Yeah the dumb dad is a common mainstream-media trope, sure. (Modern Family would be the perfect example. The dad in Beethoven. Clark Griswold) The ditz and the oprah-mom are both, also, common mainstream-media tropes. The real sin, today, is taking your societal/familial role seriously. Jim & Pam, from the Office, provide the non-gender-specific mainstream ideal. — csalisbury

I think the dumb dad trope is part of it, but only at its most superficial and benign. It's an increasingly important part of virtue signaling, social acceptance, and displaying culture for young men, especially liberal and/or educated young men, to engage in non-trivial self-flagellation for being a man that goes beyond jibes and gets into legitimate self-hatred, and it seems like this trend is only going to get more severe and mainstream as time goes on. And I think this is linked to the violence and death men are expected as a routine to suffer, while women are seen as 'metaphysical victims' with a birthright that protects them even from insult just as it does from violence, and their privilege of being the 'better half' both of the marriage and of humanity.

That makes sense to me. I'm a bit confused, though, because dropping 'all in good fun' usually means that you think the person to whom you're speaking might have been offended. — csalisbury

No, it's in case I get audited at some point in the future and some poor schmuck is reading through my whole online history.

Again, though, I'm not a fan of the man bad woman good thing. I'm not sure if I'm getting through. let me try it in italics. Women are as shitty as men. They're also as nice to hang out with as men, if you click. Again, I think you're severely missing the mark here. Women self-denigrate all the time, even in the company of men, and women who don't, or can't, or won't, drive me crazy. You can only relax and enjoy the company of people who are as aware of their flaws as they are confident in expressing their strengths. That's what makes a good fire or dinner or whatever. — csalisbury

Alright, if I was one of those leftist types, I'd say this is classic petit-bourgeois or whatever, you get the idea. It's not just a matter of individuals -- there is a way in which men are expected to be self-denigrating (and in virtue of their being men, this is the crucial part; we are all called on by women to collectively make fun of men on our own behalf for the amusement / appeasement of women, and devalue our own lives in various ways) that is not expected of women, and men are expected to take jokes and insults at their own expense (and physical harm!) in a way women are not. Surely you'll admit that's a trend that transcends individual people not being able to take a joke etc.

I certainly don't do a DFW routine to pick up women, because that'd be stupid. (though maybe it works in academia?) — csalisbury

I think what works in academia is being stable and attractive an unthreatening, which most people in academia are, and then complaining that it's soooo hard to have kids and the travel is just ugh! and why don't we get paid more for being literally the most valuable people in society? You probably also want to make smug comments about poor and uneducated people disguised as comments about 'republicans' or whatever, and then behave in such a way in public that it's not always clear to people who don't know you that you're a couple, since romance and friendship are all equally flaccid and indistinguishable.

That's all just in good fun. ^

What are psycho-social relations like between the sexes in the non-privileged layers of society? — Bitter Crank

Rape, alimony, infidelity. Reality of the dimorphism of the sexes that upper-cass people can't comprehend because they've never experienced it.

This isn't a result of "feminism" or "feminist theory". It's a result of economic flat-lining for many people. Economically, they're dead meat. Neither men nor women hold up well under these circumstances. — Bitter Crank

We're all dead meat; but men are especially dead and especially meat. And the suffering of men and the success of women are deeply entwined. The reverse may also be true, and we can even agree with feminists on that. But as a man I think it's fair to present it from a male perspective.

It seems like you won't believe me, and I don't know how I can make you believe me, but it's really not an 'act' for the benefit of women (It is for some people, sure, but not for most) — csalisbury

I don't really think it's an act, I think these things are part of the air people breathe. You believe and do whatever you were born into. Ingratiation with women by men (and self-denigration by men) is just a cultural trope, that becomes more prevalent the whiter, more liberal, more educated, etc. the demographic. There is a kind of falsity to it, but it's a deeply ingrained falsity. You've gotta have the 'man bad woman good line' somewhere in a popular work in the media, that's just how it works, it's like the invocation of the muses, part of the cultural makeup. I don't doubt that you don't experience yourself as part of any such thing.

But I understand a little bit better where you're coming from though. You're pinning me as the sensitive guy who, listen, I understand you, you as a person, you as someone with a soul, unlike those other animals, those jocks for whom you're just a piece of meat. You're aiming at the wrong target entirely. I've never been a m'lady type. — csalisbury

I don't think it's a m'lady type, so much as, a David Foster Wallace fan, I guess would be the best way to put it. However you want to interpret that. There is a kind of misogyny that the m'lady type buys into that the DFW fan sees himself as above (because he is more sincere, self-critical, and empathetic than that).

But, in any case, that's the point, your motives don't seem all that hidden to me either. So if you want to keep going forward with this, here's my interpretation: I don't think you know very much about what women are actually like, because you haven't spent very much time with women and they don't seem to want to spend time with you and I think that makes you very mad at women. — csalisbury

I don't feel any anger toward particular women, and I get along just fine day to day. I don't know many women, but I don't know many people generally, to be honest. That's a fine interpretation, I don't think it's quite right, but you're entitled to it.

Also, I wasn't saying your views expressed here were idiosyncratic. Rather that they were perfectly ordinary and predictable from someone of your general phenotype, yet you seem eager to shunt the diagnosis and treat it as an idiosyncrasy -- that you have a deeper insight into the workings of individual people, and that your opinion isn't just the result of your various demographic positions.

Well, third-wave feminism is just a branch of identity politics. The 'real' feminism which is dying (second-wave) is more about criticizing sexual and biological institutions, not mere representations and tertiary cultural reflections thereof in media and weighing of demographics. Modern feminism is just a piece of the mainstream zeitgeist, and has no subversive or critical power. It does, however, have the power to kill men, which is what all roads lead to in the world we live in, dead men.

If you wanna play the game of finding the hidden motives underlying what's being said, that's fine, we can do that. But I think you're savvy enough to understand how easy it would be to furnish an equally simple explanation for the anger you've shown here. — csalisbury

I don't really think the motives are hidden. Maybe I'm wrong about your super special idiosyncratic way of viewing the world. Maybe you act exactly like everyone else but for secret internal reasons opposed to theirs. Alright, but I'm not a mind-reader.

Congrats, Britain. Here's to further countries having the courage to follow in your footsteps.

But getting groceries is not stupid, if you catch my meaning.

I've known very few women who don't value men for anything beyond their muscles (whether used to raise houses or raze enemy cities) so it's difficult for me to understand where you're coming from. — csalisbury

If women loved men, they would be actively appalled at men's state in the world. But they aren't; they understand that their livelihood depends on it. No men, literally no buildings. You will never be anything but a tool to women, but because you recognize that they have the upper ground, you understand it's in your interest to ingratiate yourselves to them and be a 'good man' (and the only good man is a...)

#staywoke

Is it really so evident to you that women 'love' men, that citing stupid shit like 'grabbing drinks' is relevant? Meanwhile, men will just keep on dying.

Great, that's awesome!

Do women act like they value men?

Why do men need to be good for anything to them? Why are you instrumentalizing the sexes? — darthbarracuda

I never said men need to be anything. You asked what feminism wants out of you as a man, and that is the answer.

But the latter is a universal structural constant. It is undeniable that women value men as manual laborers to build the world's infrastructure, and as meat shields to die so that they don't; whether they value them as any of these other things is questionable, and that value, if it exists, is as a personal quirk and not as a structural fact.

Like what?

Out of necessity, not because that's all women think men are good for. — darthbarracuda

What else do women think men are good for?

The other thing women want of men being manual labor?

So they also contract men for manual labor, is the argument?

That's not what I said? — Moliere

Sure it is, and in fact you just said it again:

it makes sense to figure out how this concept works within the philosophy assuming that it does, in fact, work as a practical rule of interpretation. — Moliere

I disagree that we ought to go into interpretation assuming that what we're interpreting works or is correct; I hold that such a view amounts to making a position unfalsifiable and has allowed you to disregard my criticisms on the simple grounds that they declare Epicureanism false in some way, which is an absurd maxim to abide by. You seem to think charity requires of us that we assume as a working rule that our interlocutor is right, which is obviously ridiculous. That's not what charity is, and it makes decent criticism impossible. Yes this conversation is a waste of time if you continue, as you have, to disregard what I say just on the grounds that it disagrees with Epicureanism. Read what you've written and tell me that's not exactly what you've done -- not dismissed it because it's wrong, but because it results in Epicureanism being in some way incoherent as a whole. Well then, why am I wasting my breath, since all roads lead to the Garden for you, and this is an a priori constraint on your interpretation of the philosophy?

I'll get to the rest later.

Women want men dead and in prison not as a matter of personal preference but as an institutional fact; it's what their livelihood is predicated on, and they work to defend that livelihood.

So I am asking -- how does the 4th precept fit into the philosophy of epicureanism? How is it possible for it to make sense? Your answer here is simply that it doesn't, because it is false. I find that unsatisfactory because it leaves much to be explained, and because it is uncharitable. — Moliere

First of all, if you a priori don't accept any conclusion to the effect that a tenet of Epicureanism is false, on the grounds that this is uncharitable, then Epicureanism is literally unfalsifiable. I hope that rereading this you see that it's an absurd position. So being charitable I'll assume you can't have meant it, I guess.

I have not simply stated that the tenet is false; I have shown how the Epicurean is led to being forced to make a false claim by a desire on the one hand to maintain a philosophy of invincibility and on the other to tie the end to something naturally occurring and intuitively plausible to hold that position. This requires them to face at some point the intertwined questions of whether 1) bodily pain 'counts' in the freedom from pain that the Epicurean maintains is the end; 2) whether if it does not, the philosophy can genuinely be called a hedonism in any interesting sense, and whether it loses its intuitive plausibility in abstractions as a result, and loses its grip on the notion of pleasure; 3) if it does count, whether bodily pain is entirely avoidable or not; and 4) if it isn't, how then the Epicurean can maintain that the successful application of its philosophy can result in the sort of invincibility from harm that it promises as an ideal. All of these issues are intertwined and I have argued that there is no way to keep all these balls in the air at once. Epicureanism has contradictory impulses and something must give. But it does take criticism to see this, and to realize the ways in which Epicureanism is not workable. So yes, I've said the tenet is false, but of course I've said that! It wouldn't be a criticism otherwise. But it's not that it's 'simply' false, I've explained at length how and why it is, and why the Epicurean is drawn to making the false statement due to contradictory impulses. To throw up your hands after all that and claim that we can't just declare the principle to be false due to charity is absurd. I really don't see how proper criticism is possible by these lights.

Why not? — Moliere

Because, if you accept that pain is in some cases not easy to endure, then you cannot also accept that pain, as a general principle is easy to endure. I'm not sure how you're squaring this contradiction for yourself, other than by saying 'yeah well that rule of the tetrapharmikos only applies sometimes,' which renders it totally impotent, since then Epicureanism is not only not a universal cure, but only a cure for those seasons in which you're not in serious pain that's hard ot endure -- in which case, who gives a shit, we don't need philosophy for times when everything is easy to endure! The insight of the Epicurean position is presumably that all suffering, even the difficult, can be made easy to endure, or else it has no bite. But this is precisely what you've denied, and then acted as if it isn't a problem! Is Epicureanism really so weak that it amounts to 'life is easy when life is easy?' Is a philosophy even needed for that?

What is universal is a set of categories which holds for people. But within those categories variation can play a part. You mentioned luxury and sex. But neither of these are forbidden, according to Epicurean principles -- not intrinsically. It doesn't work like that. Rather, if your desire for sex is an unnatural and unnecessary one, then you should not act on said desire. But if your desire for sex is a natural and unnecessary one, you can act on that desire. — Moliere

As I said, there's no such thing as necessary v. unnecessary desires. What this amounts to is still an imposition on behavior and a set of moral do's and don'ts. The fact that you've said, no, it's not 'thou shalt not have sex,' but rather 'thou shalt not have unnecessary sex' doesn't change that, it only qualifies the nature of those prohibitions.

When Epicurus recommends against luxury and sexual desire it is because people are made anxious by the pursuit of such things. — Moliere

Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. Again, reification.

Again, this only follows if you have a concept of pleasure -- or "the things themselves" -- to contrast against the Epicurean concept of pleasure, or "The phenomena itself" as described by the Epicurean. — Moliere

There is no 'Epicurean concept of pleasure.' There is only one concept of pleasure, which both the Epicurean and other hedonists make claims about. The Epicurean then makes, in my estimation, a false claim -- namely, that freedom from pain is itself pleasant.

To see why this isn't so, we can note that corpses are free from all pain and struggle, yet they feel no pleasure. So it must be that living free from all pains and struggles, and experiencing this freedom is what is good, not simply being free from it. But what is it to experience this? In eating we experience pleasure as a relief from hunger, as well as from the stimulation of our taste buds. But these are both kinetic pleasures by the Epicurean's account. So the taste itself cannot be the pleasure that matters, nor can it be relief from pain. Rather, the Epicurean has to say that the state itself of not being in that pain must be pleasant. But pleasure is a feeling, and so must have some phenomenological quality (which is why corpses don't undergo it, because they feel nothing). So what does not being in any pain feel like? Well, precisely nothing -- there is a feeling to relieving one's bladder, or the taste of a delicious food, but there is no feeling at all of 'not being hungry,' except insofar as it is kinetic satisfaction of, and so removal of, hunger. If you abstract away from all kinetic aspects of pleasure, there results no feeling at all, and so no pleasure. So Epicurus is wrong: it is not pleasant to be free of pain, but rather indifferent.

I don't think it makes sense to look at ancient theories in light of foundationalism. The search for foundations, I don't believe, is what drives very much ancient philosophy but modern philosophy. — Moliere

There are two objections I have to this. First, it's an odd thing to say, and I don't know if it has any truth to it. Second, I'm not sure how it ties into this:

But I can say that the physics ties into the ethics because it gives a pseudo-justification to the ethics. — Moliere

Clearly the Epicureans think that physics founds ethics in some way -- they, like the Stoics, were after what is the natural end of human beings, which requires knowledge of the natural world. However you want to put this, as providing a 'justification,' or 'foundation' or whatever, it doesn't matter. The point is that they see physics as somehow integral to ethics, which I'm skeptical of. As to the reference to Lucretius, the question is not whether the Ecpicureans think there is some such tie or attempt to provide one, but whether there is one, to be found in their theory or anywhere else. I'm inclined to say no, which means the Epicurean ethical theory has to make sense on its own terms, and it's going to make nonsense on its own terms if it founders, no matter what their physics might say. Just as an illustration:

Regardless of what we might give priority to in our reading, though, the physics and the ethics both support one another quite well. The ethics makes sense in a world where we have very little control over said world (it is a random collection of atoms extending infinitely upward and downward), where there is no afterlife (because the soul is a collection of very fine atoms), and where the Gods do not interfere with our lives (various superstitious explanations about nature are false). The physics makes sense in a world where we live as another one of the world's creatures with its own particular habits and needs. — Moliere

None of this seems to impact on the debates we're currently engaging in regarding pleasure. That there are no gods or no afterlife might be practically important: but these are facts that an Epicurean or a Cyrenaic would equally have to react to, and would do nothing to decide between their differing views on pleasure, and does nothing to make the tetrapharmikos, or the question with which this thread started, more intelligible. On these issues the existence of the gods, what our physical makeup is, whether there is an afterlife, are all just irrelevant. The same points would hold even if there were gods and an afterlife, and we were made of eternal spirit-stuff.

I think you're overstating the case here. If a philosophy helps people within those human limits -- including the sage (which, in this case, is not just abstract, because there's Epicurus) -- then it accomplishes all that a philosophy can do. If torture is beyond that limit then what does that matter? Pain, more or less, is still easy to endure. — Moliere

My point is, first, that this is precisely not what Epicurean philosophy claims to do, and far from placing limits on itself, has a Hellenistic machismo that promises, with careful application, to bring about the invincible sage, that is undisturbed by torture. These are not human limits; they are fantasies (barring perhaps, extraordinary feats of asceticism, which are not recommended by Epicurus).

My second point is that you cannot just bite the bullet on this and then just go on affirming that pain is easy to endure. As if the contentless modifier 'more or less' helps? Clearly, pain is not easy to endure, and Epicurean philosophy does not help make it easier to endure, and the sage has no way to free himself from bodily pain by studying the philosophy.

I also doubt very much that Epicurus was anything more than a man. The sage is an ideal of the doxography; we don't expect to actually see sages walking around. Maybe people thought Epicurus was actually such a sage, which again is in keeping with the 'invincibility philosophy' of the Hellenistic schools.

So while it may sound implausible, our goal as interpreters (so I would say) is to figure out how to make it plausible. — Moliere

And our goal is also to acknowledge that when the best of our most generous interpretive efforts still make the philosophy founder, we have to admit the inconsistency rather than continue to deny it. Otherwise, there is no point to inquiry, we can just make up whatever we want. As interpreters and philosophers we are not just neutral historians out to give every side its best shake. Yes we do that, but only to make the arguments as strong as possible to see whether they stand up, and after that we have to leave what falls. These philosophies aren't just intellectual toys to defend and reinterpret, but are supposed to have meaningful impact on people's lives.

Not sure how to make it clearer to you than the example of a child burning themself vs. an adult burning themself. — Moliere

First of all, the claim that an adult burning themselves feels less pain than a child doing the same is very odd, and I'm not sure what supports it. Second, I think I've already said all I needed to say in the quoted paragraph, and I don't know how your response advances the conversation.

Heck, emotional pain is similar, insofar that we deal with emotional pain in the correct way. — Moliere

There is no 'correct way' to deal with emotional pain, in spite of the didactic suggestions we get from the Stoics and yes the Epicureans. To claim that there is robs it, in my opinion, of its status as actual pain (and maybe as actual emotion). Yes, pain is bad. But what follows from that?

I don't deny any of this. — Moliere

Okay, but this seems opposed to what I was responding to, so I don't know what you mean.

It seems to me that anyone who claims hedonism, at least in the philosophical sense (we can be practical hedonists without this, of course), owes their readers a theory of pleasure. — Moliere

I disagree in the sense that pleasure is not a technical concept but a folk concept, and insofar as hedonists make claims about it, they do so in reference to the folk concept (indeed I doubt hedonism has any use at all if it tries to invoke a technical concept of pleasure, which is why utilitarianism in my opinion is a dead end). So no 'theory of pleasure' is going to give you a better grasp of that folk concept, but there can be true or false claims made about that very concept. The assertion that a lack of pain is itself a pleasure, or that there is a static form of pleasure, is such a false claim made by the Epicureans, in my view. Perhaps this comes about as the result of a desire to turn pleasure, a fleeting, temporary, contingent thing, into something immortal, which is always going to be the Epicureans' absurdity. To correct these mistakes, we should not invoke a theory of pleasure, but return to the phenomenon and point out in what way the Epicureans mischaracterize it, and why their philosophy has led them to do so.

Okay, Good Man, here are your options:

1) Die

2) Rot in prison

Anyone who tells you something else is wanted of you is lying.

'B...but that can't be true! Not all women!' Uh huh.

Are you defending being a vassal state? Grow some backbone!

As a dude, what do feminists want me to do exactly? — darthbarracuda

Well, my bright-eyed child, you wouldn't like the answer...

Because it's nature which gives sense to the ethic -- in the world, as portrayed by Epicurus, the Epicurean doctrine is what makes sense. Further, it is human nature, in particular the nature of our soul, which gives the ethic its force. — Moliere

I have doubts both that physics is foundationally relevant to ethics (perhaps it is instrumentally) and that the Epicureans did any useful physics. What we know of their theories makes them seem speculative and unhelpful.

Lastly, it seems to go against the claim that epicurean philosophy is just a collection of maxims. Without having the actual texts it's not clear-cut -- but since Epicurus uses arguments in all of his letters, including the letters on nature, it would seem to me that we can't call Epicurean philosophy a collection of maxims only. — Moliere

But is there any real sense in which Epicurean views on nature tie organically to their ethical project? It seems in the modern imagination the latter has retained some interest while the former hasn't in the slightest. Is everyone involved in modern Epicureanism just deluding themselves? And if not, doesn't that show the physical project to be of little importance?

However, I don't think that this division here goes against what I'm saying about Epicurus' theory of pleasure being central to the philosophy. I'd rather say that this is one way of summing up the philosophy, but that the majority of the philosophical work is being done by the theory of pleasure -- that this is the "main thrust", so to speak -- where the division between natural and necessary, natural but unnecessary, and unnatural and unnecessary desires is how a proper Epicurean is meant to sort their desires and then act to fulfill the first category in order to obtain the goal of peace of mind and freedom of bodily pain (which you may say I'm contradicting myself here -- I admit there's a tension, but I'm trying to figure out how to resolve that tension more than anything -- but perhaps freedom of bodily pain does not mean we do not feel bodily pain, but rather, a lesser degree of pain? At the least this would make sense if pain is inevitable, which would at least cohere well — Moliere

I never said his theory of pleasure wasn't essential to the project, only that the Epicureans understand pleasure in a certain way, creating divisions between the static and the kinetic, and valuing the latter only insofar as it is on road to the former. Epicurean pleasure is negative and still, a pleasure of freedom from ill. The question as the letter points out is 'necessary for what?' If it's necessary for eudaimonia, the final end, and freedom from bodily pain is among what's necessary for this, there's just no getting around that you need to be free from bodily pain to be happy. And I think this is pretty obviously right. The problem is that once you admit this plausible principle, you're stuck as an Epicurean, because you have to say that the sage somehow must be able to avoid bodily pain with impunity, which he can't. The Epicurean wants, on the one hand, to have complete control and freedom over his life, and on the other, to base his ethics around what by its nature can't be controlled. I don't think there's a way of resolving this dilemma.

The other solution that comes to mind, for me, is to strike out the example that Diogenes Laertius uses of on the rack, since it is not in quotes, and simply give up the ground on invulnerability in all circumstances. But that wouldn't work to make sense of pain in the context of the ethics of the day, at least as I've come to understand them through the secondary literature. — Moliere

It's more than that -- it makes one tenet of the tetrapharmikos obviously false, which is what we started out with. I think an Epicurean philosophy that abandoned the abstract ideal of an invincible sage is perfectly coherent, but it goes against the spirit of the philosophy, and eudaimonistic philosophy generally.

Does it have to differ? What if "conditioning oneself to feel less pain" is, more or less, what makes pain easy to endure? — Moliere

There's a difference in what usually when we say we can cope with X, or get better at dealing with X, we don't mean we remove it, but make its presence more tolerable. If we could remove it, we exactly wouldn't have to cope with, or get better at dealing with, it. With pain this distinction seems not to hold. I can't make sense of undergoing pain and easing it -- to ease pain is simply for pain to go away.

Subjective -- The person who feels pleasure is the one who can say whether or not this or that is pleasurable. The speaker has priority over anyone else on whether or not such-and-such is pleasurable.
Empirical -- One cannot know what is pleasurable without having tried this, that, or the other thing/activity/state/etc. You must try it out to know if something is or is not pleasurable.\
Phenomenological -- related to the first, but I like to state this explicity; pleasure is had only from a first-person perspective. I differentiate this from the first category only by saying that the first governs the rules by which we may speak of pleasure, while this latter point gives the ontological foundation for said rules. — Moliere

Some of this would have to be tempered -- it seems unreasonable to say that you can never 'say' that someone else is in pain, or that you 'can't know' if something will be painful without undergoing it. We often can make educated estimations that people are in pain (but this is sometimes very hard to do), and educated guesses about what will be painful, although this is also hard. I have never hit my dick with a hammer, but I can say with confidence it would be painful and so won't do it.

But yes, pleasure is always from a first-person perspective, and nothing is essentially guaranteed to be pleasant or painful, and there is no ultimate measure of what is or is not either of these other than the feeling itself.

Now, having said this, there's something else that should be noted -- Epicurus' philosophy does not really focus much on particular actions or things. It's not that this, that, and the other are forbidden. And I don't think that a proper Epicurean would be against this, that, or the other on the basis that everyone will react to it in the same manner. So I don't think a charge of hubris would apply so easily, at least, as the strong statement above seems to indicate. There's plenty of leeway for "trying things out" and seeing what works for you in a particular circumstance. What is "fixed", so to speak, is fixed by human nature, and that leads to how we can free ourselves from anxiety, and thereby live a joyous life. — Moliere

Epicurus seems to speak explicitly against luxury and sensuous gratification, in a sort of moralizing tone, and defensively as if he knows, claiming to be a hedonist, that people will accuse him of approving of or recommending these things. Certainly Epicureanism makes explicit universal recommendations for how one ought to live.

On the rest of what you say I'll grant, though your fourth statement strikes me as odd. Here, however, I would note that you are in agreement with Epicurean philosophy. It's perhaps one of the strongest reasons I disagree with Epicureanism, in the end. But the Epicurean puts forth pleasure as the goal. — Moliere

There's a subtle difference here, though, in that Epicureans take themselves to be doing ethics in the sense of finding the final natural end of a thing -- it just happens to be for humans, and that end for humans just happens to be a certain kind of pleasure. Thus the point of Epicurean philosophy is to begin by asking 'what is eudaimonia?' and to give an answer to this question: 'static pleasure.' But the Cyrenaic hedonists don't ask this quesiton, because they deny that the end is eudaimonia. And so an Epicurean can sensibly ask, 'why is pleasure good?' and respond, 'because it is a human's natural end,' and so an Epicurean chooses particular pleasures for the sake of a state not reducible to any of these, for the sake of happiness. The Cyrenaic, by contrast, will choose happiness for the sake of the particular pleasures, which need no justification outside of themselves, including not in human nature.

Rule Britannia, get out. I'm cheering for you guys!

Why not just say 'slope'? (Though, I suppose 'declivity' has a kind of geological vibe to it. That would tie it in to the shale and limestone deposits. It suggests, perhaps, an impersonal landscape. Cormac McCarthy uses this kind of trick a lot, but it seems to work better when he does it. Not sure why. I'd have to think about it.) — csalisbury

I think 'slope' is definitely more beautiful phonetically -- one syllable, a long vowel, no flaps or schwas. But maybe, yeah, the point is to pick something that sounds more impersonal. 'Slope' has a wealth of poetic connotations. Generally I think Germanic words are aesthetically more pleasing than Latinate, especially artificial Latinate, ones in English.

FWIW here's what happens next: dude takes off his shoes ("He extended his legs and began to take his shoes off, edging the heel with the back of the other shoe") steps on a broken bottle ("as jagged as the French Alps, the round base of the bottle forming a perfect support for the protrusion, the only piece of glass for yards, seated neatly against the rail plate") thinks about his dead wife ("her car simmering steam and smoke upside down in the Saw Mill River Parkway, twisted wreckage betrayed by the battered guardrail) and then gets beat up by a bunch of poor people while he imagines the performance of Brahm's Symphony no. 3 he could be at ("the third movement of which he was particular fond, Poco Allegretto, so rounded and soft at the beginning it would, if he had gone, remind him of the shoulders of his wife, of a moment twenty years ago making love in a small room on Nantucket") — csalisbury

This physically hurts...

If I were to distill it to what I think its essence is, I would probably try something like:

He smelled seaweed and saw no water.

I think some of the diction is bad -- declivity, estuary -- and I also don't like all the relative clauses and piling on passive constructions.

The paragraph establishes a feeling of sadness and nostalgia in me, and captures a multi-faceted experience too from the history of a place to the feeling of wind on someone's face. — Moliere

I think maybe the worst that can be said of it is that for me it conjures up the author trying to write it.

One more metal track, perfect lyrics.



When I was young, I cast aside the shadows of my youth
And I lifted up my eyes to the skies
I spread my wings, I sailed the seven seas
For Glory and all that it seemed

And through my love, I passed inside the hallows of my heart
And I lifted up my cries to the heights
But no one cared, No one even dared
And Glory evaded my dreams

Now I tell you this tale, this story
When I set my own sails for my dreams
In the Author of Life I found Glory
And the honor and power of my King

Now in my age, I've looked beyond horizons of the past
And I realized that fame was but a thing
I wrote my score, I wanted even more
And Glory said "No" to my theme

Now I tell you this tale, this story
When I set my own sails for my dreams
In the Author of Life I found Glory
And the honor and power of my King

Now I tell you this tale, this story
When I set my own sails for my dreams
In the Author of Life I found Glory
And the honor and power of my King
And the honor and power of my King

As for "probably" -- if we accept Diogenes Laertius as a source when describing rather than quoting (as I do in the beginning of the post -- where the quote about being happy on the rack comes from, though it is problematic), then he describes several texts Epicurus wrote, including one called On Nature comprising of 37 books. — Moliere

But why would a work on nature be relevant?

Sort of. First, the division between static and dynamic pleasure is not necessarily an Epicurean one. This way of understanding Epicureanism is at least contended in the literature, and I haven't been able to find the division in the Epicurean texts. If you know where to look I'd be much obliged to you for pointing this out. — Moliere

Yeah, a pretty clear statement of the division is in Lives & Opinions 10.136:

He differs from the Cyrenaics with regard to pleasure. They do not include under the term the pleasure which is a state of rest, but only that which consists in motion. Epicurus admits both [...] So also Diogenes in the seventeenth book of his Epilecta, and Metrodorus in his Timocrates, whose actual words are : "Thus pleasure being conceived both as that species which consists in motion and that which is a state of rest." The words of Epicurus in his work On Choice are : "Peace of mind and freedom from pain are pleasures which imply a state of rest; joy and delight are seen to consist in motion and activity."

Under this rubric I'd categorize the avoidance of bodily pain as natural but unnecessary — Moliere

From the Letter to Menoeceus:

We must also reflect that of desires some are natural, others are groundless; and that of the natural some are necessary as well as natural, and some natural only. And of the necessary desires some are necessary if we are to be happy, some if the body is to be rid of uneasiness, some if we are even to live. He who has a clear and certain understanding of these things will direct every preference and aversion toward securing health of body and tranquillity of mind, seeing that this is the sum and end of a happy life. For the end of all our actions is to be free from pain and fear, and, when once we have attained all this, the tempest of the soul is laid; seeing that the living creature has no need to go in search of something that is lacking, nor to look anything else by which the good of the soul and of the body will be fulfilled.

My emphasis. I don't see any way to read this other than being free of bodily pain as being necessary for happiness.

I'll remention here because I'd like to see what you think of the argument: Children feel pain to a greater degree than adults do from the same sources of pain. You burn your hand on a stove you don't go crying about it. You may not be a happy Epicurean, but there's a difference in the feeling of pain between these two events. I'd say that this is due to development in dealing with pain. If that were the case, then it seems plausible, at least, that we could further develop ourselves so that pain is less of a nuisance (easy to endure), no? — Moliere

What I'm saying is, I don't see how this differs from simply conditioning oneself to feel less pain. Both emotionally and physically, some repeated exposure can actually subdue the pain itself. Short of that, I don't understand what better coping with the pain amounts to, unless you're talking about something extrinsic, like making better life decisions in the face of pain.

So I suppose that while I agree with you that "human nature" is a reification, I'd just note that it's a practical one which yields practical knowledge (which is contingent, as you note), if not universal knowledge. (which would be a strike against the Epicurean claim to a universal cure -- but the notion of a universal cure is not what I would defend. I fully confess that I doubt this. My aim is to understand what is valuable, though, rather than discount Epicureanism on some of its more exaggerated claims which were more a product of the state of ethics at the time, so I would argue). — Moliere

If humans differ significantly enough as to what they find pleasant, then the use of a static human nature is going to be detrimental to your ethics. It seems to me they do.

I would note here that it seems to me your notion of genuine hedonism here seems to be committed to a theory of pleasure which states that pleasure is subjective, empirical (as in, one has to try things out, not in any scientific sense), and phenomenological as I mentioned earlier.

Would you say that's true or false? I'm just guessing because that strikes me as a good approximation of how people talk about pleasure. — Moliere

If you are asking whether pleasure is a feeling, then yes -- and I'd say also that I don't know of any way to understand pleasure except as feeling, to the extent that this seems not to be a theoretical commitment but rather a facet of competence with the lay concept. Epicurus at least seems to agree -- again from the letter:

...we make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good thing

If your point is that pleasure needs to be seen as something other than a feeling, then I can't understand that claim except to treat it as the countersensical suggestion that pleasure ought to be treated as something other than pleasure. Or perhaps that you have some reason for being a hedonist nominally but at root are actually not interested in pleasure, but something else (some other human fulfillment) and so your ethics are not hedonistic (meaning they aren't Epicurean).

Which would highlight where you differ from the Epicureans. But if that be the case then I would at least float the idea (to see how you would respond) that your disagreement is not with how Epicureans deal with pain (as a related aside, though not necessarily direct to Epicureanism: is pain not inevitable, after all? Won't every life feel pain?), but with their treatment of pleasure. — Moliere

I basically have a Cyrenaic sort of hedonism, which differs from Epicureans on several points regarding pleasure:

-All pleasure is kinetic. There is no static pleasure, the latter just being indifference or the absence of pleasure and pain. Indifferent states in a sense do not exist, because they are lack of motion, rather than a kind of motion, and the achievement of a truly static sate is thus simply death.

-There are no categories of natural, unnatural, necessary, or unnecessary, goods, desires, pursuits, etc. Things are good and bad not by nature but by contingent bodily makeup and convention. Nothing is inherently good or bad, except for pleasure and pain, which are not really 'things' in the sense that anything can be either pleasant or painful potentially. Furthermore, we do not have enough knowledge about human commonality to make universal recommendations.

-Pleasure is good insofar as it is pleasant, not insofar as it services a notion of happiness or eudaimonia. Happiness, if there is such a thing, is worthwhile for pleasure's sake, not vice-versa.

-There is no inherent tie between virtue and pleasure.

The great difficulty here is just how little that's left to infer from over the ages. But there's enough evidence to indicate that there's more to the philosophy than maxims. — Moliere

Epicureanism's main thrust and appeal was that it was not esoteric, that anyone could practice it and reap its benefits. So aside from the weakness of claiming there were (probably?) deeper doctrines that we don't and can't know about right now, it seems that even if this is true it's not going to save the common case, which is what is so important to the Epicurean to begin with.

And the entire philosophy is not just about avoiding pain -- it's about living a happy life, and the answer to the happy life is pursuing pleasure in the correct way. — Moliere

That correct way being the achievement specifically of static pleasure, which is the freedom from pain.

Especially since, though it is hedonic, the Epicurean does not avoid pain, but deals with it (since pain is an inevitable part of life) — Moliere

But this is precisely what's under question. How does the Epicurean deal with pain? Clearly it can't be by impotent mental tricks, which you seem to agree. But then, we seem to have no evidence that they do, except precisely by avoiding it, which is what the Epicurean recommendations amount to.

What do you mean by reification? What idea are Epicureans treating like a thing? — Moliere

There is no such thing as an unnatural or unnecessary desire. Epicureans treat temporary, contingent, custom-bound properties of things (like the desire for a luxurious lifestyle) as if they were inherently bad in virtue of conflicting with a static human nature. This is reification because it takes what is situational and treats it as essential. There is nothing good or bad about wanting a luxurious lifestyle in of itself.

For example, the pursuit of luxury -- where men would pursue luxury as if it were something that can be held onto, Epicureans would say that an item of luxury is of course pleasurable, but that you are hurting yourself because of some idea you have about the luxurious lifestyle when you could just fulfill your desires which are natural to you and, thereby, be happy. — Moliere

But there may be circumstances in which the pursuit of a luxurious lifestyle is beneficial. Doctrines about what is natural or unnatural -- which a naturalistic eudaimonism like Epicureanism must commit itself to -- must perform these reifications, or else collapse into a different kind of hedonism (I would say a genuine hedonism) that treats pleasure as good on its own terms rather than because it checks off certain requirements having to do with final ends and human nature.

It might be that ascetic practices yield extraordinary abilities. If so, that'd be great -- unfortunately as a Westerner I'm just not familiar with those traditions and have no way to evaluate their effectiveness. Epicureanism was certainly NOT such a practice, however, since all records we have of it mostly record banal platitudes meant to be able to be followed by anyone, and that if followed clearly do not yield those kinds of abilities.

Lots of the religious and philosophical stuff I've grown up in has been vaguely anti-ascetic, but it's difficult for me to know whether that position is justified. It could be that a lack of exposure to asceticism makes it difficult to appreciate the extent to which suffering can be warded off. But even in those traditions, asceticism is a higher calling NOT intended for ordinary lay practice, which Epicureanism claims to be.

Coping doesn't remove the problematic thing, but makes it easier to bear. I don't think it makes sense to say that pain can become easier to bear -- for a situation to become easier to bear is just for the pain to be eliminated.

I'd also say that though I find the extreme cases (which were relevant to the day, but I'm not so sure we care about invulnerability) hard to buy that there may still be something to the philosophy -- something reasonable and worthwhile -- when an Epicurean isn't trying to defend against counter-examples. If the Epicurean way of life could relieve pain, in the no-bullshit way of actually doing so (as opposed to having a practical benefit by simply believing that pain is easy to endure), then I'd still say that there's merit to the claim. — Moliere

I doubt that Epicureanism fares much better for ordinary life -- even if it's not as bad as torture, it's questionable whether it's bearable, or whether Epicureanism has anything to say about making it bearable. What Epicurean wisdom amounts to, most generously interpreted, is a set of maxims for avoiding typical sources of pain in life.

In other words, if the 'counterexample' is all of life, it becomes hard to see your philosophy as anything other than an abstraction, aimed at a kind of intellectualistic perfection of the body.

And it strikes me that there are people who are better at coping with pain in their life, even if they are not going to stand up to torture. I could see how a disposition would lend itself to being able to endure pain, too. So, it seems to me, there's plausible reason for accepting that there might be some way to make one better able at coping with pain (though whether Epicurean philosophy actually accomplishes this is another question -- just saying I wouldn't write it off as absurd in lesser, more common, cases) — Moliere

I don't think it makes sense to cope with pain. By the time it hits, it's already too late -- pain is pain, it doesn't get better except by being eliminated. But then that's not coping with pain, but rather avoiding or eliminating it. The Epicurean life is perhaps so simple and safe that it minimizes risks of certain pains, but even then it reifies certain things that are clearly instrumental, like eschewing luxury.

The Epicurean dilemma is that one the one hand it, against Stoicism, places emphasis on man's continuity with animals, and recognizes our ends as of the same genus, if not the same species: our end is concrete, pragmatic, and has to do with our bodily makeup, the achievement of static pleasure, rather than some abstract value of virtue like with the Cynics or Stoics preach. On the other hand, the Epicureans were convinced that it was possible to overcome all life's ills through philosophy, seduced by Socrates' intellectualism, which led them into abstractions that their purported end couldn't stomach. Pain can't be abstracted away from, yet in order to maintain that the sage could be perfectly happy at all times, the Epicurean must admit that the sage can avoid pain at all times. But he can't, and so this is absurd.

This dilemma is unique to the Epicureans, and their rivals don't have to deal with it because they bite one of two bullets: either, like the Cynics and Stoics, they admit that man's end is more abstract than we might think, and so remove ethics from the concreteness of pleasure and pain, or like the Cyrenaics, they admit that philosophy is of very limited power, and while it can help you, there is no state of sagehood that will relieve you of all life's ills, or guarantee you won't be harmed. How is a man happy on the rack, if he feels pain, and lack of pain is the end? Does he literally remove the pain through some mental trick, as Moliere seems to suggest? But this is just fantasy -- bodily pain is inflicted by our animal nature that philosophizing has no power to stop. Is it that even in pain (as Epicurus 'screams' on the rack), we can still be happy? Then the core of Epicureanism is compromised, and it isn't really a hedonism, but some sort of virtue ethics that gives lack of pain some secondary role, certainly not the end.

Nothing here resembles Dream Theater too much to me at least. But I agree, they've become drenched in low fat syrup and are hard to stomach. Early DT had some serious cred though, when they were trying to be Queensryche and Fates Warning.



Pretty wild...

This is a doctrine that the Epicureans' hedonistic competitors, the Cyrenaics, mocked, in my opinion rightly. The notion that remembering past pleasures is effective and quelling present pains is quite simply ludicrous.

True masterpiece.

And now for something absolutely fucking disgusting.

It's about to get real fuckin true up in here...







Don't know his name, he does all the art for the band.

USPM, related to all three bands historically