Posts by Cassius

Matt - In case you have not seen it, I have just updated my long-standing summary on the issue behind what Robertson is saying, which I believe needs to be taken in context of Plato's Philebus. This contains my most complete list of citations on the topic.

Quote from Pacatus

But that is so egregiously wrong. He clearly did not do his due diligence on that

Unfortunately, it's equally if not more probable than he's got a sheet-full of citations from modern writers supporting him on that. Wrong, but they are legion.

Quote from Pacatus

But “blessedness” is not one that works for me either way. Perhaps I just don't understand it the way that those for whom it is helpful do. So, I just let it go (past tense there) – along with the gods.

Exactly - what meaning can "blessed -" possibly carry to a normal ear today other than "blessed by the gods" which Epicurus explicitly rejected. It's a word that appears and has to be incorporated in reviewing texts, but I see no reason to focus on it in normal conversation today rather than "happiness" or "well being" or "the best life."

I may have more to say later but this is why you don't listen to stoics - or anyone who advoccates relief from pain rather than pleasure - as what Epicurus taught as the Supreme Good.

The whole premise of the article is built on a false conception that Epicurus advocated tranquility ABOVE pleasure. If you want that, you should indeed be a Stoic.

This has been a very long thread but I think we got to this point without including the argument that meets Max's concern about why Epicurus was concerned about "perfect" or the limit of pleasure: He needed a response to the argument that Plato had made (repeated by Seneca later, which is evidence of its concern) that that which is not perfect cannot be the highest good.

Plato's Philebus

The Platonic argument against pleasure based on “limits” is important enough that it needs to be referenced immediately. Unfortunately this topic would consume a long discussion in itself, but here is an excerpt from Philebus as a finding aid to the full discussion where the argument can be researched:

SOCRATES: I omit ten thousand other things, such as beauty and health and strength, and the many beauties and high perfections of the soul: O my beautiful Philebus, the goddess, methinks, seeing the universal wantonness and wickedness of all things, and that there was in them no limit to pleasures and self-indulgence, devised the limit of law and order, whereby, as you say, Philebus, she torments, or as I maintain, delivers the soul. — What think you, Protarchus?
…

SOCRATES: Have pleasure and pain a limit, or do they belong to the class which admits of more and less?

PHILEBUS: They belong to the class which admits of more, Socrates; for pleasure would not be perfectly good if she were not infinite in quantity and degree.

SOCRATES: Nor would pain, Philebus, be perfectly evil. And therefore the infinite cannot be that element which imparts to pleasure some degree of good. But now — admitting, if you like, that pleasure is of the nature of the infinite — in which of the aforesaid classes, O Protarchus and Philebus, can we without irreverence place wisdom and knowledge and mind? And let us be careful, for I think that the danger will be very serious if we err on this point.

PHILEBUS: You magnify, Socrates, the importance of your favourite god.

SOCRATES: And you, my friend, are also magnifying your favourite goddess; but still I must beg you to answer the question.
…

SOCRATES: And whence comes that soul, my dear Protarchus, unless the body of the universe, which contains elements like those in our bodies but in every way fairer, had also a soul? Can there be another source?

PROTARCHUS: Clearly, Socrates, that is the only source.

SOCRATES: Why, yes, Protarchus; for surely we cannot imagine that of the four classes, the finite, the infinite, the composition of the two, and the cause, the fourth, which enters into all things, giving to our bodies souls, and the art of self-management, and of healing disease, and operating in other ways to heal and organize, having too all the attributes of wisdom; — we cannot, I say, imagine that whereas the self-same elements exist, both in the entire heaven and in great provinces of the heaven, only fairer and purer, this last should not also in that higher sphere have designed the noblest and fairest things?

PROTARCHUS: Such a supposition is quite unreasonable.

SOCRATES: Then if this be denied, should we not be wise in adopting the other view and maintaining that there is in the universe a mighty infinite and an adequate limit, of which we have often spoken, as well as a presiding cause of no mean power, which orders and arranges years and seasons and months, and may be justly called wisdom and mind?

PROTARCHUS: Most justly.

Seneca's Quotations

We can find the same point made by Seneca in the following letters:

Quote

Quote Seneca’s Letters – Book I – Letter XVI: This also is a saying of Epicurus: “If you live according to nature, you will never be poor; if you live according to opinion, you will never be rich.” Nature’s wants are slight; the demands of opinion are boundless. Suppose that the property of many millionaires is heaped up in your possession. Assume that fortune carries you far beyond the limits of a private income, decks you with gold, clothes you in purple, and brings you to such a degree of luxury and wealth that you can bury the earth under your marble floors; that you may not only possess, but tread upon, riches. Add statues, paintings, and whatever any art has devised for the luxury; you will only learn from such things to crave still greater. Natural desires are limited; but those which spring from false opinion can have no stopping point. The false has no limits.

Quote

Quote Seneca’s Letters – To Lucilius – 66.45: “What can be added to that which is perfect? Nothing otherwise that was not perfect to which something has been added. Nor can anything be added to virtue, either, for if anything can be added thereto, it must have contained a defect. Honour, also, permits of no addition; for it is honourable because of the very qualities which I have mentioned.[5] What then? Do you think that propriety, justice, lawfulness, do not also belong to the same type, and that they are kept within fixed limits? The ability to increase is proof that a thing is still imperfect.”“THE ABILITY TO INCREASE IS PROOF THAT A THING IS IMPERFECT.”

Additional citations here:

Episode 341 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is now available. This week our episode is entitled: "Is It True That No One Dies For A Lie?

Quote from wbernys

First of all, it is likely Plutarch is being typically unfair here, as i imagine right after this Epicurus may have mentioned examples like helping a friend, or acquiring food in need. But Plutarch uses this to suggest unfairly Epicurus would be okay with things like murder or sexual assault. Notice how Plutarch conveniently doesn't mention what the "anything the law forbids" actually is.

I agree that this is an important consideration. It would have been obvious to Plutarch and Epicurus that the law sometimes forbids in ways that are unjust, and Epicurus' views of justice clearly show that circumstances can change and agreements can and should be broken when they are no longer just to those concerned. I would suspect that those circumstances (when a law becomes unjust) were of as much concern then as they are today, and that prompted Epicurus' examination of the issue in detail in the Principal Doctrines.

So the fact that indeed punishment may come from breaking a law is true in many circucumstances, and one would hope that laws are generally beneficial. But there are many cases when breaking the law is not only the just thing to do, but also in fact brings much more pleasure and beneficial results from and to the community than complying.

So while "murder and sexual assault" are going to always be wrong, there are many ways to break unjust laws that are not wrong in themselves just because a law is involved, and you have to account for both situations in one's analysis.

I've sent an email to Christos but it's late in Greece so I presume it will be some time before i hear a response.

Quote from Patrikios

Would you feel comfortable reaching out to either of the speakers to get a copy/url for the video of their June 27 session?

Sure let me see what I can do.....

Quote from Pacatus

I have become more and more a “one day at a time” kind of guy.

And that's why I see this as relevant to the other thread on how widespread literacy was in the ancient world, and why it grew so well in the Roman world in particular. When you are practical-minded and have limited time to pore over abstract texts, you have no choice but focus on practical conclusions and applications.

Quote from Pacatus

This is exactly the kind of ideal (in the sense of ultimate goal or telos) I no longer entertain, let alone strive for – like Nirvana or Bodhi or “big Satori.” I just let that kind of thing go – relaxing from it, as it were.

I 100% agree Pacatus, and while also not denigrating any sincere Epicurean's argument about this, I think it's very very dangerous to look at it that way. Human life can and should target conceptual ideals as a way to visualize the best life, as a way of making the best decisions, but if you think that your targeting is going to actually make you an Epicurean god, you're sadly deluded, and I don't see the texts justifying that as what the Epicureans meant. Living "as a god among men" cannot have meant that you are going to live as an ACTUAL god among men.

I just posted this in another thread, but since it is directly applicable to this discussion I'll duplicate it. Max, would you disagree with this summary? (As we all know these engines like to tell us what we want to hear, so let's presume this has been talking to me and has picked up my biases. Even so, is it wrong?)

Pleasure (ἡδονή, hēdonē) is the term the Principal Doctrines are built around. It is named repeatedly and functions throughout as the explicit standard by which choice, avoidance, and the good life are judged. Happiness in the strict sense — εὐδαιμονία (eudaimonia) — does not appear as a noun anywhere in the text. Where the Doctrines gesture toward that idea, they use μακάριος / μακαριότης (“blessed” / “blessedness” — PD 1, PD 27), not eudaimonia.

Tranquility is a more complicated case than a simple presence/absence question. The abstract noun ἀταραξία does not appear as a headline term the way ἡδονή does. But a cognate of it is the organizing term of an entire doctrine: PD 17 — “The just person is the most undisturbed (ἀταρακτότατος), but the unjust person is full of the greatest disturbance (ταραχή).” That is not a passing phrase; the whole doctrine is built on that contrast. So it would be wrong to say the concept of undisturbedness never appears as a central term in the Doctrines — it is central to PD 17 specifically.

What is accurate is a claim about frequency and rank, not absence. Pleasure is named as the criterion of choice and avoidance in over a dozen doctrines (PD 3, 5, 8–10, 18–21, 25–26, 29–30, 40). Undisturbedness in this technical sense surfaces explicitly only once, in PD 17. And nowhere — including PD 17 — is it treated as a good in its own right or ranked above pleasure. In PD 17 it describes a consequence of justice, and justice is itself instrumental to living pleasantly (PD 5). Tranquility is never the measuring stick; pleasure remains that throughout.

For example:

• PD 3: “The limit of the magnitude of pleasures is the removal of all pain.”
• PD 5: “It is impossible to live pleasantly without living prudently, honorably, and justly… and impossible to live prudently, honorably, and justly without living pleasantly.”
• PD 17: “The just man is most free from trouble, the unjust most full of trouble.”
• PD 18: “The pleasure in the flesh is not increased, when once the pain due to want is removed, but is only varied.”
• PD 27: “Of all the things which wisdom acquires to produce the blessedness of the complete life, far the greatest is the possession of friendship.”
• PD 29–30: classify desires by whether their non-fulfillment produces pain.

Aponia (ἀπονία, absence of bodily pain) follows the same pattern as undisturbedness: it is not put forward as an independent goal-term. Instead, the Doctrines repeatedly define the limit of pleasure as the removal of pain (PD 3), keeping pleasure — not the absence of pain by itself — as the operative standard.

Where later interpreters and many modern summaries treat ataraxia as Epicurus’s stated goal, the Doctrines give that reading a real but narrow foothold — PD 17 — rather than the broad support it’s often assumed to have. The dominant, explicit standard throughout the Principal Doctrines is pleasure. Tranquility appears, but only once, only in service of that standard, and never above it.

Quote from DaveT

However.... I think an absolute necessity to the teaching and learning process had to be frequent, (dare I say more than weekly) meetings for both the illiterate and illiterate to learn and adopt the lessons from the Garden(s) into daily life.

Had to be frequent, and I would say likely had to repeat and focus on key points rather than deliver (for example) a Lucretius-length monologue.

Here's my view:

I would agree with the direction you are coming from Pacatus and "happiness" is the term I prefer to use for the reasonable human goal.

I'd also say it appears that just as today, Epicurus' time was filled with religious speculation and terminology. Most people were familiar with looking to the life of "the gods" as an example of the best life possible. Epicurus wouldn't have believed that the gods "bless" anyone directly, but as a shorthand for the best life, which is presumed to be what the gods live, the term probably can be used without injecting too much supernaturalism.

Same problem with "eudaimonia," and it's good demon, but Epicurus used the term anyway. if you want to be understood at all sometimes you have to adapt the common vocabulary.

No problem Pacatus I think the main part of the thread to which your refer is winding down with the opposing positions clearly stated -

Your question may go on longer so I'll move to another area.

Quote from Max DuBoff

But indeed, it shouldn't be taken to mean that all pleasure is absence of pain, because it conflicts with 1.37: "For we don’t pursue only this pleasure which excites our nature itself by some pleasantness and is apprehended by the senses along with a certain pleasantness, but we regard as greatest that pleasure which is apprehended once all pain has been removed" (my translation).

Max, as you might expect, I will say that there's no conflict between these statemens of Torquatus at all.

Here's Torquatus in 1.37 (Reid translation): "we look upon the greatest pleasure as that which is enjoyed when all pain is removed. Now inasmuch as whenever we are released from pain, we rejoice in the mere emancipation and freedom from all annoyance, and everything whereat we rejoice is equivalent to pleasure... therefore the complete termed pleasure."

He isn't asserting two competing goods, including a higher one with a completeness requirement. He's applying a general principle that everything at which we rejoice is equivalent to pleasure, and this leads him to conclude that release from pain simply is pleasure.

That's the identical point made at 2.9-11 ("freedom from pain does not mean the same thing as pleasure" / "Clearly the same, and indeed the greatest"). It's not a rival claim to 2.9-11 — it's the same claim.

Then Torquatus removes any doubt in the very next sentence, 1.38: "Epicurus thinks that the highest degree of pleasure is defined by the removal of all pain, so that pleasure may afterwards exhibit diversities and differences but is incapable of increase or extension."

That's the whole point - incapable of increase is a "hitting a ceiling" quantity claim, not a claim about which pleasures are eligible to count toward blessedness.

The same highest state is explicitly said to still exhibit "diversities and differences." If kinetic pleasures were structurally locked out as composing blessedness the way your reading needs them to be, there'd be nothing left for that phrase to refer to. The variety has to be the sensory pleasure from earlier in 1.37 — now understood as filling the ceiling, not excluded from it.
This is exactly the point of PD18: "The pleasure in the flesh is not increased when once the pain due to want is removed, but is only varied." Same two points are made: quantity (has a limit) and content (keeps varying). There's no third perspective from which some pleasures count toward a blessed life but other can't.

So I don't think 1.37 conflicts with 2.9 at all. Once "greatest" is read correctly, both passages say the same thing. The conflict arises only if you import an absolutist premise and read "greatest" as "the only thing that qualifies" - - which the text doesn't say, and which 1.38 rules out in the very next line.

When Torquatus calls the pain-free state "the highest pleasure possible" in 1.38, he immediately says it can still "exhibit diversities and differences." What do you think that variety consists of, if not the sensory/kinetic pleasures your theory excludes from conferring blessedness?

All this comes in the context of:

Quote

[40] XII. Again, the truth that pleasure is the supreme good can be most easily apprehended from the following consideration. Let us imagine an individual in the enjoyment of pleasures great, numerous and constant, both mental and bodily, with no pain to thwart or threaten them; I ask what circumstances can we describe as more excellent than these or more desirable? A man whose circumstances are such must needs possess, as well as other things, a robust mind subject to no fear of death or pain, because death is apart from sensation, and pain when lasting is usually slight, when oppressive is of short duration, so that its temporariness reconciles us to its intensity, and its slightness to its continuance.

I agree with Don's post, and in addition specifically on the issue of whether Epicurus was understood in the ancient world to be a "value dualist," I would cite what I see as a very clear refutation of any idea that "absence of pain" is something different and better than pleasure:

Quote from On Ends Book Two, 9 :

Cicero: “…[B]ut unless you are extraordinarily obstinate you are bound to admit that 'freedom from pain' does not mean the same thing as 'pleasure.'”

Torquatus: “Well but on this point you will find me obstinate, for it is as true as any proposition can be.”

The vacation example is useful to discuss. You've told us that on your own reading that small ordinary statistically real risks taken for an "unnecessary" pleasure can't be justified. You admit that this troubles you, but that you can't find another way to read PD3/18/20-21 and Men.128/131.

I'd ask you to consider the possibility that this is the texts correcting themselves. When a sincere, careful interpretation produces a result even its author finds radical and troubling, that's usually evidence against one of his premises. We've already identified the likely origin of your problem - the completeness requirement that you've twice said you can't ground in Epicurus.

Epicurus taught people who drove no cars but rode roads and sailed seas that were, if anything, more dangerous than a modern highway, and nothing in the record suggests he told them not to travel to see a friend.

As to the deathbed letter - saying the pain "doesn't interfere with blessedness" because Epicurus reports being happy - that's a conclusion, not a test. This tells us the rule after the fact, but gives no way to predict a result before the fact. What would you have said in advance, not knowing the outcome, about whether that pain would interfere?

Is the position you're defending your account of what Epicurus's texts actually say, or is it your own preferred view? You say that Epicurus should have been something other than what he was.

People here on this thread need to understand clearly to what extent you yourself admit that your argument is not required by the texts themselves.

Quote from Max DuBoff

(Separately, I think Epicurus should've embraced value dualism rather than hedonism, arguing that the absence of pain and pleasure are both intrinsic goods; but my interpretation above stands even without this point.)

Max:

On the "interference" test: You've now said the rule isn't "always avoid pain," it's "avoid pain that interferes with enjoying katastematic pleasure." And that pain which doesn't interfere with katastematic pleasure because anticipation or recollection lets you manage it is fine to accept.

But what does "interfere" actually mean?

If "interferes" means displaces katastematic pleasure at that moment, since you agree that pleasure and pain are exhaustive and mutually exclusive — then I don't see that you are saying anything new. Every pain "interferes" with tranquility by definition, and that takes us back to giving up 17 units of pleasure to avoid 3 units of pain.

But if "interferes" means something like "disrupts" a settled state going forward, as a stomach ache from overeating does, then what you're describing is just prudence: weighing a pain against a pleasure with practical wisdom managing the accounting. That's not a rule that competes with "weigh total pleasure against total pain." That is weighing total pleasure against total pain, with prudence doing what Epicurus always said it does and it's the ordinary Epicurean calculus of pleasure and pain that anyone can understand.

So which is it? If it's the second, I don't think 'refer to tranquility' names a rule distinct from ordinary pleasure/pain calculus anymore — you've just brought back prudence in under a different name.

Now let's move to blessedness — I'll just say that I think your entire framework is wrong, and here is why. Epicurus' work must be taken as a whole and assembled logically without leaving out any of the key premises. Just like there are only bodies and space in the universe, there are only two feelings given by nature to decide what to choose and what to avoid. It is as inconceivable that we are going to end up with a goal other than the positive goal that nature gave us - pleasure - as it would be for anything in the universe to be supernatural, or consist of something other than bodies and space. But that's exactly what it appears to me the "Tranquility" argument does - it sets out a goal higher than and different from pleasure.

"Blessedness" or "Happiness" isn't a separate ingredient that only certain approved pleasures are allowed to contribute to. It's the character of a whole life, built from every pleasure in it — kinetic and katastematic together, held across memory, present experience, and anticipation. Nothing in the text requires sorting pleasures into a "counts" bin and a "doesn't count" bin before happiness can emerge from the mix. Friendship contributes to blessedness by being one of the richest sources of pleasure there is, whether that pleasure is 'active' (joy of company, conversation, shared meals, aid given and received) or 'stable' (confidence that comes from knowing help is there if you need it). There's no dilemma to resolve, because nothing forces friendship or any other active or stable pleasure to be only one or the other before it's allowed to count.

The dilemma only feels forced on you because it's built on the same premise you've already told me twice you can't ground in Epicurus — that a pleasure must be complete/perfect to confer blessedness. Based on that, you think the kinetic pleasures Epicurus talks so much about are structurally locked out from contributing to happiness. Drop that premise and the dilemma dissolves along with it.

Much of this goes back to the debate that others like Gosling & Taylor and Nikolsky have stated in much more detail. Your argument requires what I would say is unjustified emphasis of "stable" pleasures over the "active" pleasures that Epicurus indeed took note of, but for which his most devoted followers wrote and acted as if it was of no consequence, and for which there would be no real argument at all but for these passages such as PD3, PD18, PD20, and Menoeceus 128, which can all be given complete and consistent meaning without any such construction.

In my view this argument and many others are best settled by looking at the lives of the ancient Epicureans as they are recorded to have lived them. When I look at the life of Epicurus I see a man who devoted his life to campaigning as energetically as he could for what he saw was both the truth and a better way of life that rejects the claims of supernatural religion. He certainly knew that that path might well cost him a great deal of pain, and even his life, but he lived it anyway, and considered himself happy, even though the "tranquility" argument would have led him to take an entirely different course.

Your rule licenses risks taken to secure the tranquility of yourself or your friends already inside your circle. It doesn't explain why the Epicureans wrote and erected inscriptions and campaigned publicly, for strangers who owed them nothing and could offer them no security in return, against the most powerful religious and philosophical authorities of their day. That's not friendship-insurance. Those are choices made by men who had a clear idea of happiness that they thought was worth pursuing regardless of what it cost them.

Note: I posted this before seeing posts 84 and 85, but I'll comment on them as needed later.

Max,

The twentieth-meal example is very useful.

Let me restate it to make sure I have it right: given a choice between 10 units of pleasure/0 pain and 30 units of pleasure/3 pain, "refer your actions to the goal of nature as tranquility" tells you to take the first option — forfeiting 17 units of net pleasure - solely to avoid the 3 units of pain.

Is that a fair restatement of your own answer?

So you're saying that on your view, no amount of net pleasure gained can outweigh even a modest amount of pain accepted to get it. That's the "even a small amount of pain is too much to pay for a large amount of pleasure" position I've been thinking your view amounts to. Is that correct?

As to what that would mean, Epicurus wrote on his last day, in real physical agony, that the joy of memory and friendship that day outweighed (or arrayed against in the military metaphor) the pain in his body. This is a direct claim that a great pleasure was worth to him a very great pain, in full net balance. Regardless about what we think of whether he changed his calculation as the pain got worse (which would be entirely reasonable to do), Epicurus did not avoid or forfeit those pleasures in advance just because great pain was involved.

Your rule would have told Epicurus in advance never to have made the friendships at all, since every friendship carries the certainty of future grief — real pain — in exchange for something "merely additive" and therefore, on your account, not counting toward blessedness. Do you accept that consequence?

Second thing, maybe even more important. You've now stated at least twice that you don't know why Epicurus would be committed to the claim that a blessed life has to be complete or perfect in the Platonic sense. Everything you're saying after that , that additive pleasures can't confer blessedness, friendship is instrumental rather than itself a pleasure/good , seems built entirely on that starting point. If you can't explain that reasoning, why would we find it persuasive to overturn all the many statements commending Pleasure as the goal?

As to friendship, PD27 doesn't call friendship just a useful tool alongside the virtues — it calls it "far the greatest" of the things which "produce the blessedness of the complete life." If friendship is instrumental the way courage or prudence are instrumental, why does Epicurus single it out instead of listing it among them? I think Epicurus is telling us the pleasure of friendship is a major part of what a full life is made of, not that it's a mechanism that occasionally throws off some pleasant ("nice") side effects.

I don't think "tranquility as prime directive" survives contact with either the deathbed letter or PD27. I'd like to hear you take those two head-on., because that's what is of most benefit to the forum - providing understandable answers that are of practical use to the kind of normal people to whom Epicurus appealed in the ancient world. It can't have required a degree in philosophy to understand Epicurus in the ancient world, and it can't require that now.

As Cassius Longinus said himself to Cicero,

... For it is hard to convince men that “the good is to be chosen for its own sake”; but that pleasure and tranquillity of mind is acquired by virtue, justice, and the good is both true and demonstrable. Why, Epicurus himself, from whom all the Catiuses and Amafiniuses in the world, incompetent translators of terms as they are, derive their origin, lays it down that “to live a life of pleasure is impossible without living a life of virtue and justice.”

Why pleasure AND tranquility? Are you saying that as with the title to "Living For Pleasure," Cassius Longinus should have written "but that pleasure (and by that i mean tranquility) is acquired by virtue, justice, and the good is both true and demonstrable?"

Catius and Amafinius may not have been the smoothest of translators of images vs. spectres, but is it really likely they too missed something as basic as not understanding the right priority between pleasure and tranquility?