All Pleasure Is Desirable, Because It Is Pleasing To Us, But Is All Pleasure *Equally* Desirable?

All pleasure may be desirable, because it is pleasure, but does that observation mean that all pleasure is EQUALLY desirable? I don't think that is the correct conclusion. And this would not be because of some outside standard of virtue that some pleasures are more "noble" than others, but as simple as observing that some pleasures are more long-lasting, or intense, than others, under our individual circumstances.

(This comment came out ofthe thread discussing Hercules, but it deserves its own thread because of the importance of the question. DeWitt talks about the "fullness of pleasure" but that does not mean that all pleasure is interchangeable, does it?)

Here I think we need to consider PD9 "If every pleasure had been capable of accumulation, not only over time but also over the entire body or at least over the principal parts of our nature, then pleasures would never differ from one another."

Welcome to the forum! Very interesting questions. On first thought:

1. Pleasures differ, certainly in intensity and duration and probably in other ways as well. Also, pleasure does not exist in the air apart from things / experiences that we find pleasing, and certainly some things we find pleasing are more efficient at removing certain types of pain than others.

2. I would say that for a human complete freedom from pain IS unattainable, at least over any significant period of time. The part of your point beginning "because surely..." seems to me to be a false deduction from the meaning of "absence of pain," which I contend to be (even in concept) only a state of unadulterated combination of ordinary pleasure. However your question is excellent because it exposes an inherent conceptual fragility with the "absence of pain is a state other and higher than ordinary pleasure" construct.

But I say this is "only on first thought" and i will be very interested in your further comment. I consider my point 1 to be firm, my point 2 is less so at least in part because point 2 is more abstract.

Pending your response Pivot, let me emphasize that I believe the key to unwrapping this excellent question is "pleasure does not exist in the air apart from things / experiences that we find pleasing." Pleasures do not exist "in the air" waiting for us to come across them and experience them. It seems to me that "pleasure" is the name we give to any number of experiences which our faculty of pleasure at any particular moment tells us is "pleasing" - meaning, our faculty of feeling tells us that this experience is desirable in and of itself.

And because experiences are innumerable in type, the only sense in which "perfect pleasure" exists is when our total experience of feeling, which generally contains some combination of pleasures and pains like jellybeans in a jar (distinct, but taking up place in the jar), contains only pleasurable jelly beans and no painful jelly beans. Now I think this definition of "perfect pleasure" can exist for at least short periods, but viewed in this way "perfect pleasure" is not a single jelly bean of some unusually potent type which can be snatched from the air or otherwise exist in human experience. Human experience is limited to vessels full of pleasures from which all pains have been (temporarily) eliminated.

And again, in my view, the real purpose of this discussion to Epicurus was to illustrate "the" goal, and to show a goal that met Platonic/other objections that pleasure could not be the goal because it can always be increased. When we take into account that a human life is like a vessel / jar, and that it has a definite limit in size which cannot be expanded, then we have a construction of "fullness of pleasure" which is serves as a conceptual framework to illustrate our goal for life.

I look forward to continuing this discussion because the issues are so important. Also, I hope we will get others to weigh in on this as soon as they can, as well.

To continue adding to thoughts here, it has been suggested to me by a friend that certainly the natural and necessary pleasures are not interchangeable. Each one has to be enjoyed to the maximum, assuming that this is possible.

I then responded to my friend: "Ok I certainly agree on interchangeability. But perhaps the greater question is: "What in Epicurean philosophy would tell us to enjoy wine (for example) when it is available without outweighing pain rather than stick to our water all the time?" Certainly parts of the letter to Menoeceus COULD be read to say that, but I do not believe that to be the meaning. And I presume you don't either - none of us do that. But we do not want to accept the implication that we are poor Epicureans in doing so. What Epicurean principle(s) are best used to override that implication, which is so popular today?

Why I see this question as important: It seems to me that this question is sort of a variation of that quote from DeWitt where the Platonist said "What, in a word, is to be said of a philosophy that begins by regarding pleasure as the only positive good and ends by emptying pleasure of all positive content?"

The twist here is "What, in a word, is to be said of a philosophy that begins by regarding pleasure as the only positive good, but ends by seeking the minimal amount of pleasure that is available without any exertion?"

If some pleasures are greater than others, then surely some pleasures are worth many multiples of the pain they require, and given the shortness of life should we not be pursuing those pleasures with all the vigor we can put into it?

And that is what I see as the deeper implication of your question, Pivot. If no pleasure is any more pleasing than any other, then the shortness of life is irrelevant, and it makes no difference whether we derive our pleasures while living in a cave staring at a candle, or on the summit of a mountain taking all the awesome beauties Nature has to offer.

Thank you for the very detailed continuation. I will try to do each point justice, but I think our different conclusions stem from very different premises.

Several times in your comments I observe comments which to me seem to focus on pain. For example, I would not agree with "pleasures must be ranked based on their capacity to achieve freedom from pain." I see pleasures as being very subjective, and I would not presume to judge someone else's ranking. If someone wants to give up years of life in order to spend five minutes "on the mountaintop" because he finds that pleasure so intense as to be worthwhile, I would not presume to second-guess that choice, and I do not believe Epicurus would either. "And even as men choose of food not merely and simply the larger portion, but the more pleasant, so the wise seek to enjoy the time which is most pleasant and not merely that which is longest."

So when you write "because both the toil to achieve such pleasures and the anxieties accompanying them will render them, in the end, "un-free" from pain" I simply look at the goal totally differently. The goal as I understand Epicurus is pleasure - which is not an abstraction or a state, but pleasureable living - the accumulating of common ordinary pleasurable experiences. I wish to purchase those with as little pain as possible, but as a human being it is not possible to live without pain. I minimize it to the extent possible, but I am not here to escape pain as my primary goal - my primary goal is to experience pleasure, without which no pain would be worthwhile.

As for this "I would contest then the idea that the vessel of human life cannot be expanded" I should be clear. When I say "cannot be expanded" I mean simply that at SOME point it is ended by death. Within that scope there is a huge variety of length and experiences - some never escape childhood, some live past 100. There is a limit set by death, but a wide variety of time within that.

Also I never would see it fair to speak in these terms: "If pleasure is simply dopamine" While it is true that the effect of pleasure is to crowd out pain, that is not the PURPOSE of pleasure. Pleasure is desirable in itself; the crowding out of pain is secondary.

"So it is not a problem that the vessel is not full, it is enough that it consists of no pain." And this is the position that calls out to me ; "Then why not commit suicide?" There is certainly no pain in being dead, and if "absence of pain" taken literally and without reference to pleasure, is the overriding goal, then a quick death is exactly the ticket.

All discussions like this are extremely helpful - at least to me - because this is a huge difference in perspective. People who come from such different perspectives may never agree, but it is very helpful to articulate the difference in perspective as clearly as possible.

(I am sorry I was interrupted during this post but I think my reply is at least partly coherent.)

But I do want to repeat that I think what we are discussing is the most important topic possible for people studying Epicurus to discuss.

I'll make notes and comment as we go through:

1. As usual, this is the issue: "Epicurus' idea that maximum pleasure is freedom from pain." -- Our disagreement is that I believe Epicurus clearly did not mean this statement in the way you interpret it, in terms of "every respect equivalent." As PD3 says, "The magnitude (quantity) of pleasure reaches its limit in the removal of all pain." "Absence of pain" is a measure of quantity, and quantity is only one aspect of pleasure, and not the most important aspect. "And even as men choose of food not merely and simply the larger portion, but the more pleasant, so the wise seek to enjoy the time which is most pleasant and not merely that which is longest."

2. "Didn't Epicurus also believe that we should not seek that which is unnecessary for happiness, but we should enjoy them if they were to come to us?" To this I would say NO - if by the question you mean this to be THE overriding rule. It is clearly "a" rule by which we should structure our lives to be sure that we do not enslave ourselves to desires that we cannot achieve. But "greater pleasure" is the goal and even that rule - and all choices - are governed by the final goal - greater pleasure. "And since pleasure is our first and native good, for that reason we do not choose every pleasure whatsoever, but will often pass over many pleasures when a greater annoyance ensues from them. And often we consider pains superior to pleasures when submission to the pains for a long time brings us as a consequence a greater pleasure."

3 - "If the goal for Epicurus is pleasure, and if "pleasure reaches its maximum limit at the removal of all sources of pain," is the goal not then complete freedom from pain? " -- YES BUT - only in terms of quantity! If one confuses quantity for quality, then one has confused the goal just as surely as the stoic who confuses "virtue" for the goal.

4 - Now, as to being free from pain being pleasurable, we do indeed agree, but the overriding premise here is "for the living." This is where DeWitt emphasises the point that pleasure, pain, etc. have no meaning except for the living! If we are alive there is nothing mysterious about what we are doing - we are at least going about the daily affairs of life in which we find pleasure if we allow ourselves to and if our circumstances do not prevent it. Clearly, life is worth living at whatever stage we find ourselves, unless we are forced to be in continuing unbearable pain without hope of relief. Life is desirable " And he who admonishes the young to live well and the old to make a good end speaks foolishly, not merely because of the desirability of life, but because the same exercise at once teaches to live well and to die well. Much worse is he who says that it were good not to be born, but when once one is born to pass quickly through the gates of Hades. For if he truly believes this, why does he not depart from life? It would be easy for him to do so once he were firmly convinced. If he speaks only in jest, his words are foolishness as those who hear him do not believe."

5 - Now here you are separating yourself from the more crusading ( ) of those who focus on "absence of pain" as the full Epicurean definition of "the highest pleasure." I refer to when you say: "I erred if I tried to argue that freedom from pain in the absence of any pleasure whatsoever is desirable. But I do think freedom from pain always results in pleasure in any practical sense." My observation is that most of the time the "no pain" argument is combined with the katastematic/static pleasure argument, and the position taken is that "absence of pain" ("katastematic pleasure") is some new and higher "state" totally separate from the normal pleasures of life, totally separate from any sensual pleasure that can be named, or in your term a "practical" pleasure - and in fact - not a sensual pleasure itself. If you are not going in that direction it will not be necessary to elaborate, but for anyone else reading this thread, this argument is frequently found on the internet, but the opposite position is taken in Boris Nikolsky's "Epicurus on Pleasure," in the section on Epicurus in Gosling & Taylors "The Greeks on Pleasure" and in various other resources that can be pointed to here.

Thank you again for another useful exchange. Must of this turns on one's perspective on pleasure, and the closer we examine that issue the better off we are. As I type this I seem to remember that you made a comment that I should have addressed with this:

Oh - here it is - you wrote: "So why is it that pleasure reaches its maximum limit at the removal of pain, unless one can claim that any increase in pleasure is simply an increase in freedom from pain (which seems untrue)?"

I think that is a KEY point that also leads to very divergent views. To me, it is crucially foundational to emphasize that Epicurus stressed that there are ONLY two categories of feelings - pleasure and pain. In any measurement system, if the universe is composed of only two components, then in rigorous terms YES - the absence of one IS exactly the measure of the presence of the other, and vice versa. I believe that if one starts with this canonical proposition a lot of confusion is addressed. "Pleasure" = "absence of pain" becomes an obvious truism and absolutely non mystical, just as in the jelly bean jar analogy one can judge the quantity by saying "jelly beans" = "absence of air" and "absence of air" = "jelly beans." YES, this is true in terms of quantity, but the effect of eating air is much different than the effect of eating jelly beans!

IF one starts with this proposition, which I believe derives from the logical arguments that Epicurus was using against the Platonists (as referenced here) then the "problem" of evaluating the "absence off pain" statements in the letter to Menoeceus and PD3 evaporates. As I see it, the reason PD3 is so highly placed is for exactly that reason. The PDs were ordered largely in terms of priority of who most urgently needed to be defeated in argument (in education).

PD1 - the religionists who say that god controls human affairs must be defeated by showing that gods are unconcerned with men.

PD2 - pretty much everyon who argues that death is a state of suffering to be avoided at all costs (such as by the adoption of false philosophies of virtue) must be defeated by showing that death is absence of sensation, and all evil comes through sensation.

PD3 - the Platonists and others who argue that pleasure cannot be the guide of life because it can never be satisfied, that there is always a "higher" amount to which we would like to achieve, and that pleasure can always be improved must be defeated by showing a logical argument that there IS a limit to the pleasure which can be experienced in human life, and that the limit is the total elimination of pain from our experience. This becomes the logical "goal" which replaces serving gods, virtue, etc as the statement of the "divine guide of life" as Lucretius called it.

I think the problem has largely arisen because the context of PD3 - the necessity to meet and defeat the arguments of Plato in Philebus and elsewhere, have dropped from sight, and people no longer see the relevance of the argument. Thus the "absence of pain" argument has been left as a "floating abstraction" without anchoring to practicality, leaving it a ready tool for those who want to distort it into a Stoic sword. Obviously this problem existed in Cicero's time as well, since he makes use of it to argue that Epicurus was confusing, but back then everyone knew that Epicureans embraced "ordinary" pleasures and lived active lives (reference Atticus, Cassius, and Lucretius and Epicurus themselves in terms of their crusading spirit). But as the texts were lost and Stoic/Christian ethical viewpoints took power by fire and sword, the essential context fell further and further away to the point where today it is a major challenge to even get anyone to consider it.

"I think Epicurus taught different pleasures have different desirabilities." <<< Yes Daniel and you and I are totally in agreement with that. I think that Pivot, however, was stating a different position, at least initially.

Now here - "There are many times I think pleasure and pain come together, such as when one feels both happy and sad at the same time." That is definitely the case, but the issue I think Epicurus was aiming at is whether the two (pleasure and pain) are a mixture into a new third substance, or whether they retain their discrete qualities (sort of like oil and water, which can be shaken together but don't really mix.

Before I go further on that point let me ask you this: Have you read Norman DeWitt's Epicurus and His Philosophy which is discussed throughout this site? if you have not, I urge you to get that book, as it presents Epicurean philosophy in a systematic way that I don't think is equaled by any other book. Of course you may disagree with some of its interpretations, and of course you may disagree with Epicurus on something, but it's not possible to decide whether you agree or disagree til you really understand Epicurus' position.

Having said that, my reading from DeWitt and elsewhere indicates that this issue of mixing of pleasure and pain is very deep, and arises from arguments started by Plato and others to which Epicurus was responding. Possibly you are not concerned with the issue of "only two - pleasure and pain" as much as you are concerned with whether they "mix." In order to understand that you will need to fall back to what Plato was arguing AGAINST the idea of using pleasure and pain as the guide of life, and that is more complicated than I can address in this post.

Let me know if you have the time and inclination to pursue that, because if you do (and I very much recommend it) there are a couple of sources you will want to read. one of them is Gosling and Taylor's "The Greeks on pleasure" which is not easy to find, but is available through any library. that book traces the history of the arguments about pleasure from the beginning up through Epicurus, and I think it is pretty much indispensable to understanding the big picture. But I would not recommend you start there - if you have not read it, I recommend starting with DeWitt, after which you will have the global view and then be in much better position to check this very detailed issue.

Also, SOME of the aspects of this issue are discussed on my page here but I have not succeeded in polishing that to the point it needs to be - it is currently more of a list of points rather than a good narrative argument.

Don't let my stopping at this point in the post discourage you. If you are motivated to pursue this there are many aspects to discuss and I would like nothing more than to follow along with you as you check these sources, and I am sure I would learn from discussing it with you as you go through. This is a tremendously important issue and far too few people are interested in it.

That is a very articulate post Pivot, thank you! I would first say that I think much of the importance of this question is what is "Unsaid" and thereby the possibility of confusion. I gather that you firmly equate in your mind "absence of pain" as a pleasurable experience, and, therefore, you have no issue considering the concepts to be largely interchangeable. You identify pleasure in absence of pain which therefore makes it desirable.

I do not believe that "most people" think in those terms, and because they do not the use of this phrasing is dangerous. It is my observation that "most people" today are so much under the influence of "virtue ethics" or the idea that "meaning" must come from something other than the feeling of pleasure, that they are unable to interpret "absence of pain" as anything other than a form of nihilism, which is a tremendous danger. Nihilism adds up to the negation of pleasure and the negation of life, and I believe Epicurus did or would have considered its modern form to be a major enemy.

So while I have no issue with discussing absence of pain if the premise is clear that we are talking about one of many forms of pleasure, I think that "many" people are not in fact doing that - those who do it intentionally are using deceptive wording to imply that there is something in life they believe is more desirable than pleasurable feeling that is separate and distinct from pleasure. And thus they reconcile Epicurus with stoicism or idealism or whatever is their favored form of "meaning."

So given my last post I do agree with much or most of what you wrote, which I see as very appropriate comparison of costs and benefits . As I see it, however, the issue where this discussion helps the most is in articulating and preparing for the question that I think exists in every new student of Epicurus when they first hear the discussion and think to themselves "What does he mean by 'absence of pain?'"

I think unless we take great pains to clarify this early, most normal and healthy young people will naturally be put off by what they will see as the apparent anti pleasure pro ascetic bias of the terminology, which conveys a meaning that I do not think Epicurus in fact intended to convey.

Choose pleasurable activities carefully so as not to suffer unnecessary significant pain that in your context "outweighs" the pleasure? Absolutely YES.

Choose pleasurable activities ONLY if you can be sure that NO pain will result from them? Absolutely NOT, and that implication has to be firmly dismissed.

You are very welcome Pivot. As a point of information for me, what is your background (if any) in Stoicism? I am interested to know how, from your perspective, you think these ideas compare to what is commonly discussed as stoicism in particular.

Also, did you say how you found this forum? If your experience in how you found it would be of help to us in getting wider exposure for it, please let us know. Most here are from the Facebook page, but not everyone by any means, and we definitely need to expand beyond that.

Oh excellent that you found on google. I am paying for a little Google Adwords advertising so I will keep that up.

And I agree with the rest of your comments too.

Please drop by as often as you can, and especially consider starting new threads in any area of interest. Activity drives activity, and the way to be gods among men is to interact and study nature with like-minded friends!