Health and Hedonism in Plato and Epicurus

Kelly Arenson

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781350212312
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350080270
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Philosophy

This book links Plato and Epicurus, two of the most prominent ethicists in the history of philosophy, exploring how Platonic material lays the conceptual groundwork for Epicurean hedonism. It argues that, despite their significant philosophical differences, Plato and Epicurus both conceptualise pleasure in terms of the health and harmony of the human body and soul. It turns to two crucial but underexplored sources for understanding Epicurean pleasure: Plato's treatment of psychological health and pleasure in the Republic, and his physiological account of bodily harmony, pleasure, and pain in the Philebus.

Kelly Arenson shows first that, by means of his mildly hedonistic and sometimes overtly anti-hedonist approaches, Plato sets the agenda for future discussions in antiquity of the nature of pleasure and its role in the good life. She then sets Epicurus' hedonism against the backdrop of Plato's ontological and ethical assessments of pleasure, revealing a trend in antiquity to understand pleasure and pain in terms of the replenishment and maintenance of an organism's healthy functioning.

Health and Hedonism in Plato and Epicurus will be of interest to anyone interested in the relationship between these two philosophers, ancient philosophy, and ethics.

1

The Pleasure of Psychic Harmony in the Republic

After Socrates establishes in book 9 of the Republic that each of the three parts of the soul has its own particular pleasures, he declares the rational part’s pleasure to be greatest, and then offers an even grander conclusion: “The one in whom that part rules has the most pleasant life” (583a2–3).¹ These claims are unsurprising, since Plato makes no secret of the fact that he considers the rational part of the soul to be the most noble and wise; surely, the best part will also be home to the greatest pleasures. It is odd, then, that Plato’s case in book 9 for the superiority of rational pleasures and the pleasantness of the philosophic life should be so problematic. A close look at book 9 reveals that Plato has several different explanations that he subtly shifts between, such that at the end of the discussion we seem to be left with no unified justification of the hedonic superiority of the rational life. Here, I discuss Plato’s attempt in book 9 to prove the hedonic advantage of the soul’s rational part, and I argue that his best justification of this advantage, hinted at in the closing comments of Socrates’ discussion of pleasure, rests on the claim that the entire soul experiences pleasure when reason is in charge, since reason is the best governor and instills order and harmony in the soul. The philosophic life, then, is the most pleasant not just because it is the only life that enables the best psychic part to experience pleasure but also because it enables the soul as a whole to partake of pleasure.² But even this argument for reason’s hedonic advantage is not as straightforward as it seems: Plato fails to tell us in book 9 what it means for the whole soul to experience pleasure. Does this mean maximizing the pleasure of each individual part of the soul or of that of the aggregate? Or is Plato uninterested in quantitative assessments of the soul’s pleasure, focusing instead on qualitative aspects of psychic enjoyment? Furthermore, how does the soul, or, more macroscopically, the person, experience pleasure as a whole? Although these questions go unanswered in book 9, we do find more of an answer in earlier books of the Republic, particularly 4 and 5, where Plato relates psychic holism to virtues that pertain to psychological consonance, the possession of which he analogizes to good health. Plato’s treatment of psychic holism and health in these books is not incidental to his treatment of pleasure later in the Republic: he links the discussions when he deliberately associates pleasure with psychic harmony in book 9.

In the sections below, I examine the many arguments Plato provides in Republic 9 for the hedonic superiority of the philosophic life, focusing especially on the relation between pleasure, psychological health, and holism in his final argument for hedonic superiority in book 9. I then consider what it might mean according to Plato for the soul to experience pleasure as a whole, the crucial notion in his final argument, for which I look to his treatments of health and justice in earlier books of the Republic.

The pleasure arguments of book 9

Early in the discussion of pleasure in book 9, Socrates establishes that each of the three parts of the soul—reason, spirit, and appetite (τὸ λογιστικόν, τὸ θυμοειδές, τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν)—has its own loves and its own corresponding pleasures (580dff).³ The rational part loves truth, rather than reputation and money, and it takes pleasure in learning. Spirit pursues victory and a good reputation, and enjoys being honored. Appetite, a multifarious part, has desires for bodily goods such as food and sex, and takes pleasure in money, with which these desires can be satisfied. Corresponding to these three parts of the soul are three types of people: the philosopher, the victory lover, and the profit lover. Socrates tells Glaucon that it is fruitless to try to determine which of the three lives is most pleasant by simply asking three such people, for each will value her own life over the others; there needs to be a standard by which to judge who is right. Socrates considers the rational part to be the best judge of the pleasantness of the lives, for to it belong the best evaluative tools: experience, reason, and argument (ἐμπειρία, φρόνησις, λόγος).⁴ According to Socrates, a philosopher will have dabbled in the pleasures of the other two lives, while neither the victory lover nor the profit lover will have ever tasted intellectual pleasures.⁵ Furthermore, the philosopher was guided by reason in her experience of the lower pleasures, meaning, presumably, that she was moderate in her tasting of them; for instance, she has had the pleasure of eating without succumbing to gluttony, and the pleasure of triumph without becoming pugnacious. Lastly, the philosopher deals in arguments, the best tools for judgment, rather than in wealth or profit. Thus, because the philosopher is the most equipped to make hedonic comparisons between the three lives, we should take her word for it that the life of learning and thought is the most pleasant. As Glaucon states, “A person with knowledge [ὁ φρόνιμος] at least speaks with authority when he praises his own life” (583a4–5).⁶

At this point in the discussion, all Socrates has shown is that the philosopher is the best judge of which life is most pleasant; if the philosopher says that her life comes out on top, then it must be so. What this argument does not prove is why the philosophic life is most pleasant. To show this, Socrates needs to explain why the pleasures of the rational part are superior to those of the other two, and much of the rest of book 9 is taken up by this task.

Socrates’ first strategy to prove reason’s hedonic superiority is to downgrade the truth and purity of the soul’s non-rational pleasures. Most pleasures, Socrates claims, are just “shadow-paintings” (τὰ ἐσκιαγραφημένη) of true ones (583b5); they are experienced by people who compare their calm, painless state to a previously painful condition.⁷ For instance, when the ill say that health and the cessation of suffering are the greatest pleasures, what they praise is not pleasure at all but the state of being without pain, namely, “a sort of calm of the soul [ἡσυχία]” (583c7–8), a neutral state between the motions of pleasure and pain (583e).⁸ Accordingly, when people descend from pleasure to a state without pain and suffering (again ἡσυχία), they find such a state to be odious and painful (583e). Socrates asserts that ἡσυχία seems to resemble a pleasure, when it is achieved after suffering, but also a pain, when it follows pleasure.⁹ Since what is neither of two things cannot be both of them, the appearance that ἡσυχία is either pleasant or painful must be deceptive: “There is nothing sound in these appearances (φαντασμάτων) as far as the truth about pleasure is concerned, only some kind of magic” (584a9–10). These “bastard (νόθος) pleasures” are preceded by pain and only seem pleasurable in contrast to worse states (587c1).

Socrates goes on to liken the threefold classification of states—pain, pleasure, and the neutral state—to levels on a vertical line: ἡσυχία finds itself in the middle, above and below which are (genuine) pleasure and pain, respectively. Socrates asks Glaucon,

Do you think someone who was brought from down below to the middle would have any other belief than that he was moving upward? And if he stood in the middle and saw where he had come from, would he believe that he was anywhere other than the upper region, since he hasn’t seen the one that is truly upper? (584d6–9)

The vertical line image coheres with the explanation of the bastard pleasures: the sick, escaping their pain, believe they are moving upward toward pleasure; the healthy, looking back on their suffering, also believe they have moved upward to a state of pleasure. According to Plato, the higher state into which the ill believe they have come is only the middle, that is, the neutral state of freedom from pain.

Some scholars, however, have a different understanding of the correspondence between the levels on the line and the states of pleasure, pain, and ἡσυχία, claiming that the lowest level corresponds to the “bastard” pleasures, the middle to the neutral state, and the higher to real, pure pleasures. Frede, for instance, situates the neutral state “‘in between’ the ‘truly upward’ motion of ‘genuine’ pleasure and the ‘bastard’ pleasure of liberation from pain” (1992: 440–41).¹⁰ However, placing the neutral state between pure and bastard pleasures leaves out a key element in the spectrum: pain itself. The state of ἡσυχία is the intermediate between pain and pure pleasure, as Socrates indicates in his explanation of the neutral state at 583c–584b and with his claim at 584e8–9 that those who are inexperienced in the truth have unsound opinions about “pleasure, pain, and the intermediate state.” Thus, the three levels are genuine pleasure, genuine pain, and the neutral state; the bastard pleasures are illusions that arise when one moves from the bottom level (genuine pain) to the middle (ἡσυχία), which means that the bastards do not have a proper place on the line.

True pleasures, on the other hand, are genuine, and they do not merely seem pleasant in comparison to pains: they do not arise from pains at all and are therefore not bound up with the deceptive appearances inherent in moving from a painful state to an intermediate one. Plato’s examples, which he considers to be “especially good” specimens and uses again in the Philebus (51b–e), are the pleasures of smell: “They suddenly become inconceivably great without prior pain, and when they cease they leave no pain behind” (584b6–7, trans. modified).¹¹ Socrates suggests that pure pleasures are not rare¹² and they differ sharply from “relief from pain” (λύπης ἀπαλλαγή, 584b9–c1). The knowledgeable person can distinguish the entirely pure and true pleasures from the bastards because she has experience with both truth and pleasure (584e–585a).

As far as arguments for the superiority of rational pleasures go, this one is rather untidy. For starters, it is unclear whether the bastard pleasures are actually pleasures at all. Although it may seem obvious that Socrates believes they are likenesses of pleasures rather than actual ones (mere “images” and “shadow-paintings”), his comparing them with pure pleasure implies there is something real about them. It makes no sense to distinguish real pleasures that are pure from fake pleasures that are impure, since purity is irrelevant if one of the pleasures is not actually a pleasure. One might argue that Plato is distinguishing two species of real pleasure, namely, those that are pure and those that are not.¹³ The problem, as Frede comments, lies in Plato’s failure to separate the fake pleasures from the neutral state: Plato binds their explanations together in such a way that it’s unclear whether the bastard pleasures are really just those of the neutral state or whether they constitute their own category.¹⁴ In addition, Plato does not take away from people their feeling of pleasure when they are relieved from pain. So, without an explanation of how the feeling of relief from pain is different from the feeling of ascending to true pleasure, and in the absence of a clear formulation of the metaphysical status of the bastard pleasures, the passage fails to provide an adequate evaluation of the relative worth of different types of pleasure. So we are basically back where we started: the philosopher has more experience of pleasure and truth and is therefore the best judge of the pleasantest life. We still lack a satisfactory explanation for why true pleasures are superior. And even if we had such an explanation, we would still need to know why rational pleasures are the best since Plato includes among true pleasures those that belong more properly to the body, such as smell.

Socrates goes on to ask Glaucon to think about whether pleasure in general should be understood in terms of what is natural and harmonious: “being filled with what belongs to our nature is pleasant” (τὸ πληροῦσθαι τῶν φύσει π ροσηκόντων ἡδύ ἐστι, 585d11),¹⁵ and the kinds of filling concerned with the soul are truer and share more in being than the kinds of fillings concerned with the body. Socrates elucidates this idea for Glaucon as follows:

Πλήρωσις δὲ ἀληθεστέρα τοῦ ἧττον ἢ τοῦ μᾶλλον ὄντος;

Δῆλον ὅτι τοῦ μᾶλλον.

Πότερα οὖν ἡγῇ τὰ γένη μᾶλλον καθαρᾶς οὐσίας μετέχειν, τὰ οἷον σίτου τε καὶ ποτοῦ καὶ ὄψου καὶ συμπάσης τροφῆς, ἢ τὸ δόξης τε ἀληθοῦς εἶδος καὶ ἐπιστήμης καὶ νοῦ καὶ συλλήβδην αὖ πάσης ἀρετῆς; ὧδε δὲ κρῖνε· τὸ τοῦ ἀεὶ ὁμοίου ἐχόμενον καὶ ἀθανάτου καὶ ἀληθείας, καὶ αὐτὸ τοιοῦτον ὂν καὶ ἐν τοιούτῳ γιγνόμενον, μᾶλλον εἶναί σοι δοκεῖ, ἢ τὸ μηδέποτε ὁμοίου καὶ θνητοῦ, καὶ αὐτὸ τοιοῦτον καὶ ἐν τοιούτῳ γιγνόμενον. (585b9–c5)

Does the truer filling up fill with what is less or what is more?

Clearly, with what is more.

And which kinds do you think partake more of pure being? Filling up with bread, drink, delicacies, and food in general? Or the kind of filling up that is with true belief, knowledge, understanding, and, in sum, with every virtue? Judge it this way: that which clings closely to what is always the same, immortal, and true, and is itself of that kind and comes to be in something of that kind—do you think it is more than that which clings closely to what is mortal and never the same, is itself of that kind, and comes to be in something of that kind? (Trans. modified)

Since pleasure involves filling (of either the soul or the body), pleasures can be compared based on the quality of that with which a deficient subject is filled; a truer filling has a truer filler. With this statement, Plato’s case for the superiority of rational pleasures might seem to be complete, since he appears to have shown that such pleasures are the best simply because the fillings with which they correspond have the best objects. In addition, the fillings argument may allow him to claim that bodily pleasures such as eating and drinking are genuine pleasures, since they consist in filling the appetite with its appropriate object (e.g., food). Such pleasures are genuinely pleasant even if they are less pleasant than rational pleasures.¹⁶

However, the fillings argument as it is presented runs roughshod over some of Socrates’ earlier statements about pleasure and replenishment and plays fast and loose with the phrase “kinds of filling.” It is not entirely clear what Socrates means by this, but the most reasonable interpretations fail to yield the conclusion about rational pleasures that he seeks. If there is any continuity among his previous comments regarding the difference between pure and bastard pleasures, then presumably the phrase “kinds of filling” aims to differentiate fillings that are preceded by pains, which are only movements toward the cessation of pain rather than genuine pleasures, from those that “become inconceivably great without prior pain” (584b5–6). But if this is what he means, the problem remains that rational pleasures are not the only ones that count as pure, since bodily pleasures that are not preceded by pains are pure too. Thus, neither the earlier argument about bastard pleasures nor the one regarding fillers elevates rational pleasures to a class all their own. Admittedly, this explanation of Socrates’ meaning in the fillin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Dedication
• Title
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on the Texts and Translations
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 The Pleasure of Psychic Harmony in the Republic
• 2 Restorative Pleasure and the Neutral State of Health in the Philebus
• 3 Plato’s Anti-Hedonistic Process Argument
• 4 Cicero’s De Finibus and Epicurean Pleasure
• 5 Epicurean Pleasures of Bodily and Mental Health
• 6 Pleasurable Restorations of Health in Epicurean Hedonism
• 7 Epicureans on Taste, Sex, and Other Non-Restorative Pleasures
• 8 Conclusion: Health and Hedonism in Plato and Epicurus
• Notes
• References
• General Index
• Index Locorum
• Copyright