And how do YOU arrive at the conclusion that pleasure is the highest good?
Well, I haven't been thinking about it in terms of the highest good, but that's a good idea.
Off the top of my head, I'd say pleasure is the highest good because for any other good, you can always ask why is it good, and you should get an answer. When you get to "because it gives me pleasure", that's the end of the line.
Hmm...maybe that's all that's necessary?
Well, I haven't been thinking about it in terms of the highest good, but that's a good idea.
It's interesting that you seem not to have read the full or main part of the Torquatus dialog. Probably you'll have much more to say when you do!
Hmm...maybe that's all that's necessary?
I might agree with you on that, but I think Epicurus would say that ultimately it is important to take a stand on what is "objectively" the highest good, and not just rely on what you or others think personally to be the case. I would say that is probably why we are having the debate about how to tie this opinion to Nature.
It's interesting that you seem not to have read the full or main part of the Torquatus dialog. Probably you'll have much more to say when you do!
I have not read Torquatus in a long time, maybe never. If I once did, it was before I had any interest in Epicurus. I guess I will have to remedy this deficiency before I take up more of your time.
I don't see any references to babies or animals in either the PD or the Letter to Menoeceus. Of course that doesn't prove Epicurus didn't use the cradle argument. But the case remains open!
The best source for this is actually from Diogenes Laertius.
A further difference from the Cyrenaics: they thought that bodily pains were worse than those of the soul, and pointed out that offenses are visited by bodily punishment. But Epicurus held that the pains of the soul are worse, for the flesh is only troubled for the moment, but the soul for past, present, and future. In the same way the pleasures of the soul are greater. As proof that pleasure is the end, he points out that all living creatures as soon as they are born take delight in pleasure, but resist pain by a natural impulse apart from reason. Therefore we avoid pain by instinct, just as Heracles, when he is being devoured by the shirt of Nessus, cries aloud,
If I once did, it was before I had any interest in Epicurus. I guess I will have to remedy this deficiency before I take up more of your time.
No, no, don't let that hold you back at all -- I always see something new in them eveytime I read i, so I am just letting you know that there's a lot more controversy where the part you've already quoted comes from!
I found this Vatican Saying interesting, translated by Saint-Andre:
60. Everyone departs from life just as they were when newly born.
πᾶς ὥσπερ ἄρτι γεγονὼς ἐκ τοῦ ζῆν ἀπέρχεται.
[NOTE] This saying is a bit cryptic. Some translations render it almost as meaning that the soul is born again at death, but clearly that would be at odds with the rest of what Epicurus says (e.g., Principal Doctrine #2). I take it to mean that human beings do not change throughout life in their essential needs: a person who is dying, just like a newborn baby, needs only to not be hungry, not be thirsty, not be cold .
LOL! I like your "clickbait" caveat 
I was with you up until the end but let me try to at least explain why I don't *fully* embrace your post there.
I see your reference to DeWitt 's "summum bonum fallacy" and I've expressed my skepticism for that DeWittean idea before on the forum. As I remember her rests his argument on the fact that Latin doesn't have a definite article and that always seemed weak to me.
I also think that many times (myself included) have equated English "highest good" as "the best good." While "summum" means 'top, summit" I don't interpret that as "best" as in quality. It's the "good" that's reached at the end, it's the good to which will other goods point. Metaphorically, if you're walking up the path past all other goods asking "What is behind this? Why do I do this?" You'll end up finding at the summit the moving toward pleasure (and avoiding pain).
All the ancient philosophies asked the question "What is it to which all goods point?" Epicurus had an answer, and a powerful one.
I've explained my take on this in my commentary to Book 1 of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics:
I was with you up until the end but let me try to at least explain why I don't *fully* embrace your post there.
I'm not exactly clear where we part ways.
If you're with me up to "pleasure is a standard, not a good"...but you still want to talk about pleasure as if it's a good?
Your metaphor seems unobjectionable to me, as metaphors are imprecise by nature. It makes a nice visual. But I'd still say the thing you find at the summit is not of the same category as the things along the way. And I think it confuses things (ref. this thread) to talk about them as if they are similars. For me at least, that realization clarified many things.
From a historical perspective, I think the highest good idea was a relic of idealism (probably can't even blame Plato for that one) that crept in unnoticed. Maybe an example of "you become what you fight".
Also, I'm not endorsing DeWitt on this topic (yet, at least). Need to read that too.
(Haven't read your commentary yet either...will do so now.)
Several good recent posts there, and I want to think more about what Todd is saying but I think he's got an interesting approach. We have talked regularly about it being more appropriate to talk about pleasure as the "Guide" rather than "the good" - along the lines of Lucretius' "Dia voluptus, dux vitae" / divine pleasure GUIDE of life. I think Todd may be sensing the same issue.
Pleasure isn't just a good. You can't even talk about goods until you have a standard to determine what is a good anyway.
Yes. Pleasure is more than anything else one of the two FEELINGS. A feeling has both aspects at least in the way we think of it, as both a guide and good in itself. If you abstract it too far into some "definition" of the good it looses its meaning.
I also want to memorialize a couple of thoughts on earlier posts, primarily, the issue Todd raised about whether pointing to babies is the most sound argument, and then Charles saying that we really need to be looking at this in terms of what is persuasive.
I continue to think that we should look at Lucretius' poem as not just "physics" but what we call it in the intro to the podcast, something like "the only surviving complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world." (Caveat - I still want to explore Emily Austin's suggestion that there was a final section of the original plague of athens story that is missing and would have made a great finale.)
Whether Torquatus has his statement about Epicurus refusing o look to elaborate logical argument or not, it does seem pretty clear that he preferred arguments that go directly to the senses in a "seeing is believing sense." The best and most persuasive argument is "Look at what is right there in front of you."
And if we look at Lucretius I think it is easy to see the "hymn to venus" as not some flight of poetic fancy, but exactly such a "look there" argument. Lucretius never gives an elaborate logical argument for pleasure as the guide of life. But he does start off at the very beginning of his poem with what is essentially a "Look there!" --
MOTHER of Rome, Delight of Men and Gods, Sweet Venus; who with vital power does fill the sea bearing the ships, the fruitful Earth, all things beneath the rolling signs of Heaven; for it is by Thee that creatures of every kind conceive, rise into life, and view the Sun’s bright beams. Thee, Goddess, Thee the winds avoid; the clouds fly Thee and Thy approach. With various art the Earth, for Thee, affords her sweetest flowers; for Thee the sea’s rough waves put on their smiles, and the smooth sky shines with diffused light. For when the buxom Spring leads on the year, and genial gales of western winds blow fresh, unlocked from Winter’s cold, the airy birds first feel Thee, Goddess, and express thy power. Thy active flame strikes through their very souls. And then the savage beasts, with wanton play, frisk over the cheerful fields, and swim the rapid streams. So pleased with thy sweetness, so transported by thy soft charms, all living Nature strives, with sharp desire, to follow Thee, her Guide, where Thou art pleased to lead. In short, Thy power, inspiring every breast with tender love, drives every creature on with eager heat, in seas, in mountains, in swiftest floods, in leafy forests, and in verdant plains, to propagate their kind from age to age. [21] Since Thou, alone, doest govern Nature’s laws, and nothing, without Thee, can rise to light, without Thee nothing can look gay or lovely;
And I have one more thing to say about babies. Todd points out that it is questionable to look *only* at babies for data. We've also discussed that no could credibly suggest that we want to go back to an infantile state of existence in general, totally dependent on others and with very little ability to judge how to successfully avoid pain and pursue pleasure.
But there *is* one aspect of babies and the young of all species that I do think that Epicurus would have endorsed, and that is the absolute lack of doubt in the mind of infants that the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain are the prime directive of nature. The "perversion" or "corruption" after that which is referenced in Torquatus is obviously not in *every respect*. As our minds mature we gain the ability to judge better and successfully pursue pleausure and avoid pain. But the way in which we often *do* get corrupted and perverted is that we are seduced by priests and supernatural religion and false philosophers who talk of "true worlds" beyond this one. We are infected by their poison and we lose our confidence in nature as providing the clear standard of feeling as the only way to ultimately base our decisions on as to what to choose and avoid.
So at the very least I do think that Epicurus would have compared the single-mindedness of new-born youth against the corruption that comes from religion and false philosophic influences that are primarily external and that turn us away from confidence that nature has provided pleasure and pain as our guides.
I don't think I'm going to budge on this.
I respect your conviction.
Pleasure isn't just a good.
What would you call it then? And that's not meant as sarcasm! I'm just wanting to see what word you'd use to describe it.
You can't even talk about goods until you have a standard to determine what is a good anyway.
I've found it instructive to always go back to the source texts and the words used. When anyone - Aristotle, Epicurus, et al. - talked about "good" or "the good" as it's uniformly translated into English, the words used are αγαθός (agathos) "good" and ταγαθον (tagathon, basically the previous word with the definite article "the" bound to it) "the good."
I looked at the LSJ (THE standard reference for ancient Greek) definition for αγαθός:
Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, ἀγα^θός
What I found instructive was the various connotations of that word:
II. of things,
1. good, serviceable
2. of outward circumstances, to good purpose,
3. morally good
4. ἀγαθόν, τό, good, blessing, benefit, of persons or things; as term of endearment for a baby, blessing!, treasure!; confer a benefit on . . , :—in pl., ἀγαθά, τά, goods of fortune, treasures, wealth; “ἀγαθὰ πράττειν” fare well; also, good things, dainties: good qualities; good points, of a horse.
To me, what it's getting at are "What things in life or this world confer benefit? What do we consider to provide a service to us?"
With these connotations, Epicurus seems to me to say wisdom, morality, and justice are goods because they provide the benefit of our living pleasurable lives.
But they aren't the end of goods. Pleasure is that to which all other goods point or end up - all other things that provide benefit to our lives ultimately do so because they provide us with pleasure.
So he uses ταγαθον when he talks about the expansiveness of pleasure here:
Fragment 67. I do not think I could conceive of the good (τἀγαθὸν) without the joys of taste, of sex, of hearing, and without the pleasing motions caused by the sight of bodies and forms.
And I have one more thing to say about babies.
I feel like the cradle argument is now sort of a distraction from a more important issue. But since you brought it up, I will summarize my current view on that too.
The concept of the argument appears to be fine. I'm a bit hesitant to fully endorse it, because someone hearing the argument might make some inferences that I would not approve of.
The issue to me is WHY are we looking at babies? If the answer is because they're a simple, easy-to-understand, real-life example that we can extrapolate to more advanced humans, then that is perfectly fine.
If the answer starts hinting at purity, uncorruption, unbias, superiority, etc. In other words, if they are held up as an IDEAL, then that is a problem. I see this as another example of idealism being snuck in via the back door.
What would you call it then? And that's not meant as sarcasm! I'm just wanting to see what word you'd use to describe it.
I would call pleasure a feeling, first and foremost.
Then, for the purpose of this discussion, I would go on to say that pleasure (the feeling) is nature's standard for judging what is good.
In other words, if they are held up as an IDEAL, then that is a problem
It's a problem for the same reason I don't want to think of pleasure as a good.
By what standard have you chosen to single out this one part of nature to use as a norm? Nature is everything.
See, you must have a standard when you're doing that. And you do have one. You're just not thinking about what it is. The standard you are using is that nature in its original state is superior to nature as it has been changed by humans. Now, you may well be right in the case of any particular change. But to elevate that to the level of a principle is a philosophy of poverty and death.
And sure, you can try to save the argument by saying you only look to babies as an ideal in this one particular respect, which maybe I will agree that you are right about. But we're relying on a lot of reasoning to get to this point. Is this really the best way to establish a foundational principle of Epicurean philosophy?
Last edit, I promise: when I keep saying "you" there, especially wrt not thinking, I don't mean you, Cassius, or anyone else here. In genenal, when people are making these kind of arguments.
I've found it instructive to always go back to the source texts and the words used
If your goal is to understand someone else, what choice do you have?
But I'm not trying to understand someone else right now (mostly), I'm trying to clarify my own ideas. Introducing foreign words with different shades meaning doesn't seem helpful.
To me, "good" is a simple word. Whether you say "some goods", "very good," "good job," "a good,", "the good," "the highest good." To me, those all have nearly identical meanings and connotations. (They are things that provide pleasure.) I'm happy to throw all those forms around without having to make fine distinctions and endless clarifications about what kind of "good" I'm talking about in a given context.
Edit: I feel like I'm taking the Epicurean approach here.
That why pleasure needs to be separate. Otherwise it would be a circular definition.
Now, if you are saying there is something in Aristotle that I need to understand that will help me, that is another thing. Is that what you are saying?
I concur with @Don's approach to this discussion insofar as acknowledging the difference Epicurus delineates between AΓAΘOΣ , which refers to instrumental objectives that further an individual toward a greater goal, versus TAΓAΘON, which is the greater goal of life (for which the former objectives are merely instruments).
I agree that Pleasure is not "a good", in that it would be inappropriate within the context of Epicurus' teachings to place "a good" in the same category as "The Good". Pleasure is The End, and the virtues are means by which to acquire that end.
Keep in mind, as well, that Epicurus refers to Pleasure as the "first Good" and "the beginning and end of the blessed life", but, he reserves the "highest good" for "prudence" (or "practical wisdom"). While translators throw around "good", "goods", "Good", and "The Good" somewhat ambivalently, Epicurus distinguishes all of the other "goods" (typically identified as "virtues"), including the "highest good" (being "prudence", the most important virtue) from "The Good" (which is not a virtue, but The Goal). As Epicurus writes to Menoikeus, "it is to obtain this end that we always act".
