Posts by Cassius

Good survey of the available movie / tv versions of the Odyssey:

Quote from DaveT

... Now, take that short explanation and see how I don't care about any discussion of kinetic and katastematic pleasures. Epicurus is telling me quite clearly that absent pain, I have pleasure.

Dave, the further I read into Arenson's book the more i would encourage the part I underlined. I'm not disagreeing with what you are saying about your more practical approach - I am saying that i don't think you are going far enough.

Arenson is building the case (with many of the same cites as Nikolsky and Gosling & Taylor) that the kinetic/katastematic issue is focused on responding to arguments that health is not a pleasure, that replenishment pleasures have nothing to do with "the good," and that what Epicurus was doing was rejecting that argument and saying that indeed replenishment and active pleasures of any kind are definitely in the category of "good," regardless of whether they are "becoming" or "being."

I'm one of those people who find that entire argument singularly uninteresting and unpersuasive, and I am willing to dig into it only because I see that it has been use for what i consider to be very damaging purposes.

So I agree that not worrying too much about kinetic vs katastemtatic is exactly the right approach for most people.

But it's also exactly the right approach in regard to worrying about absence of pain.

It's total BS to build a theory on thinking that Epicurus did not know the difference between bread and water vs steak and wine, and that he would not prefer the latter absent some particular circumstance that would make choice of the latter lead eventually to more pain than pleasure.

And of course Epicurus would not suggest that the bare description of "absence of pain" would constitue the ultimate goal of life. Sensory deprivation may have some enjoyable short-term aspects in certain circumstances, but to assert that sensory depriivation is the ultimate best human experience is totally absurd -- and therefore I do not think he would have meant anything absurd.

"Absence of Pain" is every bit as tied to responding to the arguments about process vs state and being vs becoming that Plato and Aristotle were wrestling with as is the kinetic/katastematic distinction. "Absence of pain" supplies the "state of being" that can be thrown in the of the Platonists and others who insist that only the "complete" can be the highest good.

If you're into logic puzzles the kinetic and katastematic pleasure distinctions, and "total absence of pain" are great logical solutions to tricky questions. but they have only the most abstract of connections to real life decisions.

And the reason I am reacting against your formulations so far is that your suggestion that we should first eliminate pain and only afterwards concern ourselves with real-world mental and bodily pleasures turns the true priority on its head.

The point of PD04 is to emphasize the point that we should NOT obsess about pain or make it the focus of our lives, because pain is ultimately manageable - it can be terminated by death if it gets too severe, and when it is not so severe we can almost always find ways to experience offsetting pleasures that outweigh those pains.

All of which is to repeat that the common sense application of pleasure being the supreme good and always balancing pleasures against pain, with the goal of greatest net pleasure, are the key to be practical application of the philosophy. Ideas like kinetic and katastematic and "absence of pain" are fine for those who want to debate the logical formulas, but they absolutely should not be used to corrupt the common sense balancing of pleasures and pains that every infant or animal understands before they become corrupted through having to deal with Platonism and Stoicism and the rest.

I have returned to this project now that the audiobook generation technology continues to advance, and below is a link to my latest version of Lucretius. This is largely the Bailey version but with various edits to shorten sentences so as to prevent the TTS engine from choking. I should soon have a better one with better markings and navigation to make it easier to find sections, but this one is already good enough for casual use. Far fewer weird pronunciations than in the past.

The description section at Youtube contains links to the start of each book.

Getting this project to perfection is going to be too time-consuming for me to stay with constantly, but I am posting the raw text to the link below, and i will be revising it as time allows. Of course anyone who has the time to make specific suggestions for corrections is welcome to send in corrections. Not only do I want to eliminate the obvious errors, but there are many archaic English words in Bailey's version (e.g. - "desried") that there is no reason not to update to make this more useful to more people.

Let me expand and double down on this:

Quote from Cassius

Epicurus says all pleasures are desirable --- he never says all pleasures are EQUALLY desirable, and indeed it would be ridiculous to say so.

So yes as far as I can tell Epicurus never says that all pleasures are equally desirable, any more than he says that all pains are equally undesirable. It would be ludicrious to take those positions, but the improper interpretation of absence of pain is leading directly to that result.

People are talking as if Epicurus were defining a particular experience, rather than a particular context, as "the best pleasure" or "the highest pleasure" and so they are demoting all other analysis of how to rank pleasures and pains as if to do so were meaningless. When you imply that the single goal is "absence of pain" then you are start talking as if it makes no difference which pleaures take the place of the pain that they displace, which again I will say is so nonsensical that the important texts that survive make no mention of such a counterintuitive concept.

And yet today all you hear is that the most minimal pleasures are all we should care about, even though Epicurus specifically said something entirely different. We do not seek to be free to walk away from pleasures whenever we like not that we may at all times enjoy but a few things, but that so that we won't feel painful longing if circumstances require that we go without them.

And again independence of desire we think a great good — not that we may at all times enjoy but a few things, but that, if we do not possess many, we may enjoy the few in the genuine persuasion that those have the sweetest pleasure in luxury who least need it, and that all that is natural is easy to be obtained, but that which is superfluous is hard

And this very kind of discussion shows that Epicurus was very well aware that all pleasures are not exactly the same and totally interchangeable.

Dave, I appreciate your engaging on this; it was your posts yesterday that led to a discussion last night at our "meet and greet" and kept me awake last night thinking about it all.

Quote from DaveT

No, what I mean is that once you eliminate pain(s) you have pleasure automatically and immediately. You don't need to do anything to turn to pleasure. Now, take that short explanation and see how I don't care about any discussion of kinetic and katastematic pleasures. Epicurus is telling me quite clearly that absent pain, I have pleasure.

While this does some work toward clarification I don't think it goes far enough. I think it is fair to say what we are talking about is this, and the difficulties that arise from departing from it by suggesting that we should triangulate our decisions on the basis of any term other than pleasure, as stated here: "We are inquiring, then, what is the final and ultimate Good, which as all philosophers are agreed must be of such a nature as to be the End to which all other things are means, while it is not itself a means to anything else. This Epicurus finds in pleasure; pleasure he holds to be the Chief Good, pain the Chief Evil."

Your statement taken literally continues to say "once you eliminate pains..." as if the only pleasure you are really insisting on are whatever you happen to find available when pain is gone. Yes, because there are two feelings, when pain is gone there is pleasure. Yes, when pain is gone, then the pleasure that remains is pure or complete or unadulterated by pain. That is the most pure or complete or unadulterated it can be. But are you telling me that Epicurus was blind to the differences between pleasures that he discussed in PD09 as differing in duration, intensity, and parts of the body that are affected? Certainly he was not, and he was focusing his efforts in life on particular steps which he calculated would bring him the most pleasure (studying nature, building a school, gathering together teammates), all of which required significant costs in pain of exertion, making of enemies, etc. Had Epicurus held "I am not going to pursue those pleasures until I eliminate every pain from my life" we would not know about him in order to have this forum -- Epicurus would never have done anything beyond chasing pains to their minimum -- and like all of us, he never fully escaped them, as we know from his "poor health" and painful death.

So yes Epicurus is telling you that every time you eliminate pain what takes its place is "a" pleasure. But it would be the height of irresponsibility not to calculate your actions to make sure that your pleasures that you achieve in your circumstance are those of the longest duration, greatest intensity, and involved the most of the total mind and body that are possible to you. And part of the reason I say "height of irresponsibility" is that Epicurus has drilled into us that when we die we are gone forever, so that we need to take great care how we spend our time, which is just another way of saying that we should firmly direct the pleasures that we seek to achieve. And we do NOT wait until "all pains are gone" before we start making sure that our pleasures are as gratifying to us as possible.

Ok that's going to cover most of what I suspect you'll want to respond to, but I will touch on other aspects of the rest.

Quote from DaveT

I am in a state of pleasure which I can increase any way I choose within the hedonic calculus.

The issue there is being clear about "increase." From the perspective of "increase," when you truly have no pain it is not possible to increase pleasure from that point, because when there are only two options, and one of the options is gone, you are already completely full of the other option.

The problem that underlies much of this debate is that "completeness" does not say anything about duration, intensity, parts of the body affected, or anything else about the details of the specific pleasures under discussion. We don't experience "pleasure" as a concept any more than we experience color as a concept -- we experience specific pleasures and we see specific colors. The conceptual terms allow Epicurus and us to talk about categories, but those terms tell us NOTHING about the specifics within those categories, some of which are much more desirable than others. I am sure that statement will generate some pushback but Epicurus says all pleasures are desirable --- he never says all pleasures are EQUALLY desirable, and indeed it would be ridiculous to say so.

Quote from DaveT

Man, I love your processes, but please give me time to plumb your prior comments before supporting your position with more material. I can't keep up and feel like you are giving me too many things to think about before I can finish my conversation. me out of the water. Can we come back to this after you actually read my response?

Like I said I read your comments yesterday closely and I very much appreciate them because they are helping me focus in on the deepest issues.

The term "absence of pain" as applied to real life is another Rorschach test that can mean anything to anyone. It is useful in context when you are debating categories and abstractions, but it tells you NOTHING about the particular experience under discussion without reading much more into it.

Since pleasure and pain cannot coexist at the same space per PD03, any particular pleasure can also be called "absence of pain." But of course what we are reading into the term most of the time is to read it as complete absence of pain as a way of trying to figure out what could have been meant by using words like highest or best in the same sentence, as did Epicurus and Torquatus and presumably others as well. That's what's invaluable about On Ends because it shows this term being debated and used in multiple constructions, which shows that "absence of pain" and "pleasure" can be used identically but in multiple ways. "Pleasure" without a qualifier can be read to mean "pure pleasure" just like "yellow" can mean pure yellow. Same for "absence of pain" - it can refer to the goal, or any part of the experience along the way that is not painful.

The real issue is being clear about what the goal really means, as Torquatus did in saying "let us imagine..." and went into detail about the numerous and vivid pleasures as well as the freedom from the particular fears (pains) that he listed.

Torquatus moves back and forth between the general and the particular in order to explain their relationship. We have to do the same if we are going to avoid having "absence of pain" be interpreted as a prescription for retreat, resignation, and the rest.

Because that is exactly what is going on out there in the world by the legions of people who say "The world got Epicurus wrong -- he really wasn't into pleasure at all!"

Quote from Pacatus

Some pains may be readily removable, some may not. Sometimes the distress caused by pain (or by focussing on the pain) can be relieved (or at least attenuated) by engaging in pleasurable activity (e.g. Epicurus on his deathbed).

Sort of similar to pleasures in that respect. There's always a context that is going to have great influence on when and how you address relieving a pan, just like how you address pursuing a pleasure..

To me that's another reason why "Maximize Net Pleasure" works as a statement of the target while "Minimize Total Pain" does not. The focus by which you triangulate to reach the goal is the "net" -- not prioritizing removal of all pain as the prime directive.

When I hear people say they think the texts support identifying the goal with absence of pain, and therefore Epicurus is teaching them to target reducing pain above all, and that whatever pleasures happen to be laying aroundcan be used to achieve the supreme good, I keep wanting to remind them of the statement of the best life by Torquatus:

Quote

Reid: 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. Let such a man moreover have no dread of any supernatural power; let him never suffer the pleasures of the past to fade away, but constantly renew their enjoyment in recollection, and his lot will be one which will not admit of further improvement

Certainly anyone should first want first and foremost to dismiss fears of gods and of death and of unmanageable pain, but do those of you who think "absence of pain" is a complete description of what you need think that those three words fully describe what Torquatus is saying? Does his statement of the goal sound like something you are going to get by focusing solely on reducing every bodily or mental pain without any consideration to selecting the type of activities that are going to produce in you the greatest bodily and mental pleasures? Do you really see no difference between an hour spent trimming your toenails vs an hour with your friends at a concert of your favorite music? Do you really expect to achieve pleasures "great, numerous, and constant" by devoting every momentof your time first and foremost to rooting out every small annoyance from life?

And given that what we are doing is trying to articulate a clear philosophy to help people live better, you are honestly comfortable telling people that their overriding objective in life should be "absence of pain?"

For anyone to answery "yes"to that question - remember: You would not be this case arguing that what some would variously describe as "meditation" or "mimicing a a corpse" is pleasurable or a pleasure. What the sources are saying is that absence of pain is the limit of pleasure, or the highest pleasure, or the greatest pleasure. Torquatus' thought experiment to imaging the man surrounded by numerous and vivid pleasures and the rest clearly to me meet that test. You are saying that your single "absence of pain" description exceeds what Torquatus described?

As I see it, the idea of "absence of pain" as an organizing principle can easily be explained to mean what Torquatus says the highest good to be. To leave it unexplained and accept the possibility that it means focusing your life on eliminating pain and nothing more is an absolute disaster for anyone who would seek to live that way - which means as an organizing principle - and the very opposite of what Epicurus intended as his purpose for discussing "absence of pain."

Speaking of imagining things, can we imagine the possibility that Torquatus might have said the following:

Again, the truth that pleasure is the supreme good can be most easily apprehended from the following consideration. Let us imagine an individual who has absolutely no pain .... I ask what circumstance can we describe as more excellent than this or more desirable? ... his lot will be one which will not admit of further improvement.

I would say that it is not possible to contend credibly that Torquatus would have said such a thing, and that's exactly why he did not use that as his thought experiment / proof that pleasure is the supreme good.

Dave's post has me focused on trying to identify what I see to be two different camps with two different sets of foundational premises:

Camp one maintains that goal is a feeling that is specifically identifiable with "absence of pain." They believe that this term describes not only a specific feeling, but that this specific feeling is the most pleasurable experience that anyone can reach. As with Dave's post, it is of no concern to them which combination of activities that people normally associate with the word "pleasure" might be part of the goal of getting to zero pain. They see "absence of pain" as naming a state that they consider to be an extremely good feeling without need for any further definition. And from this perspective, "pleasure" as ordinarily understood is a threat to absence of pain and no amount of pleasure is sufficient to accept the cost of any amount of pain. So this group prioritizes "pain reduction" and focuses on identifying pains to remove as their first priority. Their goal is to minimize total pain - regardless of any calculation of "ordinary" pleasures - because they consider the specific state of "absence of pain" better than any combination of other mental or bodily pleasures. Does not all this add up to the goal of "minimizing total pain"? And does it not conflict with the proposition that we will sometimes choose pain in order to obtain a greater pleasure? Even worse, is not the goal of "minimizing total future pain" not logically indistinguishable from what is accomplished by dying? (The only way it would logically be distinguishable would be to argue that the dead experience no pleasure, but pleasure is strictly speaking not included within the goal of minimizing total pain.)

Camp two sees the position of camp one as something incomprehensible. They see the goal of "absence of pain" as naming a condition in which it is implied that they are experiencing the many different types of ordinary mental and physical pleasures that are associated with daily life - eating, drinking, reading, talking with friends, zip-lining, etc. -- with no combination of pain distracting them from concentrating on those other pleasures. This camp sees the idea of attaching the name "absence of pain" to a specific feeling as nonsensical. And if fact they see Camp One's view of absence of pain to be describing something much more like a "corpse" than a life devoted to pleasure as the supreme good. So this group focuses on ordinary mental and physical pleasures according to the rule of whether the particular pleasurable activity brings more pleasure than pain. Thus their goal is to maximize net pleasure, fully realizing that some pain is involved in doing so. This is fully consistent with Epicurus' limit of pleasure, because pleasures cannot be maximized beyond extending to 100% of your experience- which is the meaning of absence of pain.

In this post I'm not trying to resolve any conflict between the two positions, I am first trying to describe what I am seeing more accurately.

So might it in fact be something that can be summarized by viewing the issue as being between the competing goals of:

Maximizing Net Pleasure vs Minimizing Total Pain

You are raising some excellent points -- these are the issues that need discussing.

First, as to singular or plural in PD03, it looks to me like the translators are all over the board on which is corrrect. Given their disagreement it would be good to hear what Don or Bryan think, because I agree with your perspective that it would make a difference to us in English whether it is singular or plural. But given the different variations I expect that's not going to be easy to sort out, and I suspect that the end result is the same. In any language we can look at pleasure as a concept or pleasure as one or more particular pleasures, and we always have to be able to move between the contexts as appropriate.

Among the most important parts of your post was this part

Quote from DaveT

I think this focus allows me to not worry about which pleasure, or how much of it will make me happy more often than sad when navigating the reality of every day life. This focus tells me to first notice what is painful bodily and/or mentally and address the removal of that condition. When I do that I'm left with the various stages of pleasure and happiness however I define it.

I think that depending on how one interprets what you have written there you are going to find huge differences of opinion.

If what you mean is that your first priority is to seek out and eliminate any bodily or mental pain from your life before you turn to any pleasure, and that in the process of eliminating those pains it makes no difference what pleasures you choose to employ, then that's quite a stark statement.

If what I gather to be Kelly Arenson's opinion is correct - that katastematic pleasure is that kind which we experience in smelling roses or listen to music which is not required of us because we experience a lack of rose-smells or music, then arguably someone who used your formula would never pursue roses or music until they reach a state of perfect painlessness.

Clearly there is a dual focus that arises from the existence of both pleasure and pain. We want to BOTH choose pleasure and avoid pain. The question is whether it is correct to erect the elimination of any pain of body or mind as the "prime directive" that is to be pursued before one would choose to pursue any pleasure of any type or degree, especially a type of pleasure that is "discretionary" because it is not something we need for the relief of a specific pain.

I suspect you will say that that is not what your formulation is doing, but my personal opinion is that it comes very close to saying that, and I would not agree that that would be the correct conclusion. Sometimes we choose pain in order to avoid a worse pain or achieve a greater pleasure.

These are exactly the issues that are both the subject of this thread and of the thread on Kelly Arenson's book, so I'll just note here that people reading into this should refer to both threads.

THe only record of Hiernymous of Rhodes is what Cicero says about him as explained in our earlier thread (note from 2019) with the citations. Hieronymus of Rhodes embraced "absence of pain" but not pleasure, as Cicero explains.

They support the point that when you have reached the "limit" of anything you still have the full volume of what you started with to build to that point. You do not have something different than water when you fill a glass of water to the brim. You have a glass of water, and to say that you at that point do not need water is to say that you need no MORE water, not that the water you have has become worthless because you filled the glass.

I realize that it is counterintuitive to have to say that when you complete the accumulation of something all you care about is the concept of the accumulation and not the content of it, but that is what the argument is about. It's simply not going to be something that can be understood without reading the argument that Plato made about "being" as the good, rather than "the becoming." At present the best guide through all of that is the first several chapters of Arenson's book, where she lays out all the citations to The Republic and to Philebus.

Thread

Are You Epicurean Or Hieronymian?

According to Doctrine 3, Epicurus held that the limit of quantity of pleasure is the absence of pain. This is a function of the truism / premise that there are only two feelings - pleasure and pain - which means that in quantity, the measurement that describes the "absence" of the one is the same measurement as the "presence" of the other. But this observation is limited to quantity - it has nothing to do with the quality or the detail of the type of pleasure (or pain) that is being…

Cassius

October 1, 2019 at 2:08 PM

This also relates to review of Academic Questions:

Blog Article

The 'Academic Questions' Behind Evaluation Of Pleasure And Happiness

"Academic Questions" sounds like exactly what a modern reader expects from ancient philosophy: a dry, technical argument about definitions, conducted by men with nothing better to do, over a question no one outside a classics department has any reason to care about. That impression is wrong. The argument Cicero stages between Lucullus and himself -- whether the senses can ever deliver real knowledge, or whether we are stuck with mere probability -- is not a side issue in ancient philosophy. It…

Cassius

August 1, 2026 at 3:15 PM

Interesting to see a Chinese take on Nolan's version of the Odysee, including how Nolan states that modern filmmakers need to apologize for greatness, and his statements about gods at the end:

Welcome to Episode 345 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 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. This week will continue in Section 13 of Book Two.

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 proceed through the end of Academic Questions these are the topics we expect to cover:

24. Lucullus's Extended Rebuttal of the Academic Doctrine, and His Concluding Appeal to Cicero (2:XIII)
25. Cicero Begins His Reply (2:XX)
26. Cicero Lays Out the Syllogism About Assent and Opinion (2:XXI)
27. Cicero Turns to Antiochus's Own Inconsistency (2:XXII)
28. Cicero Defends His Citation of the Ancient Philosophers (2:XXIII)
29. Cicero Adds Chrysippus and the Cyrenaics, Then Returns to Arcesilas and Zeno (2:XXIV)
30. Cicero Returns to Attacking the Senses (2:XXV)
31. Cicero Presses the Sun's Size and the Limits of Trained Perception (2:XXVI)
32. Cicero Turns the "Art" Argument Back on Lucullus (2:XXVII)
33. Cicero Multiplies Examples From Madness (2:XXVIII)
34. Cicero Attacks Reason and Dialectics: The Sorites Paradox (2:XXIX)
35. Cicero Presses the Liar Paradox (2:XXX)
36. Cicero Presents Carneades's Own Positive Doctrine of Probability (2:XXXI)
37. Cicero Distinguishes the Academic Position From Epicurus's (2:XXXII)
38. Cicero Defends Probability Against the Charge That It Cannot Support Memory or Action (2:XXXIII)
39. Cicero Answers the "Self-Refuting" and "Two Incompatible Propositions" Objections (2:XXXIV)
40. Cicero Broadens the Argument Beyond the Stoics (2:XXXV)
41. Cicero Reflects on His Own Position Among the Competing Schools (2:XXXVI)
42. Cicero's Survey of Disagreement Among the Natural Philosophers (2:XXXVII)
43. Cicero Presses the Problem of Providence and the Limits of Physics (2:XXXVIII)
44. Cicero's Survey Continues: The Soul, the Antipodes, and the Motion of the Earth (2:XXXIX)
45. Cicero Asks Which Natural Philosopher He Would Even Choose to Follow (2:XL)
46. Cicero Turns to Ethics: Even the Gods Are Disputed (2:XLI)
47. Cicero's Roll Call of Rival Schools on the Chief Good, Part One (2:XLII)
48. Cicero's Roll Call of Rival Schools on the Chief Good, Part Two (2:XLIII)
49. Cicero Weighs Zeno Against Antiochus on Virtue and the Happy Life (2:XLIV)
50. Cicero Catalogs the Stoic Paradoxes About the Wise Man (2:XLV)
51. Cicero's Climactic Debate Between Pleasure and Honor (2:XLVI)
52. Cicero Turns to the Canon of Truth, and Zeno's Hand (2:XLVII)
53. The Dialogue's Close (2:XLVIII)

I am posting this link to a new "blog" post I have just completed because it deals directly with the issues raised by Arenson in her book.

Blog Article

The 'Academic Questions' Behind Evaluation Of Pleasure And Happiness

"Academic Questions" sounds like exactly what a modern reader expects from ancient philosophy: a dry, technical argument about definitions, conducted by men with nothing better to do, over a question no one outside a classics department has any reason to care about. That impression is wrong. The argument Cicero stages between Lucullus and himself -- whether the senses can ever deliver real knowledge, or whether we are stuck with mere probability -- is not a side issue in ancient philosophy. It…

Cassius

August 1, 2026 at 3:15 PM

Quote from Matteng

Pleasure/Pain guide to what ?

They are the guide to the best life, because pleasure is the word we choose to use to describe all that is intrinsically desirable.

Yes this is a word game, and if you want to argue that the goal should be set as "virtue" or "being like god" you can argue that too. In the end all these things are just words.

But some words can be tied to real experiences. In the case of Pleasure as the goal, that is tied to the feelings of pleasure and pain which our experiences reveal to us directly. Other goals are not so directly establishable - they are just words that float around forever in ambiguous and unprovable assertions about things like "gods" or "virtue" that can never be pinned down because they are just abstractions for which there is no direct sensory experience of them.

We have often mentioned in the past the cliche about the perfect not being the enemy of the good.

A variation of that is probably easier to see in this context is that the goal is not the enemy of the process, or the destination is not the enemy of the journey.

Embedded in the Platonic analysis seems to be the idea that "the good" should be viewed as the result of actions, but that the actions themselves are not good. It appears that the example that is cited is ships and shipbuilding -- that "ships" are "the good" of shipbuilding.

If you use that approach then ships are good, but shipbuilding is not good. Now the defenders of Platonism may say that that's not what they mean, but nevertheless that is what the ordinary person is going to gather from the statement. That shipbuilding is inferior to ships - that shipbulding is at best a necessary evil, and that what you really want is ships with the implication that you can dispense with shipbuilding.

That's also implied in the quoted statement - Pleasure/Pain guide to what ? As if all you need to know is what the goal is, and that once you know the goal you can dispense with pleasure and pain.

This attitude perspective is a big part of the issue with the way people are reading Menoeceus 128:

The right understanding of these facts enables us to refer all choice and avoidance to the health of the body and (the soul's) freedom from disturbance, since this is the aim of the life of blessedness. For it is to obtain this end that we always act, namely, to avoid pain and fear. And when this is once secured for us, all the tempest of the soul is dispersed, since the living creature has not to wander as though in search of something that is missing, and to look for some other thing by which he can fulfill the good of the soul and the good of the body. For it is then that we have need of pleasure, when we feel pain owing to the absence of pleasure; (but when we do not feel pain), we no longer need pleasure.

Yes you no longer need ADDITIONAL pleasure, but that's because what you have is made from all the normal pleasures of life. Would someone in the business of ships properly say "Now that I have a ship I no longer have need of nails, fabric, wooden beams, ropes, tar, or the rest?"

That would be ludicrous -- the only way to make sense of that is to understand you don't need MORE of them but ONLY because you already have them in the completed ship that you're going to sail on.

Would it be proper for a doctor to say - You have your health, so you no longer need skin, bones, food, water, air, shelter, or clothing. (?)

Of course not - that would be ludicrous - you have "health" ONLY because you have the things that make up health.

Epicurus is talking in Platonic terms to someone who would have understood that this relationship between the perfect and the good, between the goal and the process was a major concern of the time because Plato had preached it and Aristotle had wrestled with it without making the proper perspective clear.

And we're obviously still wrestling with it today, because CLEVER people have us convinced that "the good" is what we should be concerned about rather than what that term means.

And so we have people obsessed with 'a healthy mind in a healthy body" without any concern whatsoever for what "health" is all about - in fact allowing or even demanding that health be divorced from pleasure, even though it is absolutely ludicrous to do so.

We talk as if we are so superior to the rubes who believe in supernatural gods and punishments or rewards after death, when in truth much of the discussion about Epicurus today is trapped in an illusion that is far worse than those mistakes. As Epicurus said, at least those who follow religion have the hope of happiness by cozying up to the gods. Those who are mesmerized by "tranquility" and "health" and "happiness" and 'the good" and even "absence of pain" while looking down on pleasure are trapped in something far worse. They have created a divide that can never be healed because they think that "being" (the goal) is all that matters and that "becoming" (the required process) is beneath them.

Note: This analysis would also apply to the relationship between virtue to prudence, honor, and justice in PD05. Don't preach to me about "happiness" if you don't understand that happiness is inseparable from the actions that produce it (we call those actions virtues). It's the same point: Don't talk to me about "ships" if you don't understand that ships are inseparable from the wood and nails and cloth and rope from which a "ship" is made. Don't talk to me about "absence of pain" unless you understand that "absence of pain" is inseparable from the regular bodily and mental pleasures from which "absence of pain" is made.

I have another analogy that I think applies.

Today a friend sent me the linked video because he was so impressed how it went through the Bible and asked a series of questions that calls the Bible into question. 109 Questions For God

I think the video is good, and there was a time when I really would have been impressed by it. And a video like that probably has a lot of good uses for those people who are really worried about whether the Bible is true.

But the entire approach of the video is to "play on the other team's turf." It accepts many of the premises of the Bible and simply tries to use its own logic against it.

That's useful to a point, but when do you move on and stop granting them their premises in the first place.

Arenson's book really shines the spotlight on these stupid platnic arguments that the goal is "being" not 'becoming" and so our goal ought to be "heath" rather than the pleasures that plato acknowledges that some people find to be good.

When you accept the premise that only the "complete" or the "perfect" or "things that have a limit" are good, then you're playing on Platonic turf.

As Arenson says even Aristotle was smart enough to reject that "processes are inferior to goals" argument.

It looks to me like Epicurus included the discussion, such as contained in PDO3, because Plato was fixated on arguing that there is a middle ground between pleasure and pain and that that middle ground - absence of pain - is not pleasure at all.

Epicurus refutes that by arguing that there are only two feelings, that if you don't feel any pain what you feel is pleasure, and at that point that's actually the most "complete" pleasure because there's no pain involved at all.

That wins the logical point and is something that is important for people immersed in Platonism (like almost everyone was in 300 BC) to know.

But by even granting the premise that the state of "absence of pain" is important to talk about, you set the stage that Cicero walked into when he pointed out that "if you're concerned about pleasure you shouldn't care about absence of pain at all." That produced the argument that Epicurus really should have said he was a value dualist (a term we've seen here recently) and admitted that pleasure and pain are two separate goals and not the same thing.

Torquatus adamantly refused to admit that and for good reason - there's only pleasure and pain and so when we have no pain what is left is the most "complete" pleasure possible.

But is "complete pleasure" the most intense? Is it the longest in duration? Does it involve the most parts of the body? No necessarily on any of those three counts, except on purely "logical" terms. No one can credibly argue that "feeling no pain" tells you anything about the specific mental or bodily experience of a particular moment.

So while the point is important for refuting Plato's anti-pleasure logic, and needs to be discussed with anyone who is concerned about "being vs becoming" - it's a point that makes little sense outside that context. Arenson spends a lot of time talking about whether Cicero knew what he was talking about, and how much we should believe his descriptions about what Epicurus taught, but what is beyond dispute is that Cicero has succeeded in perpetuating this "war" between "pleasure as a process" vs. "the goal as some fixed and definite thing." And every anti-Epicurean of every religious stripe or ascetic position has used that as an invitation to say that that "fixed and definite thing" is not pleasure at all, but something entirely different.

So to be clear I am not criticizing Epicurus at all - he had to make the point to refute Plato on pleasure just like he refuted Aristotle on atomism. But we have to understand the specific history of the argument and the context in which it lives, because outside its context the terminology is easy to twist into the opposite of what Epicurus intended.

And that's the same reason most of us don't spend a lot of time on logical arguments about the flora and fauna of the garden of Eden -- we reject the whole paradigm, and it doesn't bother us.

The whole paradigm of "being vs becoming" and "pleasure as a process" and "pleasure as restricted to replenishment" are similar artifacts of a specific ancient argument that few people recognize or care about anyome - and for good reason - it was nonsense from the time Socrates and Plato et all started spinning it.

Quote from Don

I'm getting it via interlibrary loan soon.

OMG.

Don, you and I and Joshua and many others here have done a creditable job and I'm not going to apologize for what we've done, because I think we're on the right track.

But what little we've done to comment on Philebus and Plato has been woefully incomplete.

I don't know where Arenson ends up yet (other than skimming the conclusion) so I can't say that we'll agree with all of her conclusions, but she's done in this book what we've needed to do for a long time -- go over in detail the arguments against pleasure not only in the Philebus but also in the Republic, and then go through Aristotle's tentative pushback.

Aristotle long before Epicurus had rejected this stupid and woefully insufficient "replenishment" theory of pleasure, which is tied to that cursed "process" and becoming vs being" argument which Aristotle also rejected. We've been talking around Epicurus' rejection of the same thing without getting the full picture in view of how central this "becoming is inferior to being" argument, and the citations she's collected will help us get much closer to where we need to be.

I think I can safely predict that neither you nor most of us here are going to find this to be an "enjoyable" book - at least in the sense of Emily Austin's "Living For Pleasure" because it's highly technical. But the background she provides is going to - I hesitate to say "revolutionize" but something on the same order - how we need to be discussing these issues.

A major difficulty is that she's doing what all academics do - presenting the various arguments without taking strong and immediate positions on which are correct. And many of us aren't going to be able to wade through it.

She covers much of the same ground as Gosling and Taylor, but they were even more frustatingly non-committal as they wade through it. Arenson is being considerably more clear in the implications of what's going on. And Socrates and Plato are just abominations who deserve to be exposed for the folly or maliciousness of their arguments, not simply viewed as being "clever" -- which itself appears to be a key word.

All this denunciation of pleasure as not the true good because it is a "process" rather than an "end" is definitely "clever" - but it's cleverness in the employment of something very much to be rejected.

I have a long way to go before finishing, and this is definitely not going to be a book for "everyone." But it's exactly the resource that those of us who are really trying to work through this need.

It is highly irritating to me that this has been out for over five years without me spending more time on it long ago.

That's a large part of why all this has to be a team effort.

Added to the files section here:

File

Life And Works Of Hermarchus of Mytilene

This is the second installment of the Co-founders of the Garden project. Unfortunately, it is also the last one since there's not enough transmitted material about Polyaenus of Lampsacus to create a similar compilation about him.

Cassius

July 31, 2026 at 12:39 PM

I have spent the morning listening to the first two chapters of the Arenson book, which is focused on what is said about Pleasure in the Republic and Philebus.

The whole structure of holding being to be better than becoming and the need to discuss "limits" is deeply disturbing to me in listening to this.

So much of this discussion of being vs becoming and limited vs unlimited is just unadulterated trash - it is very similar to religious discussion of angels dancing on pinheads.

This is likely to radicalize me further: Thomas Jefferson was far too lenient in his conclusions about Plato and other Greeks like the Stoics. These word games are as deceptive and manipulative as any religion ever invented.

Epicurus was right to point out their logical fallacies, but lingering too long in disputing them plays into their hands by distracting from a common sense understanding of pleasure and pain.

Probably the smartest this Torquatus said was at the beginning when he said that Epicurus refused to admit any need for argument or discussion to prove that pleasure is desirable and pain is to be avoided.

I am beginning to see this as very close to the argument as go religion. Yes it is good to point out that the religious view of the nature of divinity is flawed, but it makes no sense to spend your life debating priests about the supernatural.

And yes it makes sense to point out that the logic of the anti-pleasure arguments is wrong, but it makes no sense to argue forever about logical definitions of how to slice and dice pleasure into logical but meaningless categories.

It's as big a mistake to speculate endlessly about categories of pleasures as it is to speculate whether gods speak Greek or Latin.

If our goal is to better the lives of real people rather than pinheads, it's far better to stick to basic points and then work to apply them in real life, not just debate about words and definitions.

To clarify - this is an excellent book for those who want to understand how we got to where we are. Unfortunately those who need it most are probably the least likely to read it.

Quote from Matteng

I would decide against it precisely because one loses one's freedom and connection to the real world; returning is difficult to impossible, and one sacrifices everything.

It is very interesting to see how individual people either deal with or refuse to deal with hypotheticals. It's certainly very important to evaluate whether the hypothetical is possible in reality or not.

But the purpose of a logical possibility is to exactly test the premise by abstracting out what are current realities. "But it's not possible" is essential to real life and it's why we choose real life over fantasy --- but some people are going to say that it is avoiding the question, and I do not think that they should be faulted to say that.

In this case the part I quoted above does not grapple with the question at hand.

Because in logical terms the answer to what is quoted above is clear --- why would you care about "freedom" or "connection to the real world" unless they bring pleasure?

That's why Kally Arenson made the statement she did -- NOTHING -- even "reality" or "being human" or anything else -- is desirable in itself unless it brings pleasure. Exempting ANYTHING from that test -- does it bring pleasure? -- is not good logic from the standpoint of logic alone.

If one chooses to play logic games, then rather than step outside of the philosophic position that pleasure is the supreme good, it would probably be better to say more like:

Logic is not truly useful unless its premises are grounded in reality, Your hypothetical is not grounded in realty, so I refuse to waste my time with it, just like Epicurus refused to entertain a hypothetical about necessity as to whether Hermarchus must be alive or dead tomorrow.