What In Your Opinion Are the Most Essential Characteristics Of "Being An Epicurean" (According to Epicurus)?

I am eventually going to expand this poll over to Facebook and perhaps other sites, but I thought this would be the best place to start so we can get an idea of what answers definitely ought to be listed in the checkbox options. What I am thinking of here is very general, and it's probably best not to overthink it. Everyone here is familiar with the basic doctrines of Epicurus, so please pick five from the following that you think are most essential to what "you" subjectively apply in your own mind as a test of what it means to be "an Epicurean." Don't qualify your answer in terms of "being an Epicurean today" or "being an Epicurean in ancient Greece," or in any other limited way. But don't totally redefine the word, either - let's use "Epicurean" in the way that Epicurus would have used it.

What do you *feel in your gut* Epicurus himself would tell you is what it means to be an Epicurean?

Please comment to add additional options to the poll.

You may select a maximum of seven from this list.

Can you suggest better wording? Just pull a phrase out of the letter to Menoeceus about pleasure being the alpha and omega of a blessed life? Of from the Torquatus letter that pleasure is ... (rewording only slightly) "the final and ultimate Good, and the End to which all other things are means, while not itself a means to anything else."

This is obviously a huge phrasing issue.... and maybe itself something for listing as alternatives withing such a "poll"

i think what you are talking about is that the needs of expressing a philosophy as a logical proposition are different from those needed for personal motivation among non-philosophers.

Torquatus' formulation to me now seems clearly contextual for the professional philosophy audience, which is also my view of the "absence of pain" statement. Neither are suitable for explaining to a layman what it means to be an Epicurean. Which I think helps explains why his school was called by his name, rather than the "Hedonist" or "Pleasurist" school.

It has always been true for me that "pleasure is the goal" is more of a rejection of rationalism and religion than it is a positive statement of what Epicurus is all about.

So in my view the whole discussion about pleasure is a component of the logical whole, not a standalone slogan, and I think I need to emphasize that more.

Here's another angle on that same point:

Maybe the Greeks were also used to debating these issues in terms of competing "gods." For example it's clear that in Philebus, Plato has Socrates and Philebus talking in terms of a competition between their patron gods / godddesses:

Quote

SOCRATES: Then let us begin with the goddess herself, of whom Philebus says that she is called Aphrodite, but that her real name is Pleasure.

PROTARCHUS: Very good.

SOCRATES: The awe which I always feel, Protarchus, about the names of the gods is more than human—it exceeds all other fears. And now I would not sin against Aphrodite by naming her amiss; let her be called what she pleases. But Pleasure I know to be manifold, and with her, as I was just now saying, we must begin, and consider what her nature is. She has one name, and therefore you would imagine that she is one; and yet surely she takes the most varied and even unlike forms. For do we not say that the intemperate has pleasure, and that the temperate has pleasure in his very temperance,—that the fool is pleased when he is full of foolish fancies and hopes, and that the wise man has pleasure in his wisdom? and how foolish would any one be who affirmed that all these opposite pleasures are severally alike!

Quote

SOCRATES: Nor would pain, Philebus, be perfectly evil. And therefore the infinite cannot be that element which imparts to pleasure some degree of good. But now—admitting, if you like, that pleasure is of the nature of the infinite—in which of the aforesaid classes, O Protarchus and Philebus, can we without irreverence place wisdom and knowledge and mind? And let us be careful, for I think that the danger will be very serious if we err on this point.

PHILEBUS: You magnify, Socrates, the importance of your favourite god.

SOCRATES: And you, my friend, are also magnifying your favourite goddess; but still I must beg you to answer the question.

And also Lucretius of course starts out his poem by talking about Venus.

So maybe where we find it artificial to talk about "Pleasure" as the goal, it was much more natural for the ancients to talk in terms of Venus symbolizing a guiding force or life force, as opposed to other gods (Zeus, or someone representing personified reason? -- Who is Philebus referring to as Socrates' favorite god?). So I wouldn't go too far with this at the moment without thinking further, but maybe for people who personified Pleasure as Venus it was much less of a problem to talk in terms of Pleasure or Venus / Aphrodite more interchangeably, and it was less of a mental hurdle than we have today.

At the very least I would expect that equating pleasure in one's mind as Venus was a much more reverential or "serious" way of thinking about pleasure than is evoked by the word in our minds today.

EDIT: Maybe this comment is another reason, in accord with my recent semi-joking comment, that it would be a legitimate option for some group of modern Epicureans to go ahead and embrace Venus as our "patron" goddess in a more actual "religious" sense. Even today it might be a lot more intellectually helpful to say that we "follow Venus" rather than "follow pleasure."

Hopefully this discussion will produce some good material for us to discuss well into the future. I am thinking of developing a discussion format around this in which we could conduct an online discussion of how to "rank" these elements. visually, I think we can collaborate in an interview format with something like this, the purpose of which would be to rearrange the elements into the interviewees preferred format and ordering:

I see that Bryan strongly liked Elayne's post. My question is this: does anyone think that Elayne and Bryan are not in full agreement in these two posts (10 and 11)?

If you think these posts are not in full agreement, can you articulate why you think they are not?

If you think these two posts are in full agreement, please articulate what seems most important to you about their agreement.

And I would be curious to know the response to this question by Bryan and Elayne too - do you guys see yourselves in these two posts to be in complete agreement? If not, why not?

As time goes by - regardless of what Elayne and Bryan say from here - I think it would be very helpful to hear from anyone who has time to answer my question about how they think these two posts do or do not fit together.

As if my last question is not deep enough already, I will say that i suspect that Bryan's post was spurred by the wording of the poll option which reads: "The person holds that the "pleasure" which Epicurus held to be the goal of life includes joy and delight and active pleasures, and means more than "absence of pain.""

In comparing Elayne's post to Bryan's post, it might be helpful to consider whether Elayne and Bryan appear to be on the same page in their implicit agreement or disagreement with that wording.

To repeat, it would be interesting to hear from anyone on whether they think these posts are in agreement or disagreement, regardless of what Bryan or Elayne may say in subsequent posts, because it will be helpful to discuss not only the substance of what each post says, but the form in which the post is phrased.

Yes when Godfrey thinks that the two posts are saying the same thing, and Elayne thinks they are not, I think we have a lot to explore in clarifying what is being said. And that's a difference of opinion already among us who I think read these posts closely - which means that others who are less closely reading may be puzzled even more.

Quote from Bryan

Full physical contentment is naturally and frequently achieved when we have the natural and necessary accommodations of food and shelter. .... In failing to appreciate this fact, the common man, when he in a painless state, typically tries to add to his complete pleasure by engaging in further activities. Yet any attempt to add more pleasure to the complete pleasure of painlessness must always lead to failure, and never allows the mind to settle. .... Yet full mental contentment can be achieved just as naturally and frequently as full bodily contentment -- by the very realization of the simple ease of obtaining bodily contentment and then fostering gratitude and a full appreciation for your success in doing so.

I don't want to overemphasize this part of the discussion, because I think there are lots of aspects of how posts 10 and 11 relate to each other that are worth discussing. But certainly in my own experience I have seen it argued fairly regularly that views such as stated here would lead to the conclusion that it would never be appropriate to emerge from a subsistence level of existence. Now maybe that conclusion is in fact the position that Epicurus and/or some Epicureans sought to argue, but before we can discuss whether they were right or wrong to argue that position, I don't think we have clarity or consensus that this was in fact what some or all or any of them argued.

It seems to me that this is a pretty profound question and it is all wrapped up in what is meant by the "absence of pain" analysis. And that makes it triply important to be clear in how we discuss it. Are Bryan and Elayne agreeing, or strongly disagreeing? Is there a perspective - a a way to approach the question -- in which the two positions can be seen to agree, or to disagree, according to the perspective taken?