Epicurean Ethics: Pleasure and Pain as Fundamental Motivators

Pleasure as the highest good is argued by Epicureans, using animal behavior, sensory perception, and explaining virtues and vices.

### Cicero's Epicurean Argument: Pleasure as the Highest Good
* 🧠 Cicero's character Lucius Torquatus presents Epicurus' belief that **pleasure is not just good but the highest good**, and **pain is the worst evil**.
* 🐾 Every animal, from birth, desires and enjoys **pleasures**, and avoids **pain**.
* 🌟 "Every animal from its very birth values **pleasure as the highest good**."
* 👃 Pleasure and pain are grasped through the senses, and are **immediate and basic for ethics**.
* 💪 Pleasure and pain determine our **motivations, desires, and behavior**.
* 📏 "Pleasure and pain lie at the basis of everything we do, think, feel, and **value**."
* 🔄 Virtues, vices, friendship, and exceptions can be explained in terms of **pleasure and pain**.

hi, this is Dr. Gregory Sadler. I'm a professor of philosophy and the president and founder of an educational consulting company called Reason IO, where we put philosophy into practice. I've studied and taught philosophy for over 20 years, and I find that many people run into difficulties reading classic philosophical texts. Sometimes it's the way things are said or how the text is structured, but the concepts themselves are not always that complicated. And that's where I come in to help students and lifelong learners. I've been producing longer lecture videos and posting them to YouTube. Many viewers say they find them useful. What you're currently watching is part of a new series of shorter videos, each of them focused on one core concept from an important philosophical text. I hope you find it useful as well. In Cicero's work on moral ends, he has one character, Lucius Torquatus, who represents the Epicurean position and who presents it in an extended argument, trying to make the case for what it is that Epicurus actually thinks.

it's quite rational and should be taken as the correct philosophical position in ethics. The Epicureans are hedonists, that means that they believe that pleasure is not just something that's good. They believe it is the good, or to put it in Cicero's terms, the Summum bonum, the greatest, the highest good, the good that in some respect encompasses the other ones and makes them good. Likewise, it's called on the ends, not on the end, because pain is also an end, a so mama, but it's the Summum Mahlum, the worst evil, and so pain is not just something bad for the Epicureans, it is love bad. It is what is worst and what makes other things bad. So good and bad are understood primarily in terms of pain and pleasure. What about everything else in the universe that we're interested in, that might motivate us, that we might take into account in our moral reasoning, or even in our just sentimental responses? Well, everything else for the Epicureans is simply a

means to an end, and we have two different ends here: the end of good and the end of evil or badness. So, everything that can bring us to some sort of pleasure is conducing to that final end of ours, which is to have pleasure, to enjoy pleasure, or to avoid pain. Likewise, there are many things that are bad, not intrinsically bad, but because they lead to pain. So, the Epicureans might take some things that we would often say are just good or just bad and say, well, no, it really depends on whether they're leading to pain or pleasure, or are likely to lead to pain and pleasure, and that's a typical hedonist position. Now, Cicero is going to have Torquatus provide several arguments explaining the Epicurean position, trying to make it seem reasonable and plausible. Let's take a look at the first argument. It's fairly straightforward. This is one that comes directly, if the ancients are correct, from Epicurus himself, which is that every single animal, when we observe them as soon as they are babies, they desire.

they seek out and they enjoy pleasures. Their pleasures may vary considerably from species to species, so we share some things in common. For example, with otters, we both enjoy swimming and playing in the water, but otters eat a lot of things that I think we would find fairly disgusting, and perhaps vice versa. There's probably a lot of things that we eat that otters would turn their nose up at. And if we go through other animals, we'll find all sorts of other things that we don't enjoy that they enjoy, and vice versa. And there's some things that babies do enjoy that perhaps we as adults don't get so much out of, and vice versa. You know, you're not gonna have a baby enjoying reading Cicero, for example, but every animal does in fact desire and seek out pleasure from its very inception, from its very birth. Likewise, Cicero has Torquatus say they do the converse with pain. They register pain and it sucks for them. They don't like it. They do the opposite of desiring.

which is being averse to they do the opposite of seeking which is to avoid. Now, Cicero says this. This assumes you've got an animal whose nature has not been corrupted. If it has been corrupted, then you might say all bets are off, but you don't take those as the norm. So looking at healthy animals from their very inception, they begin to value pleasure as the highest good. Does this actually prove that pleasure is the highest good? If you want to be strict about it, not really. It does prove that pleasure is a desirable good and that animals are motivated by it. And likewise, they're also motivated to avoid pain. But it doesn't prove that it's the highest good. A stronger argument is going to be provided for this a little bit later. Let's look at the second argument, also not that strong but an interesting one nonetheless. So it's saying essentially there is an immediacy about pleasure and pain that doesn't require any sort of complex philosophical argument on their behalf as fundamentally basic for ethics. What's the argument here? Well, we grasp

pleasures desirability through our senses. How do you know something is pleasant? Well, you know, I'll be kind of silly here. Give it a lick, give it a touch, give it a tickle, smell it, rub your face in it. You know, that works for certain kinds of things. You might imagine a bar of chocolate, right? Give it a lick. You know, that's very pleasant. Rub it on your face, maybe not so much. Maybe it's not that kind of pleasure, right? And likewise, how do you know something is painful? Well, it hurts you or it sucks and it makes you feel bad. Some pains could be maybe not like the poking, like, you know, something poking you in the eye or catching your toe on the stool or something like that, but there's other things like the gross feeling of oozy things, right? You recoil from that. You don't have to sit there and think, hmm, is this something that is actually painful to me? I don't know, let me go through a syllogism. Epicure says

you don't have to do anything remotely like that. You know right away that something is pleasurable and painful, and we know right away that we are motivated by these things. A much stronger argument is provided in claiming that pleasure and pain are generating or determining the motivations that we have, our fundamental attitudes, and behavior and relations to all other things. So he's going to say this in two places. In the first place, he is going to say that we seek out pleasure and we avoid pain, and that leads us to other things as well. He says, What is nature perceive, or what does she judge of perceive through the senses, judge of through the intellect besides pleasure and pain to guide her actions of desire and avoidance? Desire and avoidance are in some respect dictated or determined by the pleasures and pains that we've experienced or that we anticipate coming from whatever it is that we're reasoning about or even just reacting to. A little bit later he'll say, Pleasure and pain supply the motives of desire and avoidance and the springs of.

conduct generally. So, the idea here is that if we're looking at human experience, if we're generalizing about the kind of creatures that we are, and we're being honest with ourselves, we will understand that pleasure and pain lie at the basis. Not only of everything we do, but everything we think, everything we feel. Even more so, everything we value and how we value things in relation to each other seems to be a somewhat stronger way of making the case. The fourth argument that he's going to provide, and you see him doing this in many different ways, talking, for example, about friendship or about virtue or about other things that we choose and pursue, is that any sort of exception, what seems like an exception to the rule of pleasure and pain, are really the fundamental motivators can actually be explained in terms of pleasure and pain. So, take the virtues, for example, are the virtues genuinely good? Do we really value courage, justice, temperance, wisdom for their own sake, or do we value these because they lead us to pleasure and he

help us to avoid pain, or at least to minimize the pain that we encounter. What about the vices? Are they bad in and of themselves: folly, cowardice, injustice, intemperance, or are they bad because they ultimately lead to pains and deprive us of pleasures? We can talk about friendship, but Epicurus also goes to ordinary experiences that we have. Think about when you forgo some sort of pleasure that you normally would pursue because you engage in some reasoning and you realize that if you do engage in this pleasure, you're going to have a more painful situation later on. Think, for example, about when you'd like to say something cutting, too witty, but kind of biting to somebody else, and you think, Oh, no, no, I better not say that now. Why do you forego that immediate pleasure? It's because you actually do value pleasure more, and you want to have more pleasure later on than right now. Likewise, why do we do the things that we do that don't bring us pleasure in many

cases to avoid pain, to avoid further pains down the line, and so any sort of exception, according to the Epicureans, can really be explained in terms of good practical reasoning that leads us to enjoy pleasure. Is the good and avoid pain as the evil. This, according to Torquatus and Epicurus, provides the fundamental basis for not just Epicurean ethics, but for all other ethics. It's just the Epicureans are being honest about it and everybody else is sort of hiding this from themselves.

Cicero, on the Ends bk 1 | Epicureans on Pleasure as the Basis | Philosophy Core Concepts

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Gregory B. Sadler

Understanding Epicurean Philosophy of Hedonism

Gregory Sadler, a philosophy professor, explains the Epicurean view of pleasure as the highest good and pain as the worst evil in Cicero's work on moral ends.

The Epicureans believe that everything else in the universe is secondary to pain and pleasure in moral reasoning.

Sadler's shorter videos focus on core concepts from important philosophical texts to help students and lifelong learners.

The Epicureans believe that everything is a means to the end of either pleasure or the avoidance of pain.

This hedonistic position is supported by the observation that all animals, from babies to adults, seek out and enjoy pleasures while avoiding pain.

The idea is to make the Epicurean position seem reasonable and plausible by explaining how the pursuit of pleasure is a fundamental aspect of life for all creatures.

The Nature of Pleasure and Pain in Ethics

Cicero argues that, in their natural state, animals prioritize pleasure as the highest good and seek to avoid pain.

However, this does not conclusively prove that pleasure is the ultimate good.

Another argument is that the immediacy of pleasure and pain, perceived through the senses, makes them fundamental to ethics, but this perspective also has its limitations.

The Role of Pleasure and Pain in Motivation and Behavior

Pleasure and pain are the primary drivers of human motivation and behavior, influencing our actions and attitudes towards everything else.

Our desires, avoidance, and even our values are determined by the anticipation of pleasure and pain.

Exceptions to this rule, such as virtues, can also be explained in terms of their relationship to pleasure and pain, as they ultimately lead to pleasure.

Epicurus believed that vices are bad because they ultimately lead to pain and deprive us of pleasure.

The philosophy emphasizes the importance of good practical reasoning in pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain, even at the expense of immediate desires.

This view forms the fundamental basis for not only Epicurean ethics, but all other ethical systems.