Catherine Wilson's January 2021 article: "Why Epicureanism, Not Stoicism, Is The Philosophy We Need Now"

Quote from Elayne

I don't think you understand PD 10. If you take it in context with the entire body of writings, it is very clear Epicurus places nothing above or equal to pleasure. The problem is that the pleasures of the profligates not only produce more pain than pleasure but that they leave anxiety unaddressed, and thus they can't produce complete pleasure. They leave the pain of anxiety. And he is talking about limits not because of the modern concept of "knowing our limits." He is referring to the understanding that once you have removed all pain, you will be full of maximum pleasure, a real and wonderful feeling, and that we are not (as was argued in his time) forced to seek more and more pleasure endlessly, if there is no pain. He is saying complete pleasure can actually happen for humans.

Yes. There's a problem with the pleasures of the profligate, and I think you described that problem well. I'm not seeing where we disagree.

Don then maybe I misunderstood what you said about "teaching us limits"-- because he didn't use it that way.

Cassius You've lost me 😂. Pleasure being maximized at the absence of pain is not a logic statement at all. It's just a description of observed experience. If he had not felt complete pleasure at least a few times when he couldn't detect any pain, he would have no grounds for such a statement. It would just be a hypothetical.

I knew he was correct when I read it the first time because it agreed with my experience. What he describes is simply a real, achievable condition. It does get interrupted for most if not all of us, but it isn't an imaginary ideal. It's a real experience! If it were not, I would likely have little interest in Epicurus.

Don you did say PD10 was about taking responsibility though-- but that's only in service of pleasure. So that would not be a reason to turn down a true bliss for you pill in an environment free of threats, if you believed it was as advertised.

I saw an article a couple of weeks ago about some major developments in aging research. It might become possible to stop aging. That wouldn't prevent death from injury, infection and so on, but it would increase longevity dramatically and reduce age related suffering. If I were convinced of the safety and effectiveness, I would take that kind of pill.

Logic can never give you primary information about reality, Cassius . Logic is not _in_ the Canon but supplemental.

Epicurus knew there were 2 basic feelings, pleasure and pain, because he felt them. Not from logic!

Quote from Elayne

Don you did say PD10 was about taking responsibility though-- but that's only in service of pleasure. So that would not be a reason to turn down a true bliss for you pill in an environment free of threats, if you believed it was as advertised.

Yes. Each of us is responsible for our own pleasure through the choices and avoidances each of us decide to follow.

Quote from Elayne

Don then maybe I misunderstood what you said about "teaching us limits"-- because he didn't use it that way.

PD 10 does explicitly say that "if, further, they [that which is productive of pleasures to profligate persons] taught them to limit their desires [then] we should not have any reason to censure such persons,..."

So, Epicurus is saying the profligate don't learn to limit their desires and so we should have reason to censure them.

It's actually phrased not as an infinitive "to limit" but:

If, furthermore, "that which produces profligate pleasures" taught 'the limit (τὸ πέρας)' of desires/yearnings/lusts' ( τῶν ἐπιθυμιῶν) etc."

Don in the context of everything Epicurus said, he did not mean whatsoever to limit their desire for pleasure to something less than total bliss. That's why I wrote about what he was really talking about. You said you agreed, but it doesn't sound like you do. He wants for them to understand that they can actually achieve complete pleasure, instead of thinking it is infinite, requires infinite desires, and can never be experienced. He means it differently than how we would mean it today. Teaching them the limit means teaching them that they can both desire and achieve total bliss, in the real world. He would censure them for failing to desire and reach total pleasure-- because they are still anxious and partying has not relieved their fear of gods.

He wants them to desire _more_ pleasure than they currently do-- not less.

An analogy would be a coach cheering on a runner near the end of the race-- a runner who thinks the race is endless, even Sisyphean, impossible to complete, and may be giving up. Epicurus the running coach is saying guess what? You are only a few yards from winning, because the pursuit of the goal of pleasure has a finish line!! And to reach it, you need to know there is no reason to fear the gods or punishment in an afterlife.

A pleasure pill that was truly as advertised, trustworthy, in a world with no threat to longevity, would be the wise choice. But I would need to see a huge amount of research.

Cassius you said the only way for some people to be sure of something is if they can say it with internally consistent logic. Those kinds of people are Platonists. But they will never actually understand EP through logic, because EP is not primarily logical but experiential, evidentiary, and feeling based. So that doesn't do them any favors, to say that our philosophy is logic based.

Remember that Elli has explained to us that his use of the term "reasoning" did not mean logic at all but _prudence_. Wisdom, which comes from experience. We must repeatedly bring anyone who wants to learn the philosophy back to their experience of life-- not logic.

Elayne what I agreed with was your eloquent description of the "things productive of the pleasures of the profligate" being unable to address the anxiety and fear of the gods, death, etc. When Epicurus is saying if those things did teach the limit of desires, we'd have no reason to censure the profligate. The "limit of desires" I take to refer to the desires one choose and those one refects. Not every desire leads to pleasure and so those should be rejected. The word translated as "limit" also can have the connotation of the "perfection" of something. So if those things taught the perfection of desire - how to prudently make choices and rejections - we'd have to need to censure the "lost." The fact that he calls them ἀσώτους along with the commentary on the Menoikeus Letter leads me to believe he's not condoning their choices in any way. I believe he's clearly saying, this isn't the way to choose to live a pleasurable life.

Don -- use the whole context of the philosophy. Epicurus never places anything greater than pleasure. He is saying we can actually experience total-- perfect-- pleasure. That it's not abstract. The profligates are not going far enough! They are leaving some of their pleasure on the table.

It is hard for people today to drop the middle path ideas they've been inculcated with. EP is not a middle path. It's a path of the most extreme, total pleasure, experienced by humans in reality. Epicurus could testify to it because he lived it.

If Epicurus lived today with the tools of technology and all the goods he had in his era.... since for writing the papers/papyri and all the works that had to be done in his Garden, it was a need to have four slaves, who treated them with respect, as we read in the sources. Thus, if it could be a way to visit us in our era, he would consider us that we are living as profligates.

If we take an accusation by Plato and the hypocritical idealists, for being always apologized in their foolishnes what means PLEASURE, we will fall in the same trap with that person who thinks that is an Epicurean, as he is a member in a Garden in Greece, and in every meeting and in every comment he makes and on FB, he is repeating countiniously:

"When we say pleasure we do not mean the pleasures of the profligates".

And one day I asked him :

- And what do we mean when we say pleasure ?

We mean ataraxia and aponia.

- What is ataraxia and aponia ?

To not have the pleasures of the profligates!

- Who are the profligates ?

Those people that over pass the limits of pleasure and they feel pain.

- An example? I asked him.

They are those that Epicurus describes in his LTM, that are eating fish, have sexual intercourse with many women and boys, making parties etc.

- Really eh? I said, except the sexual intercourse that you do not have with many women as you're being married now (but I do not take an oath for this HA )... you do not eat fish, you do not drive a luxurious car, you do not have an elegant office in your work, you do not have an elegant house, you do not make parties with your family and friends.. nothing eh? You only eat bread, drinking water inside a cave. Sorry, this is hypocricy and if Epicurus lived today, he would say to you and to all of us, that wenare living as profligates ! HA

In the end I reminded him the PD 3 (that only Cassius made me clear to notice that in the past), and then I told him also :

- who is that person that he would judge telling me what provokes to me pleasure and what pain ? Only my prudence that is all based on my experiences measured by my senses and my feelings. Besides, we have and our trusted doctors, not the charlatans, that when we feel pain in body and soul, we visit them for offering to us their advice that is based on discoveries and the experiences of the science of Medicine that is the Art of all arts.

Quote from Cassius

I suspect Don would say that he agrees with that point, so maybe the issue is more "why do we think there is an issue in how to express this?"

Quick response, short on time right now, but...:

A) Yes, I agree about pleasure.

B) I think y'all are making PD 10 do way more heavy lifting than it has to.

I'll try and add more detail later.

Good idea, Cassius . I'm going to move over to the PD10 link to continue that discussion. I really want to understand ya'll's* interpretation of that Doctrine. I'm not saying I agree with it (yet, maybe?), but we may be talking past each other in some ways. I'm going to try and use Daniel Dennett's presentation of Rapoport's Rules. I don't think we're opponents, but I do see us as having different interpretations.

*Note: English really needs an official 2nd person plural pronoun instead of the ambiguity of "you." For now, I'm picking "ya'll"

I moved to NW Florida a year ago and I'm still resisting the allure of "y'all". In lieu of bringing back "ye", which contrary to popular notions was historically plural, I'm still clinging to "you guys". But more generally I try to reframe my sentences so as to escape the problem altogether!

Quote

Now I have to go back to the intermundia for a while.....

There, by contrast, is a sentence you don't often see in Georgia!