Episode 317 - The Epicurean System of Counterbalancing In the Pursuit Of Pleasure
Welcome to Episode 317 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.
We are closing in on the end of those portions of Tusculan Disputations that are most relevant to Epicurean philosophy today, so we’ll pick up this week with more on Section 32 of Part 5.
XXXIII.
Section titled “XXXIII.”You see, I imagine, how Epicurus has divided his kinds of desires, not very acutely perhaps, but yet usefully: saying, that they are “partly natural and necessary; partly natural, but not necessary; partly neither. That those which are necessary may be supplied almost for nothing; for that the things which nature requires are easily obtained.” As to the second kind of desires, his opinion is, that any one may easily either enjoy or go without them. And with regard to the third, since they are utterly frivolous, being neither allied to necessity nor nature, he thinks that they should be entirely rooted out. On this topic a great many arguments are adduced by the Epicureans; and those pleasures which they do not despise in a body, they disparage one by one, and seem rather for lessening the number of them: for as to wanton pleasures, on which subject they say a great deal, these, say they, are easy, common, and within any one’s reach; and they think that if nature requires them, they are not to be estimated by birth, condition, or rank, but by shape, age, and person: and that it is by no means difficult to refrain from them, should health, duty, or reputation require it; but that pleasures of this kind may be desirable, where they are attended with no inconvenience, but can never be of any use. And the assertions which Epicurus makes with respect to the whole of pleasure, are such as show his opinion to be that pleasure is always desirable, and to be pursued merely because it is pleasure; and for the same reason pain is to be avoided, because it is pain. So that a wise man will always adopt such a system of counterbalancing as to do himself the justice to avoid pleasure, should pain ensue from it in too great a proportion; and will submit to pain, provided the effects of it are to produce a greater pleasure: so that all pleasurable things, though the corporeal senses are the judges of them, are still to be referred to the mind, on which account the body rejoices, whilst it perceives a present pleasure; but that the mind not only perceives the present as well as the body, but foresees it, while it is coming, and even when it is past will not let it quite slip away. So that a wise man enjoys a continual series of pleasures, uniting the expectation of future pleasure to the recollection of what he has already tasted. The like notions are applied by them to high living; and the magnificence and expensiveness of entertainments are deprecated, because nature is satisfied at a small expense.
In this week’s episode, part of what we discuss is the following section from XXXIII which was new to Joshua and me when we came across it. In tonight’s 20th Zoom there was a general idea that this is likely referring to sex / romantic relations, but all ideas will be appreciated.
There are two things going on here: (1) is that there’s a significant difference between the Yonge and Loeb translations of the sentence before the one we’re referring to (“and seem rather for lessening the number of them” vs. “yet all the same look out for a plentiful supply of them,” where Yonge and Loeb seem to be at odds, and
(2) the sentence that contrasts “birth position and rank” to beauty, age, and shape.” (the Loeb version) on which point Yonge largely agrees, but the question is “what exactly are they talking about?
From Bryan:
between the Yonge and Loeb
Looks as though Loeb is correct. Older editors assumed the Latin was wrong. So they assumed a lost negating word. This was considered more plausible here because the word just before this phrase “they condemn” (contemnunt) has an apparent errant “non” (the Loeb edition does have a note about that issue).
For example, this edition (link) says at that spot (in Latin):
“Yet they seek abundance” (quaerunt tamen copiam) These statements are plainly contrary to what Cicero has just said, namely that the Epicureans feigned contempt for pleasures. Therefore Bentley’s conjectures are not to be rejected: ‘yet they do not seek’ or ‘yet they despise’. But perhaps Cicero wrote ‘yet they cling to something’. In any case, nothing certain can be established from the agreement of all the manuscripts.”
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Episode 317 (TD44) continues the Tusculan Disputations series, with Cassius and Joshua focusing on Cicero’s TD Section 33, which presents Epicurus’s classification of desires and his system of counterbalancing pleasures and pains. Cassius opens by linking the episode to the prior week’s theme — happiness is the goal of life; a life of happiness is a life of pleasure — and explains that the next step is to understand what pleasure means to Epicurus. He emphasizes Epicurus’s two-feeling framework (pleasure and pain) and the wide scope of pleasure that includes mental pleasures amplified by the mind’s ability to draw on past, present, and future experience.
Joshua reads the TD Section 33 text, in which Cicero presents Epicurus’s three categories of desires: (1) natural and necessary, (2) natural but not necessary, and (3) neither natural nor necessary. The third category should be rooted out entirely. The section then describes Epicurus’s system of counterbalancing: the wise man avoids pleasures that lead to greater pain and submits to pain when it produces greater pleasure; the mind, not the body alone, is the final judge of pleasures, foresees future pleasure, and preserves the recollection of past pleasure — enabling a continual series of pleasures.
A significant portion of the episode is devoted to a discrepancy between the Yonge and Loeb (King) translations: Yonge has the Epicureans “seem rather for lessening the number of them” while King has “yet all the same, look out for a plentiful supply of them” — near-opposite readings. Cassius argues King’s reading is more consistent with Epicurus’s overall teaching that pleasure is always desirable. Joshua reads the parallel Rackham translation of De Finibus Book 1 (the Torquatus passage on desires and temperance), reinforcing the point that temperance is a means to pleasure, not an end in itself. The episode closes with discussion of an obscure passage where Cicero says these pleasures should be estimated not by birth, condition, or rank, but by beauty, age, and shape — a passage neither host can confidently identify from other Epicurean texts, probably involving sexual pleasures, with Cassius noting that “lewd” and “wanton” are Cicero’s moral vocabulary, not Epicurus’s.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius:
Welcome to episode 317 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. Our discussion last week focused on Sections 30 and 31 of Part Five of Tusculan Disputations, and the title last week was “Happiness is the Goal of Life and a Life of Happiness is a Life of Pleasure.” As we close in on the ending of Tusculan Disputations, Cicero is advocating a blend of Stoicism and Platonism and Aristotelianism and academic skepticism, and as Cicero concludes he’s going to be throwing everybody into the same pot for his contention that all wise men, all philosophers, come to the conclusion that happiness is based on virtue and that a life of virtue is going to be a life of happiness — that virtue is sufficient for happiness.
One of the themes that we’ve been following as we’ve talked about all this, though, is that the devil is in the details — or maybe even the devil is in the dictionary of the way we explain these things — because the meaning of virtue, the meaning of happiness, the meaning of even the word “good” is highly disputable depending on the perspective you come from among the different philosophies that these authorities are promoting. With Cicero, he shifts his position from time to time: advocating the Stoic dogmatic view that virtue is the only good, the highest good, and a life of virtue is guaranteed to be a life of happiness; but sometimes Cicero drops back to his academic skeptic role of saying that he’s not going to take a position himself on exactly what is correct, but he’ll tell you what these other philosophers say and we’ll talk about what is most probable. And he’s going to cite example after example of people who generally are in praise of what Cicero broadly considers to be virtue, but they’re praising this form of happiness from a variety of different perspectives that are not at all the same given the approach that Cicero is taking.
However, he’s able to throw in Epicurus as in general support of some of these ideas, and there are definitely several very interesting comments about Epicurus that we’re going to continue to go through in detail. But as we go from here, we’re probably going to skip Section 32 entirely and go straight to Section 33, where Epicurus is the focus. But again, as we discussed last week, from the Letter to Menoeceus and other examples, Epicurus says that it’s happiness that is the goal — that if we have happiness, we have everything — and Epicurus himself links happiness to pleasure by saying that pleasure is the beginning and the end of the happy or blessed life. We cited Cicero’s Torquatus and Diogenes of Oenoanda for the position that a life of happiness is a life of pleasure, and so when we focus on Epicurus’s position, we have a good fix on words like happiness, which is tied tightly to pleasure. But in order to complete that summary of saying that happiness is the goal of life and a life of happiness is a life of pleasure, the next step in that process is to be sure we understand what pleasure means to Epicurus.
And that’s one of the things we’ll see here — that there are many aspects of the good life that Cicero is talking about that may or may not come within this definition of pleasure as Epicurus sees it. And today we’re going to focus on Section 33, a discussion of Epicurus’s views of the natural and necessary desires. We of course have in Epicurus’s Principal Doctrines and in the Vatican Sayings references, and we have references of course as well in the Letter to Menoeceus, as Cicero is going to explain to us today in Section 33. However, I think we’re going to see a little bit of a different perspective on it — probably in most respects consistent, but stated in a little different way — that’s going to help us drill down to talk about what natural and necessary desires might mean, but always in the context that natural and necessary desires are a subset of the analysis in which happiness is the goal and a life of happiness is a life of pleasure, and so the connection is going to have to be made with natural and necessary desire analysis to pleasure.
And at this point it’s worth remembering that Epicurus is clearly saying that there are only two feelings — pleasure and pain — and as a result, Epicurus has a very wide scope, wide definition of what is included in pleasure, which certainly does not only include the physical stimulations of life as Cicero might want you to believe, but also includes the mental pleasures of life, which Epicurus has said can be and often are of more significance to us than the physical pleasures. As Joshua brings up regularly, Epicurus is clearly on record as saying that the pleasures of the body exist in the present, but the pleasures of the mind are amplified by the fact that the mind considers the past, the present, and the future, so that if we use our mind appropriately we can offset present pains with pleasures not only of the present but also of the past and of the future.
The man on the rack who is under torture, the man who has kidney disease, can offset against the present pain of his kidney disease or being on the rack — not only anything that he can summon right now to his aid, but also his pleasures of the past and anticipatory pleasures of the future. So again, here at the beginning of the episode, linking this to what we discussed last week: if in Epicurean theory happiness is the goal of life, and if in Epicurean theory a life of happiness is a life of pleasure, then the next link in that chain is that pleasure is any experience in life which is not painful. That’s where “pleasure is the absence of pain” comes from, which is stated explicitly by Torquatus in On Ends. When Cicero challenges him and says, “Clearly, Torquatus, you can’t be telling me that absence of pain is pleasure,” Torquatus responds: “Absolutely it is, and it is as firmly so as anything possibly can be asserted.” In other words, both in practice and in theory, when there are only two feelings, the absence of pain is pleasure, the absence of pleasure is pain, and that wide understanding of the nature of pleasure is essential to a clear understanding of how a life of happiness is the goal, how a life of happiness is a life of pleasure, and how the pleasure that we’re talking about that constitutes the good of life is not only sensory stimulation but is all experiences — mental and bodily — of good health, wellbeing, blessedness, happiness, and lots of other words that can be brought to play to emphasize how worthwhile life is to live, even though at sometimes in life you’re going to be choosing temporary pain for the sake of a more pleasurable life in general. Which of course is another point that Cicero has been hitting on here — that a life of happiness does not mean that every moment of every day is consumed in sex, drugs, and rock and roll. If a life is predominantly of a nature that it is worth being called good or happy, then that is a happy life, even though there are exceptional times in life when you’re required to go through experiences that you would prefer not to go through. Okay, I’ve said a lot there to link us over to Section 33. Before we get into 33, though, let’s drop back and see if Joshua has any general commentary and let him lead us into Section 33.
Joshua:
Yeah, I don’t have much to say about Section 32 except to say that as we skip all of these examples, we should not lose sight of the fact that these are incredibly important for classicists who are trying to reconstruct an understanding of the ancient world, and sometimes you find something incredibly important. So it’s in the middle of this discussion of frugality that Cicero gives this paragraph on Epicurus’s view and categorization of desires. And so that’s what we’re getting into now. He starts out this way: “You see, I imagine, how Epicurus has divided his kinds of desires — not very acutely perhaps, but yet usefully — saying that they are partly natural and necessary, partly natural but not necessary, partly neither; that those which are necessary may be supplied almost for nothing, for that the things which nature requires are easily obtained. As to the second kind of desires, his opinion is that anyone may easily either enjoy or go without them.”
“And with regard to the third, since they are utterly frivolous, being neither allied to necessity nor nature, he thinks that they should be entirely rooted out. On this topic a great many arguments are cited by the Epicureans, and those pleasures which they do not despise in a body, they disparage one by one, and seem rather for lessening the number of them. For as to wanton pleasures, on which subject they say a great deal — these, say they, are easy, common, and within anyone’s reach — and they think that if nature requires them, they are not to be estimated by birth, condition, or rank, but by shape, age, and person. And that it is by no means difficult to refrain from them should health, duty, or reputation require it. But they say that pleasures of this kind may be desirable where they are attended with no inconvenience, but can never be of any use.”
“And the assertions which Epicurus makes with respect to the whole of pleasure are such as show his opinion to be that pleasure is always desirable and to be pursued merely because it is pleasure, and for the same reason pain is to be avoided because it is pain. So that a wise man will always adopt such a system of counterbalancing as to do himself the justice to avoid pleasure should pain ensue from it in too great a proportion, and will submit to pain provided the effects of it are to produce a greater pleasure. So that all pleasurable things — though the corporeal senses are the judges of them — are still to be referred to the mind, on which account the body rejoices whilst it perceives a present pleasure, but the mind not only perceives the present as well as the body, but foresees it while it is coming and even when it is past will not let it quite slip away. So that a wise man enjoys a continual series of pleasures, uniting the expectation of future pleasure to the recollection of what he has already tasted. The like notions are applied by them to high living, and the magnificence and expensiveness of entertainments are deprecated because nature is satisfied at a small expense.”
Cassius:
Okay, Joshua, thank you for reading that. Now, this paragraph is going to take some time. I don’t think we’re going to go any further today than to analyze what we’ve got here in as much detail as we can, because as we started out the episode, the understanding of pleasure and how to pursue it is critical to understanding Epicurean theory. And as I listened to you read the Yonge translation here, I’m catching a significant difference in a critical point between his translation and that of the Loeb edition. Let me focus on that first as an example of how carefully we have to read this. Let’s first look at this sentence in regard to the third category. Yonge has it this way — which you just read — quote: “and with regard to the third, since they are utterly frivolous, being neither allied to necessity nor nature, he thinks that they should be entirely rooted out. On this topic a great many arguments are adduced by the Epicureans, and those pleasures which they do not despise in a body, they disparage one by one, and seem rather for lessening the number of them.” Now, the emphasis I’d like to draw there is to that last phrase: “and seem rather for lessening the number of them.”
Well, that is not the way that King translates it in the Loeb edition, because that section reads this way in Loeb: “The third kind he thought should be utterly rejected because they were completely meaningless and so far from counting as necessary had not any relation to nature either. And this sentence seems to me significantly different at this point: his disciples enter on a long argument, and those pleasures which belong to kinds they despise, they belittle in detail, yet all the same, look out for a plentiful supply of them.” And we’ll stop at that part of the sentence. But I would submit that “seem rather for lessening the number of them” is significantly different than “yet all the same, look out for a plentiful supply of them.” One of them seems to say, look out for a plentiful supply of them — indicating you’re going to want to pursue them plentifully — as opposed to Mr. Yonge, who seems to imply that they want to lessen the number of them.
And in explaining that Loeb translation, I see that King has a footnote which says: “The Epicureans despised certain kinds of pleasures such as obscene pleasures, pleasures of food and the like. They took them one by one and refined them away, yet all the same preferred to have a plentiful supply of all” — and he cites that we should compare On Ends Book 1, section 45 for that interpretation. Now again, Joshua, it certainly has to be read closely when someone says that Epicureans despise pleasures such as food and the like. That would be a definition of the word “despise” that would have to be looked at very carefully. But in general, the assertion that they are looking out for a plentiful supply seems to me to be significantly different than the way Yonge is translating — “rather than lessening the number of them.”
Either way you look at the translation, the point seems to be that whether you go with King and say “at this point his disciples enter into a long argument,” or whether you use the Yonge version “on this topic a great many arguments are cited or adduced by the Epicureans” — in either case, the thought seems to be that this is a complicated issue where there are many perspectives on it even within the Epicureans. In fact, Joshua, I would be inclined to say that this sentence is not focused entirely on this third category, but appears to be a general observation that after we discuss the three categories, the Epicureans have a lot of argument and discussion on the application of it — that after having listed the categories, that’s when you get into a long discussion about what those categories mean.
And in the end, you are either as Yonge says going to come down to the position to lessen the number of them, or as King translates, look out for a plentiful supply of them — with the point there being that natural and necessary desires are just a way of categorizing the pleasures in general. And in the end, whether you’re talking about natural or whether you’re talking about necessary or whatever you’re talking about, the total number of pleasures — as King would say here — you’re looking for a plentiful supply of them. The natural and necessary analysis is not there for purposes of causing us to limit our total number of pleasures, but in fact the opposite: the total number of pleasures is to be maximized; it’s just that the type of pleasures you’re talking about should be those that are best calculated to lead to that maximum plentiful supply of pleasure.
Because when you get to the end of this paragraph in the King version, you come up with something that looks to me like a standalone summary, which is this: “The whole teaching of Epicurus about pleasure is that pleasure is, he thinks, always to be wished and sought for in and for itself because it is pleasure. And that on the same principle, pain is always to be avoided for the simple reason that it is pain. And so the wise man will employ a system of counterbalancing which enables him both to avoid pleasure should it be likely to ensure greater pain, and submit to pain when it ensures greater pleasure. And all pleasurable things, although judged by the bodily sense, are notwithstanding transmitted on again to the soul. And for this reason, while the body feels the delight for the time it has the sensation of present pleasure, it is the soul which has both the realization of present pleasure conjoined with the body and anticipates coming pleasure and does not suffer past pleasure to slip away. Thus the wise man will always have an unbroken tissue of pleasures as the expectation of pleasures hoped for is combined with the recollection of pleasures already realized.” And when I read a sentence like that, that’s where I think Epicurus is in fact going, which is why I would say that it is more accurate to say that the Epicureans are at the same time always looking out for a plentiful supply of pleasures, as opposed to ever being in a position where you would be looking to lessen the number of them. You want to lessen the number of experiences of pain for sure. You want to lessen the number of experiences even of pleasure that lead to greater pain. But in general, as an overall viewpoint, pleasure is desirable and you’re looking to ensure a plentiful supply of pleasures.
Joshua:
Now as we look at this, it’s also possible that we’re talking about not lessening the number of the pleasures, but lessening the number of the unnatural and unnecessary desires. And that is something I do see in Epicurean evidence for that practice. We were looking at the footnote which reads, once again: “The Epicureans despised certain kinds of pleasures such as obscene pleasures, pleasures of food and the like. They took them one by one and refined them away, yet all the same preferred to have a plentiful supply of all” — and then it gives a citation to De Finibus Book 1, section 45. So I am looking here at the Rackham translation of this text. This is the Torquatus material that we cite frequently, and this is what he says: “Nothing could be more instructive, more helpful to right living than Epicurus’s doctrine as to the different classes of the desires. One kind he classified as both natural and necessary. A second is natural without being necessary, and a third is neither natural nor necessary. The principle of classification being that the necessary desires are gratified with little trouble or expense. The natural desires also require but little, since nature’s own riches, which suffice to content her, are both easily procured and limited in amount. But for the imaginary desires, no bound or line can be discovered.” And that is where Cicero leaves off on the discussion of the desires and their categorization specifically. And it’s surprisingly short. It’s interesting to see that the discussion of this topic in De Finibus — at least on Torquatus’s side of the debate — is quite short, and Cicero’s treatment of this in Tusculan Disputations might be the longest we get from Cicero in any of his texts, because we have a lot to work with here today. However, he does continue in De Finibus.
He says: “If then we observe that ignorance and error reduce the whole of life to confusion, while wisdom alone is able to protect us from the onslaughts of appetite and the menace of fear, teaching us to bear even the affronts of fortune with moderation and showing us all the paths that lead to calmness and to peace — why should we hesitate to avow that wisdom is to be desired for the sake of the pleasures it brings, and folly to be avoided because of its injurious consequences? The same principle will lead us to pronounce that temperance also is not desirable for its own sake, but because it bestows peace of mind and soothes the heart with the tranquilizing sense of harmony. For it is temperance that warns us to be guided by reason in what we desire and what we avoid. Nor is it enough to judge what it is right to do or to leave undone; we also need to abide by our judgment. Most men, however, lack tenacity of purpose; their resolution weakens and succumbs as soon as the fair form of pleasure meets their gaze, and they surrender themselves prisoners to their passions, failing to foresee the inevitable result. Thus for the sake of a pleasure at once small in amount and unnecessary — and one which they might have procured by other means or even denied themselves altogether without pain — they incur serious disease or loss of fortune or disgrace, and not infrequently become liable to the penalties of the law and of the courts of justice. Those on the other hand who are resolved so to enjoy their pleasures as to avoid all painful consequences therefrom, and who retain their faculty of judgment and avoid being seduced by pleasure into courses that they perceive to be wrong, reap the very highest pleasure by foregoing pleasure. Similarly also they often voluntarily endure pain to avoid incurring greater pain by not doing so. This clearly proves that intemperance is not undesirable for its own sake, while temperance is desirable — not because it renounces pleasure, but because it procures greater pleasures.” So I think from what I just read there, this line — “those on the other hand who are resolved to enjoy their pleasures as to avoid all painful consequences therefrom, and who retain their faculty of judgment and avoid being seduced by pleasure into courses that they perceive to be wrong, reap the very highest pleasure by foregoing pleasure” — he’s not here necessarily talking about lessening pleasure, as we get from this particular translation of Tusculan Disputations, but the idea that you reap the highest pleasure by foregoing other pleasures that carry pain in attendance or that are hard to procure.
Cassius:
Yeah, let me jump in there and say that the singular versus the plural has a lot of implication on it. When you say that you go for higher pleasure by reducing pleasure, that is a difficult way of saying it. It seems to me it’s much more understandable that if you use the singular and the plural — and say that you are trying to maximize pleasure by foregoing certain pleasures — we often stress the difference between desire and pleasure in this discussion. But I think I will note here how difficult that distinction can be and how important it is for us to observe it. Because when I look at both King and Yonge in translating this section, it looks to me like they are using the words “desires” and “pleasures” interchangeably — even in the same sentence. They’re talking about a desire and then immediately shift over to pleasure.
So even in these translations, this distinction between a desire — which pretty clearly means something different than pleasure but is closely related to it — is difficult to maintain and has to be thought about very carefully. But I think the one way that it cannot be read would be to say that you maximize pleasure by lessening pleasure. You have to say something — whether it’s singular versus plural, or particular types of pleasures, or however you want to say it — but just to simply say “I maximize pleasure by lessening pleasure” using exactly the same words just doesn’t make any sense. You have to be discussing two separate things, not just the same thing. You can’t maximize the same thing by reducing the same thing. You can maximize the total experience of pleasure by reducing the experience of certain types of pleasures. And of course what you’re talking about there is: you’re reducing the experience of those types of pleasures which lead to more pain than pleasure.
And of course the ultimate citation that supports that interpretation would be where they both say that Epicurus held that pleasure is always to be wished and sought for in and for itself because it is pleasure — with pain being the opposite. So if you say pleasure is always to be desired, then pleasure is always to be desired. Pleasure is always the goal. It’s only certain types of experiences which bring both some degree of pleasure but a greater degree of pain that would be the activities that have to be monitored and regulated and in fact eliminated. If you know an activity is going to bring more pain than pleasure, then why in the world would you ever pursue that particular activity if you know from the beginning that the outcome is going to be more painful than pleasurable?
Joshua:
Okay, what do we think about this next section here? When he says: “For as to wanton pleasures, on which subject they say a great deal — these, say they, are easy, common, and within anyone’s reach — and they think that if nature requires them, they are not to be estimated by birth, condition, or rank, but by shape, age, and person. And that it is by no means difficult to refrain from them should health, duty, or reputation require it.” And in the Loeb edition: “For lewd pleasures upon which they dwell at length, are, they say, easy to satisfy, general, within reach of all; and should nature demand them, the standard of value should they think not be birth, position, or rank, but beauty, age, shape; and abstinence is by no means difficult at the call of either health or duty or reputation. And in general this kind of pleasure is desirable should there be no obstacle but is never of benefit.”
Cassius:
Joshua, let me first say in response to that — just like when we were talking about “obscene” earlier — here we have words like “lewd” and “wanton.” And to me, I would question those words at the very beginning, because Epicurus is saying that all pleasure is desirable. I don’t know whether these are words that are being chosen by these translators because of a sort of Puritan aspect — maybe there are references to sex or something else that these translators are finding to be undesirable and extremely negative. But the beginning point of analysis with Epicurus is that all pleasures are desirable because they’re pleasure. Now some are not going to be pursued because they lead to more pain than pleasure, but I don’t see Epicurus talking in terms of lewdness or wantonness or using words of moral judgment like that. What do you think there?
Joshua:
Yeah, I completely agree, and it is Cicero who’s doing this. The Latin word he uses there is obscene.
Cassius:
And remember too, it is Cicero doing this here in the conclusion of Tusculan Disputations, where he’s trying to drive home his point about virtue and moral worth and so forth. And that might perhaps explain the additional time being given to this here versus On Ends. But the general context here is clear that Cicero is trying to use these arguments in support of moral worth, and I would say that probably influences some of the way he’s interpreting this. But yeah, this is definitely more detail than we generally see when we start talking about age and shape and person. There certainly must be something behind what Cicero is discussing here. It reminds me sort of Principal Doctrine Nine, where you talk about duration, intensity, and part of the body that’s affected. There is a context to the pleasure that is significant to evaluating it. Certainly I could see how age would affect things. It’s interesting to consider beauty or shape — these other words that are being used — such as health, duty, or reputation. So there’s something going on here that Cicero is rightly or wrongly interpreting. And then in the King edition where he says that in general this kind of pleasure is desirable should there be no obstacle but is never of benefit — “benefit” is another word. What does “benefit” mean? Because there’s no good but pleasure and no evil but pain in Epicurean philosophy, and pleasure is desirable because it’s pleasure.
Joshua:
Right. But we do have Epicurus in Vatican Sayings 50 and 51. He says — no pleasure is a bad thing in itself, but the things which produce certain pleasures entail disturbances many times greater than the pleasures themselves. And in Vatican Saying 51, he is writing in response to a young man or adolescent: “You tell me that the stimulus of the flesh makes you too prone to the pleasures of love. Provided that you do not break the laws or good customs and do not distress any of your neighbors or do harm to your body or squander your pittance, you may indulge your inclination as you please. Yet it is impossible not to come up against one or other of these barriers, for the pleasures of love never profited a man, and he is lucky if they do him no harm.” So he’s using the word “profited” there.
And I presume this is Epicurus writing in Vatican Saying 51. I don’t know what text it comes from, but the thing which I’ve never seen before — and we’re going to have to get some people together and find out what he’s talking about here as we go through the week — is that the standard of value for these pleasures (which Cicero calls obscene) should, the Epicureans think, not be birth, position, or rank, but beauty, age, and shape. And I have no conception of anything like that in any of the surviving Epicurean texts. So this to me is an interesting foothold into another view in Epicurean philosophy that we don’t have apparently from everything else that survives — unfortunately. That also means I don’t know what to make of it at this moment.
Cassius:
And focusing on King’s way of saying it: “For lewd pleasures upon which they dwell at length, are they say easy to satisfy, general, and within reach of all, and should nature demand them the standard of value should they think not be birth, position, or rank, but beauty, age, and shape; and abstinence is by no means difficult at the call of either health or duty or reputation.” So that section about “the standard of value should they think not be birth, position, or rank, but beauty, age, or shape” — that’s not something that I can easily relate to other Epicurean texts either. Shape: how does shape fit into that? Birth, position, or rank seems fairly relatable, and beauty and age jump to mind too, but shape — what is shape in that context?
Joshua:
I don’t know. I was watching an episode of QI recently and they were pulling old words out of Dr. Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, and one of them was “Shape-Smith” — a word we no longer use — which was like a personal trainer, someone who corrects the shape of your body.
Cassius:
That makes sense too. And of course, I suppose we could be talking about the things that Lucretius is alluding to in his famous description of how love can be blind — perhaps that’s it. Joshua, I’m not sure I can think of any other examples in Epicurean texts about pleasures related to beauty, age, and shape.
Joshua:
The thing that stands out for me is that we’re not estimating them by birth, condition, or rank. In other words, it’s not like these pleasures are only appropriate if you are from a patrician family, these pleasures are only appropriate if you have reached a certain status in society. It sounds to me like what Cicero is saying is that Epicurus is saying that’s not the standard — we’re not looking to aristocrats with our judgment of these things; we’re looking to these other standards. But this is such a small little snippet, and we know so little about it, that I hesitate to make any certain pronouncements on it. But there’s something interesting here.
Cassius:
Yeah, Joshua, another aspect could be that we are making the observation that people enjoy certain pleasures regardless of their birth, condition, or rank.
Joshua:
Just like people are capable of the study of philosophy, even if they are women or non-Greek. So if that’s the point being made, then I do see a through-line here to other aspects of the philosophy.
Cassius:
Yeah. Age — everybody goes through certain ages; they don’t always go through the same conditions or ranks, but they all go through age. And “shape” and “person” I suppose also strike me as being highly contextual. Another way of relating this will be back when Lucretius talks about qualities versus properties — things that you can remove without destroying the thing, things that change by events but the thing remains the same, versus those things that cannot be removed without destroying the thing itself. Certainly condition and rank do not destroy the nature of a human being. You can be any condition or rank; those things change without destroying the person. You can change your social standing without changing the fact that you’re a human being. Maybe age, person, and shape are more primary properties than birth, condition, and rank are. But as you’ve said, Joshua, that would be pure speculation on my part there. This is something we will have to take to the Council of Elders on EpicureanFriends.com and see what we can come up with, especially with those who can help us parse through the Latin well. Okay, why don’t we begin to think about closing thoughts for this episode?
Joshua:
Well, as we go through this, we continually see the importance of being careful about the use of words and their meanings and the conclusions that we draw from their use. And to that end, I think comparing different translations is very helpful. Certainly it would be better to do even more than that, but we have a limited amount of time to work on this kind of stuff.
Cassius:
Joshua, you’re exactly right, and that’s a good theme for this episode and a theme for much of what we’re doing here. Just as we started the discussion today, it’s easy to say that happiness is the goal of life. It’s even easy to say — although more controversial — that a life of happiness is a life of pleasure. But the real questions start to be very difficult to deal with when you want to focus on: well, exactly what pleasures are involved in a life of happiness, and how do you pursue those pleasures? And in the end, everything comes down to what you mean by pleasure. Does Epicurus mean by pleasure only stimulation of the body — like Cicero wants to put him in a box to say — or does Epicurus mean a much wider and broader and deeper interpretation of pleasure, in which all of the things in life we find desirable, especially the mental and emotional satisfactions we get out of the past, the present, and the future — those are the focus of what Epicurus is talking about and telling us to pursue during the time that we have? We’ll gather some more information on these details and come back next week to discuss this further. For the time being, let’s leave it there. Feel free to drop by the EpicureanFriends.com forum and let us know if you have any comments or questions about this or our other discussions of Epicurus. Thanks for your time today. We’ll be back again soon. See you then. Bye.