Episode One Hundred Thirty Eight - Letter to Menoeceus 5 - Pleasure Part One

Quote from Cassius

It is unclear to me exactly how Godfrey and I ended up on close to the same page, but it appears to me that is the direction things are taking.

Quote from Godfrey

For me, desire is intricately tied to both pain and pleasure; it can have elements of either or both.

Just to keep things lively, I would carry that forward and say "For me, desire is intricately tied to life itself."

If you don't actively have desires, you aren't alive, and I would analogize the absolute minimizing of all desire to being on the very doorstep of death - such a person might still be be breathing and conscious, but if he has no desire of any kind, not even for the continuation of life, then that is what I would expect to observe in a hospital who has lost the battle against some disease and who is totally ready to die. (Leaving aside for the moment that such a person might indeed desire death.)

That's why it is essential to establish the initial presumption that not all desire is inherently painful and something to be minimized.

So therefore I would say that the Epicurean gods have desires as well -- all of which are presumably met. Which is not to say that Epicurean gods are omnipotent and can do anything and everything, but that they are smart enough not to have desires for things which are impossible by nature.

This is my vote for best summary statement so far:

Quote from Godfrey

For me, desire is intricately tied to both pain and pleasure; it can have elements of either or both. My practical Epicurean take is that desire provides the stimulus to action, while pleasure/pain provides guidance in how to act. Practice involves being aware of and responsive to all of these: desire, pleasure, and pain.

Except I would delete the "for me" and render it more firmly something like:

Quote from "Collective Genius" of the EpicureanFriends Forum

Desire is intricately tied to both pain and pleasure; it can have elements of either or both. Desire provides the stimulus to action, while pleasure/pain provides guidance in how to act. Epicurean practice involves being aware of and responsive to all of these: desire, pleasure, and pain. The advice of Epicurus to consider whether desires are natural and necessary is a call to consider the full results of pursuing any desire so as to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, not a call to minimize all desire.

Edit: I checked Don's post 36 to see if there is anything in that list that needs to be added to such a really simple summary statement. On first glance I don't know that there is. There are some important points in 36 about voluntary vs automatic but I am not sure those really fit in addressing the main point, which is the issue of how to avoid the implication that ALL desire needs to be avoided/minimized. However if Don or someone sees something pithy to add, please say so. I would eventually like to take a paragraph like the above and add it to the summary outline on page one. We can link to this thread for the full discussion of the extra details of the varying opinions. Link to post 36: RE: Episode One Hundred Thirty Eight - Letter to Menoeceus 5 - Pleasure Part One

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I can happily agree with all of this if I just swap out the word "desire" for "interest" or "motivation" (although technically motivation is WHY you want to do a thing, not just what you want to do - I think it still works here and is sometimes even more useful to know) but I still get hung up on the one word.

Quote from Cassius

VS34. It is not so much our friends' help that helps us, as it is the confidence of their help.

I was expecting elpis "hope" for confidence here but it ends up being pisteōs "trust" (related to "epistemology" ie, study of what you can trust)

I'm getting hung up on the differences and shades of meaning of:

Desire

Anticipation

Hope

Want

and all the similar words both in English and Greek that have to do with looking forward to something pleasurable (or wanting to escape something painful)

It seems to me at least that there's a distinction that should be important. What does it mean to desire something as opposed to just wanting or anticipating or having confidence in something.

Desire has such a sexual connotation now in English it's hard to disassociate it from that.

Anyway, that's where my head is currently.

Quote from Cassius

There is an awful lot of discussion of "confidence" but not all of it would clearly be applicable. This one jumps out at me first as applicable - is this not a current thought of future pleasure?

VS34. It is not so much our friends' help that helps us, as it is the confidence of their help.

If I understand it properly (that it's not the actual help provided but just the certainty that help WILL BE provided that is helpful), then it's definitely related.

But to go all Ciceronian, I think that technically since the CONFIDENCE is occurring in the present moment, and that it is the actual source of the pleasure, I'm not sure that it counts as a future pleasure.

Seriously though, I do think it's the exact type of thing I was looking for - a pleasure gained from the thought of something happening in the future that isn't actually tied to whether it happens or not. It makes a possibility for disappointment, but as long as your confidence is founded, the risk is worth the pleasure to be gained from trusting in your friends' support.

Quote from Cassius

Quote from reneliza

I can happily agree with all of this if I just swap out the word "desire" for "interest" or "motivation" (although technically motivation is WHY you want to do a thing, not just what you want to do - I think it still works here and is sometimes even more useful to know) but I still get hung up on the one word.

Can you explain that a little further? We probably need to focus on using the word "desire" since that is the word with the explosive connotations that people are used to debating about, but I would like to be sure I understand your concern.

Really just what I've been saying - that I have no conception of desire that is without any pain. I don't know if it's a difference in language, or experience, or even just personality or neurotype (ie me as a kid in misery waiting for xmas presents) but it's not something I can wrap my head around. Although as you reduce the distance (in time, effort, etc...) between the desire and fulfillment, the pain can certainly be negligible.

Going to Godfrey's example (which I'm still thinking on!) - at the store yesterday I considered buying a pineapple, but didn't, and him bringing it up - that it's even already prepared! - made me wish I had some pineapple. It's not going to upset the balance of my night (or my dinner) to not have it, but it is a bit of a pain if I dwell on it. The grocery store doesn't close for an hour so I could pack up the kids in the car and go get it and then get home and peel it and core it and slice it, but that's a lot of distance between me and that pineapple, so the pain is minor, but noticeable (if I bother to notice it). If my circumstance was already prepared pineapple in the fridge, I wouldn't even notice the pain, I would just go eat the pineapple. Heck, I might not even eat it. I might just hoard it.

You may have noticed I'm not very patient (again see: xmas presents), but I also delay gratification for myself so often that I've become known for treats going bad while I wait to enjoy them. This is probably something worth examining! Perhaps the pain of desire as I experience leads me to reduce that distance as much as I can for a variety of possible desires.

Or possibly I'm a masochist.

My argument would be that desire is inherently painful but that circumstance can make the pain negligible. But you could just as easily make the claim that desire is not inherently painful but that circumstance can make it so and I don't think there's necessarily a right or wrong. But I DO necessarily think that Epicurus did not mean to refer to something that was inherently painful, as he even specified.

Quote from reneliza

I know Epicurus speaks about remembering past pleasures. Does he ever say anything about thinking ahead to future pleasure as a form of pleasure? (Or anything remotely related)

Regarding future pleasures, I think there's a passage somewhere in which Epicurus says something about the remembering of past pleasures and anticipation of future pleasures and you will live like a god among men... I thought it was in a letter or a fragment, but all I can find is this from Cicero....

Tusculan Disputations 5.95-96. The upshot of his entire discussion of pleasure is this. He holds that pleasure itself should always be wished for and pursued for its own sake because it is pleasure, and that by the same reasoning pain should always be avoided, just because it is pain; and so the wise man will employ a principle of compensation, and will avoid pleasure if it will produce a greater pain and will endure pain if it produces a greater pleasure; and that all pleasing feelings are to be referred to the mind, although they are actually judged by bodily senses. 96. As a result the body is pleased for only so long as it perceives a present pleasure, while the mind perceives a present pleasure just as much as the body does, but also foresees a pleasure which is coming in the future and does not let a past pleasure slip from its grasp. So the wise man will always have a continuous and interconnected [set of] pleasures, since the expectation of hoped-for pleasures is linked to the memory of pleasures already perceived.

Quote from Cassius

Excellent quote Godfrey! That is one we do not talk about much but looks very relevant.

Quote from reneliza

Really just what I've been saying - that I have no conception of desire that is without any pain

And maybe that is exactly an artifact of the corruption of the modern monotheistic world and misrepresentaton of Epicurean philosophy - that you and a lot of people DONT have such a conception(?). And for that reason that may be why this point needs to be pounded home in modern Epicurean discussion.

Were you by chance raised Catholic?

I can understand where reneliza (and Joshua) are coming from with the desire / pain paradigm. I think the perspective issue is an intriguing one: the urge to move toward pleasure vs the urge to move away from pain. They really are two sides of the same coin or mirror images or similar metaphors. The glass really is half full AND half empty at the same time.

I do want to dig into Aristotle and his emotion feeling classifications to get a handle on Greek thought at the time.

From the above linked paper "Emotions in Plato and Aristotle", discussing Aristotle: (the author uses "affections" in place of "emotions")

"The two Ethics introduce pleasure or pain, or pleasure and pain, in order to generalize from lists of affections. Thus we read, ‘By the affections I mean desire (epithumia), anger, fear, confidence, envy, joy, love, hatred, longing, emulation, pity, and in general things that are accompanied by pleasure or pain’ (NE 2.5.1105b21-3); but also, ‘By the affections I mean such things as anger, fear, shame, desire, and in general things that, as such, give rise for the most part to perceptual pleasure and pain (EE 2.2.1220b12-14). Presumably it is not a coincidence that the Eudemian Ethics adds both the qualification ‘for the most part’ and the specification ‘perceptual’: Aristotle must think that a special kind of pleasure or pain attaches to most affections, though not all. The Physics identifies the affections with changes in the soul’s perceptual part (to aisthêtikon morion) that involve bodily pleasures and pains excited by action, memory, or anticipation (7.3.247a3-9). Such pleasures and pains are excited by sensible things through perception or imagination (a9-17). They arise from their location within that part of the soul which Aristotle elsewhere calls ‘the perceptual and desirous’ (EE 2.2.1219b23): they are not merely sensible because conscious, but sensory in that they connect closely with sense-perception and imagination within the affective soul (to pathêtikon morion, Pol. 1.5.1254b8). Many of the affections involve imagination (phantasia) in the service of memory and expectation; this connects them with the pleasures that follow on imagination as a weak form of perception (Rhet. 1.11.1370a27-32)."

"It is true that there is no explicit mention of belief in the initial definition of anger (2.2.1378a30-2); but belief is implicit in mention of desire (orexis), given that such orexis is equated with ‘aiming at’ (ephiesthai), which is taken to presuppose believing, and not just imagining, that an end is attainable."

Quote from Godfrey

the author uses "affections" in place of "emotions"

Looks like the reason the author uses affections is because Aristotle uses our old friend pathē πάθη there. I double-checked both citations.

Pathē means "that which one experiences, that which happens to a person, that which affects a person." So it's not affection like "He has an affection for his dog" but affection instead of using feeling (something one feels) since it appears Aristotle is using it to refer to everything that can be contained under pleasure and/or pain. So Epicurus and Aristotle both use pathē to refer to the large categories of pleasure/pain.

I need to read Nussbaum's whole book. I have a copy. One of the first I bought and then read the Epicurean parts but it has been several years.

I always took the title to mean "using desire as therapy." So, obviously I've missed out on her larger context. Add it to my infinitely growing list of "to be read."

Quote from Cassius

Excellent quote Godfrey! That is one we do not talk about much but looks very relevant.

Quote from reneliza

Really just what I've been saying - that I have no conception of desire that is without any pain

And maybe that is exactly an artifact of the corruption of the modern monotheistic world and misrepresentaton of Epicurean philosophy - that you and a lot of people DONT have such a conception(?). And for that reason that may be why this point needs to be pounded home in modern Epicurean discussion.

Were you by chance raised Catholic?

I totally agree - and have no offense since I was raised atheist and materialist (fairly hedonistic, even). I have gone through my own crises of "faith" but was always taught that there's only one life, so the point of it is to live it.

While it's possible that this is an artifact just from existing in America and absorbing certain ideas, I'm not sure that's it. Because I don't think of people with desires as morally bad or wrong any more than I think that of people dealing with any other kind of pain. I definitely don't think that desires should be suppressed, because that is generally going to end up with some other complications either psychological or physical.

I think the path to "zero desire" (noting it's not a permanent state since you'll always need to eat again) is to meet all the desires you can and expunge the rest. Of course picking and choosing the ones that will actually bring more pleasure than pain to meet.

I can conceive of motivators to action that aren't inherently painful (I think I can, anyway) but are only preferences. I suppose this is what the unnecessary desires are meant to be. I just can't conceive of using the word desire there. Maybe my understanding of the word is just too strong?

In researching some things I also just found a forum where someone described Epicurus as "the first pro-ana" so... this is what we have to work with 😭😭

Quote from Cassius

Dare I ask what "first pro-ana" means?

pro-ana is a position in favor of anorexia (the word itself deriving from the greek word orexis which Epicurus used in some circumstances instead of epithymia - although exactly where he used each was what I was trying to determine)

The poster said that reading the Letter to Menoeceus (which she described as being about "the absence of desire") in college helped her learn to suppress her desires including actual hunger. She respected Epicurus for living on a restrictive diet of only bread and water - missing the crucial point as Don has brought up before that this was meant to mean ordinary food and not an ascetic or lacking diet - and then binging when invited to a feast.