A desire is a state of mind […] Plenty of people go through life desiring things that they never choose.
Yes, that! 
Also...nice to see many you here again after my long hiatus.
Welcome back! 
Epicurean versus deceptive (“modern”) Stoic decision making
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"What is desire?" reminds me of how important it is to stick closely to ordinary language, to not redefine things but to remain as close to everyday speech as possible.
To this we are going to have to compare a series of text references that show that while Epicurus felt it important to be clear, he did not think it was important, and in fact was willing to radically redefine, that to which ordinary words are used to refer.
I think it is clear from the texts for example that he used "gods," and "pleasure," and even "virtue" in ways radically different than common usage, and so he was not willing to accept terminology that is used in everyday speech.
For example he said:
Letter to Herodotus: "First of all, Herodotus, we must grasp the ideas attached to words, in order that we may be able to refer to them and so to judge the inferences of opinion or problems of investigation or reflection, so that we may not either leave everything uncertain and go on explaining to infinity or use words devoid of meaning. [38] For this purpose it is essential that the first mental image associated with each word should be regarded, and that there should be no need of explanation, if we are really to have a standard to which to refer a problem of investigation or reflection or a mental inference. And besides we must keep all our investigations in accord with our sensations, and in particular with the immediate apprehensions whether of the mind or of any one of the instruments of judgment, and likewise in accord with the feelings existing in us, in order that we may have indications whereby we may judge both the problem of sense perception and the unseen."
--- I do not believe this means that we use words in a way that conforms to ordinary usage in all cases, but overrridingly that we are clear, by stating our terms, even when others disagree with us:
VS29. For I would certainly prefer, as I study Nature, to announce frankly what is beneficial to all people, even if none agrees with me, rather than to compromise with common opinions, and thus reap the frequent praise of the many. Note 29 Translation by C. Yapijakis, Epicurean Garden of Athens, Greece. Bailey: “In investigating nature I would prefer to speak openly and like an oracle to give answers serviceable to all mankind, even though no one should understand me, rather than to conform to popular opinions and so win the praise freely scattered by the mob.”
And we know from repeated complaints from Cicero that Epicurus used words (such as pleasure and prolepsis) in new ways that no one had done before, which was such a great source of controversy that Cicero's complaints are unmistakeable that he was in fact actually doing that.\
So with "desire" as much as "pleasure," it will be necessary for us to take a position on exactly what Epicurus was referring to. This would be at the root of the controversy we continually have over whether Epicurus was attempting to "eradicate all desire" as Buddhists or Stoics would argue, or whether it was only particularly harmful desires (those that cannot possibly be attained or clearly can be expected to bring more pain than pleasure) to which he was advising caution.
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In terms of the difficulty of pinning down a definition, "desire" is quite like "pleasure." They're also quite alike in terms of pinning down a workable Epicurean ethics.
We've given a lot of effort to understanding what Epicurus meant by "pleasure;" the same effort needs to be applied to understanding what he meant by "desire." And that is not to imply in any way that they are the same thing: they're not. I tend to agree with how Julia and Todd are interpreting it, and I also agree that a good look at the original passages in the Greek may be helpful (by someone who understands Greek, not by me!)
As for choice: between desire and pleasure or pain lie choice or avoidance.
(Oops, I see that I missed the two posts above.)
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We've given a lot of effort to understanding what Epicurus meant by "pleasure;" the same effort needs to be applied to understanding what he meant by "desire."
Yes I agree and for the reasons I have stated. Buddhism and Stoicism have introduced poisonous presumptions in ordinary communication that "desires" are all of a single class, and that that class is to be eliminated as bad or even evil. That may or may not have been the case in 300 BC, but it is the case today, so when we talk about desires today there is a huge difference between ordinary issues of "wanting to accomplish a goal (any goal)" vs "passionate intoxicating ardent longing" which most everyone will agree is a thing to be avoided. (At the very least, most of us would agree that the "intoxicating" part is bad. I would be willing to defend "passionate ardent longing" depending on the context of what is being discussed. But at some point most of us will agree that there is a red line where desire that is intoxicating and gives no regard to other realities is dangerous and self-destructive.)
But to repeat the poison in the air is the idea that Epicurus would agree with the Buddhists and Stoics and other ascetics and agree that all desire is to be eliminated, and I would say that is an implication that should never go unchallenged.
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I would say that is an implication that should never go unchallenged.
Yes, I've noticed that!
Epicurus may have been dealing with similar conflicts, and his categories are, to me, quite an improvement over the other versions of dealing with desire. Having said that, even once (or if) we settle on an appropriate definition of the term, we'll find that desires are wide-ranging by nature. That's what the categories are most valuable for, at least in my humble opinion.
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Gosh my typing is terrible. I've now changed "implicated" to "implication"
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..., he did not think it was important, and in fact was willing to radically redefine, that to which ordinary words are used to refer.
This is in contradiction to the quoted part of the letter to Herodotus:
QuoteFor this purpose it is essential that the first mental image associated with each word should be regarded, and that there should be no need of explanation, ...
This means that typically, we should use words the way they are usually meant. Epicurus himself made exceptions from this and then usually gave an explanation why a word would be used with a different meaning than commonly (mis)understood.
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Martin I read the quoted part as saying that the important thing is to arrive at the point where the mental image associated with each word is absolutely clear to the person who is stating the formulation, not that the person stating the formulation has to accept the definition proposed by others. And I'd relate that to the discussion of the development of language and how different peoples arrive at different words and languages, because language is not handed down by a god or central authority, but by local people developing their own word assignments. In most cases you can and should, because it is most convenient, to use the commonly-established formulation. But the real objective is clarity and for the purpose of happy living, and when that means rejecting the majority definition, seems to me he is advocating rejecting it.
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Quote
..., he did not think it was important, and in fact was willing to radically redefine, that to which ordinary words are used to refer.
This is in contradiction to the quoted part of the letter to Herodotus:
QuoteFor this purpose it is essential that the first mental image associated with each word should be regarded, and that there should be no need of explanation, ...
This means that typically, we should use words the way they are usually meant. Epicurus himself made exceptions from this and then usually gave an explanation why a word would be used with a different meaning than commonly (mis)understood.
I very much agree!
I think it is clear from the texts for example that he used "gods," and "pleasure," and even "virtue" in ways radically different than common usage, and so he was not willing to accept terminology that is used in everyday speech.
What strikes me as important is: "gods" and "virtues" are abstract concepts of things which exist neither in the external world, nor in the internal experience of humans by nature. Toddlers don't know of gods or virtues. So redefining gods and virtue is like redefining justice and good behaviour. Epicurus certainly didn't "behave well" when he invited women, even women of low social status, to join his garden and be heard. He did that, because he thought it was unjust they were excluded. "Justice" does not mean the same thing around the world, it might not even mean the same thing for you and me. Saying "justice" is like saying "a picture of a tree" – the tree which we see will differ (fruit vs pine; civic law vs religious law) and the technique with which it is made will differ (oil vs mosaic; capital punishment vs forensic psychiatry). Yet, all of those are equally "pictures of trees", equally "justice". You see were I'm going with that?
Desire is not an abstract concept; it is as real as our emotions are – we cannot touch them, others cannot see them (not without modern scanners, like fMRI, anyway), but they're there, they're real, and we all have them. Crucially, we all have them and we also all have the same range of them: everyone gets sad, happy, angry, afraid. (There are rare psychological exceptions, but there are also humans with two heads, so let's stick to the 99% case here, please.) Like emotions, we all have desires and the internal experience of "I desire something" is known to all humans. Some desires may be overshadowed with shame or fear, not all desires exist in all humans, but we all have these two related but distinct internal experiences: 1. "I desire Xyz" and 2. "Xyz is desirable" just like we all have a) "I love abc" and b) "Abc is lovable"
The same holds true for pleasure: Epicurean pleasure is broad, it contains things which are fun but "bad behaviour" and continues to encompass things which are neither sexual nor sensual. ("Pleasure" has, in my experience, been increasingly sexualised, but that wasn't always the case, or else the idiomatic "My pleasure!", "Pleasure to meet you." would be a rather lewd expressions!)
So where Epicurus redefined words, he either did so to more truly reflect actual human experience (desire, pleasure) or they were abstract concepts which he simply disagreed with (gods, justice).
(Regarding the gods, things might seem clearer to us today if he had said "There are no gods at all, instead there are [new word] and they are like this and that" but that's a whole new rabbit whole, so suffice it to say that I'm sure he had his reasons given the importance of the subject.)
In my opinion, getting fancy with "desire"/"desirable" and "pleasure"/"pleasurable" would be like getting fancy with emotion-words, like "happiness", or, more precisely, with experience-words, like "joy". When first grasping the word, it matters to be precise about the inner experience it refers to (eg something fun-but-forbidden may cause joy and guilt, pleasure and pain; it matters to delineate that honestly, precisely, without getting hung up on morals).
Just like joy, desire simply denotes a certain human experience. Which is what Todd already said:
[…] A desire is a state of mind: […]
Another example would be jealousy/envy/begrudgery: They are neighbours in the semantic vector space and colloquially confused for one another, but they are in fact clearly delineated and separate: jealousy is fear someone takes what you have, envy is wanting what someone else has, and begrudgery is not wanting someone to have what they have.
Likewise, desire & desirable, pleasure & pleasurable are semantic neighbours but do already all know what they are, just like we all know what joy, warmth, tiredness and sweet are. Because there are "experiential atoms", they are indivisible units of the human experience. I cannot subdivide joy. I cannot subdivide desire. Unlike mixed emotions, unlike complex experiences, they are pure in the sense of one-thing-only.
This, and the fact that the majority of Epicurean philosophy wouldn't make any sense, is why I
This would be at the root of the controversy we continually have over whether Epicurus was attempting to "eradicate all desire" as Buddhists or Stoics would argue, or whether it was only particularly harmful desires (those that cannot possibly be attained or clearly can be expected to bring more pain than pleasure) to which he was advising caution.
I'm firm in that "eradicate all desire" was certainly not on the agenda of ancient Epicureans, and so…
But the real objective is clarity and for the purpose of happy living, and when that means rejecting the majority definition, seems to me he is advocating rejecting it.
…this is, to me, is in line with that we simply need to get to the core of human experience – eg, delineate pleasure and guilt if we did something fun-but-forbidden – but I feel like that has been accomplished in the way in which we use "desire" and "desirable": as fundamentals of human nature, as experiential atoms.
To me, this "experiential atomism" is what Epicurus uses himself and what (among other things) he refers to in his Letter To Herodotus.
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The longest treatise on language by Epicurus left to us is Book 28 of On Nature:
Sedley's translation is the best source to dig into that work.
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Julia I agree with the thrust of most of your post but as to this I am not completely clear on what you are saying:
In my opinion, getting fancy with "desire"/"desirable" and "pleasure"/"pleasurable" would be like getting fancy with emotion-words, like "happiness", or, more precisely, with experience-words, like "joy". When first grasping the word, it matters to be precise about the inner experience it refers to (eg something fun-but-forbidden may cause joy and guilt, pleasure and pain; it matters to delineate that honestly, precisely, without getting hung up on morals).
At the very least, as to pleasure, it seemed absolutely clear to Cicero, and I would say to Norman DeWitt and now to me also as the only logical way to read the texts, that Epicurus was in fact taking a very non-standard and radically different stance. He was redefining "pleasure" to include not only sensory stimulation but also all other experiences which are not painful, even if not normally considered by the majority of people to be included in pleasure. I see no other persuasive way to explain numerous statements by Torquatus, including his response to Chrysippus' "hand" argument.
I don't see you referring to that his expansion of the definition of pleasure in your comments so far. I think it's important to take a position on how Epicurus was using the word pleasure in a non-standard way to make any sense of many highly reliable texts, including but not limited to the Principle Doctrines and the letter to Menoeceus themselves.
The line from DeWitt that's right on point is from page 240 of his book:
Quote“The extension of the name of pleasure to this normal state of being was the major innovation of the new hedonism. It was in the negative form, freedom from pain of body and distress of mind, that it drew the most persistent and vigorous condemnation from adversaries. The contention was that the application of the name of pleasure to this state was unjustified on the ground that two different things were thereby being denominated by one name. Cicero made a great to-do over this argument, but it is really superficial and captious. The fact that the name of pleasure was not customarily applied to the normal or static state did not alter the fact that the name ought to be applied to it; nor that reason justified the application; nor that human beings would be the happier for so reasoning and believing.
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Julia I agree with the thrust of most of your post but as to this I am not completely clear on what you are saying: […]
At the very least, as to pleasure, it seemed absolutely clear to Cicero, and I would say to Norman DeWitt and now to me also as the only logical way to read the texts, that Epicurus was in fact taking a very non-standard and radically different stance. He was redefining "pleasure" to include not only sensory stimulation but also all other experiences which are not painful, even if not normally considered by the majority of people to be included in pleasure. I see no other persuasive way to explain numerous statements by Torquatus, including his response to Chrysippus' "hand" argument.
I agree. What I meant by saying…
In my opinion, getting fancy with "desire"/"desirable" and "pleasure"/"pleasurable" would be like getting fancy with emotion-words, like "happiness", or, more precisely, with experience-words, like "joy". When first grasping the word, it matters to be precise about the inner experience it refers to (eg something fun-but-forbidden may cause joy and guilt, pleasure and pain; it matters to delineate that honestly, precisely, without getting hung up on morals).
…was that:
If we look inside of us, we will see that we feel "joy" when we hit the goal, master a formula, win a cup of ice cream, when our crush agrees to being our prom date, when we feel the soft warmth of a cat purring next to our ears. Those are mental, emotional, physical, social, … joys – but they're all, equally, joy. Joy makes our faces light up, we stand tall, we get lightheartedly energetic; the specific type of joy doesn't change that, because joy is fundamental in the sense of atomic. Joy is one form of pleasure.
We feel relieve when we finally get to a rest room, when we can take a shower for the first time in a fortnight, when we are found not-guilty, when we found our misplaced wallet after all. Those are many different kinds of relief – but they're all, equally, relief. Relief makes us sigh, makes tension drop from our minds and bodies, makes a heavyhearted energy flow out of us while it lifts a weight off our shoulders; the specific type of relief doesn't change that, because it is atomic. Relief is also a type of pleasure (though the pain we go through beforehand makes it not worth it, or else we would instinctively seek relief instead of joy).
Joy and relief are distinct fundamental ("atomic") building blocks of the human experience, and so is desire: While I could classify desires into various groups, the experience of desire I cannot subdivide any more than I can subdivide the experience of joy. Desire and joy are not built from smaller units; they're already atomic.
Unlike desire, pleasure and pain are umbrella terms (hypernyms). Pleasure and pain are not themself atoms of experience in adults, but instead they are categories of experiences: Joy and relief are examples of pleasures, sadness and physical-pain are examples of pains. As such, I can easily subdivide a painful experience: If, in sports, I stumble, break my ankle and miss the shot, I will feel sadness and physical-pain; those two will be the atoms of my painful experience, and pain will merely be the adequate umbrella. Any mammal is born with the two categories of pleasure & pain, but (at least) humans only develop sufficient insight to differentiate the experiential atoms underneath later on. A newborn will know: "This is pleasurable", but it will not yet be able to see and name the elements this pleasure is made of (eg, lots of joy, moderate relief and a little bit of bitter-sweet melancholy). Vice versa analogous for pain.
So, despite pleasure and pain being umbrella terms (not atoms of experience), they are innate, which is rather unusual; as a matter of fact, I cannot come up with any other such instance. Children aren't born with an innate sense of the category of "tools" or "works of art" or anything, except for pleasure and pain. This is what makes pleasure & pain such odd fellas: they're innate, but not atomic (except in newborns).
"Getting fancy" with pleasure would be to artificially manipulate which items naturally fall under this umbrella: "Sex is only for procreation", "Food is only for sustenance", "Giving all your money to the church is fun" would be examples of trying to artificially modify the experiences which by nature are pleasurable. As such, Epicurus' redefinition of pleasure was rather only a reinstatement of its pure form, before all the manipulations of culture came to taint it; the way toddlers and piglets still perceive it. (Vice versa analogous for pain.) To me, this is what is in line with DeWitt:
Just because pleasure/pain might no longer be customarily applied to something due to various elements of society and culture having twisted and tainted how we verbalise these categories doesn't mean it is unclear, unjustified or unhelpful to right that wrong, and to adjust the structure of language to (again) match the structure of our minds.
There is a long history of societal forces manipulating language to control people; a process which was present 2500 years ago and still is going on. In the middle ages, instead of saying "war is peace" people said "sex is sin"; likewise, in ancient times, various distortions were commonplace. So another way to say Epicurus reinstated the pure form of the umbrella terms would be to say he undid a type of newspeak.
With so much said about how I see pleasure & pain, allow me to circle back to desire:
Desire is easier, because it isn't just innate, it is also atomic – like joy.The experience of desire is not made of smaller experiences, and so definitions like "passionate longing" or "sexual wanting" are necessarily false by being too narrow. I can desire something without having a passionate longing for it, but I cannot have a passionate longing for it without having a desire for it. Desire is the fundamental unit. Just like the experiential atom of joy, I can recognise various types of desires (social, mental, physical, …) but the experience of desire still cannot be subdivided.
I don't have the scientific reference at hand just now, but: There was a study done where specific clusters in the human brain were stimulated from the outside (using strong magnets). The subjects then experienced various fundamental/atomic states, such as "conviction". When asked what it is they were so certain about, they didn't know. They said: "I'm just very certain!" This is an analogy to what I mean by saying that joy, relief and desire are fundamental/atomic.
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Epicurus' redefinition of pleasure was rather only a reinstatement of its pure form, before all the manipulations of culture came to taint it; the way toddlers and piglets still perceive it.
I admit I haven't thought of it in that way before, but I like it. -
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Do we all agree that "to desire sth" is an "atom of experience" just like "feels warm" is, too, meaning both are indivisible and not made up of smaller, lower-level, more fine-grained units of experience?
I agree, at least in the sense that I am not aware of a meaningful way to compose a desire of smaller units.
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I agree, at least in the sense that I am not aware of a meaningful way to compose a desire of smaller units.
Thank you for confirming (always risky to extrapolate from oneself to general human nature). For the time being, I shall maintain my point of view then:
- desire: a fundamental unit of experience (cannot be divided into smaller experiences; is not made up of smaller units); by being fundamental in this way, it is simultaneously something we somehow just know (like "sweet taste", "feels warm") and yet very hard to define, to pin down with other words
- pleasure & pain: not fundamental units of experience themself, but innate categories of fundamental experiences. When undistorted by judgements of others (religion, society, …) and undistorted by scarring life experience (eg "fear of joy" as is possible in PTSD), pleasure is the set of fundamental experiences which humans by nature find agreeable (joy, relief, …) and pain is the set of fundamental experience which humans by nature find disagreeable (physical-pain, grief, …). (Moving away from pain is called avoidance. Moving towards pleasure is called play.)
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pleasure & pain: not fundamental units of experience themself, but innate categories of fundamental experiences. When undistorted by judgements of others (religion, society, …) and undistorted by scarring life experience (eg "fear of joy" as is possible in PTSD), pleasure is the set of fundamental experiences which humans by nature find agreeable (joy, relief, …) and pain is the set of fundamental experience which humans by nature find disagreeable (physical-pain, grief, …). (Moving away from pain is called avoidance. Moving towards pleasure is called play.)
OK when stated as in post 36 quoted above (I added the emphasis on the first part), I have to state a reservation, particularly on the statement that pleasures and pains are "not fundamental units of experience themself, but innate categories of fundamental experiences."
I think the terms "pleasure" and "pain" are in fact properly used both to refer to "categories of experiences" as well as "particular experiences," and we have to be clear which perspective we mean when we discuss them.
This issue of the multiple meanings of words such as "good" and "gods" is largely the issue that ended up being the topic of our podcast Episode 241. Coincidentally, before reading this thread, I had just added an insert to assert that the discussion of the way Epicurus was approaching defining his terms before discussing particulars should be taken to refer to "pleasure" and "the limit of pleasure" as well.
If anyone gets a chance to listen to that discussion please let us know if you agree or disagree, either in this thread or preferably the episode thread, where it will probably be more findable in the future.
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the issue that ended up being the topic of our podcast Episode 241
I'm not even close to 241 yet, but continue to catch up
I think the terms "pleasure" and "pain" are in fact properly used both to refer to "categories of experiences" as well as "particular experiences," and we have to be clear which perspective we mean when we discuss them.
I'm not sure what it is you're saying
The category of pleasures is filled with these fundamental experiences: Joy, relief, et cetera.
The fundamental experiences (joy, relief, …) inside that category each are a pleasure.
To have one of these experiences is pleasurable.
Is it correct to state that the ambiguity arises (mostly) because I tend to imprecisely refer to the category of pleasures by the singular? Is that an adequate way to rephrase the objection you're raising?
I feel like with inanimate objects I would be less tempted to slip up regarding that singular/plural imprecision; for example: The category of trees contains apple, pine, et cetera. A pine is a tree.
It would not occur to me for me to say "The category of tree contains", and if someone were to say that to me it would strike me as odd. -
pleasure & pain: not fundamental units of experience themself, but innate categories of fundamental experiences. When undistorted by judgements of others (religion, society, …) and undistorted by scarring life experience (eg "fear of joy" as is possible in PTSD), pleasure is the set of fundamental experiences which humans by nature find agreeable (joy, relief, …) and pain is the set of fundamental experience which humans by nature find disagreeable (physical-pain, grief, …). (Moving away from pain is called avoidance. Moving towards pleasure is called play.)
What I am focusing on as potentially objectionable - depending on how one reads this sentence, is that I think it would be inappropriate if a reader where to say that "pleasure" cannot refer to an individual experience, but it always used as a "category' term to abstractly stand for the whole "set" of experiences.
I am emphatically agreeing that the word "pleasure" *can* be used that way, and at times *is* used that way by Epicurus (for example in formulations such as "by pleasure we mean the absence of pain," but I am ALSO saying that the word "pleasure" can be used to refer to a single experience, e.g., "Eatine peas today at lunch was a pleasure."
I am really focusing mainly on the "not fundamental units of experience themself." So as to be more clear I would prefer to reword that as:
pleasure & pain: These terms can be used to describe BOTH fundamental units of experience themselves, AS WELL AS innate categories of fundamental experiences, depending on the context of the discussion.
And then I would reword the rest of the paragraph in a way consistent with that.
I feel sure I should be making the same comment as to desire, when I read this:
desire: a fundamental unit of experience (cannot be divided into smaller experiences; is not made up of smaller units); by being fundamental in this way, it is simultaneously something we somehow just know (like "sweet taste", "feels warm") and yet very hard to define, to pin down with other words
But I confess I am losing track of some of the original detail of the thread as it started out. Maybe there is some reason that you are focusing on desire and pleasure as categories, and maybe you are putting the particular pleasures and the particular desires aside for some reason, but if so, I think that makes me want to emphasize the point of the podcast even more strongly.
These words - gods, good, pleasure, desire -- can be viewed equally correctly as either "concepts" standing for a particular class, or individual particular examples of experience within that particular class. Either viewpoint can be correct and useful and is valid, but it's essential to be clear as to whether you are talking about a class or a particular.
If you're NOT careful, then you run into this trouble that plagues Epicurean philosophy today: "Absence of pain" can be confused as referring to a particular experience that nobody can adequately define outside of a particular context, and thus a great source of confusion, rather than being seen as a definition of the "limit of quantity of pleasure" in which context it is a very useful and helpful definition.
Same with desire: If you view desires solely as a "group," and imply all desires should be minimized or eliminated, then you are on the straight path to Stoicism or Buddhism or worse. But if you take the common sense approach that desire is also a term that can be used to refer to many individual experiences, some of which are very healthful and beneficial and some of which are more like a disease and damaging, then you'll be able to productively realize that many desires are to be encouraged and pursued, while many others are to be suppressed.
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I will repeat the caveat that i hope everyone constantly remembers:
I'm not representing that I have everything figured out, and I welcome challenges and disagreements (at least when stated constructively
)The benefit that the podcast is providing, as Joshua also states in Episode 241, is that it is very helpful to challenge oneself to articulate these issues precisely. Unless you do get pretty deep in the weeds (another term Joshua used today) then it can sometimes be hard to see how important some of these issues are.
And this thread is a good example too - starting out talking about a Stoic chart, but now wrestling with some extremely deep conceptual issues that need to be resolved before we can adequately construct an alternative presentation.
I perceive that where we are in the discussion is a question that has to be answered before we can delete the "does it concern virtue?" and replace it with a question relating to "Pleasure." This dual perspective on Pleasure, as both a category and a particular experience, has to be understood before one can see that "absence of pain" is being used by Epicurus as a term that is an EXACT equivalent of "pleasure," and not a separate and unique category that some set out as so unique and perceptive that even Buddhists and Stoics would envy. I would say more confidently here in August of 2024 than every before that the truth is nothing of the kind. "Absence of pain" is simply a way of extending the definition of pleasure to ALL non-painful experiences, just as "gods" are defined as living beings who are blessed and incorruptible, and just as "the highest good" is defined to be "the standard by which we are bound to test all things by, but the standard itself by nothing."
"Pleasure" can only be understood as deserving of its place in the first rank of any "choice and avoidance" chart by understanding it in this wider way of: "all experience which is not painful." The problem is that we are so conditioned to see "pleasure" as "sex drugs and rock and roll" and therefore "bad," that we are intimidated away from putting the word "Pleasure" in its rightful position as the keystone of the whole analysis.
