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If I remember correctly from The Greeks on Pleasure, the earlier philosophers were searching for the most pleasant life, not the greatest good. Having said that, here are some of my notes from the book that might be pertinent (they're scattered throughout the book as shown by the reference numbers): 8.3.1 Eudoxus of Cnidus (via Aristotle): pleasure is the good because: - all animals, including men, pursue it, and what all pursue is the good - all animals and men avoid pain as an evil, and what i…

(Quote from Don) I'm pretty sure we can all agree on this. To me it becomes questionable when it's stated as "the Good", and that seems to be just a philosophical argument which leads down a rabbit hole and is of limited or no practical use. All of the examples in post #37 are "lower case" goods and make sense both practically and philosophically as far as I can tell.

More goodies from the Letter to Menoikeus: 128. And this is why we say pleasure is the foundation and fulfillment of the blessed life. [129] Because we perceived pleasure as a fundamental good and common to our nature, and so, as a result of this, we begin every choice and rejection against this, judging every good thing by the standard of how that pleasure affects us or how we react to considering experiencing that pleasure. And because pleasure is the fundamental and inborn good, this is why n…

1. Absolutely! 2. It would appear that he held there to be many, which makes sense to me. 3. He seems to have used "foundational". For me, this is much clearer than "greatest", and ties pleasure to the Canon which is critical to understanding EP. 4. I'm not sure about this one way or the other. 5. "Foundational good" works well for me to describe pleasure, particularly since I feel that it ties it to the Canon. Calling it the Epicurean good does it a disservice in my mind by limiting it. Foundat…

This is a very illuminating discussion! Thanks to both Don and Cassius . First, I reacted to post #53 with total agreement. (Quote from Don) Following up on this quote: whether we define pleasure as the guide (North Star, lighthouse) or greatest good, once one has understood pleasure as foundational they still need to use practical wisdom in making choices and rejections. Once you're sailing to the lighthouse, you need to make wise decisions so you don't sink your little boat, and logic games wo…

Don I need to come clean on a bias I've got: I tend to contrast Epicurus with Cicero. I'm coming to value Cicero much more based on the podcast discussions, but I still don't trust the crafty old lawyer. Knowing that, I see that I'm writing my comments about the good in order to contrast what I see to be Epicurus' point of view with what I see as Cicero sending us down a rabbit hole filled with logic games. Your project of translating Epicurus is extremely helpful in this regard and is helping …

Contemplating sex and filing fingernails: my latest take on PD09 is that Epicurus is saying that all pleasures are the same, they only differ in intensity, duration and location. Not to get too sidetracked, but there are some hilarious videos online of dogs getting their nails cut... I won't post them here though