Posts by Max DuBoff

Quote from Cassius

Just FYI as to Emily Austin, footnote 8 from Chapter 4 of Living For Pleasure

Ahh, good, thanks! Yeah that's quite different from my view. (I'm also not sure it's exactly Arenson's view, because she thinks any painless non-restorative pleasure is katastematic, e.g., looking at a beautiful sunset. I'm also not sure it's the best guide to G&T's view, because for them kinetic and katastematic pleasure are different ways of describing things, so the painlessness part is what makes it katastematic. But I'd have to look back at them. I generally deemphasize the restoration/variation material; but there's certainly a good argument for foregrounding it, as Arenson does.)

Quote from Don

Agreed. I like your approach. I may ramble here, but I'll try and respond to your points and see where we may differ and where it may end up we have the same interpretation but different words. Possibly?

Yes, it's been a great thread!

Ok, a few responses to your points:

Yes, pleasure for Epicurus is the summum bonum in terms of explaining all actions--everything we do points to pleasure. That part is totally fine, and Cicero is right when he attributes that claim to Epicurus.

The reason to understand "goal of nature" as katastematic pleasure is that otherwise it wouldn't be helpful at all. There are all kinds of pleasures that lead to lots of pain, so someone who looks only to pleasure won't be able to live well. To actually live well, you need to look to pleasure with an eye to minimizing pain--which is seeking katastematic pleasure. Plus, in Men. 131 he quite clearly says "pleasure is the goal" indicates katastematic pleasure, and what really seems to be katastematic pleasure is the "goal of a blessed life" in Men. 128.

Yeah, when I say tranquility or ataraxia I don't mean to exclude aponia. Epicurus clearly thinks they go together (though this creates problems for him). My speculative view is that aponia is a problem for ataraxia because bodily pain creates justified fear about the future, which is painful and thereby interrupts ataraxia. But the relationship between aponia and ataraxia is pretty vexed; a lot depends on your interpretation of KD 18 and of Plutarch, Non Posse 1089d. I have an unpublished paper dealing with some of these issues but not giving a full account of the problem.

The point about ice cream is that, if (this is impossible, but for the sake of argument) ice cream never started causing pain if we ate too much, it'd be good forever, always good to have more of it. And Epicurus thinks that that kind of good can't be the foundation for a blessed life. It's not clear why.

(By the way, unrelatedly, I usually use KD for Key Doctrines/Kuriai Doxai because I like that it's the same acronym in English and Greek; but I was using PD upthread and that's totally cool too. So I might just flit between them.)

Quote from Godfrey

Regarding pantelēs: I'm quite ignorant of the nuances of Greek (not just the nuances, most of it) but I see from Nate Bartman's compilation of PD translations that translations of PD21 are fairly evenly divided by translating it as perfect and as complete. In my mind there's a significant difference between these two words, at least in English. "Perfect" seems to have platonic connotations of an ideal state, a state that doesn't empirically exist. "Complete," on the other hand, implies something that one can judge for oneself. I'm curious what the thoughts of those with knowledge of the Greek make of this....

Yes, both "perfect" and "complete" are good translations. Neither is better supported by the Greek. The reason I use "perfect" is because David Sedley understands "complete" in a temporal sense, i.e., as a complete temporally extended life. I think (agreeing with Rosenbaum and Mitsis) that Epicurean blessedness is complete at every moment.

As to your other points, a couple notes:

DL 10.136 indicates that there are mental katastematic, mental kinetic, bodily katastematic, and bodily kinetic pleasures. DL 10.137 indicates that the mental ones are better (within each category).

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).

Quote from Cassius

... there being no mystery to setting out total absence of pain / perfect pleasure as the theoretical goal, as that conclusion is clearly and logically compelled by the two feelings doctrine, in the same way that the observation that everything in the universe is ultimately composed of bodies and space rules out the presence of supernatural gods.

Ahh, but Epicurus seems to be saying that a blessed life is attainable, and a blessed life is marked by the absence of pain. He's not merely saying that the absence of pain is a goal that we'll never reach (Men. 135 seems pretty clear on this). So we need to explain how, whatever his understanding of the absence of pain/blessed life is, real people can reach it.

Quote from wbernys

Quote from Cassius

with one side incorporating joy and delight along with tranquility into the wider concept of pleasure as all that is desirable,

This is a great summarization of my views, along with what I believe Epicurus believed.

Someone feeling perpetual joy or delight is not in any way inferior or superior to feeling constant Serenity or Tranquility. Both are equally Pleaseant. Kinetic and Katastematic pleasures are variations of pleasure. Pretty sure this is Austin's view and Gosling and Taylor's as well. They are variations of the same condition, Epicurus recognized this variation (Dissgreeing with Kolosky) but didn't consider it a huge deal.

This is why Tranquility is not the absolute goal, but any continuous Pleaseant state, whethe it be either constant Tranquility/Serenity or Joy/Delight.

Although I think practically Epicurus more so focused on what prevents tranquility when we rest (our fears and vices). But as he says in PD 10, if one removes these fears and vices by constant debauchery or joy, it's equally valid.

Do you agree Max DuBoff?

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Ahh, no, I disagree, for a pretty simple reason: feeling perpetual joy or delight is quite consistent with having lots of fear and pain. So the pleasure isn't pure/unmixed. (The uses of this term are a little unclear, but it does seem to play a role.)

If, for the sake of argument, someone could just have kinetic pleasure all the time, it's a good question whether that'd be desirable; I think yes (based on KD 10). But that's not the world we live in, because as a matter of fact kinetic pleasures do bring fears and pains. So maybe this is a theoretical/actual world dispute.

Quote from Cassius

Here's another example I just noted from the signature line used by Elli, one of our members from Greece:

Should we tell her that that's not accurate, and that she should change it to:

Beauty and virtue and such are worthy of honor, if they bring tranquility, but if not then bid them farewell.

Hmm, no, I think there's still a misunderstanding. All pleasure is good, full stop.

When we deliberate (which happens quite frequently, of course), we need to figure out which pleasures to prioritize, and we do so based on the pleasure that makes for the best life. That's ataraxia (and aponia). Sometimes when Epicurus says "pleasure" he has in mind all pleasure; sometimes he's most interested in the highest pleasure.

Quote from Cassius

Another direct question that would be helpful to answer:

Just as we question as to "flourishing," what exactly does "tranquility" mean and what does it entail?

In short, what Max do you think at that a person is doing while they are tranquil?

Also, do you agree with a statement Don in an earlier post that he believes tranquility is specifically defined in terms of a lack of fear of gods and of death?

What specific improvement or advancement in a person's life arises from holding "tranquility" to be the goal rather than the ordinary calculus of evaluating pleasures vs pains?

Here's what the goal means: actively enjoying the absence of pain (that's good in and of itself), and enjoying a variety of other pleasures painlessly. Epicurus thinks that anyone who enjoys tranquility will also be enjoying a variety of other pleasures. But the thing is, if you take the other pleasures to be primary, you might lose out on tranquility, but other pleasures don't mean so much without tranquility (because the other pleasures are likely to bring pain along with them--those pleasures won't be stable).

No, tranquility must be the absence of all fears.* Epicurus identified fear of the gods and of death as particularly common fears, so he devoted a lot of attention to them. But there are plenty of other fears.

*I've been struggling recently with fear of future pain. As KD 4 notes, fatal pain will be short; but it'll be bad when it happens, so it seems like the sage should justifiably fear it in the meantime, thus disturbing the sage's tranquility.

Quote from Cassius

Quote from Max DuBoff

So, all pleasure is good and is worthy of pursuit. When figuring out what to do, figure out first and foremost what will lead to blessedness, which Epicurus identifies as tranquility. One should only pursue other pleasures when they do not interfere with blessedness.

One way of summarily getting to the conclusion would be to go back to my eariler question: was Emily Austin's book misnamed? Your comment would imply that to be accurate to Epicurus it should have titled it "Living for Tranquility"? Or perhaps maybe "Living for Pleasure Means Living For Tranqility"?

Yes, the latter one.

I also hold the view (which I'm sure you'll disagree with) that Epicurus is a value dualist (sensual stimulation and the absence of pain are both good but don't share anything besides that they appear good and we should therefore pursue them). So I think he could've called the absence of pain something other than pleasure and his view would've been fine. But he did consider it a pleasure, and I have an account of why (namely, because a pleasure is what plays a certain functional role in his epistemology--appearing good to us and motivating us to pursue it).

Quote from Cassius

Quote from Max DuBoff

I understand "the goal of nature" as particularly connoting katastematic pleasure (following the use of this term in Men. 133 and VS 25, where it most naturally refers to katastematic pleasure).

If there were a fate it would be that we would once again be going down the Katastematic/Kinetic rabbit hole and all that it entails. DeWitt, Gosling and Taylor, Emily Austin, and Boris Nikolsky can be lined up military-style against virtually the entire rest of academia, with one side incorporating joy and delight along with tranquility into the wider concept of pleasure as all that is desirable, and one side narrowing the goal by elevating "tranquility" to the only thing that is really worthwhile and the only reason we need "pleasure" in the first place.

Max, do you see the lines dividing differently? It will be useful to go through detailed argument but I suspect it would be more efficient to state the end-points as soon as possible. Surely the ancient world did not require battalions of experts to understand Epicurus, or he would not have been so popular (and hated) so we ought to be able to describe the conclusions in human form too.

Certainly, I agree it's a rabbit hole (one I spent quite a while going back and forth on as I wrote my dissertation, and which I'll continue to wade into in the future). I don't actually know that Austin supports that position; I'll have to look back at her book but I don't currently have it with me. As I noted above I think there are four major positions of katastematic pleasure:

1) Unimpeded atomic condition (which fits closely with, but doesn't entail, the Rist/Diano view that all kinetic pleasure supervenes on katastematic pleasure)

2) No real distinction with kinetic

3) Intentional state

4) Just fulfillment of needs

Quote from Max DuBoff

Quote from Don

Quote from Cassius

Epicurus considered himself to be happy even during his last days of extreme physical pain. ..., as Epicurus tells us that his mental pleasures from friends and philosophy outweighed the physical pains.

Slight quibble: he didn't write that his mental pleasures outweighed the physical pains, but he did write that he could contend with his pains with the mental pleasure of his memories: ἀντιπαρετάττετο "metaphorical, hold one's ground against, Epicur.Fr.138: abs., stand in hostile array" (LSJ) I like the image of drawing up battle lines against your pain.

Thanks for this point, Don. Antiparatattesthai is markedly military language, evoking a battle line and the presence of an enemy. It derives from paratattein, which refers to arranging battle lines. Antiparatattesthai is perhaps best translated as “to be drawn up in battle array against.” It's rare outside of a military context is rare (to my knowledge, the only parallel roughly contemporary to Epicurus is Aeschines, Against Ctesiphon 257), and the military connotation remains very strong.

Warren, following Long and Sedley and influenced by Cicero’s term compensabatur in Fin. 2.96, translate antiparatattesthai in DL 10.22 as “counterbalance.” I have two objections to a translation of DL 10.22 based on compensabatur. The first is that it doesn't do justice to the military connotation at all. The second is that compensabatur appears in Fin. 2, which is obviously polemical and does not clearly reflect Epicurean views, unlike Fin. 1, which does appear to try to represent Epicurean views accurately.

Oops, I forgot to mention: I designate "resistance"/"resist" to translate antiparatattesthai. It's not a literal translation (it's impossible to capture the full context in one word), but it does preserve the military context. (I owe this suggestion to Inwood.)

Quote from wbernys

So pleasure is clearly the absolute goal, but mostly defined the absence of distrubance, which is itself a pleasure. I don't think ultimate pleasure, but certainly a pleasure worth pursuing, like all others if not outweighted by pain.

I've now reread the thread, and I'm going to respond to a number of posts, but I think it'd be more helpful to write a few paragraphs than respond to individual points. If there's an individual point from upthread which you think is important for the conversation but which I don't address here, please do feel free to reraise it.

I think wbernys's point quoted above (first sentence) is closest to my own view. Let me lay out some of my interpretation of Epicurus.

It's clear from the Letter to Menoeceus that pleasure is the good. Anything good is such that we should pursue it (DL 10.33; Men. 128-130). But there are lots of pleasures. So how do we know which to pursue? This is where blessedness comes in. All pleasures are choiceworthy (by which I just mean to-be-chosen, or, there's sufficient justification to pursue them), but only some pleasures lead to blessedness. This is Cicero's crucial mistake. In On Moral Ends he assumes that the good simply is the summum bonum, i.e., what leads to blessedness. But Epicurus has an entirely different assumption: there are goods that don't contribute to blessedness, and some goods that actively impede blessedness. So it's important to ask, on top of what is good (i.e., pleasure), what we should actually pursue, because we can't pursue all the goods (not just because we don't have time/space, but because some goods preclude other goods).

When I emphasize tranquility, it's in this context. PD 25 is the lode star of my interpretation: "If you do not, on every occasion, refer each of your actions to the goal of nature, but instead stop short at something else when making either avoidance or pursuit, your actions will not follow arguments" (trans. Inwood and Gerson, with my modifications). I understand "the goal of nature" as particularly connoting katastematic pleasure (following the use of this term in Men. 133 and VS 25, where it most naturally refers to katastematic pleasure).

So, all pleasure is good and is worthy of pursuit. When figuring out what to do, figure out first and foremost what will lead to blessedness, which Epicurus identifies as tranquility. One should only pursue other pleasures when they do not interfere with blessedness.

But why is tranquility the pleasure that confers a blessed life? Epicurus, like many Greek philosophers, thinks that a good life is a perfect life (pantelēs; PD 20, 21; Pyth. 116). It's not clear to me exactly why he holds this assumption (very curious for your thoughts; I think this is one of the big puzzles of his ethics, for which we don't have extant sources). "Perfect" in this sense means "not able to be made better, in the respect in which it's good." But pleasure fits a bit awkwardly with this assumption. Lots of pleasures are good additively: when I eat ice cream, it's always better if I eat more ice cream (other things being equal, which, to be fair, they're not). Or it's always better if I'm looking at a beautiful view for longer, and looking at more beautiful views. So these kinds of pleasures can never support a perfect life.

Tranquility is blessedness because it's the only pleasure that can be perfect in this sense. That's why PD 3 speaks of the "limit of the magnitude of pleasures"; once pain is absent, pleasure cannot be made better in the respect in which it's good. If blessedness were based at all on goods like ice cream or beautiful views, it'd never be able to be made perfect, because we could always have more ice cream or beautiful views. Blessedness/tranquility isn't best because it allows for ice cream or beautiful views to be enjoyed painlessly (in my view); it's best because it's the only pleasure that allows for a perfect life, and a good life must be a perfect life. Nonetheless, tranquility as a matter of fact allows us to enjoy many other pleasures painlessly, and that's great. We very much welcome those pleasures, even though they don't have a role in making our lives blessed.

This all leaves open what the relationship is between kinetic and katastematic pleasure. I should note that there are substantively different views of the relationship between kinetic and katastematic pleasure, and of what pleasure is. Cassius was raising Gosling and Taylor, who argue that kinetic and katastematic pleasure are two ways of describing the same thing. This is controversial (and not my view), but it's certainly a view with plenty of interesting arguments in its favor. I'm going to crib a footnote from one of my drafts to show how I classify the different views of katastematic pleasure:

The most influential view is that katastematic pleasure is the unimpeded atomic condition of the mind or body, and pain is a disturbance to this condition (Diano 1974a: 45-47; 1974b: 82-90; 1974c: 168-170; Rist 1972: 102-114, 170-172; Purinton 1993: 306-307; Wolfsdorf 2013: 162; Arenson 2019: 85-108). Others consider kinetic and katastematic pleasure to be different ways of describing the same phenomenon (Gosling and Taylor 1982: 365-396; Hossenfelder 1986: 255-258; Striker 1993: 17; Nikolsky 2001). Others consider katastematic pleasure to be the intentional object of a mental state (Tsouna 1985: 151-155; Purinton 1993: 283-291, 300-302; Erler and Schofield 1999: 655-657; Splawn 2002: 476-481). Mitsis (1988) considers katastematic pleasure to be the fulfillment of needs.

Quote from Godfrey

I feel the need at this point to add in my reading of some of the PDs, which when carefully considered (at least to me), delve into further parsing pleasure as intensity, duration and location. All pleasure is pleasure, full stop. The way to differentiate between various pleasures is not by attempting to rank the pleasures but by looking closely at their intensity, location and duration. For example:

PD09. If every pleasure were condensed and were present at the same time and in the whole of one's nature or its primary parts, then the pleasures would never differ from one another.

Thanks for this idea. Although I largely agree with Cassius just below, it's good that you raised this, because one of the biggest developments in 20th-century scholarship on Epicurus was less attention paid to PD 9. I don't mean to necessarily say that's a good or bad thing; but Rist and Diano, for example, placed a lot of weight on it, and scholars rarely do now. I'm with Cassius, though: saying that all pleasure would be indistinguishable if (somehow) combined doesn't mean all pleasure is indistinguishable now.

Side note: anyone who can read Italian should check out Carlo Diano. He's super interesting but not widely remembered outside of Italy (except for his influence on Rist, but his interpretations are often more interesting than Rist's imo). His papers on Epicureanism were collected in the 1974 volume Scritti Epicurei--though I admit it might be a bit tough to find without a university library (and I haven't been able to find a digital copy).

Quote from Don

Quote from Cassius

Epicurus considered himself to be happy even during his last days of extreme physical pain. ..., as Epicurus tells us that his mental pleasures from friends and philosophy outweighed the physical pains.

Slight quibble: he didn't write that his mental pleasures outweighed the physical pains, but he did write that he could contend with his pains with the mental pleasure of his memories: ἀντιπαρετάττετο "metaphorical, hold one's ground against, Epicur.Fr.138: abs., stand in hostile array" (LSJ) I like the image of drawing up battle lines against your pain.

Thanks for this point, Don. Antiparatattesthai is markedly military language, evoking a battle line and the presence of an enemy. It derives from paratattein, which refers to arranging battle lines. Antiparatattesthai is perhaps best translated as “to be drawn up in battle array against.” It's rare outside of a military context is rare (to my knowledge, the only parallel roughly contemporary to Epicurus is Aeschines, Against Ctesiphon 257), and the military connotation remains very strong.

Warren, following Long and Sedley and influenced by Cicero’s term compensabatur in Fin. 2.96, translate antiparatattesthai in DL 10.22 as “counterbalance.” I have two objections to a translation of DL 10.22 based on compensabatur. The first is that it doesn't do justice to the military connotation at all. The second is that compensabatur appears in Fin. 2, which is obviously polemical and does not clearly reflect Epicurean views, unlike Fin. 1, which does appear to try to represent Epicurean views accurately.

Quote from wbernys

Do you know (or are allowed to share) if Emily Austin has any new works on Epicurus coming out? I really enjoyed her book and hoped she would do more!

She's writing a book on Epicurus for the Routledge Philosophers series.

Ohhhh, yes, I wasn't denying that the absence of pain (i.e., tranquility and the asence of bodily pain) is pleasure. The question is, in large part, what "pleasure" means. What it doesn't mean (in my view) is that tranquility feels great in the way that caviar or a beautiful view does. Epicurus doesn't have a preset idea of pleasure, shared with everyone else, that he then asserts ataraxia is an example of. Rather, he thinks pleasure is the good, but he has a distinctive idea of what pleasure means. It is very clear that the good is pleasure and vice versa, but it is not at all clear waht pleasure(s) actually determine a blessed life. Only the absence of pain does that; but he expects that lots of other pleasures will be present in a blessed life.

Two of my more complicated views (can say more later):

1) in Epicurus's epistemology, a pleasure is whatever plays the functional role of appearing good to us and motivating us to pursue it (DL 10.33, pathos is one of the criteria)

2) Epicurus is a hedonist because he thinks only pleasures appear good to us evidently [i.e., with enargeia]

Very interesting points, more later. In the meantime, Don, yes, I meant ataraxia by tranquility, makarios for blessed, and eudaimonia for happiness (though I agree well-being is a solid term).

And yep, I like Austin's book a lot! (Plus I've benefited significantly from discussions with her.) The only issue for someone looking to understand ancient Epicureanism is the lack of science; but that's not a deficiency of the book, because her primary goal isn't to provide an introduction to the ancient school.

I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out whether we disagree on the point about a blessed life. I certainly agree that, once pain is absent there is only pleasure, so in that sense the absence of pain is the best life. But the relevant point is that the absence of pain is the important part, rather than any kind of quantity of pleasure or something like that. I'll think about this more later and reread your comments, to see if there's something I'm missing.

Godfrey, a major theme of PD 18-21 (as I understand them) is that a finite life can be perfectly good (pantelēs), i.e., unable to be improved in the respect in which it is good. PD 20 begins with an argument about why an additive conception of pleasure can't meet that standard.

Thanks for this note, Cassius! Yes, I'm very glad for your opinionated-ness, as you put it. And I wanted to share my papers as part of that project: I'm very interested in your feedback (including objections), and I don't consider my interpretations of Epicurus to be the only plausible ones.

I am a bit uncertain what you mean (both in this note and in some of the guiding posts on this site) in distinguishing tranquility from happiness or pleasure. Tranquility is a pleasure but not the only pleasure. At the same time (and here I'm wading into a perhaps controversial interpretation), tranquility is the only pleasure upon which blessedness, i.e., a perfect or complete life, is based.* I take this to be the straightforward reading of Letter to Menoeceus 128 and also to be clear from Principal Doctrines 3 and 20; if there were another pleasure that could improve tranquility, a human life could never be perfect/complete (PD 20), and it couldn't be the limit of the magnitude of pleasure (PD 3).

Perhaps what you mean is that the absence of pain will not be experienced as simply an absence, both because it's itself good to experience, and because it'll almost always go along with a number of other pleasures. So tranquility is the goal of life, but we don't need to rule out everything else in order to focus on it. If that's what you mean, then yes, I agree.

PD 20 is a lode star for my (sometimes controversial) interpretation; I take very seriously the argument that, for pleasure to ever be perfect, it must not be be additive. But if that's true, then the prime directive is tranquility.

Great points about religion! Definitely with you on that; we need to take the gods seriously as exemplars of happiness, whether they literally exist or not. (And certainly they don't affect us no matter what.)

More to say about death and sex/marriage, of course, but yes, I thought you'd be sympathetic to my general approach (as I am to yours).

*I tend to refer to blessedness rather than happiness because "happiness" is quite nebulous. "Blessedness" is a bit nebulous too but at least connotes the life of the gods. By the way, I think Cicero's biggest mistake in On Moral Ends 2 is conflating the good with the goal of life; for Epicurus, there are goods which don't contribute to the goal of life.

Thank you so much! Glad to be here. In addition to what I said to Cassius (posted above), I'll add that I found Epicureanism through general reading in classical philosophy, and I was attracted to it because of the focus on both theoretical and practical ethics. I was particularly interested in philosophical therapy (which also drew me to Marcus Aurelius at the time, though over time I've been less influenced by Marcus's philosophy, while still appreciating his style). I've seen posts from this community on Google searches a number of times over the years, and I've been consistently impressed by the focus on classical texts and perspectives.

By the way, I might recommend Tim O'Keefe's Epicureanism book over DeWitt. Although DeWitt has some important merits, and can certainly provide a good introduction, one of my main complaints is his dismissal of later Epicureanism as derivative. I think that later Epicureanism was quite frequently innovative (not as different from Epicurus as, for example, later Stoics were from earlier ones; but still meaningfully different).