to the forum - providing understandable answers that are of practical use to the kind of normal people to whom Epicurus appealed in the ancient world. It can't have required a degree in philosophy to understand Epicurus in the ancient world, and it can't require that now.

[helpful material about Cassius Longinus and Cicero]

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Yes, I've been really struggling with the deathbed letter recently (as I think I said upthread). But my basic response will be: it's because the pain doesn't get in the way of blessedness. The question is always whether pain interferes with blessedness, not simply whether pain is present. (I develop this sort of approach in my paper on self-sacrifice as well.) Thanks for the opportunity to clarify my approach to pain in the example I offered; I wasn't careful enough to indicate the question of whether foreseen pain is likely to interfere with blessedness. In cases where pain won't interfere with blessedness, I don't think the two decision standards are different. Epicurus does claim to have tranquility in the deathbed letter, so this isn't a case of tranquility conflicting with other goods (although it might still be hard to explain how he's able to maintain tranquility).

I think the evidence that Epicurus believed a complete life can't get any better is clear; I don't know how else to interpret KD 3, 18, and 20-21, and Men. 128 and 131. And again, we don't need to overturn any statements saying that pleasure is the good or the goal, because katastematic pleasure is a pleasure. Saying that pleasure is the good/goal doesn't give us any guidance, in itself, on which pleasures to pursue. And Epicurus certainly doesn't want us to pursue all pleasures equally (a Cyrenaic-style position). He thinks we should be discriminating when it comes to pleasures.

My short answer to the material about Cassius Longinus and Cicero is that tranquility is a pleasure, so it's always proper when someone speaks of pleasure as the good. We ranks goods, but what's the most important good is one of the goods.

So, to sum up, the "tranquility as prime directive" view is only a view about which pleasures to pursue; it's not to deny that Epicurus is a hedonist.

(Separately, I think Epicurus should've embraced value dualism rather than hedonism, arguing that the absence of pain and pleasure are both intrinsic goods; but my interpretation above stands even without this point.)

Quote from Cassius

Your rule would have told Epicurus in advance never to have made the friendships at all, since every friendship carries the certainty of future grief — real pain — in exchange for something "merely additive" and therefore, on your account, not counting toward blessedness. Do you accept that consequence?

...

As to friendship, PD27 doesn't call friendship just a useful tool alongside the virtues — it calls it "far the greatest" of the things which "produce the blessedness of the complete life." If friendship is instrumental the way courage or prudence are instrumental, why does Epicurus single it out instead of listing it among them? I think Epicurus is telling us the pleasure of friendship is a major part of what a full life is made of, not that it's a mechanism that occasionally throws off some pleasant ("nice") side effects.

Friendship is important for blessedness. It's an extremely important instrumental good, so it's worth taking on pain (and risk of pain) for it, not because it's intrinsically valuable, but because it's the best way to achieve the highest pleasure.

What role does the pleasure of friendship play in constituting blessedness, in your view? (Your view might be a bit similar to Alex Gillham's in his 2018 dissertation; he thinks Epicurus's view of happiness isn't about well-being.) The problem for friendship is that if it's a kinetic pleasure, it's not clear how it can contribute to blessedness; and if it's a katastematic pleasure, it's not clear what it has to do with the absence of pain.

Quote from Cassius

Max,

The twentieth-meal example is very useful.

Let me restate it to make sure I have it right: given a choice between 10 units of pleasure/0 pain and 30 units of pleasure/3 pain, "refer your actions to the goal of nature as tranquility" tells you to take the first option — forfeiting 17 units of net pleasure - solely to avoid the 3 units of pain.

Is that a fair restatement of your own answer?

So you're saying that on your view, no amount of net pleasure gained can outweigh even a modest amount of pain accepted to get it. That's the "even a small amount of pain is too much to pay for a large amount of pleasure" position I've been thinking your view amounts to. Is that correct?

As to what that would mean, Epicurus wrote on his last day, in real physical agony, that the joy of memory and friendship that day outweighed (or arrayed against in the military metaphor) the pain in his body. This is a direct claim that a great pleasure was worth to him a very great pain, in full net balance. Regardless about what we think of whether he changed his calculation as the pain got worse (which would be entirely reasonable to do), Epicurus did not avoid or forfeit those pleasures in advance just because great pain was involved.

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Excellent point, this is really helpful.

No, I want to nuance my previous point: choose against pain if it'll interfere with enjoying katastematic pleasure. It's totally fine to accept some pain if it promotes katastematic pleasure. That's why we should run some risks for the sake of friendship (VS 28). And if there's a pain that won't interfere with enjoying katastematic pleasure (because anticipation/recollection allows us to manage it, and it doesn't prevent the fulfillment of our needs), it's fine to accept that pain. That's why junk food (which doesn't satisfy hunger) is a problem even if it's very pleasurable, but overeating a bit of something nutritious could be ok.

But in general, yes: don't take on risky kinetic pleasures, which might foreseeably prevent enjoying katastematic pleasure.

Quote from Cassius

Quote from Max DuBoff

. So I think I'm on firm ground in saying that further pains don't contribute to blessedness, i.e., don't increase pleasure beyond its maximum (the maximum which is noted in PD 3)

Max I presume the underline "pains" I underlined there is a typo?

Yes, that should read "pleasure."

Quote from Cassius

On friendship, you said its contribution to blessedness runs through security against future fear. But doesn't that just relocate the problem rather than solve it? More security, and a richer stock of memories to draw on, would seem to be exactly as "additive" as more ice cream. Is there a natural limit to how much friendship or security is "enough," past which more of it stops contributing to blessedness, the way Epicurus treats natural and necessary desire as self-limiting? If there is such a limit for friendship, I'd like to hear what it is and where it comes from. If there isn't, then I don't see how friendship escapes the very rule you're using to exclude other additive pleasures from counting.

On what you would actually tell someone to do differently, I am looking for a concrete case where "refer your actions to the goal of nature as tranquility" and "weigh total pleasure against total pain" would recommend different choices. You answered by questioning whether katastematic and kinetic pleasure share a common scale at all. That doesn't answer the question I asked. Can you give me one actual choice where your priority rule and the ordinary whole-life pleasure-pain calculus come apart? If you can't produce one, I think that's itself telling us something: that this may be a dispute over which word gets to be called "the goal," and not a dispute that changes a single thing about how a person should actually live.

Last thing: you've now told me twice, in almost the same words, that you don't know why an additive pleasure can't be the foundation of a blessed life. That's not a side issue - it seems like the foundation of your priority for tranquility. Everything else in your position rests on it. It seems to me that since Epicurus says that he would not know what good is without a list of what is essentially additive pleasures, additive pleasures - normal sensory pleasures including joy and delight - are a very clear foundation for a "blessed life" or "eudaemonia" or "happiness" or whatever other word we want to use to describe the real goal that normal people are looking to hear about.

Friendship isn't a pleasure, i.e., intrinsic good; friendship is an instrumental good. So it's not subject to the same problems. Epicurus praises friendship because it's an extremely important instrumental good; and it frequently provides intrinsic goods.

The limit of security is not being afraid anymore.

Ok, I'm not sure this is what you mean, but here's an attempt at a case where "refer your actions to the goal of nature as tranquility" and "weigh total pleasure against total pain" make different recommendations. Consider an exceptionally good Twentieth meal. If I eat moderately, I'll have 10 units of kinetic pleasure and 0 units of pain. If I eat excessively, I'll really appreciate the flavor of this exceptionally fine vegan cheese, so I'll have 30 units of kinetic pleasure but 3 units of pain. "Refer your actions to the goal of nature as tranquility" indicates I should eat moderately, because I want to minimize pain. "Weigh total pleasure against total pain" indicates I should eat excessively, because the pleasure far outweighs the pain. (The only way this wouldn't happen is if we add a whole extra rule about minimizing pain; but then we're basically at the other standard.)

Yeah, I take that passage from Epicurus's On the Goal to be a statement about hedonism: experience shows us what's good, and kinetic pleasures contribute to showing that pleasure is the good. What I don't understand is why Epicurus is committed to the claim that a blessed life must be a complete/perfect life. Given that assumption, it's quite clear why he thinks additive pleasures can't make a life blessed (because it'll never be complete/perfect).

Quote from Cassius

I don't think that the "in theory" gives us a clear answer as to what your position really is. You've just told us that your definition of blessedness, taken on its own terms, is fully satisfied by a life with no friends, no joy, no positive pleasure of any kind — nothing but an undisturbed absence of pain. The only thing keeping that from being your actual recommendation is a claim that it can't happen in practice, not a principled reason why it shouldn't count as the best possible life if it did. That's a strange place for a consistent theory of the good life to land. If your account of blessedness doesn't care whether the life it's describing contains anything anyone would actually want, in what sense is it still a theory of human flourishing rather than an edge case your chosen framework happens to generate?

On the textual basis for "some goods don't contribute to blessedness" — you cited PD20, Men. 128, and PD03. But don't those passages actually establish that once pain is removed, there is no further need to seek anything more. That's a claim about cessation of motivation. What your position would need to show is the stronger claim that additional pleasures, once had, don't count toward the blessedness already achieved. Those are two different claims. "I don't need to look for more" is not the same as "if more comes anyway, it doesn't add to my good."

Helpful points, indeed! Splitting this into two parts.

Wait, no, all pleasures always motivate us to pursuit them--that's true for pleasures that don't contribute to blessedness just as much as it is for those that do. So what keeps us from having that bare life is that we're very motivated to seek out all kinds of pleasures (as long as they don't interfere with ataraxia/aponia). (Warren doesn't recognize this in Facing Death; that's why he worries, around pp. 200-212, that an Epicurean will have no reason to live on once they achieve blessedness. The reason to keep living is exactly the reason to achieve blessedness: because all pleasure motivates us to pursue it, and that's true whether we're already blessed or not.)

So when I say it wouldn't happen in practice, I don't just mean it's extremely unlike to happen; I mean that the kind of person who's going to achieve blessedness won't let it happen.

This response sets up for responding to your second paragraph above. There's no need to seek more, but we want more (i.e., we want kinetic pleasures even once we've achieve katastematic pleasure--in addition to wanting to maintain katastematic pleasure). PD 18 clearly states that pleasure is only varied, not increased, once we have the absence of pain. So I think I'm on firm ground in saying that further pains don't contribute to blessedness, i.e., don't increase pleasure beyond its maximum (the maximum which is noted in PD 3).

Quote from Godfrey

Quote from Max DuBoff

I don't think there's any way for katastematic pleasure to have intensity, because if so it couldn't be perfect at every moment (we could always imagine that it could be a bit more intense

This is an intriguing comment!

A pleasure with no intensity would, to me, describe a neutral state, which of course doesn't exist for Epicurus in the pleasure/pain relationship. This is why I prefer "complete" to "perfect". To my understanding a pleasure or pain requires all three components of intensity, location and duration: if any one of these doesn't apply, how can a pleasure or pain be experienced? Further, to my way of thinking a katastematic pleasure can vary in intensity, say from contentment to joy.

On a related note, I'm not clear as to what constitutes a bodily katastematic pleasure. Or possibly any katastematic pleasure.... It would seem to me to be a matter of duration, of being "lasting". This gets into the squishy question of what is meant by "lasting". Eternal? Being around longer than most pleasures? Persisting regardless of any external circumstances or new information?

Being now a "senior citizen", it's become quite apparent to me that all bodily pleasures and pains come and go. This is the lens through which I view bodily katastematic feelings with suspicion, but of course it may have nothing to do with that I suppose. Does it have to to with a material world in which everything is ultimately physical?

To be clear, katastematic pleasure is experienced; but, by saying it has no intensity, I mean that it couldn't be made stronger or weaker. It just is or is not present.

For someone who thinks contentment or joy is a katastematic pleasure, my claim doesn't make much sense. So you need to maintain that katastematic pleasure has intensity; but then I'm not sure how you can maintain that katastematic pleasure is complete. You'll probably need to go for a Rist-style explanation that all that matters is that painless has more spatial extension than pain.* I think this view has other problems, namely, that it clashes with PD 3 (on Rist's view, the blessed state isn't the complete removal of pain).

You're right to ask what a katastematic pleasure is. My view is that only ataraxia and aponia are katastematic pleasures. The simple reason is there's no evidence for anything else being one. These are the only katastematic pleasures listed in DL 10.136 and Men. 128 (the former explicitly indicates they're called katastematic, and they must be in the latter).

*Rist, Epicurus: An Introduction, p. 110: "Similarly when Epicurus said on his last day that, although his bodily pains were now intense, yet he was still enjoying happiness, he must have meant, in terms of the atomic theory, that, although he was suffering in some of his bodily structures, yet the atomic compounds in his mind and in the rest of his body, the vast majority, that is, of his atomic structures, were free from pain and thus enjoying the supreme happiness."

Quote from Don

Quote from Cassius

We're packing a lot into this conversaton already

LOL Ya think so?

We have to be careful and not conflate pleasures with desires. There are not necessary, natural, and empty pleasures. There are necessary, natural, and empty desires.

Anything that brings pleasure is good, but some pleasures are not worthy to be chosen due to the pain they bring in their wake.

100% agree with this, Don.

Also, in response to Pacatus, yes, pleasures/pain (i.e., pathē in the epistemological sense) are closely linked to sense-perceptions (aisthēseis). That has to be true even for katastematic pleasures.

Quote from Cassius

Quote from Kalosyni

By contrast, ataraxia is a highly active, unshakeable state of mental resilience.

I agree with your contention, but I also think this is exactly what is in dispute. Neither of these terms have readily-understandable meanings in English beyond "calmness" at best.

Definitely appreciate your points a lot, Kalosyni, and I think a lot of what you're saying is just about what connotations there are in English. But Cassius is right: we need to have specialized understandings of words in mind when we're approaching Epicurus (not that they're unrelated to the plain meanings of words--they're not--but the plain meanings don't exhaust what they mean to Epicurus; and he does this quite clearly in Men. 131).

Quote from Cassius

Here are several specific questions which as I see it call for addressing in order to see the implications of what Max is advocating:

1. Where is the textual basis for "some goods don't contribute to blessedness"? Is there a passage where Epicurus says a specific pleasure fails to count toward the blessed life merely because it is gradable/additive?
2. As Don has asked, why does the Letter to Menoeceus 128 name "health of the body AND tranquility of the mind" jointly as the goal, if tranquility alone confers blessedness?
3. Does the "additive, therefore excluded from blessedness" rule apply to friendship? PD27 says friendship is the greatest of "all the things which wisdom acquires to produce the blessedness of the complete life." Friendship is not katastematic — more friends, deeper friendship, would seem "additive" by Max's own logic. So: does friendship confer blessedness (per PD27) or not (per Max's exclusion rule)? If friendship only confers blessedness instrumentally, by producing tranquility, why does PD27 say "produces the blessedness," not "protects tranquility"?
4. Would a tranquil person with no friends, no joys, no positive pleasures — just an undisturbed, empty mind — count as having achieved the blessed life in full?
5. What would Max tell someone to do differently if someone were to accept Max's contention and prioritize tranquility over pleasure? In a concrete choice between two options, would "refer each of your actions to the goal of nature" (which Max alleges to be tranquility) ever recommend something different from "weigh total pleasure against total pain under a simple and straightforward ordinary calculation"?

Thanks, Cassius! Great questions:

1) KD 20, where the flesh's understanding of pleasure is deemed incorrect for a good life. Also Men. 128 is good evidence--after describing what must be katastematic pleasure, he says "the animal is not in a position to go after some need nor to seek something else to complete the good of the body and the soul." Plus I think this is clear from KD 3.

2) This was a misunderstanding which I addressed elsewhere--ataraxia and aponia go together, Epicurus thinks. But the evidence on this is conflicted, because DL 10.136 says mental pleasures are better than bodily ones, and KD 18 seems to indicate that bodily katastematic pleasure is necessary but not sufficient for mental katastematic pleasure. (And Non Posse 1089d, which probably quotes Epicurus's On the Goal, seems similar to KD 18 but is pretty unclear.)

3) Friendship contributes to blessedness, but not simply through pleasant experiences (just addressed that in last reply).

4) As I understand Epicurus: Yes in theory, but this could never actually happen. (Purinton addresses this question interestingly in his 1993 paper, as you probably know. Not saying I agree with him, but he raises and answers the question most clearly in the literature.)

5) I don't understand how someone could "weigh total pleasure against total pain under a simple and straightforward ordinary calculation"--because what weight would we assign to katastematic pleasure in relation to kinetic pleasure? It has no numerical value. (Now, you might disagree if you go for a G&T/Nikolsky position; but even if you agree with them, it's not clear how to decide between pleasures that are both kinetic and katastematic and those that are just kinetic; so we still need to prioritize katastematic.)

Quote from Cassius

Thanks for the translation comment Don. The PD, on any translation, says that of all the things wisdom prepares or provides toward a blessed life, friendship is by far the greatest. Not a good and useful means among equally-good means — the single greatest one.

Friendship is, by Maxs's account, additive in exactly the way ice cream and a fine view of the sky are additive. More trust, more years, more depth is always better, other things being equal. If additive goods are structurally barred from contributing to a "perfect" or "complete" life, and only katastematic pleasure can clear that bar, I don't see why wisdom would single out an additive good as its single greatest tool for reaching blessedness. Does "additive" really disqualify a good from being central to the blessed life, or doesn't it?

Ahh, interesting, No, I'd say the most important thing about friendship is that it's an insurance policy against hardship, so it allows us not to be afraid about the future. It directly contributes to katastematic pleasure by removing fear for the future. Pleasant experiences with friends are nice in and of themselves, and they contribute to blessedness by providing material for antiparatattesthai (pain management).