Posts by Cassius

Aristos tells us this:

I'm from Serbia, and I'm 30 years old. I'm a food technology engineer by profession, with a wide range of interests and hobbies related to cooking, beverages, metalworking, 3D printing, and many other pursuits.

I've been studying philosophy independently for almost ten years, primarily for my own personal development and understanding. During that time, I've devoted serious attention to many philosophers and philosophical traditions, hoping to find a coherent system that could offer convincing answers to some of the fundamental existential questions.

Epicureanism fascinates me for many reasons, especially when viewed from the perspective of more than two thousand years of intellectual history and the development of the Western philosophical tradition. What I find particularly remarkable is how many Epicurean ideas can be examined - and in many cases even supported through modern science, which serves as an important reference point for evaluating philosophical claims that ancient thinkers first proposed through observation and insight.

I'm interested in every discipline of Epicurean philosophy, partly because I already have some background in epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, and related fields. My goal is to study Epicureanism as a complete philosophical system rather than as a form of popular psychology or a simple remedy for anxiety or identity struggles.

I'm looking forward to learning from the community and participating in thoughtful discussions.

Best regards,

Aristos

Good to hear from you Charles.

If we can't be clear in Epicurean philosophy about the centrality of pleasure, we don't need to be talking about Epicurean philosophy at all.

Might was well also forget the positions on gods and death - which not coincidentally is exactly what a lot of the videos in my "World's Worst Epicurus Videos" thread are doing.

Welcome Aristos

There is one last step to complete your registration: All new registrants must email Cassius so that this Welcome Thread can contain basic information about your background and interest in Epicurus. In that email, please tell us what prompted your interest in Epicureanism and which particular aspects of Epicureanism most interest you, and/or post a question.

This forum is the place for students of Epicurus to coordinate their studies and work together to promote the philosophy of Epicurus. All posting here is subject to our Community Standards, Participation Levels, and Posting Policies -- please read that page; it explains our ground rules and will save everyone time and friction.

ALSO - AS OF JULY 16, 2026, the Forum has instituted a new editorial policy as to the advocacy of anything other than Pleasure as what Epicurus taught to be the supreme good. All prospective members must read this post before proceeding with an account at Epicureanfriends.coom:

Against Katastematic Supremacy - Pleasure Is A Unified Good, Not A House Divided Against Itself - INCLUDES FORUM EDITORIAL POLICY

The Current Establishment View - Which It Is the Editorial Policy Of EpicureanFriends.com to Reject

With only a few notable exceptions, practically every modern account of Epicurean ethics repeats the same claim: Epicurus divided pleasure into two distinct kinds, ranked one above the other. Pleasure, like a house, cannot stand if it is divided against itself — and that is exactly the structure this traditional reading imposes on it. On this traditional view, kinetic pleasure covers everything…

Cassius

July 16, 2026 at 2:06 PM

If you have not done so already, please be sure you have read Torquatus' Presentation of Epicurean Ethics (also available in a more compact side-by-side format at EpicurusToday.com). That is the clearest, most complete statement of Epicurean ethics to survive from antiquity, and reading it early will save you -- and us -- a great deal of confusion. Most people arrive with a version of "Epicureanism" assembled from the Tetrapharmakon, the Letter to Menoeceus, or scattered quotations of questionable reliability -- and of the three, the Tetrapharmakon is the least reliable foundation of all. It is many times more compressed even than the Letter, and terse enough that it has been read in sharply different, sometimes incompatible ways by different interpreters; at best it serves as a reminder of Epicurus's four main topics for someone who already knows their content, not as a source of that content. The Letter to Menoeceus is a real summary, but it too is compressed and was written for students who already understood the foundations of Epicurean ethics. Torquatus is the best surviving example of how Epicurus's own well-educated students understood and presented that foundation themselves. It is the fastest and most reliable way to find out whether what you already believe about Epicurus matches what he and his school actually taught.

The moderators here are well aware that many fans of Epicurus hold sincerely-held views about what Epicurus taught that are incompatible with this forum's purpose. This forum exists specifically for people committed to classical Epicurean positions, not for reconciling those positions with modern "eclectic" reinterpretations that borrow Epicurus's name while rejecting his actual conclusions. Reading Torquatus first is the quickest way to see where that line falls, before investing time in posts that argue against the very foundations this forum exists to defend.

All of us here arrived at our respect for Epicurus after long journeys through other philosophies. We don't demand of others what we weren't able to do ourselves. Epicurean philosophy is different enough from most other philosophies that understanding how deep those differences run simply takes time. That's why we have participation levels that give new members room to learn, but it's also why we have standards that can mean arguments being limited, or participants removed, when the purpose of the community requires it. Epicurean philosophy is not inherently democratic, isn't committed to unlimited free speech within its own meetings, and isn't organized around anything except the pursuit of truth and a happy life through pleasure as Epicurus explained it.

Please tell us a little about your background reading Epicurean texts, how you found this forum, and what particularly interests you -- that context helps us help you. Our Getting Started page also has ideas for using the site.

Beyond Torquatus, two books will do the most to deepen your understanding quickly. Norman DeWitt's Epicurus and His Philosophy is the single best book-length treatment available. DeWitt treats Epicurus as a coherent system rather than filtering him through later Stoic, Platonic, or modern secular assumptions. If you read one book beyond the ancient sources, make it this one.

Emily Austin's Living for Pleasure: An Epicurean Guide to Life is a clear, engaging modern introduction that many of our members have found a useful on-ramp. Read it, but read it alongside Torquatus and DeWitt rather than in their place, since like most modern treatments it makes no attempt to give the full picture that DeWitt provides.

From there, Epicurus's own surviving letters -- to Herodotus, Pythocles, and Menoeceus -- and Lucretius's On The Nature of Things are also on the essential reading list. Our Recommended Reading page has a fuller list for when you're ready to go further. None of this is required before you participate, but the more of it you've read -- starting with Torquatus -- the more you'll get out of being here.

Welcome to the forum!

This thread is for discussion of the article:

Blog Article

Too Long Unpraised And Unappreciated - Aulus Gellius And The Clearest Ancient Testimony That Absence of Pain Means Nothing More Than Pleasure

[…]

Centuries of commentators have treated this and similar statements as an invitation to make something other than pleasure the real goal of Epicurean philosophy -- a neutral resting state, a merely negative condition, a "tranquility" or "static pleasure" standing above and apart from pleasure as ordinarily understood. The clearest evidence against that reading does not come from an Epicurean apologist. It comes from a Roman grammarian with no stake whatsoever in Epicurean ethics, writing…

Cassius

July 20, 2026 at 9:47 AM

Looks to me like the same person is generating these - and apparently isn't through yet -

"I want my life of pleasure to be stable and established."

Does a sentence like that serve as a bullet train to living on bread and water and denouncing pleasure? Or does it simply remind you that you want your "life of pleasure" -- the life that Diogenes of Oinoanda and Torquatus explictly state to be what Epicurus taught as the meaning of happiness -- to be complete and stable and enduring?

Why would anyone take that expression - with simple and unthreatening adjectives like "complete" and "enduring" -- and then conclude from it "what I want is not really pleasure at all!"?

They wouldn't - unless they have another agenda besides recognizing Pleasure to be the supreme good. While I don't think anyone here does that, I am completely sure that what has motivted comprimisers for hundreds of years - from Gassendi on down to today - is a desire to apologize for pleasure and make it acceptable to the religious and moralistic orthodoxy.

Quote from Bryan

However, it is also clearly true that a single brick -- or even a huge pile of bricks -- is not as good as a whole stable and established brick building.

That would be exactly the analogy I seek to use with the "full cup" of pleasure and what I take DeWitt's "fullness" argument to mean. Yes you want your life to be 100% pleasure and 0% pain, and you want it to stay that way, neither needlessly below the rim (due to the presence of pain) or sloshing over the rim (causing intrustio of pain due to the sloshing). But no matter what perspective you look at the vessel, what it is full of is real tangible experiential pleasure. Or using the other analogy, when you build a house of bricks you have something more desirable than a pile of bricks, but you would be a fool to then think that you have freed yourself from reliance on bricks. You don't need a greater quantity of bricks when you finish building a house in the same way that you don't need a greater quantity of pleasure when your life is 100% full of plesure.

But who would be such a pinhead or so stupid -- when you have a completed house or a full life of pleasure -- to go on a campaign apologizing for, or talking down, or even outright dismissing, the value of bricks or pleasure???

It would be interesting to discuss if anyone sees a conflict between the 2019 "On Pain Pleasure And Happiness" article and their current understanding of the katastematic / kinetic situation and the "Against Katastematic Supremacy" article which is the topic of this thread. If there is any such conflict then by all means it needs to be cleaned up as we go forward.

My posting of this earlier in this thread and Pacatus' reminder have in turn reminded me that this is where we were in 2019 - almost seven years ago to the day.

We've come a long way since then - in many ways forward - but we still don't have many articles / posts here that are as on target on this topic as this one. I have now added it to the front page as one of the featured blue buttons to call more attention to it.

Blog Article

On Pain, Pleasure, and Happiness

Not "absence of pain" as a full statement of the goal of life, but “the Feelings are two, pleasure and pain” and “Pleasure is the beginning and the end of a happy life.”

Brief: The feelings are only two, pleasure and pain—there is no third state such as neutral, and there are no “fancy pleasures” which are different from regular pleasures. Because there is no neutral, reducing pain in life is only possible if there is a corresponding increase in pleasure. The extent of pleasure can be…

Elayne

July 15, 2019 at 7:31 PM

Let me expand further on what I have said in some of these recent comments.

When Epicurus says that he is not able to conceive the good without the pleasures that he mentions, all of those pleasures he mentions are "active" - not "katastematic" under the normal definition that people seem to be presuming. While pleasure is the supreme good, it is not the pleasures of the moment, but the life of pleasure, which is foreseen to be the final result, and that means at time choosing pains.

In other words, there are many perspectives on pleasure and the life of pleasure, and more than one can be true at the same time, and they are not in conflict.

What most of us seem to accept here is that the word katastematic refers to something that is stable or established. Is there something there which is not a subset of DURATION, which is referenced in PD09? Of course we want our pleasures to have the longest duration possible!

Is anyone here thinking I am advocating against pleasures being stable and established? OF COURSE NOT. What I am saying is that 'stability' and 'being established' are attributes of something else, not of themselves, and that something else is PLEASURE.

Rather than taking the passage "Freedom from trouble in the mind and from pain in the body are static pleasures, but Joy and exultation are considered as active pleasures involving motion" in isolation, we should consider it with all the rest we know. We know that Epicurus held that because there are only two experiences, for the living human whenever pain is not present what is present is pleasure. This quoted passage need be saying nothing more than that mental or bodily well-being (meaning when pain is absent) constitutes a "stable" perspective on the goal of life. This is a perspective that does not change and does not vary from person to person. This is because we all want 100% pleasure and 0% pain in mind and body. At individual times and places, however, some people are going to engage in food, some in sex, some in zip-lining, and some in studying ancient Greek literature. Those activities and the pleasures that come from them are as stated in PD09 - they vary in intensity and duration and parts of the body that are effected -- they CHANGE with the circumstance.

But those changing circumstances are exactly what human life is made of. At the same time, we maintain a stable attitude that our goal - to the extent we can attain it - is 100% pleasure and 0% pain. This is a goal that is stable and which never varies, and if we keep it mind mind with the reasons for it, then we can have confidence and not be deterred by obstacles.

Is this interpretation spelled out by Diogenes Laertius? Is exactly the same description given by Gosling and Taylor or Boris Nikolsky or Emily Austin or Kelly Aronsen? No, but the writers u have listed are making an effort to present a theory in understandable terms without just chanting Greek words as if they were stating something impossible for the American mind of 2026 to understand in English.

And whichever interpretation you end up taking for yourself, you end up focusing on pleasure in understandable terms that does not incline you toward thinking that being "untroubled" is the best you can do with your life. There are all sorts of ways to be "untroubled" in life and you damn well better specify what you mean rather than leave it to the imagination that blowing your mind out with drugs, or worse, is an equally acceptable way to become "untroubled."

There is absolutely no reason that the factors listed by Epicurus in regard to pleasure - intensity, duration, and parts of the body effected - are not all that anyone needs to make rational decisions about what activities to pursue and what results should be considered the target. And to repeat - injecting untranslated Greek terms into the ultimate description causes much more harm than good.

So I certainly am not arguing against the value of attitudes, or the value of locking up in your mind certain knowledge about import topics, or anything of the sort connected with stability and being established. But the reason this dispute arises is because that's not the interpretation that normal people are going to give to attempts to hold up "Tranquility" or "Calm" or the like as Epicurus' true goal of life. If someone is in this group it is because they are legitimately trying to make use of Epicurean philosophy not only for themselves - but in the great Epicurean tradition, for others as well. And that means being able to explain it in understandable terms.

If katastematic means simply stable and established then say so, and talk in plain terms about how much we value and appreciate things that we have been able to make stable and established in our lives. If someone wants to argue that it means something else - that it is not in fact pleasure, that it means something higher and better than pleasure itself -- then they can take that argument outside this group, because that is the straight highway to asceticism, minimalism, and the total abandonment of the term "pleasure" as we see happening so often. it's not even a slippery slope - it's a Chinese bullet train to that same destination.

Stating things plainly in English will not tempt anyone to think that "tranquility" is an attribute of pleasure that can be detached from pleasure itself. Stating things plainly in English will not tempt people to think that being "tranquil" is the Epicurean supreme good. When virtually every expert has their own individual interpretation about what katastematic means and what activities fall within it, that's neither a stable nor established base on which to move forward. And to let this argument undermine the whole philosophy - as it is doing - is absolutely unacceptable.

it's the job of Academics to debate each other. It's our job to make Epicurean philosophy useful for ourselves and other regular people.

Welcome to Episode 343 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts, and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes.

This week we start are continuing our series reviewing Cicero's "Academic Questions" from an Epicurean perspective, which gives us an overview of the issues that split Plato's Academy and helps us understand Epicurus' position on the same issues.

We are now in Section 10 of Book 2, moving into Section 11.

Our text will come from
Cicero - Academic Questions - Yonge We'll likely stick with Yonge primarily, but we'll also refer to the Rackham translation here:

• Cicero On Nature Of Gods Academica Loeb Rackham : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

As we moved into section ten, Lucullus (from the Stoic perspective) attacked those who imply that the mind - a creation of nature - is useless for obtaining knowledge, which has the result of overturning the whole of life.

He then will move to address those who argue that there is a difference between saying everything is uncertain and that nothing can be perceived, and this takes him toward the discussion of Cicero's own position - that it makes sense to say that some things are probable and some are not.

Then as we move into eleven the talk turns more and more to discussing "signs" - and that is the beginning of the point we are looking for - so that we can eventually tackle Philodemus' "On Signs"

Quote from Pacatus

don’t know if that word pleasure (and pain as well) scares people.

There's absolutely no doubt --most people are scared to death of the term, and they would never want to be associated with a philosophy of pleasure - especially in Academia.

Since there's a lot of criticism of negativity embedded in this discussion I thought I better draft something as an example of what I personally think is a more positive approach to Epicurus. Nothing that people here haven't seen a hundred times before, but again that's the point - we are the tiny minority, and I don't think we should sit back and make no effort to change that by talking about the core issues - WITHOUT lathering it with apologies for pleasure, with appeals to asceticism, minimalism, resignation, withdrawal, or the like. Posting this mainly for X, Facebook, Substack, etc.

Blog Article

Living For The Pleasures Of The Moment Isn't Epicurean — It's Lunacy: Why the World's Most Famous "Hedonist" Would Have Despised What We Call Hedonism

The Passage You've Seen a Thousand Times, and What It Actually Says

You have almost certainly seen this sentence before, even if you've never read a word of it: "Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum, quia dolor sit, amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..." It's the source of "Lorem Ipsum" -- the scrambled placeholder text that has filled empty design mockups and dummy web pages for decades. Almost nobody who has typed it, pasted it, or stared at it while waiting for real content ever learns…

Cassius

July 17, 2026 at 3:05 PM

This thread is for discussion of the article:

Blog Article

Living For The Pleasures Of The Moment Isn't Epicurean — It's Lunacy: Why the World's Most Famous "Hedonist" Would Have Despised What We Call Hedonism

The Passage You've Seen a Thousand Times, and What It Actually Says

You have almost certainly seen this sentence before, even if you've never read a word of it: "Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum, quia dolor sit, amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..." It's the source of "Lorem Ipsum" -- the scrambled placeholder text that has filled empty design mockups and dummy web pages for decades. Almost nobody who has typed it, pasted it, or stared at it while waiting for real content ever learns…

Cassius

July 17, 2026 at 3:05 PM

Dave's questions and this thread have me constructively focusing on the issue of what IS really important to focus on. I'm working on some new thoughts for articles about the general issue of the public perception of what "hedonism" means and how much of a problem that word can be.

I was watching a short clip this morning of someone who was mad about an issue and he concluded by accusing his opponents of being "greedy" and essentially focusing on their own pleasures of the moment to the exclusion of concern about future generations. Whether he was right or wrong on the particular issue isn't nearly as important as the fact that he specifically called his opponents "hedonists" as if there is no other possible meaning of the word beyond a narrow focus on the immediate bodily-pleasures-of-the-moment.

1. Is it worth anyone's time to write material trying to rehabilitate the word hedonism?
2. Does it make more sense just to explain that that's not what Epicurus was about?
3. Why is it in fact so hard for people to weigh the pleasures of the moment against the pains that are sure to follow? Aren't there ways to work on improving that situation without talking as if pleasure and desire should be entirely abandoned?

I tend to think that one of the most effective lines of argument is to look to the actual lives of the ancient Epicureans to see how they implemented the philosophy. The contents of Epicurus' will and his last letter are extremely helpful in putting to rest any ambiguities because we can see how Epicurus himself lived his philosophy.

Many of us here and I am one of them love to spend time digging into the details of the surviving fragments to glean more out of them, but can I say that I really have time to do that given that I can't seem to eat right and exercise enough and already have a clear focus on the balance of short and long term and greater and lesser pleasures and pains? No, I can't say that I've come nearly far enough on the basics, and spending too much time on nonessential details may in my case at least be a way of procrastination from what really needs to be done.

So there's all sorts of things that need to be addressed, not only in others but in ourselves. And a time and a proper way to say everything - even denouncing with righteous indignation those who are so blinded by desire that they choose a lesser but immediate pleasure that will cost them a future but much greater pain.

Quote from Torquatus On Ends 1:33

On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of the pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain.

Quote from DaveT

Respecting the man, and Epicurus' mind, is what the Forum is dedicated to, right

That's one way of looking at it, maybe like there is more than one way to view pleasure.

Yes if we respect Epicurus' mind and person, as Lucretius did for example, that's a good guardrail. But just like Epicurus himself as a real person, we all have to live day to day and focus on the most important issues, just as he wrote in the letter to Herodotus about not always needing to know the details but always returning to the headings.

So I would say the real idea is to focus more on the importance of the core ideas which are needed all the time (true views of gods, death, pleasure as the goal, pain as manageable) and only after those are firmly established as the organizational principles would we be prudent to be spending much time on secondary issues.

Of course its tricky - advocacy that Epicurus had a goal other than pleasure is not a secondary issue at all. That takes us back to Pacatus' observation that we will never have consensus on some things. If we are going to buiod content and community on the view that pleasure is the goal, there has to be a limit on advocacy that undercuts that.

Eikadistes lets us know about his recent work:

Quote

Greetings .....

I hope all is well. I just wanted to share a project I finished.

I finished an attempt at Book 1 of On Gods. No published translations are currently available of P.Herc. 26. Dr. David Armstrong apparently started doing so, but ... Philodemus really, really, really sucks to the modern eye as a prose writer, so Dr. Armstrong, as I've read, abandoned the project. Anyway...

I published my translation of the entire book here: https://www.academia.edu/170344034/Philodemus_On_Gods_Book_1

I will be revising updates on twentiers.com/on-gods/

Pacatus i think your post does a good job of summarizing where we need to be.

Quote from Pacatus

I didn’t read the policy thread as forbidding any and all discussion of kinetic/katastematic pleasure (or aponia/ataraxia). They’ve been batted around on here since I’ve been here – often helpfully.

Correct. These terms and questions can be discussed without advocacy of the opposing position, and the very existence of the controversy is an "elephant in the room" that cannot be made to go away by ignoring it. I expect to write many additional posts and articles that address the issue from the "pleasure is the supreme good / pleasure is a very wide concept perspective, and I hope others will too. We can also have "private" discussions that do not affect the publicly-viewable flow of the site and distract from its central message.

Quote from Pacatus

But it seems as if the various arguments (using that word in a technical, not a pejorative sense) about trying to parse strict distinctions are unlikely to ever be settled to any general satisfaction.

And that is probably the most important point. There will never be universal agreement on these points, even among those of us who devote extensive time to reading about Epicurus. In my own mind I come back over and over to the scenes in the "Agora" movie about Hypatia, where the Platonic-like philosophers were consumed in their disputes about astronomy and geometry while their world was collapsing around them outside their doors. There's a time and a place for everything, but these are not the times nor is this the place to allow the focus of the site to be distracted away from central issues.

I don't think anyone on this website is an ascetic or even a minimalist at heart or views "pleasure" or even "desire" with suspicion. And yet those attitudes and perspectives have embedded themselves into Epicurean discourse, largely through this dispute that somehow "katastematic" pleasure is superior and different to pleasure itself.

I haven't recently referenced Elayne's article from 2019 but it continues to be a good non-technical discussion of the issues:

Blog Article

On Pain, Pleasure, and Happiness

Not "absence of pain" as a full statement of the goal of life, but “the Feelings are two, pleasure and pain” and “Pleasure is the beginning and the end of a happy life.”

Brief: The feelings are only two, pleasure and pain—there is no third state such as neutral, and there are no “fancy pleasures” which are different from regular pleasures. Because there is no neutral, reducing pain in life is only possible if there is a corresponding increase in pleasure. The extent of pleasure can be…

Elayne

July 15, 2019 at 7:31 PM

Dave - You wrote:

Quote from DaveT

.Certainly a person can feel katastematic pleasure over longer periods of time than physical pleasure. Can we agree to that?

it appears to me that we can include among those who would not agree with that Professor Kelly Aronsen in her 2019 Health and Hedonism in Plato and Epicurus. There, Aronsen parses kinetic vs. katastematic entirely differently from the mental vs physical your question implies:

Quote from Kelly Aronsen

Contrary to the dominant scholarly view, I argue that there is good reason to avoid classifying non-restorative pleasures as kinetic since they are not derived from movements toward painless, healthy functioning. In this chapter I contend that pleasures from taste, sex, sound, etc., are painless in themselves and are therefore katastematic; no matter whether they occur in the midst of pain (such as when we enjoy tasty food when hungry) or are isolated from pain (when we enjoy dessert after filling up on dinner), they are perceptions of the painless workings of the organism.

I don't write this to encourage us to spend more time looking for classical scholars to take sides with on the meaning of kinetic and katastametic. Nor should we throw up our hands and conclude that Epicurean philosophy is hopeless because we've lost so many texts. The right way forward for virtually everyone is to focus on the basics as it is clear that Lucretius, Diogenes of Oinoanda, Diogenes Laertius, and the general ancient world understood him. And it seems clear that they saw Epicurus as embracing pleasures of both types - pleasures of action or pleasures of state or whatever those words mean - and choosing among those pleasures by applying a a common sense analysis of whether they will bring us more pleasure or more pain.

Glad to have you William.