Smooth Motions

The life of a human being consists of a complex succession of desires. Because we are not self-sufficient as bodies, we need other bodies to sustain our existence. The lack of these bodies is experienced as pain, which we are motivated to avoid. The satisfaction of our desires is experienced as pleasure, which we are motivated to pursue. For Epicurus, this kind of pleasure–kinetic or “moving” pleasure–is felt as a positive affect. Cicero claims that Epicurus follows the Cyrenaics here is conceiving of pleasure as “an agreeable motion that gladdens the senses” (iucundum motum quo sensus hilaretur) (II.8; cf. 18).

Epicurus is clear in the Letter to Menoeceus (128) that these sorts of episodic pleasures by themselves do not constitute the end. That is identified with the state in which we are free of pain (aponia) and mental disturbance (ataraxia). One question that arose today is whether this state of “katastematic pleasure” is experienced as a distinct kind of positive affect, or whether it is just the state in which we satisfy (necessary) bodily desires and enjoy kinetic pleasure without interruption. Here’s how I think of these as being related.

An ordinary life is one in which we are led hither and thither by unregulated desires, satisfying some and failing to satisfy many others (=> followed by => indicates a satisfied desire; => followed by X, an unsatisfied desire):

=>=>X=>=>=>X=>X=>=>X etc.

A disciplined life is one in which we regulate our desires in the way recommended by Epicurus. We limit our desires to those things that we cannot live without (barley cakes and water) and take other things only when they can be easily had without painful consequences. In this case, ideally, we enjoy an uninterrupted flow of kinetic pleasure:

=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>etc.

When we are in this state we enjoy a life that is free from bodily pain. So we have realized the first conjunct of the Epicurean end: the state of aponia. Now what exactly is it to be in that state? Is it to experience some other positive affect over and above the succession of kinetic pleasures? I don’t think so. Rather, it is just to be in the state in which we experience kinetic pleasure without interruption. This is brought out in Cicero’s contrast between voluptas in actu and voluptas in stabilitate (II.16). It is what Epicurus describes as the limit of the pleasures of the flesh, which are not increased but only varied (PD 18).

The disciplined life, however, is not yet the Epicurean life, because even if we enjoy a life free of bodily pain, we can still suffer from psychic pain, or mental disturbance. We do so as long as we have failed to reason out “the goal and limit of the flesh” and dissolve our fears of the gods and death (PD 18, 20). We worry about whether we will be able to continue satisfying our desires into an indefinite future (including a life after death); we worry about whether our life could be better than it is in terms of our success, social standing and the kinds of pleasure we enjoy. In short, even if all our physical needs are supplied and we are free of bodily pain, we can still be miserable because of our beliefs about the possibility of desire satisfaction.

Ataraxia comes in our understanding that we have, or can have without difficulty, everything we need to make our life complete: “He who has learned the limits of life knows that it is easy to provide that which removes the feeling of pain owing to want and make one’s whole life perfect. So there is no need for things which involve struggle” (PD 21; cf. 19-20). When we understand this, we eliminate the anxiety that stands between us and the end of happiness (or a happy life).

Now, the question can still be raised whether ataraxia itself is (or involves) a distinct kind of positive affect–a so-called “mental pleasure.” It is certainly conceived in this way by some later thinkers, but I don’t see much evidence for it in Epicurus. First, in contrast to the kinetic pleasures, which are “agreeable motions” of the flesh, aponia and ataraxia are both represented negatively in terms on the absence of pain or disturbance. Second, we have reason to believe that for Epicurus the pleasure that we feel when we have achieved the end is just the kinetic pleasures of the body–now appropriately limited, regulated and unaccompanied by beliefs about their fragility, insufficiency, etc. Admittedly, in the same text he does go on to speak of the “joy of the mind” (laetitia mentis), but this he says consists in nothing more than “the expectation that our nature will avoid pain while acquiring all those things I just mentioned [i.e. bodily pleasures]” (Tusc. Disp. 3.41-2 = Text 19).

I’ve got a question about what we were discussing toward the end of seminar today. It concerns the rational temporal allocation of pleasure, and whether and why Epicurus is really opposed to a pleasure-maximizing view. When it comes to the rationality of allocating pleasure and pain across time, I think I more or less grasp the difference between Epicurus and the Cyrenaics. The Cyrenaics are presentists; they are only concerned with pleasures and pains in the present. Epicurus, on the other hand, is concerned with pleasures and pains throughout one’s entire life.

I am having more trouble understanding the ways in which Epicurus’ view is supposed to significantly contrast with classical utilitarian views (in particular, Bentham and Sidgwick) on this score. I am here abstracting away from the various ways in which the classical utilitarians may differ from Epicurus on (1) what pleasure consists in (e.g., a pain-free experience, an experience that qualitatively feels enjoyable, an experience that one desires to continue, etc.) and (2) what a pleasurable episode consists in (e.g., the sum of all the momentary pleasures from t1 to t2; a particular state that persists between t1 and t2). That is to say, I am here less concerned with the nature of the unit of prudence, but more concerned with how it ought to be allocated across time.

Of course, one might reasonably object that these two questions cannot be separated, though it seems plausible to me that they can. Assuming we are only dealing with the latter question — “how should the unit of prudence be rationally temporally allocated?” — I am not sure how or why Epicurus would substantively differ from Bentham or Sidgwick. I am assuming that the Benthamite/Sidgwickian view about rational prudence roughly says: it is rational to maximize the ratio of pleasure to pain across all of the time-slices of one’s life, giving equal weight to all time-slices in allocating pleasure and pain. (Of course, utilitarians think this applies interpersonally as well as intertemporally, but I am here only concerned with prudence, and not morality or other-regarding rationality).

One objection to the Benthamite view might be that pleasure cannot be quantified — that we do not readily have, or cannot possibly build, a ‘hedonometer’. But this seems to be an empirical or descriptive claim. It also seems to only address the practicality of implementing a full-blown Benthamite project, not whether a Bentham-like view is plausible in theory. A related worry is that we cannot perform the pleasure calculus because it is too impractical. But then this is a claim about the practicality of the pleasure calculus as a decision procedure, not as a criterion of prudential rationality or what makes one’s life go best. One might think that one’s life goes better just in case one has a higher pleasure to pain ratio and nevertheless agree that it would be impractical to apply the pleasure calculus for every decision one makes (and prescribe some other decision procedure). Yet another worry is that one cannot give equal weight to all time-slices because one cannot be certain that one will actually experience temporally distant time-slices. But then one is not failing to be neutral about time-slices, but only taking into account that distant time-slices are less probable than more proximate ones, and so, ceteris paribus, their expected utility is lower. This does not imply that distant future pleasures are intrinsically worth less than proximate future pleasures. (Though note that there may be some disagreement between Bentham and Sidgwick on this last point, as Bentham may count propinquity as an actual dimension of pleasure).

Perhaps I have overlooked an obvious way in which Epicurus differs from Bentham or Sidgwick when it comes to rationally temporally allocating pleasures and pains. I have a suspicion that Epicurus has a more fundamental reason for disagreeing with pleasure-maximizing views than any of the ones I have listed. But perhaps this suspicion is misguided. If it is, then I am dubious he really substantively disagrees with pleasure-maximizing views. If it is not, then I am simply puzzled. Assuming X is the only thing that makes a life go well, why does not having more X make a life go even better?