Is Pleasure the Only Good?

Aren't there lots of intrinsic (natural?) goods? Eating, drinking, breathing, shelter, etc, but the GOAL of any good is pleasure. An intrinsic good is necessary for survival, but we pursue it to attain pleasure and/or avoid pain. So pleasure would be considered the goal rather than just a good.

This is also why one doesn't pursue all pleasures, as some are more trouble than they're worth as described in PD 8 for instance.

I agree with all the comments and think that the basic thrust is a problem with definitions. We know what pleasure is because we feel it, but we don't know what "good" means because it is an abstraction. That means our definitions of "good" have to be very careful, and it may not be going too far to say that that was what Epicurus was warning against, and that "good" really has no "intrinsic" meaning at all. Does any abstraction have meaning other than what we say it means? But pleasure is not an abstraction - pleasure is a feeling which we don't require abstractions to perceive.

In terms of thinking things through out loud, that's really helpful. Not just to the initial poster: it also gives others a chance to mull over particular ideas

Yes Joshua we are going exactly in the same direction. Eating and drinking do produce life-sustaining results, and are at times (most times) pleasurable. But I think if we rigorously track down the WHY of everything we do, we always come back to "the feeling of pleasure" as the reward. Were it not ultimately for the feeling of pleasure, there would be no reason to do anything --- I doubt it is valid even to consider that without the feeling of pleasure we would be mechanisms or robots, because in order to exist I think it is implicit that those machines had intentional creators, the existence of which Epicurean physics would deny.

Although the opening of Lucretius can appear muddy due to the nature of "the gods" I think it's important and correct to lead off with a hymn to "pleasure" as the motivating force of all life.

Although it would be off course and a wide tangent to follow it now, I presume that given the eternal / infinite universe Epicurus would say that it is incorrect to talk about there ever being a "first" pleasure or a "first living thing" --- which I think makes for an interesting topic of conversation (maybe another thread) about the implications of that.