Assignment task:
Epicurus Intrepretation from the text, Letter to Menoeceus:
"For it is then that we have need of pleasure, when we feel pain owing to the absence of pleasure; but when we do not feel pain, we no longer need pleasure"
"Since pleasure is the first good and natural to us, for this very reason we do not choose every pleasure, but sometimes we pass over many pleasures, when greater discomfort accrues to us as the result of them: and similarly we think many pains better than pleasures, since a greater pleasure comes to us when we have endured pains for a long time"
And again independence of desire we think a great good-not that we may at all times enjoy but a few things, but that, if we do not possess many, we may enjoy the few in the genuine persuasion that those have the sweetest pleasure in luxury who least need it, and that all that is natural is easy to be obtained, but that which is superfluous is hard. And so plain savors bring us a pleasure equal to a luxurious diet, when all the pain due to want is removed; and bread and water produce the highest pleasure, when one who needs them puts them to his lips
'When, therefore, we maintain that pleasure is the end, we do not mean the pleasures of profligates and those that consist in sensuality, as is supposed by some who are either ignorant or disagree with us or do not understand, but freedom from pain in the body and from trouble in the mind. For it is not continuous drinkings and revellings, nor the satisfaction of lusts, nor the enjoyment of fish and other luxuries of the wealthy table, which produce a pleasant life, but sober reasoning, searching out the motives for all choice and avoidance, and banishing mere opinions, to which are due the greatest disturbance of the spirit."
Intrepretation from the text, Cicero, On Moral Ends I.29-72:
Some Epicureans wish to refine this doctrine: they say that it is not enough to judge what is good and bad by the senses. Rather they claim that intellect and reason can also grasp that pleasure is to be sought for its own sake, and likewise pain to be avoided. Hence they say that there is as it were a natural and innate conception in our minds by which we are aware that the one is to be sought, the other shunned.
We do not simply pursue the sort of pleasure which stirs our nature with its sweetness and produces agreeable sensations in us: rather, the pleasure we deem greatest is that which is felt when all pain is removed. For when we are freed from pain, we take delight in that very liberation and release from all that is distressing. Now everything in which one takes delight is a pleasure (just as everything that distresses one is a pain. And so every release from pain is rightly termed a pleasure. When food and drink rid us of hunger and thirst, that very removal of the distress brings with it pleasure in consequence. In every other case too, removal of pain causes a resultant pleasure. Thus Epicurus did not hold that there was some halfway state between pain and pleasure. Rather, that very state which some deem halfway, namely the absence of all pain, he held to be not only true pleasure, but the highest pleasure.
'That pleasure is the highest good can be seen most readily from the following example: let us imagine someone enjoying a large and continuous variety of pleasures, of both mind and body, with no pain present or imminent. What more excellent and desirable state could one name but this one? To be in such a state one must have a strength of mind which fears neither death nor pain, since in death there is no sensation, and pain is generally longlasting but slight, or serious but brief. Thus intense pain is moderated by its short duration, and chronic pain by its lesser force.
Those who locate the highest good in virtue alone, beguiled by the splendour of a name, fail to understand nature's requirements. Such people would be freed from egregious error if they listened to Epicurus. Those exquisitely beautiful virtues of yours - who would deem them praiseworthy or desirable if they did not result in pleasure? We value medical science not as an art in itself but because it brings us good health; navigation too we praise for providing the techniques for steering a ship - for its utility, not as an art in its own right