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ADMIN NOTE: This thread was split off after Post 10 of the "Welcome Kungi" Thread here. The following series of posts were originally post 11 in that thread. ----- (Quote from Cassius) This is a prime example of confusing pleasures with desires. All pleasures are natural because pleasure/pain is the faculty of feeling. Desires are what need to be discussed in terms of what is natural, necessary, vain &c, not pleasures. I imagine this may sound like nitpicking but I'm increasingly convinced that …

To my current understanding, the "non-natural" are best described as "unlimited" desires. They vary by the person and by the situation and can change over time. They are desires which are divorced from the limit of the natural homeostatic relationship between pleasure and pain, and thus have become unlimited. Some of them involve intense, conscious effort by the person in order to consciously limit them, while others have been eliminated by the person through reasoning as to how they would affec…

(Quote from Cassius) That's my current interpretation. The natural homeostatic relationship between pleasure and pain is my understanding of the contemporary idea that an excess of pleasure tends to produce pain, while pleasure can bring some relief from an excess of pain.

One way to think about "absence of pain" and "living in a cave" is that it’s actually rather unnatural to live that way. Unless you're thinking in terms of how early humans lived, which I don't think is what Epicurus had in mind as his philosophy is intricately tied to the society in which he lived. The feelings of pleasure and pain are an entirely natural faculty. Our goal is to live the most pleasant life, which we do by listening to our feelings and using them as a guide to action. A person w…

PD07 and PD10 address this point pretty directly.

It might be more relatable and/or useful to those of us who are not interested in power or unlimited wealth to think about the desires to live forever, to have perfect health, or some other visceral desire. By visceral, I mean something that we've reasoned out for ourselves. We've come to the intellectual conclusion that the particular desire is limitless, yet we still subtly (or not) experience it on a physical level. Other examples might be media influenced: the desire to look a certain way, t…

(Quote from Cassius) Cassius this doesn't give you the answer you're looking for, but there doesn't seem to be any formula other than frank speech. The line between N/N and unlimited desire, as far as I can tell, is so individual that it can only be dealt with on an individual basis, like medicine. People needing to depend on formulas might be better served by the Stoics (except that they would then lose the benefit of a coherent worldview).

No need to apologize reneliza ! I think that we need specifics like you've posted; it helps all of us as we bounce back and forth from theory to practice. Good post!