Re: Forsaking the bestial pleasures!!

I am compelled to add to Cecilia's post because I sensed in it a certain
risk for the reader, a risk very often found where conversation leads to the
ancients (though in this case, not, I am sure, by any ill-will or poor
scholarship on Ms. Baader's part). This risk is of seeing the ancients
merely as a bunch of simple folks who produced a bit or two of raw substance
that we sophisticated moderns inherited and finally considered, usually
sometime after the seventeenth century.

I am confident that Cecilia does not see it this way, but I wish to say just
a little more on the topic as it concerned the ancients so that nobody else
does either.

First, it is important to note that what we know of Epicurus today is at
best second- or third-hand, because none of his writings survive but in
fragments and quotations. Most of what we know comes from commentaries by
other writers and from the philosophies of Epicureans (men like Lucretius,
who wrote De Rerum Natura -- or On the Nature of Things -- which is a long
poem containing, among many other things, a "proof" of the non-existence of
God, of the infinity of the universe, and his philosophy concerning
everything from physics to morals to free will).

We do know that Epicurus met considerable opposition (indeed, at least
enough that none of his writings survive), and that his were not ideas that
can be generally ascribed to the ancients, or even to the Greeks. That
said, we do not know exactly what his ideas were. It is unlikely that he
was, strictly speaking, a hedonist. For one thing, the pleasure in question
need not be immediate -- which means in fact REFRAINING from those immediate
pleasures that can damage long-term pleasure (which, if you are at all like
me, is almost all of the obvious ones). Some modern scholars have in fact
thought that Epicurus might have been something of an ascetic.

A big Epicurean buzz-word is "ataraxia," which means "untroubled" or
"undisturbed" or "steady." It is probable that his "pleasure" is better
understood as being, or as following from, satiation. Physical hungers, be
they of whatever sort, prevent happiness. Thus his alleged maxim,
"Happiness begins at the stomach." This requires neither that all pleasures
be indulged in nor that sensual indulgence necessarily leads to happiness.

It might also be helpful to see something like a "pleasure principle" in
light of a rather popular and influential idea that we first see in Plato's
representation of Socrates, which is, in effect, that All men desire good.
Socrates says, plainly (perhaps too plainly for most people to take it
seriously), no man knowingly does bad. It is important here to remember
that Socrates packs much more punch in "knowing" than most of the rest of us
do. You might remember being told that something was a sin in Sunday
School, and you might do it anyway; but if you KNOW that you should not do a
thing, you won't do it. Thus the pervasive idea, perhaps held unknowingly
much of the time, that for someone with a properly-aligned soul, pursuing
pleasure, happiness, and the good are one pursuit. By pursuing pleasure,
one does the right thing, because only the right thing is pleasurable.

And as this conversation began as a question (or questions) about the place
of "piggy" pleasures, I should add a certain notion that sometimes comes up
in and after the Greeks (especially in Plato), which is that something like
such pleasures is in fact what begins and inspires the pursuit of higher
things. A love of beauty, of nobility, of good (the Greek "kalos" has
"beautiful" as its primary meaning, but becomes "fine," "noble," and
"good"), even philosophy itself, can begin with an instance of being taken
by something beautiful, even of an instance of erotic love. Eros is very
important to philosophy -- if it cannot be said of the Greeks generally, at
least of Socrates and Plato. Socrates, in fact, who is called the wisest of
the Athenians because he alone knows that he knows nothing, admits knowledge
of one thing: love.

It is helpful to recall the horses and charioteer that Socrates calls an
image of the soul in the Phaedrus. The myth is often simplified (in fact,
made trivial) even by people who've read the Phaedrus -- often being
remembered with the bad horse causing trouble for the good horse, and
needing to be controlled. But Socrates says that the soul is the chariot of
two horses and the charioteer. The light horse is noble in character, and
driven by noble things. The dark horse is quite the opposite. The
charioteer needs to control BOTH horses, compelling BOTH horses to work
together. One noble horse is presumably not enough to bring the whole
chariot up to the realm of the forms, up to the divine. Getting there,
suggests Socrates, takes both.

-robbie
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Received on Sun Jun 8 02:59:30 2003