Episode 195 - Cicero's On Ends - Book Two - Part 05
Date: 10/09/23
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/3405-episode-195-cicero-s-on-ends-book-two-part-05/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”The fifth episode in the On Ends series opens Book Two in detail, beginning at the end of Section 2 where Cicero launches his complaint that Epicurus is “in the dark” about what pleasure actually means — unclear whether he intends the word in the sense that everyone else uses it or in some idiosyncratic private sense. The group wrestles at length with whether this is a legitimate philosophical objection or a rhetorical wedge. Cassius acknowledges his own long struggle with the formula “pleasure is the absence of pain,” which he found opaque for years. Joshua responds with Principal Doctrine 3 — the limit of the quantity of pleasure is the removal of all that is painful — clarifying that “fullness of pleasure” is not a definition but a description of the maximum state, and that within that bandwidth any non-painful experience is pleasure.
The discussion moves to the problem of discrete experience: can any single experience be simultaneously pleasure and pain, or does it only appear mixed because we’re compressing multiple simultaneous experiences? Cassius poses the thought experiment of a single minute of Joshua’s listening experience as a test case. Callistheni asks whether the anticipated pain of going to work on Monday is bodily or mental. The group reads and parses Principal Doctrine 3’s second sentence — “wherever pleasure is present, as long as it is there, there is neither pain of body nor of mind nor of both at once” — and the Quod dolore caret id in voluptate est passage from Book One Section 11. The percentage analogy (99% pleasure vs 100% pleasure) is introduced: the fullest experience of pleasure is complete absence of pain, but this is different in degree, not in kind, from any moment of non-painful experience.
Cicero’s introduction of Hieronymus of Rhodes — who held that freedom from pain alone is the supreme good, with no need for pleasure — is examined. Torquatus calls this view “grossly mistaken,” and the group explains why: Hieronymus creates a false separation between two things (absence of pain and pleasure) that Epicurus insists are one and the same. Cicero then defines pleasure as “that by the reception of which the sense is excited and pervaded by a certain agreeable feeling” — insisting there must be active stimulation, not mere removal of pain. The group reads Cicero’s famous jibe that Epicurus is “too familiar” with the pleasures of food, drink, and the gratification of the senses, and Torquatus’s defiant response. Norman DeWitt’s page 240 passage — “the extension of the name of pleasure to the normal state of being was the major innovation of the new hedonism… Cicero made a great to-do over this argument, but it really is superficial and captious” — is quoted as the key to understanding what Cicero is objecting to and why Torquatus is right to refuse to yield.
The episode closes with Callistheni reflecting on the liberating implication of Epicurus’s broad definition — that labeling things as simply right or wrong, good or bad, locks people into a quagmire of mental pain, while Epicurus’s framework opens up personal responsibility and freedom. Joshua closes with Epicurus’s Letter to Idomeneus (deathbed letter) as proof that pleasure and pain can coexist as simultaneous but discrete experiences — even in his greatest moment of physical suffering, Epicurus sets above all the gladness of mind at the memory of his past conversations with friends.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to Episode 195 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius who wrote On the Nature of Things, the only 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 you’ll find a discussion thread for each of our podcast episodes and many other topics.
This week we are continuing our discussion of Books 1 and 2 of Cicero’s On Ends, which are largely devoted to Epicurean philosophy. On Ends contains important criticisms of Epicurus that have set the tone for analysis of his philosophy for the last 2,000 years. Going through this book gives us an opportunity to review those attacks, take them apart, and respond to them as we think an ancient Epicurean might have done — which would be much more fully than Cicero allowed Torquatus, his Epicurean spokesman, to do. Last week we opened a brief discussion of Book Two, but this week we’re going to get into it in detail.
We’re using the Reid edition as we’ve discussed before, and we’re going to start on page 32 of the Reid edition — very close to the end of Section 2 — where Cicero is stating his complaint about Epicurus’s alleged lack of clarity in defining what he’s talking about when he talks about pleasure. Cicero says: “Now I should like you to define what pleasure is, for our whole inquiry deals with that.” And then Torquatus responds: “Pray, who is there that does not know what pleasure is, or requires some definition to make it plainer?” Cicero says: “I should proclaim myself to be such a person, but that I believe myself to have a thorough notion of pleasure and a quite stable idea and conception of it in my mind. As it is, however, I allege that Epicurus himself is in the dark about pleasure and uncertain in his idea of it, and that the very man who often asserts that the meaning which our terms denote ought to be accurately represented sometimes does not see what this term ‘pleasure’ indicates — I mean, what the thing is which is denoted by the term.”
Now, Torquatus is going to respond to that. But in stating this introduction, I think this really hammers home the point that Cicero believes Epicurus’s discussion of pleasure is not clear, and he’s going to go into detail about why in just a moment. That’s the first touchstone of this discussion. At least for the moment, Cicero is willing to put aside some of his criticisms of where pleasure stands in the ethical chain, but he’s saying that Epicurus doesn’t make clear what pleasure is and that he doesn’t understand it.
It’s pretty clear that what Cicero is trying to do is sort of draw a wedge between Epicurus and the other philosophers on this question. We’re going to read about Hieronymus of Rhodes and what he had to think about this. Cicero is trying to drive a wedge and wants Epicurus to fall on one side or the other. But Torquatus isn’t really going to let him do that, because pleasure is not exclusively mental any more than it is exclusively physical. Pleasure occupies all of these domains. Cicero is not willing to allow a definition that is that broad — which is a problem for Cicero, but not really for us, I don’t think.
Joshua, I do see — at least when I think back over the number of years that I’ve been studying Epicurus — I have to admit that there is some initial attractiveness in Cicero’s argument that Epicurus is not entirely clear. I know I’ve wrestled for many years with the idea that when Epicurus says “when we mean pleasure, we mean the absence of pain,” some people seem to think that is absolutely clear and that you don’t need to know anything more than to hear those words stated over and over again. I personally have not been one of those people who found those few words clear and complete enough to satisfy me that I was understanding what was going through Epicurus’s mind. I don’t think I’m alone in questioning what Epicurus really means when he says pleasure is the absence of pain — because I know what pleasure means when I’m eating ice cream or riding a roller coaster or looking at a painting I like. I don’t generally call that the absence of pain. So something must be going on beyond my normal understanding of the word. And Cicero — being the lawyer that he is — probably perceives that there is, in this formula, an ambiguity that requires additional explanation. What do you think?
Joshua: Right. I would remind you that Cicero is part of a tradition which, in a famous story, tried to define human beings as featherless bipeds — so there’s an element of absurdity in their project to begin with. We can certainly clarify what Epicurus has to say about pleasure and the absence of pain, because he’s very technical on that point. He says the limit of the quantity of pleasure is the removal of all that is painful. It’s not a one-to-one correspondence between absence of pain, therefore pleasure — that is, not the claim that everything which is absence of pain is pleasure. That’s the limit of the quantity of pleasure. When you take away every possible painful experience in that moment — all the mental anguish and anxiety, your depression, your worry, your fear — when all of that’s gone, you have reached a state of maximal pleasure. But it’s not the only kind of pleasure. Even though you’ve reached the limit of the quantity of pleasure, you still have a nearly infinite variety of pleasurable experiences you can pursue. I’m not sure that helps to define it, but it describes pleasure at its maximum: sometimes called the fullness of pleasure. But that description of the maximum is not really a definition of pleasure. I’m not sure Epicurus is going to give us a clean definition.
Cassius, you are anxious to jump in.
Cassius: I am anxious to say something, Joshua, because yes — I agree with most of what you’ve said. The most important thing is what you said about Principal Doctrine 3: Epicurus is talking about the limit of the quantity of pleasure being the absence of pain. I think he is stating the fullness of pleasure — “full” meaning it’s complete. And if it’s less than complete, if it’s less than full, then it’s not full. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve drained it almost to the bottom or whether you’ve just got 1% missing. If you’ve got something missing from full, it’s not full. It’s not complete. And the limit of pleasure is when all of your experience — every bit of it, without exception — is full of pleasure. You can’t go higher than being full. You can’t go higher than 100%. It would not make sense to say you’re looking for 200% pleasure. You want full and complete pleasure as 100%, and that’s the logical maximum.
Now, you raised something when you said the quantity of pleasure is not the same as the quantity of absence of pain. I’m not so sure about that. Let’s go back over that for a minute. If you’re looking at a particular experience in your life and you say that that experience has no pain, I’m thinking that that does mean that that experience is pleasure. Is that the way you’re saying it, or did I mishear?
Joshua: I don’t remember saying what you thought I said, but it’s possible that I did — so don’t rule it out. I think you have this bandwidth of feeling-experience. That bandwidth has a limit, and when the pain is all gone — all kinds of pain you can experience — the only thing left in that bandwidth is pleasure. And then it’s just a question of what kind of pleasures are occupying different percentages of that bandwidth at a given moment. When the pain is gone, it’s all pleasure.
Cassius: Okay. Now, let’s put aside for a moment the limit of pleasure issue and the fullness of pleasure issue, and let’s just talk about any individual experience — not the fullness of experience, not the 100% experience, but just an experience. Dare I say, let’s talk about Chrysippus’s hand. Let’s talk about your hand at this moment. I presume your hand at this moment is neither being massaged by a specialist nor dipped in ivory liquid to make it soft. Your hand is probably just doing what it normally does. I interpret the example that Torquatus gives about Chrysippus as saying that the hand in its normal condition — just as an example of an experience — if it is not in pain, it is in pleasure. Do you agree with that?
Joshua: See, here’s the issue. The hand is not really an instrument for feeling pleasure. The hand is an instrument for moving things around in the world and receiving signals that then get sent to the brain. And the brain is really where pleasure and pain happen. I think that’s one of the things that makes the hand example so difficult — you’re right, the hand is not normally thinking about anything or really registering a feeling on its own. It’s a part of your body.
Cassius: So let’s take an example. We’re recording this right now at 10:05 a.m. on October the 8th. And let’s talk about the next minute of Joshua’s experience — from 10:05 to 10:06. This slice of experience. And let’s presume that you are neither thrilled with happiness upon listening to my voice, nor bored to tears as you probably should be. You’re just receiving the sound waves, not even having a reaction to them at that moment. Just simply listening. Can we say that during that period of time — when you’re simply listening and you’re neither filled with joy nor with sorrow — you are in pleasure? Because I’m thinking Torquatus is saying, if you’re not in pain, you are in pleasure.
Joshua: You’re simply listening.
Cassius: Right.
Joshua: Yeah, but the reality is I’m probably experiencing both pleasure and pain. You’re segmenting it in different ways — in different areas. I probably have a slight soreness in my back because I woke up half an hour ago and maybe didn’t sleep right. There are issues that happen all over your body or your mind that cause issues. That’s why you’re right — it can be confusing the way the Epicureans speak about this. It’s a question as to whether it’s like: is it all pain, and then when that’s gone it’s all pleasure? Or is it that it’s possible to experience more pleasure than pain, or more pain than pleasure, in any given moment? And I think that’s the way we should be looking at it — that in any given moment in your life, some areas of your life are giving you pleasure, some are giving you pain, and the job of philosophy is to try to minimize the areas that are giving you pain.
Cassius: You’ve mentioned several areas of your life, Joshua, as you were going through that explanation. Let’s pick one. Pick one experience.
Joshua: Okay. It’s Sunday and I know I have to go to work tomorrow.
Cassius: Okay. Knowing you have to go to work tomorrow is, by definition in Epicurean philosophy, either a pleasure or a pain, right?
Joshua: Right. But in reality, what I’m probably doing is the experience of anticipating going to work tomorrow — which is pleasurable or painful. But what I’m anticipating is both pleasure and pain.
Callistheni: I have a question because I find this fascinating, okay, because we’re really getting into practical issues here. So when you think about tomorrow, is it going to be bodily pain or mental pain that could occur?
Joshua: Oh, it’ll be mental pain. Yeah. I don’t like work in general, so it’ll definitely be mental pain. But there will be pleasures associated with it. The reason I work is because I have to — I need money in order to live. If I was independently wealthy, I would stop working and organize my life in such a way that I was having more pleasure every day and in the long run. So there’s that “oh, work again” — I don’t want to do this, but I do it because I have to. But that doesn’t mean I’m consigning myself to eight hours of pure human misery just because I’d rather be somewhere else. I’m still capable of finding pleasure while doing it. And that’s more or less always been the case.
Cassius: Joshua, when you read Principal Doctrine 3 just a few moments ago, you started with the first sentence — about the limit of pleasure — but I’m not sure you read the second sentence. And that second sentence is: “Wherever pleasure is present, as long as it is there, there is neither pain of body nor of mind nor of both at once.” Now, I would read that as a statement that wherever pleasure is present, there is no pain — and where there is pain, there is no pleasure. But there’s a word there — “wherever” — that I think is important. We’ve been talking with Godfrey about pleasures in terms of duration, intensity, and location. If “wherever” means location, if you locate in your experience one segment and drill down to that moment, then it seems to me Epicurus is saying that you’re either going to find that experience to be pleasurable or you’re going to find it to be painful. We can walk and chew gum at the same time — just like Epicurus had a kidney problem when he was about to die while at the same time his mind was enjoying pleasure. But when you drill down and isolate a specific discrete experience, it seems to me that that specific discrete experience is labelable as either pleasure or pain and not a mixture of the two. Do you agree with that?
Joshua: Well, tell me what level of experience are we talking about? Are we talking about the level of a neuron, the level of a second?
Cassius: Well, since Epicurus says in Principal Doctrine 2 that something which is without sensation is nothing to us, we’re basically talking about a sensation that you are aware of. A particular sensation — is it not either pleasure or pain?
Joshua: I find this almost impossible to answer. But imagine if you’ve raised a child for 18 years and now your child is going off to college, and in the moment when they pull out of the driveway and head off down the road — that’s a single experience. But are you only experiencing pleasure or pain in that moment? You certainly break it down into different aspects, to which you have different reactions according to the aspect.
Cassius: Right. Now, my full answer depends on the ability to find a quote, but I don’t remember where it comes from. I actually think it comes from what we’re reading. Do you remember this, Cassius? He says something along the lines of there will never be a time when you do not experience more pleasure than pain.
Cassius: Yes. It’s in the same section by Torquatus — On Ends Book One, Section 62. He’s talking about the wise man who has correct views of the gods and death and so forth. He says: “Furnished with these advantages, he is continually in a state of pleasure, and there is, in truth, no moment at which he does not experience more pleasures than pains.” And he continues on the same point: “And pains, if any befall him, have never power enough to prevent the wise man from finding more reasons for joy than for vexation.” And I think you’re right to bring that up, because it seems to me he’s examining these issues discretely — there are discrete experiences of pain, there are discrete experiences of pleasure, and the wise man will offset them against each other in order to conclude that his life has more reason for joy than for vexation.
Joshua: Yeah, you express that very well. And that’s kind of the level on which I would prefer to think about this. It is possible, as you were asking me a moment ago, to drill down to a level of experience where you can say: this sensation is entirely and discretely pleasurable, and this other sensation is entirely and discretely painful. And to a degree, that’s what that quote even mentions — that you’re experiencing discrete pleasures and discrete pains. But at a higher level, you’re experiencing both. And that’s really the life that most of us are going to live. I’m sitting in this chair, as you asked me earlier in this episode, and I’m experiencing both. That’s kind of my answer.
Cassius: Okay. Well, we’ll go ahead and move on into Section 3, but I would not expect us to have an absolutely clear and complete consensus at this point — because I think this is exactly the issue Cicero is driving home: that there are ambiguities about how Epicurus is dealing with this that have to be resolved. And I’m interpreting what you’re saying, Joshua, is that you’re very reluctant to separate pleasure and pain out and view them discretely because you see them as a sum. And so it’s kind of unnatural to you to separate them out and treat pleasures and pains like you’re talking about individual atoms.
But let’s go forward because I think we’re going to learn a lot as Cicero goes into his questioning further. So then Torquatus says with a smile: “This is truly an excellent thought — that he who declares pleasure to be supreme among objects of desire and the final and ultimate good knows nothing of the essence and attributes of the thing itself.” And Cicero replies: “Nay, either Epicurus is ignorant, or else all human beings who are to be found anywhere are ignorant of what pleasure is.” Now Cicero has Torquatus say: “How so?” — as if Torquatus doesn’t understand what Cicero is saying. Don’t be with your brilliance, Cicero. And Cicero replies: “Because all pronounce that thing to be pleasure by the reception of which sense is excited and is pervaded by a certain agreeable feeling.”
Let’s stop at that point for a moment. How do you guys interpret that? It seems to me Cicero is trying to define pleasure as what he calls something which excites the senses with an agreeable feeling. “Excitement” is maybe the key word there. “Agreeable feeling” — I doubt anybody has any problem with that. But he’s saying that the senses are excited, and that’s the definition of pleasure.
Joshua: Yeah. I think even now we have that same understanding of the word pleasure — that it is excitement of the senses. This would be a point in time where it would probably be excellent to consult other translations, because I’d be curious to see how they put that word “excited.” But nevertheless, what Cicero appears to be getting across here is that there has to be some stimulus — some positive stimulus — not just the negative stimulus of the removal of pain. That’s not really sufficient for him. There has to be something poking your senses in a way that feels good for him to say, “this experience is pleasure.”
Joshua: Right. I think I’ve seen the word “tickling” used there or something like that. It’s got to be something — and I want to say something from the outside, but I’m not sure that’s a requirement. It’s got to be something stimulative or exciting or tickling. You’ll probably find other words, but they’re all going to have some active component to them that would unite them under the phrase “an excitement of the senses with an agreeable feeling.”
Cassius: Okay, so there we go. Cicero has said: this is what everybody says about the nature of pleasure. And then Torquatus responds: “Well, then, is Epicurus unfamiliar with that kind of pleasure?” And here Cicero gets some of his ad hominem attacks in, because Cicero says: “Not always, I replied — for Epicurus is now and then too familiar with it, since he avers that he cannot even understand where any good exists or what is its nature, unless such good as is experienced from food and drink and the gratification of the ears and from pleasures of a less reputable kind.” He probably means sex there. “Is this not in fact what he says?”
It’s this argument through intimidation that Cicero is using — to say that these pleasures that Epicurus is talking about can’t possibly be the nature of life.
Joshua: Yeah, Cicero clearly wants to restrict all nuance and meaning in the word pleasure to just this: something striking the bodily senses in such a way that it causes an agreeable feeling. That’s his definition of pleasure, and he’s saying to Torquatus, why does Epicurus not understand this? But it’s possible — as we’re going to find out — that Epicurus has reached a wider definition of the word pleasure, one that’s going to include not just stimuli exciting the neurons at the end of your fingertips or elsewhere in your body, but pleasures that happen because pain recedes, like a bare escape from death, or just normal mental pleasures like flow and happiness from having created something. There’s a functionally infinite variety of pleasures. But Cicero is like: no, no, no — this is my world. Pleasure means just this one thing, and if Epicurus doesn’t understand that, then he is the fool.
Cassius: I know somebody who was a good dramatist could get some emotion going in some of this dialogue, because I think this next sentence could be read a variety of different ways. Once Cicero states that Epicurus is too familiar with pleasure because he’s into the gratification of the senses and so forth, what does Torquatus say in response? And I’ll try to put some emotion into this. Torquatus appears to say: “As if I were ashamed of the words you quote, or unable to explain in what sense they are used!” Torquatus is saying: I’m not going to back away from the pleasures of food and drink and the gratification of the ears and the senses. I’m not going to back away from that at all — but I have an explanation of the sense in which Epicurus is using the word pleasure that is wider than that.
So then Cicero says: “I assure you that I do not question your ability to explain that easily, nor have you any cause to be ashamed of repeating things said by a wise man — who is the only one, so far as I know, that has ever ventured to announce himself as a wise man.” So here he comes up with another attack: Epicurus is such an egotist that he considers himself a wise man, when Socrates — the paragon of virtue as a philosopher — was the first to admit that he didn’t know anything.
“I don’t suppose that Metrodorus announced himself as a wise man, but rather that when Epicurus gave him the title, he did not like to thrust from him so great a favor. They say something about the well-known Seven — again, obtained the title, not by their own vote, but by that of all nations.”
Joshua, you got something to say about who the seven are?
Joshua: Yeah, well, the problem is we don’t know who the seven are because it’s a constantly changing number — kind of like the seven wonders of the world. He’s referring here to the semi-mythical Seven Sages of Greece. Despite fluctuations, four of the seven sages persist in almost every version: Thales of Miletus — who is really the father of natural philosophy; Cicero gives the title of father of philosophy to Socrates, but Thales was doing it 200 years or more before Socrates was born — and then Solon of Athens, who is a kind of lawgiver. Then names I’ve never even heard of, like Pittacus of Mytilene and Bias of Priene. And then the remaining three are typically Chilon of Sparta, Cleobulus of Lindos, and Periander of Corinth. They’re just traditional figures, semi-mythological figures almost, known for having made strides toward different intellectual pursuits — legendary lawgivers, great philosophers, great astronomers. And as Cicero is saying here, they didn’t call themselves wise. They didn’t call themselves the Seven Sages of Greece. So why is Epicurus calling himself a wise man?
Cassius: Yes. Cicero’s saying, basically, that Epicurus is not modest and humble like he should be. And this gives me an opportunity — I don’t get a chance often to mention our friend Elie from Greece, but we’ve had a brief discussion about modesty. And Elie has pointed out that that’s not necessarily an Epicurean virtue. To be falsely humble, falsely modest, would not be consistent with Epicurus’s views. You want to be honest about whether you are right or wrong on something. And Epicurus is taking the position that his philosophy is correct — so he’s taking the position that he himself is a wise man from that point of view, and that people who have that correct position are wise people. Let’s go on.
Then Cicero continues: “However, I take it for granted at this point that when Epicurus holds such language, he certainly understands the word pleasure to bear the same sense that the rest of the world gives it. All men, in fact, describe by the term ἡδονή in Greek and voluptas in Latin an agreeable excitement by which the sense is cheered.” Torquatus then says: “Then what else do you want, Cicero?” Cicero says: “I’ll tell you, because I wish to be instructed. I don’t want to find fault with you or Epicurus.” Torquatus says: “I too would be better pleased to learn anything that you have to bring forward than to find fault with you.”
Now that little interlude does nothing to advance the storyline here, but at any rate — this is a mutual-congratulations exchange. Very infuriating. But here’s the key: where we’re going to introduce this very important topic of Hieronymus of Rhodes.
Cicero says: “Do you understand then what Hieronymus of Rhodes declares to be the supreme good, the standard by which he thinks all things should be judged?” And Torquatus says: “I understand that he, Hieronymus of Rhodes, holds freedom from pain to be the final good.” And then Cicero asks: “What view does this same philosopher hold of pleasure?” Torquatus answers: “He asserts that it is not essentially an object of desire.” And Cicero says: “So Hieronymus of Rhodes is of the opinion that joy is one thing, absence of pain another.” And Torquatus says: “Yes, and he is grossly mistaken; for as I have proved a little while ago, the limit to the increase of pleasure consists in the removal of all pain.”
Now let’s stop there and go through what we’ve just discussed. There appears to be very little known about Hieronymus of Rhodes. Joshua, did you pick up anything about him?
Joshua: He’s thought to be a Peripatetic, a follower of Aristotle — but apparently that’s not even clear. What Wikipedia has to say is that Hieronymus of Rhodes was a Peripatetic philosopher, but that his works only survive in fragmentary form, and interestingly enough that it’s Cicero himself who questions his right to the title of Peripatetic. Here’s the problem: Cicero is almost the only source we have on this. Diogenes Laertius mentions two of his works and notes that he may have done some work on poetry. But that’s basically it. Our main source, apart from Diogenes Laertius and Rufinus, is Cicero. So we don’t have any way of knowing the truth of whether Hieronymus of Rhodes really held the beliefs that Cicero is alleging he held or not.
Cassius: But to some extent I would say that that’s not entirely a defect, and for purposes of our analysis might actually be a feature — in the sense that we can understand from what Cicero is saying that this is the key issue that needs to be considered. The key issue that Cicero is bringing out is that Hieronymus of Rhodes held that the supreme good is the absence of pain, and that in doing so, Hieronymus — in Cicero’s view — was more consistent than Epicurus, because Hieronymus held that if the supreme good is the absence of pain, you have no need of pleasure. And I don’t know if I’ve read that ten times or a hundred times or a thousand times in commentators on Epicurus, but that seems to me to be a huge, huge problem in a lot of the analysis people will read about Epicurus on the internet. It’s almost as if they are alleging that you don’t have any pleasure at all until you have banished all pain from your existence. They’re saying that the real and truly only pleasure in life, the real goal, is absence of pain — without any further explanation of what that means.
But here Torquatus says that Hieronymus of Rhodes was “grossly mistaken.” This is Torquatus — presumably one of the most educated people in Epicurean philosophy in 50 BC — saying that absence of pain is not the supreme good. Let me say that again: Torquatus says absence of pain alone — the supreme good as Hieronymus defines it — is grossly mistaken. Cicero thinks he’s backed Torquatus into a corner by saying that if absence of pain is the final good, then you have no need of pleasure, because Hieronymus says you have no need of pleasure. But Torquatus calls that view grossly mistaken.
Joshua, now it’s time to explain: how is the view that absence of pain is the supreme good grossly mistaken?
Joshua: This is challenging stuff here, Cassius. I almost can’t get my head around this problem — because if it’s true that the limit of the quantity of pleasure is the absence of the removal of all that is painful, and pleasure is the supreme good, then isn’t it correct to say that the absence of pain is the highest good? It’s just not a full definition of what is the highest good.
Cassius: Your last phrase there is the key part. Let me channel some more Cicero here, because Cicero says: “I’ll examine afterwards, Torquatus, what is the sense of your expression ‘absence of pain’; but that pleasure means one thing and absence of pain another, you must grant me unless you are very obstinate.” And what does Torquatus say in response to that?
“Oh, but you will find me obstinate in this matter, for no doctrine can be more truly stated.”
So he is saying that pleasure and absence of pain are the same thing and he’s not going to back off on that statement. But at the same time, he’s saying that Hieronymus of Rhodes was wrong in considering the absence of pain to be the supreme good. How do you make sense of that? And I think there’s a way to do it. But we ought to just revel in the ambiguity and complexity of this for a few minutes, because this is so critical to Epicurean philosophy. If you can’t come to terms with Cicero’s argument against this, you’re not going to be as confident in Epicurus’s conclusions as you otherwise might be.
Joshua: In fact, you’ll think that Cicero is right and Epicurus is wrong, and you’ll go read some Plato. But yeah, I’m still having trouble with this. It seems that Hieronymus of Rhodes is considering absence of pain to be like a pure, unadulterated state — not subject to the description of pleasure but just its own state. Aponia is the word for it. And that that state is the highest good — the final and best good — and that once you’ve reached that state, you’ve reached a point in your life where you have no need of the grosser sensory pleasures to enhance it, because it can’t be enhanced. It’s already the best thing there is. That’s his position. But Torquatus is saying that it’s true that the absence of pain is the highest good, and it’s true that there is this state — once the pain is all gone — where that’s the best life you can have. So is it the only difference, Cassius, to say that between these two philosophers, one of them says that state is good enough and you don’t need physical pleasures to go along with it, while the other says, yeah, I’ll take the physical pleasures too — it’s only going to get better and more varied and more interesting from there?
Cassius: Well, I would answer that yes, that is sort of a description of their difference. But I would agree with Torquatus that Hieronymus of Rhodes is engaged in the grossest of errors, because there is no reason whatsoever to limit yourself to something you’re calling “absence of pain” without describing it as pleasure.
Just as I’m listening to your description of the problem, you are continuing to repeat it exactly as Torquatus is saying it here — in terms of talking about the extreme point. Torquatus is continuing to repeat that this extreme point is easy to identify: total absence of pain is the highest pleasure. That is one observation. But the point we were discussing earlier is that absence of pain is pleasure — and you don’t obsess over the limit. You identify that at any moment in your life, in any discrete experience you want to interpret, that experience is to be deemed pleasure and is pleasure unless it is specifically painful. And so when Hieronymus of Rhodes wants to limit the supreme good to absence of pain but wants to throw pleasure out — when he wants to throw the stimulations out — he’s totally ignoring the truth that Epicurus seems to be describing: that when you’re not in pain, you’re in pleasure.
The phrase that we discussed last week — in Latin from Section 11 of Book One — is Quod dolore caret id in voluptate est. People translate it different ways: “that which is free from pain is in a state of pleasure”; “anything which is cut off from the state of pain is in the state of pleasure”; “to be without pain is to be in a state of pleasure”; “whatever is free from pain is in pleasure.” I think you can’t interpret these as meaning that you have to be totally free from pain before you’re experiencing any pleasure at all.
And if we go a little further here, we can see if Torquatus is talking about degree. Because Torquatus says — when Cicero asks about the quenching of thirst — “A pleasure different in kind; for the quenching of the thirst brings a steady pleasure, whereas the pleasure which accompanies the process of quenching itself consists in agitation.” Cicero says: “Why do you describe those two different things by the same name?” The answer Torquatus gives: “Don’t you recall what I said a little while before — that once all pain has been removed, pleasure admits of varieties but not of increase.” And Cicero says: “I do remember, but though your statement is in good Latin, it is far from clear.”
But let’s stop for a second on that point. The quenching of thirst brings a steady pleasure in the sense that you’re no longer thirsty, and you can go for significant periods of time without being thirsty anymore. And he’s distinguishing that from the pleasure which accompanies the process of drinking — which Torquatus says consists in agitation. While Cicero screams, you’re talking about two different things and calling both of them pleasure — that’s exactly what Torquatus is doing. He’s considering both of those things to be pleasure. The normal existence of life when you’re not thirsty is a pleasure, while also drinking something to get rid of your thirst is also a pleasure. They are both pleasures.
What about 99% pleasure versus 100% pleasure? 100% pleasure is clearly the absence of pain — 0% pain. But does that mean that if you’re at 99% pleasure and you’ve got 1% pain in your life, you’re somehow totally divorced from pleasure, that you’ve somehow failed to meet the summit experience? It would mean that if you remove the final 1%, you’d have some kind of transcendent experience of something totally new that’s not pleasure at all. I don’t think that is a rational reading. What they’re saying is that at 100% pleasure you have pure pleasure — but what you also have at 99% pleasure is pretty darn close to pure pleasure, and not something different in kind; 100% is not different in kind from 99%, just different in degree.
I think you can’t interpret Quod dolore caret id in voluptate est as meaning that you have to be totally free from pain before you’re experiencing any pleasure at all.
Joshua: Certainly not. No, that can’t be the case. If that were the case, then any experience of pleasure would make you an Epicurean God. That’s their whole shtick — the Epicurean gods experience the fullness of pleasure without any admixture of pain. And so if you were an Epicurean any time you said, “oh, I feel good” — then wow, you really are rivaling Zeus for happiness. I think that the typical human experience — I would almost go so far as to say that the lot that is given to us is that we experience pleasure and pain, and that the goal then is to experience far more pleasure than pain. I have a feeling now, Cassius, that I’ve taken one step too far in your view.
Cassius: I think this is the issue, and I don’t know whether Cicero has set this up in his presentation here to take advantage of it. But I do think there are two issues involved here. The fullest experience of pleasure is to be completely without pain. But in any discrete experience of life, it’s either pleasure or pain — and they don’t mix. It seems to be the word because you always only have pleasure or pain; you don’t have a third type of experience called “pain-pleasure” or something we could ask some Germans to combine into a totally new word. You don’t have a third type of experience; it’s either pleasure or it’s pain — not both, not neither, one of the two.
And when you see that whatever your experience is that’s not painful is pleasurable, you see a much different perspective. As Torquatus is insisting, you include the pleasures of wine, women, song, sex, drugs, rock and roll — so long as they don’t bring so much pain that they offset the pleasure they bring. It’s not the activity in itself that is the problem, because many activities can be painful or pleasurable in different circumstances. But you do have your eye on the goal of 100% pleasure, of absolute painlessness, if you can eliminate every pain from your life. And we had read this past week: what’s the difference between 100% pleasure and 99% pleasure? 100% pleasure is clearly the absence of pain — 0% pain. But 100% is not different in kind from 99%, just different in degree. And not something totally divorced from pleasure at 99%.
Cassius: Okay, now I’ll follow up. Norman DeWitt — and this has become one of my favorite quotes — says from page 240: “The extension of the name of pleasure to the normal state was the major innovation of the new hedonism. It was in the negative form, freedom from pain of body and distress of mind, that it drew the most persistent and vigorous condemnation from adversaries. The contention was that the application of the name of pleasure to this state was unjustified on the ground that two different things were thereby being denominated by one name. Cicero made a great to-do over this argument.” That’s where we are right now. “But it really is superficial and captious. The fact that the name of pleasure was not customarily applied to the normal or static state did not alter the fact that the name ought to be applied to it, nor that reason justified the application, nor that human beings would be the happier for so reasoning and believing.”
So we’re in the midst of exactly the issue Norman DeWitt is talking about there. Cicero is saying: you’re talking about two different things, you’re not making any sense. And in response to that, Torquatus is insisting: I don’t really care whether you understand it or not, Cicero — absence of pain is pleasure. You have to understand how that works without becoming Hieronymus of Rhodes and ditching all of the sensual pleasures that we also embrace.
And I think this is really helpful to wrestle with these issues. It would be strange if we found all this to be absolutely clear, because this is the real crux of the attack on Epicurus — that he’s using the term pleasure in ways that people normally don’t use it. But when you then think about how he’s using it, it makes perfect sense.
And then in Section 4, Cicero is going to say this — and let me read it because I think this is the answer to your question about why Cicero is so obsessed with categories. It’s not so much that he’s obsessed with categories like Aristotle might be, droning on and on about categories for the sake of categories. This is what motivates Cicero:
“Torquatus has said absence of pain is identical with pleasure… Why then, when you’ve once defined your supreme good to make it consist entirely in absence of pain, do you shrink from embracing, maintaining, and championing this exclusively? And I ask: what need there is for you to introduce pleasure into the assembly of the virtues like some harlot into the company of matrons? The name of pleasure is odious, disreputable, open to suspicion. So you’re in the habit of telling us this very often — that we don’t understand what kind of pleasure Epicurus means. Now whenever I’ve been told this, and I have not been told it infrequently, I have the habit of getting now and then a little angry, though I usually bear myself with tolerable calmness in discussion. Do I not understand what ἡδονή means in Greek and voluptas in Latin? Which, pray, of the two languages is it that I do not know? How comes it that I don’t know this? — even though all those who are aware of it have chosen to become Epicureans.”
Okay. Let’s stop here and ask for closing statements. This is really interesting material. I think a lot can be brought out of it. I’m sorry to have droned on so much today. Martin, if you’re with us, closing comments today.
Martin: (No comment today.)
Cassius: Thank you, Martin. Callistheni?
Callistheni: Yes. I am seeing that there really is a potential here for liberation, because how much of human experience involves some subtle kind of mental pain that we’re sort of trapped in and can’t see a way out of? So we have this idea: okay, there’s pleasure and there’s pain. If you divide everything up as either good or bad, you’re locking things down in a way that is the opposite of freedom and choice. And there’s something in human beings that gets trapped in a quagmire as soon as you label things as right or wrong, good or bad. For example, alcohol — some people can drink and can do so in a pleasurable way. Now, there are others who cannot do that. But if we see that Epicurus includes drinking as a pleasure — a pleasure of the senses that is acceptable — we then open up freedom for each person to take personal responsibility for what brings pleasure and what brings pain. And you continually observe that in your own self, and you have the freedom that opens up so many more avenues in life for fulfillment. So we’re not saying one thing’s right or wrong. I don’t think I’m fully explaining it, but I see this as very liberating.
Joshua: You know, one thing I’ve been focusing a lot on as we’ve been going through Cicero is Epicurus’s will — when he’s describing his last day on earth — because I think it helps to clear up some of the confusion here as to whether pain and pleasure can coexist in the same moment. This is what Epicurus says: “On this blissful day, which is also the last of my life, I write this to you. My continual sufferings from strangury and dysentery are so great that nothing could increase them.” In other words, we have reached here, for Epicurus, the limit of pain — the limit of the quantity of pain is the strangury and dysentery he’s feeling right now. And then he goes on to say: “But I set above them all the gladness of mind at the memory of our past conversations.”
So this is kind of the eternal struggle between pain, which is bad, and pleasure, which is good. And that even in your darkest moment of pain — as on Epicurus’s last day on earth, if we believe what he’s saying — he sets above all that pain and anguish the gladness of mind at the memory of his past conversations with friends. There’s one of those words for pleasure that Cicero is going to talk about in the next episode — “the gladness of mind.” Anyway, something to keep in mind. This is Epicurus on his deathbed, not losing sight of the main focus: that pleasure is going to carry him through this. The pleasure of the memory of past experience with his friends is going to be the main thing to get him through this experience. And even though the pain of the strangury and the dysentery — kidney stones, I think, is the modern explanation — is so great that he can’t imagine a greater pain, even at that limit, he is able to set above that pain the pleasure he is experiencing.
So just as creation in the Epicurean cosmos is always one step ahead of destruction — and that’s why everything doesn’t just fall apart all at once — pleasure, it seems to me, is one step ahead of pain in Epicurean ethics. And that’s a good way to look at life. This relates, Cassius, to what you were saying about how it matters how you answer the question of whether the glass is half full or half empty — your answer is indicative of your mental state and of your happiness. Just as the phrase “absence of pain” can convey a bewildering sort of ambiguity, or if you define it in the terms that Torquatus and Epicurus are insisting on, you can see “absence of pain” as a phrase which describes the very best state of life. And it depends on the explanation and understanding you provide for it as to whether it makes sense and you become an Epicurean — or your eyes glaze over and you say this guy does not know what he’s talking about, and you throw down the books and move on to somebody else.
Cassius: That’s what we’ll continue to discuss next week. We’ll come back to this beginning of Section 4. I think we’ve had a good discussion today. As always, I want to invite everybody to drop by the forum. We have a thread for this episode and every episode. Let us know your questions and comments. Thank you for your time today. We’ll see you next week.