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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!

Welcome to Episode 342 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 9 of Book 2

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 move into section ten, Lucullus (from the Stoic perspective) attacks 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 moves 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"

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.)