Would You Rather Live For A Week As (1) Epicurus During the Last Week of His Life or (2) An Anonymous Shepherd Laying In The Grass In The Summertime With No Pain At All?

    Quote from Cassius

    Words mean something. When you accept (1) that if you are aware of anything at all then what you are aware of is either pleasure or pain, and (2) someone has said that their life is "free from pain," then (3) the realization that what they have said is that they are at maximum pleasure follows like night follows day.

    It may be important to acknowledge that occasionally we feel something that seems like neither-pleasure-nor-pain (a kind of nothingness) but this rarely happens and also it shifts into either pleasure of pain fairly quickly (perhaps upon reflecting on it one becomes aware of it feeling painful).

    Regarding "freedom from pain is the height of pleasure" - I would say this is a kind of remedy which is similar to "death is nothing to us". Without a thourough contemplation and using the mind to reason through them, then both of these do not appear to make sense - so it takes thinking in order to see the application of these two points.

    Quote from Kalosyni

    Regarding "freedom from pain is the height of pleasure" - I would say this is a kind of remedy which is similar to "death is nothing to us". Without a thorough contemplation and using the mind to reason through them, then both of these do not appear to make sense - so it takes thinking in order to see the application of these two points.

    YES that is the key part. It takes proper thinking to recognize this pleasure. Maybe that is similar to how it takes a movement of the will to summon up a happy memory, which is there and is always pleasurable when you reflect on it, but which requires that act of reflection to experience. You have to practice this perspective or you don't profit from it and if you don't the competing pains can override it.

    PD18. The pleasure in the flesh is not increased when once the pain due to want is removed, but is only varied: and the limit as regards pleasure in the mind is begotten by the reasoned understanding of these very pleasures, and of the emotions akin to them, which used to cause the greatest fear to the mind.

    PD19. Infinite time contains no greater pleasure than limited time, if one measures, by reason, the limits of pleasure.

    Thanks Cassius, yes I think I was referring to numbness or the exaggerated of some idealistic state of tranquility, rather than a concrete phenomenological state. Also I would still rather be Epicurus for a week (assuming I return to myself after this week) as I would learn how to live joyfully in the midst of extreme pain which could help me later on.

    Quote from Eoghan Gardiner

    assuming I return to myself after this week

    Ah, yes! That is an important consideration for this hypothetical! (One which I did not think of in my response. :( )

    "We must try to make the end of the journey better than the beginning, as long as we are journeying; but when we come to the end, we must be happy and content." (Vatican Saying 48)

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