Perverse Desire

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me.

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin...

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.

Saint Paul of Tarsus - Epistle to the Romans

Perverse desire belongs to the final category -- not groundless, and not necessary. Epicurus doesn't speak in terms of perversion, but I think this set of categories helps to clarify perversion and that his explanation thereafter -- where he speaks of people habituating themselves to luxury or treating evil as a good -- helps to describe perverted desire. It's technically perverted because there's nothing wrong with, say, sexual desire (I choose sexuality because it's something that should communicate. I believe this holds for other desires of the same category though). It is a natural desire. But it is possible to treat sexual desire as if it's necessary to satisfy, and to become anxious about satisfying sexual desire. To add something to the theory I'd say that sexual desire is such that it can either be satisfied in a simple manner -- which is what Epicurus advocates for in pursuing the tranquil life -- but it can also "run away" with itself. One can become attached not to the satisfaction of sexual desire but rather to its excitement and seek to deepen that excitement and become attached to a luxurious sexuality which is never satisfied (and, hence, would lead to a non-tranquil life, which is evil in Epicurean ethics).

A "full" freedom requires that we have control over our desires. This is where Frankfurt's distinction between first order desires "I want to x" and second order desires "I desire that I should want to x," is key. We can also have negative second order desires, i.e., "I want to not desire x," e.g., when a drug addict wants to be free from the desire of their addiction.

The fact] that one desires to combat the vehemence of a drive at all, however, does not stand within our own power; nor does the choice of any particular method; nor does the success or failure of this method. What is clearly the case is that in this entire procedure our intellect is only the blind instrument of another drive which is a rival of the drive whose vehemence is tormenting us . . . While “we” believe we are complaining about the vehemence of a drive, at bottom it is one drive which is complaining about the other; that is to say: for us to become aware that we are suffering from the vehemence [or violence] of a drive presupposes the existence of another equally vehement or even more vehement drive, and that a struggle is in prospect in which our intellect is going to have to take sides.

Then you point to the way in which desire leads to injustice. I think there is a connection, and it is one Nietzsche profoundly misses (or rather refuses to address). If we have people with reflexive and negative freedom, people who have self control, means, and freedom from constraint, they might still desire to do things that deprive others of their freedom. What is missing in Nietzsche but present in Hegel, Honneth, etc. is a conception of "social freedom," as the ways in which desires are harmonized such that they don't conflict.

The impulse toward the community is itself a drive, in competition with the other drives: we never leave the domain of the drives. The drives never exist in a free and unbound state, nor are they ever merely individual; they are always arranged and assembled, not only by moral systems, but more generally by every social formation.

…the fundamental problem of political philosophy is one that was formulated most clearly by Spinoza: “Why do people fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation?” The answer: because your desire is never your own. Desire is not a psychic reality, nor is it strictly individual; rather, your drives and affects are from the start part of the social infrastructure.”( Dan Smith)

Is this control over desire or just being at the mercy of one desire over another? Since you mentioned Nietzsche, I thought I’d quote him on the issue of will and desire:

There is no struggle of reason against the drives; what we call “reason” is nothing more than a certain “system of relations between various passions,” a certain ordering of the drives.

What writers like Deleuze and Focault get from Nietzsche is the fundamentally social nature of drives. Because our drives are inextricably bound up within a larger community, the essential question for them is not how to harmonize individual drives to achieve social ethical norms, but how we ever manage to resist those normative chains that bind us

It's control over desire (as a whole) to the extent that a person is deciding as a harmonized unity. Nietzsche isn't wrong to point out the problem of one desire simply acting as a tyrant over others, although he fails to extend the nature of this problem to social relations between people far enough IMO. He sees clearly how a person, as a whole, isn't free if one desire simply lords over the others like a tyrant, but then fails to see how the human tyrant becomes unfree through his tyranny in the interpersonal sphere, how power and the role of Lord becomes a trap

Even if we accept Nietzsche's description of the will as a "congress of souls," we can still suppose that some congresses are more harmonious than others. This is the difference between the person who does a chore they don't like because they have been forced to, because they do not want to be punished, or because they do not want to hurt the feelings of another, versus the person who does a chore they don't like because they have decided that it must be done and is "better," in a holistic sense. This second person is acting out of a positive duty thay they desire as part of their identity. This is the fire fighter who fears a burning building as much as anyone, but who wants to rush in on another level, because he wants his identity to include his duty.

Tyranny and power are not properties of individuals, they are manifestations of affects circulating though a culture , from the bottom up rather than from the top down. Subjects are produced by the way power circulates though a community

You seem to making a leap here from harmonization of desires to normative ethics as altruism.

Deleuze’s Nietzschean-inspired model posits assemblages of desiring elements which produce what he calls a plane of consistency. This plane creates relational connections within the person , and a point of view or perspective, without any overarching synthesis. There is no one self, no one overarching desire, but a society of selves and a society of desires that manifest a relative ongoing thematic unity throughout its changes.

As far as I know, Deleuze never applies the term community regarding his theory of desire. For him, the concept of ‘a society of selves and a society of desires that manifest a relative ongoing thematic unity' would display a return to a process of identification,

The point isn't that we become free in supporting the society we already have, or even the society we want to have, but that we become free in supporting the evolution of the society that produces the most freedom. And since individuals' freedom is deeply interrelated, this means freedom for all. This, IMO, has sort of been lost in modern philosophy. There is way too much focus on fighting conformity, cutting against the grain, etc. Sure, that's important, but it cannot be an ends in itself. In Nietzsche, it is an ends in itself and in this it becomes a self defeating ideology if applied at the social level.

“Justice, like autonomy, is relational. I cannot be just or unjust on my own. So an action is just or unjust only in the way it fits into the arrangements of intersubjective and social interactions.” “Justice consists in those arrangements that maximize compound, relational autonomy in our practices.” The autonomy of the interaction itself depends on maintaining the autonomy of both individuals. Justice (like friendship) involves fostering this plurality of autonomies (this compound autonomy); it is a positive arrangement that instantiates or maintains some degree of compound relational autonomy.”“Accordingly, although one can still talk of individuals who engage in the interaction, a full account of such interaction is not reducible to mechanisms at work in the individuals qua individuals.”

“As reflected in the definition of interaction, in interactional dynamics recognition depends on autonomy and is undermined by reification; that is, treating the other as an object observed from a third-person perspective. At the same time, individual autonomy diminishes without social interaction; and interaction doesn't exist if the autonomy of any of the participants is denied. Interaction, autonomy, and recognition dissipate in cases of slavery, torture, or terrorism.”
“ As the enactivist approach makes clear, a participant in interaction with another person is called to respond if the interaction is to continue. My response to the other, in the primary instance, just is my engaging in interaction with her—by responding positively or negatively with action to her action. Although research on primary intersubjectivity provides a detailed model of elementary responsivity, it may also be useful to consider Levinas's analysis of the face-to-face relation in order to explicate what this research tells us.” “…according to Levinas, the face-to-face relation primarily registers in an ethical order: the other, in her alterity, is such that she makes an ethical demand on me, to which I am obligated to respond…In contrast to Heidegger who might speak about a system of involvements that constitute the pragmatic world (characteristic of secondary intersubjectivity), Levinas describes a direct embodied encounter with the other.…the failure to enact that transcendence [recognizing the alterity of the other], as when we simply objectify or reify the other person, is also a possibility of relational contingency.”

There is no one self, no one overarching desire, but a society of selves and a society of desires that manifest a relative ongoing thematic unity throughout its changes. Tyranny and power are not properties of individuals, they are manifestations of affects circulating though a culture , from the bottom up rather than from the top down. Subjects are produced by the way power circulates though a community.

In the Elements of Philosophy of Right Hegel rejects the idea of freedom simply being the proper prioritization of the passions and ranking of actions, which I think you see in Aristotle and Epicurus to some extent. This is at best a partial freedom because it is still always going to be determined from without to a great extent.

Now above, Paul talks of being "dead in sin," but this is not a biological death. It's a death of personhood that is restored by Christ, the Logos. In a more symbolic reading of how the Logos quells sin and "casts out the Legion within," we approach the more rationalist formulation in Hegel, although we lose something as well.

I've read a lot of Hegel and I think Wallace is spot on in many respects. The idea is that we become free by going "inwards and upwards" ala Saint Augustine is stronger in Plato though. There is a reaching beyond proximate causes that make us their effects, towards self-determination. And to the extent that we transcend our boundaries, reaching out in rationality and dissolving love, we are free.

But then descriptions of Hegel or Plato as pantheists are completely wrong, as are descriptions of them as "anthrotheists." The point is that we are only deified to the extent we are self-determining, free, and we are only free to the extent we transcend, and we only transcend to the extent that we are intellectually determined by rationality and emotionally determined by an open love.

And this seems actually closer to more orthodox religion, Rumi, Saint Paul, etc. than many forms of "philosophical religion." It's the same sort of transcendent attitude you see in "God is love," "God is in us," "living through the will of God," "Christ living in us/us living in Christ," which is smattered across Saint John, Saint Paul, and even to a degree Saint Peter's writing.

Absolute transcendence is crucial for the fullest sort of freedom because to have something that is outside one's self is crucially to be defined by that thing. But if one transcends all boundaries then there can be full self-determination. And I think you see a bit of this intuition in Shankara too.

A woman's desire to bear and raise a child. I don't know of a male philosopher who looks at this seriously: yet it's how the species continues, the heart of the matter. Pleasure/pain cannot account for these desires, or so it seems to me. There is something marvellous involved: the embrace of pain and confinement to enable something else; the desire to create another, to recognise and love that other and to find fulfilment in both the caring for that other, and the eventual letting go of control.

Sado-masochism. In s/m behaviour a high degree of pain may be the greatest pleasure. And the ethical approaches to such behaviour involve, as the Count outlines in another context, the second order desire: How shall we enact our desires, that will involve being hurt or hurting, in a way that acknowledges and indeed privileges the other? After all, the enactment of such desires on a first order basis would be no more than narcissism, and cruelty.

I start off taking an analytic approach to these questions, but it seems to me Levinas' explorations of our encounters with the other offer great insights into how we can resolve the analytic problems that arise.

For Lacan, desire is never fully satisfied. Any material or ‘natural’ need requires articulation and recognition demanded from another. After transferrence onto the general form, desire bears on something other than the satisfaction it can bring. The particularity of a need assumes an irresolvable lack that transcends the given situation and generates a ceaseless sense of incompleteness. Lacan entirely transforms the perspective on transgression and perversion.

I can’t speak to perversion and desire. But I am confident that most people don’t know what they want and their active pursuits and ostensible meaning are derived through goals provided by enculturation and marketing. The person who has reflected and worked to transcend these has a better shot at happiness. I suspect this is close to Epicurus.

Life is perverse. It consumes itself in renewing itself. Mind would like to rise above life, but does so only in self-denial - aka love.

I believe instead that the ethical dilemma we face is not that of recognition vs reification, self-transcendence vs self-interest, the arbitrary conservative thrust of the lure of the familiar vs the compassionate embrace of otherness. When we seem to fail to recognize and maintain the other‘s autonomy this is not a retreat into self but, on the contrary, an experiencing of otherness which is too other to be intelligible. For Gallagher justice is maintaining the autonomy of the other, as if one first glimpses this autonomy and then decides not to honor it. But the other's autonomy can only exist for me to the extent that I can integrate it intelligibly within my way of life, which is itself the ongoing production of a collaborative community. The failure to coordinate harmoniously among competing realtional intelligibilites results in the appearance of injustice, as though there were an intention on the part of one of the parties not to recognize an aspect of the other.

However, it is not autonomous content that we strive to maximize, but intelligible process, and intelligibility is ontologically prior to the actions of an autonomous subject who recognizes or fails to recognize others. When there is disagreement between the victim and the alleged perpetrator about whether an injustice has indeed been committed, who determines, and how is it determined, that someone is closing off another's affordance space and eliminating their autonomy? If it is intelligible ways of going on that are being protected, then from the vantage of the ‘perpetrator', what is being excluded, closed off and eliminated is not a particular content (the other's affordances) , in the service of reifying one's own autonomy. On the contrary, the aim is to exclude from a system of practices that which would render it nonsensical and deprive it of coherent meaning. In other words, from the vantage of the so-called perpetrator, the practices of exclusion and elimination are in the service of rendering justice by preventing the degradation of meaningful autonomy in general.

As Ken Gergen(1995) states:

“... groups whose actions are coordinated around given constructions of reality risk their traditions by exposing them to the ravages of the outliers. That is, from their perspective, efforts must be made to protect the boundaries of understanding, to prevent the signifiers from escaping into the free-standing environment where meaning is decried or dissipated. In this sense, unfair or exclusionary practices are not frequently so from the standpoint of the actors. Rather, they may seem altogether fair, just and essential to sustain valued ideals against the infidels at the gates.”

Is the consumption of life to preserve life a perversion, or can you see it as a natural flow which can become perverted?

That question suggests, (rightly I think) that perversion is in the seer more than the seen. That is, the first perversion is the cleaving of the individual such that they can stand in judgement of their own desires. And from that judgement comes the repression and then the projection onto the world of whatever is seen to be perverse. Perversion is the buck that is always passed and never stops. It is the human condition. The epicurean is naturally a connoisseur of perversion. Too much would be gross, but a little spice in your girls (or boys) ...

Rather it's accepting oneself as what one is and modifying desires

Basically if we're confident that most people don't know what they want, and we know a set of wants which produce happiness, then why bother giving people the freedom to hurt themselves when it's ignorance which is the culprit of their misery?

We can't make people take up 'better' or choices. I also don't see who is 'giving' anyone else freedom. People make their choices, the end. If they arrive at a personal understanding that they can do better and be more authentic, then great. But authenticity can't be mandated.

Is this not a direct contradiction? As the therapist proverbially says, "the lightbulb has to want to change."

But honestly, I don't understand much of what you are saying. I'd better be quiet.

How does that sit with you?

I'm giving leeway because I sincerely don't believe in as fixed a human nature as the Epicurean philosophy seems to, and so I believe people have to find these things for themselves.

But it's not authenticity that brings about happiness (after all, we could authentically desire to be immortal, and pursue that, and it would cause anxiety because it's a groundless desire), but the pruning of desire such that one can be happy. (though authenticity does seem to be a thing we hold onto, so it relates.)

The only interest I have in Epicurus is how I might adapt some of his ideas for myself. I am naturally inclined to many similar approaches - I am a minimalist. I have no interest in luxury. I have never chased ambition or status. I am mostly indifferent to food. This is I believe my authentic orientation. I can't speak for anyone else and, since I am not a very social person, the idea of any kind of an Epicurean community fills me with horror.

I hear you, but I think authenticity, being who you are, is a better path towards happiness than trying to live up to impossible standards, or following some else's plans for your life. There are of course limits to how far authenticity can take you. But anything can be made to look bad if taken to an extreme example. There big problem with authenticity is how do you determine who you really are? Therein lies the challenge.

Is this not a direct contradiction? As the therapist proverbially says, "the lightbulb has to want to change."

I'm pretty much taking your word on Lacan here. I've read people influenced by him but never took that plunge. With that being said I'd say the natural and necessary desires would stand out in Lacan's theory of desire, which are re-occurring due to the nature of life but satisfiable. But I suspect that Lacan would take these facts of hunger and thirst and say that due to their reoccurrence they are never fully satisfied. Or, perhaps, just that we have reoccurring desires is enough to generate a ceaseless sense of incompleteness.

In which case I think it'd be safe to say that Lacan's desire runs orthogonally to Epicurean desire. If desire is never satisfiable, if there's is always a lack and a sense of incompleteness, then the Epicurean cure is a fraud. You'd be making the desire for desire itself a groundless desire which cannot be satisfied.

But this is where I think the appeal to nature -- even though it's fallacious! -- is actually a strength. Running along with the philosophy as I did with Sadomaoschistic desire: Surely if the goal is tranquility then building up desires about desire would result in anxiety if our desires about desire lead us to desire things which cannot be satisfied. But if you, instead, come to live with your own nature -- in this case a ceaseless sense of incompleteness due to the nature of desire as a lack -- you can come to see that it's just a little bit of pain, and that pain isn't all that bad to deal with after all. The pain will come again, and so will go away, and the pleasure will fade away, but will come about again.

Thank you for your response. You are correct that Lacan’s desire is incompatible with the Epicurean’s... I will not take sides here; I see this discussion as an opportunity to enhance my understanding

There is no simple dichotomy for me, with a groundless desire as a lack from one side and a possibility of tranquillity and fulfillment from another. Both perspectives assume
an ahistorical, universalist nature of desire. Yet, for Lacan, any concrete desire co-exists and co-relates with the symbolic order and the primordial pre-conscious and unconscious settings (the mirror stage, etc.). He offers an elaborated modification of Freud’s theory of psychics so that an ultimate lack and ceaseless desire becomes one of the primary human conditions.

Certainly, we cannot clearly define human nature that stands independently from a concrete social situation. Even hunger and pain in certain circumstances can be experienced as satisfactory and positive.

Our emotional sphere is penetrated with social forces in such a manner that even the most intimate feelings cannot be separated from collective affective impacts. To state the opposite, one should assert the exceptionality of the chosen ethical and theoretical perspective. Paradigmatic examples of the Sadomasochistic desire as an exemplary perversion and the achievement of the state of tranquillity in an ashram or Enlightenment in a Buddhist monastery show the decisive role of a particular social constellation.

On the other hand, Baudrillard, Deleuze, and Guattari contend that the lack becomes the desire’s ultimate feature exclusively under the historical conditions of a capitalist society.

I want to drop "nature" in the account, but I'm thinking that what is natural -- what the seer sees as the natural place of the object of perversion -- is what helps understand perversion in this very general sense.

In a similar way we might say the hammer becomes perverted when it's used as a weapon

Hegelian perversion -- so I'd like to think -- is anarchy. Hegel's a funny ethical philosopher because he encompasses all values into a teleological order. So what could possibly be perverted, when everything has a time and a place? I put forward anarchy because I believe Hegel's vision of absolute freedom is the nation-state across the world. This would explain why there are Marxists, Liberals, and Fascists who all claim homage to Hegel: they all are politically dedicated to the nation-state. And the past, within Hegel, can be understood as slowly building towards the international order of states -- the maximum freedom -- but the modern anarchist is a perversion because they are against the telic order. On the whole I think perversion can be understood in each of the political traditions along this way: Marxists, Liberals, and Fascists each see one another as a perversion of their tradition, of the way a state ought to be structured. But for Hegel this is exactly what you'd predict and you'd be looking for the next sublation in the order of thought. But the anarchist sees no sublation, no telic order, no end. The anarchist simply doesn't want teleology or a state or a party. The anarchist demands freedom from teleology.

I think a perversion is a kind of privation, and a privation is an absence of that which is due. What is due depends on a thing's nature. So for example, a shark with a missing fin has a privation, but a man with a missing fin has only an absence. Without some notion of what should be, we cannot distinguish privation from absence, and "nature" supplies this notion.

But that a perversion is a kind of privation does not tell us overly much. There is still something unique about the special variety of privation that is a perversion.

Yes, it is perverse to use a hammer as a weapon. But perhaps it would be even more perverse to strangle someone with a stethoscope, for then that which was fashioned to cause health is being used to cause death. I think perversion is something like that.

I always figured Hegel's commitment to the state had to do with the lack of any extra state powers during his era. He is still living in the shadow of Westphalia and the apocalyptic conflagration that killed a significantly larger share of the German population than both World Wars combined. The state was elevated out of fear of the return to religious wars.

But if Hegel had seen the failures of the state system in the World Wars, and moreover on climate change, global inequality, ocean acidification, recalcitrant multinational mega corps, and mass migration, I think he'd come around on the idea of things like the UN, EU, AU, etc. There is a tension in his philosophy. He wants to allow particularism, but then doesn't wholeheartedly embrace federalism because he wants the state to be an organic unity. I think this is a dynamic that plays out on many levels, individual vs society, region vs whole state, state vs union of states. Most philosophers focus on the individual vs society, I think Hegel is correct to also put emphasis on this higher level, even if he fails to totally resolve the issues.

I always took his point to be: "we are only fully free to explore our particularity in the organic, stable, harmonized whole," so in the end the two do support each other more than they contradict one another.

Heh. I can get along with this, but I'm anxious about relying on the concept of nature.

When speaking of perversion in general I can't think of a way without the concept...

A shark missing a fin is only a privation with respect to some way of conceiving the shark. Else, it's an absence. It depends upon how we judge sharks.

Or perhaps the same thing: "Nature" supplies the notion, but we are the ones who fill out what "nature" consists of. "we" being the judgers.

Interestingly this inversion is not of the form of negation, like "A v ~A", but the concepts of saving a life and killing a life are semantically opposed: you can't do both at the same time.

That's perfect! Not only using something for which it's not intended, like the hammer, but using it in a way that's in conflict with its intent. Also I'm finding thinking in terms of tools a little easier than the general account. Rather than dealing with the concept "by nature" the tool can be seen as having an intent. Like in the stethoscope example rather than saving lives the person is taking a life, which strikes me as an almost perfect inversion of the intent.

[...]

I want to re-think Epicurean desire on this line, but I didn't have the time today. But I felt I owed you a post.

But why?

I think that to judge that sharks need not have fins is to judge falsely. Fins are part of what a shark is; they are part of its nature. I think that if someone says a finless shark is just as much a shark as a normal shark, then they have very poor judgment, haha.

I could get on board with this, just so long as the nature of a shark is not conceived merely as a matter of our own invention. It is discovery, not just invention, and it then follows that we can be wrong in our judgment about what constitutes a shark's nature.

That is a thread-worthy question.

"Nature" is one of those concepts like "Freedom" -- it seems to explain a lot, but then it seems to explain a lot for a lot of people who disagree on what it is that it's explaining, and what it even means for us to explain something by reference to its nature. A lot of times we can get by with stipulation when it comes to the ambiguity of concepts, but "nature", like "freedom", does so much work in philosophy that even stipulation doesn't ward off confusion, miscommunication, and frustration.

I'd say that to judgethe judgment that a shark needs to have fins is true or false is relative to a system of judgment about what a shark ought to be.

Nature, in the ancient world, is prior to the is-ought distinction or the naturalistic fallacy. It's interesting for this very reason, but it's also ambiguous. The appeal to nature is, I think, basically an ethical appeal -- or at least aesthetic. And further I'd say that there are no true ethical statements. "The shark ought to have fins" is false with respect to a judgment on its truth, though with respect to a system of beliefs about what ought to be we could judge it true -- but not in the same way that we judge "Sharks have fins" to be true.

This gets more contentious when it comes to things like human nature. Epicurus' appeal is to human nature, but I'd say that the appeal to human nature is a kind of fib that allows the game of ethical justification to get started. It's important to us, it's just not truth-apt.

Any appeal to nature will bring up these sorts of thoughts for me. There's a sense in which the appeal to nature is just to beg the question with respect to a tradition and disagreement over it is just disagreement over what beliefs we like others to have and enact. But in the ancient world this wasn't as explicit and so you get interesting uses that are not easy to untangle. So, if I can help it, I like to avoid using concepts like that which both lend themselves to confusion, and lend themselves to simply begging the question with a different phrase. (another reason to insist that the Epicurean is dogmatic on the ends of human beings being to live in a state of ataraxia)

The perversion of desire is this "building up" of desire. I'm not sure how else to say it, but the desire for food differs from the desire to eat a particular kind of food in a particular kind of way and to feel disappointment for not being able to eat that kind of food even though you have access to food, it's just boring. There's nothing wrong with variety, the wrong is in allowing your desires -- which "naturally" lead to an ataraxic life -- to lead you to an anxious life. Desires push and pull the organism towards its natural ends but the human desires are such that they can become greater than what an organism wants, and become what a human imagination wants and thereby become unsatisfiable.

Another highlight on the appeal to nature: I hope this shows how much Epicurus is responding to the Aristotelian conception of human nature, especially with respect to the ethical. Rather than biological creatures which can only become ethical at the height of the social ladder where every possible human capacity can be experienced and pursued and perfected you have every human creature which can live a tranquil life regardless of the place they find themselves within the city-state. Rather than greatness within a social role such that ethics isn't really what the many can pursue you have tranquility, a state of mind, which anyone can pursue. If the appeal to nature is alethic then which of these is true? For Aristotle you had slavish souls and master souls, but for Epicurus you had the master who performed the cure such that you became equal in his eyes.

As a meta-theory [anti-realism] forces the ethicist to evaluate ethics on something other than the usual.

You keep saying interesting incomprehensible things: Explain yourself!

As a meta-theory [anti-realism] forces the ethicist to evaluate ethics on something other than the usual.
— Moliere

What is the usual, and what is the other? I can guess on behalf of the realist that their usual basis for judging an ethical theory is whether or not it is true, absolutely or approximately.

Okay, I definitely agree that it gets more complicated when claims about human nature meet the moral sphere. Maybe I haven't been properly contextualizing the "nature" idea within the context of your thread on perversions. But I do think we have both agreed that perversions presuppose natures, and Epicurus is very much situated within that ancient nature-paradigm.

Fair enough. But to be precise, I don't think there is anything strange or controversial about the idea that a shark has a nature (a determinate form).

The controversy only arises when it comes to human nature and moral claims. I don't think we should throw out the idea that sharks have a determinate form because of that controversy.

I think that's a good description of the problem. :up:

Right, there is a disagreement about human nature occurring here. Granted, Aristotle does not think that flourishing is impossible for a slave, but rather that they flourish in a different and inferior way. For Epicurus the goal of life is (more or less) equally accessible to all. In our modern day we would prefer Epicurus to Aristotle on the basis of egalitarianism, yet Epicurus' own account is presumably not based on a desire for egalitarianism. Presumably egalitarianism is just a happy accident of the theory which he sees to be true on independent grounds.

Suppose I define a desire as "identification with a personal judgement of an imagined future", I think this suggests that a perverse desire is one that is either incompatible with the desires of others, or that is incompatible with reality(they amount to the same thing, because others are always part of reality). The former case demands a meta judgement of 'our' desires that is the province of ethics, and that means that perversity can be personal or social.

If I want of you, that which is incompatible with your desires, then a social judgement can be made as to which of our desires is perverse. But the case of global warming is the paradigm of collective social desires incompatible with reality:— to have an energy rich and wasteful economy, and a stable and productive environment. The personal equivalent would be things like wanting to be a concert pianist, but not wanting to practice for several hours every day, or wanting to give up an addiction but not wanting to go through any withdrawal process.

The perversity of pornography is the perversity of advertising, that it deliberately sets out to stimulate desires that it cannot fulfil. The sexual desires of the innocent adolescent (as was), are incoherent urges towards an unclear and unimaginable intimacy. Porn provides cartoon images of a fabricated unreal intimacy that is never mutual, because it is only an image; but the unreal image attaches to the primitive urge and thus develops a perverse desire that can never be fulfilled in reality, but becomes an unsatisfying addiction. Fast food and beauty products work in a similar way. This is the building up of desire, as unreachable because unrealistic images. Compare this with the job of the architect, planner, or engineer which is to make images of realisable ideas, that might be desired.

We've agreed that perversion in general presupposes nature -- or at least that I can't think of another way of talking about perversion in general. And, yes, I still include the appeal to nature because that's what Epicurus does, and it's from this ancient nature-paradigm. But I wanted to explain why I prefer to avoid explanations from a things nature (not that it's forbidden, only preferable to avoid to the extent possible)

I'd say that this is precisely what is controversial about interpreting Darwin in philosphical terms: creatures don't have an innate, fixed nature that makes them what they are, and in fact they are always morphing and changing and responding to the environment they find themselves within. The reduction of life to mechanism rather than teleology is a very strange and controversial, but rariefied, thought in the background for me.

So while I've gone some way to explain why hesitancy with respect to the justification by appeal to a things nature, I think we agree that these are two different controversies -- one deals with how to describe sharks and the other deals with how we should judge ourselves and others.

Here my comparison is to ideas, and so there's historical work I'd need to do to further up this point, but at least with respect to the ideas: notice how the art of philosophy is not for the slave in Aristotle. It's for the master who will take care of the slave so that the slavish souls flourish within the social order. But for Epicurus even the philosopher is only a doctor, rather than at the height of the social ladder influencing the leaders of tomorrow such that society is good. Epicurus takes on the slavish souls and turns them into master souls, thereby directly countering Aristotle's theory that there are slavish souls by nature.

It's in the ideas that I mean (though there'd be more historical work that needs to be done if I were to make a factual demonstration between the person's Aristotle and Epicurus, or the institutions that competed for students)

Would it be right to call Epicurus a psychologist?

I would be interested to know if Epicurus was responding to particular philosophers or schools or ideas. That seems like a fruitful avenue for investigation.

I'm anxious about relying on the concept of nature.

Actually if you read the OP you will see that Epicurus had a strong notion of unnatural human desires.

The Greeks used the term phusis ('nature') to distinguish it from what is by convention or law or custom (nomos). When applied to ethics, what is by nature is universal, true for all human beings by virtue of human nature.

In Judaism, however, no appeal was made to nature but to God. Rather than a nature man has "ways". Some ways are straight, others crooked. Some God approves, others he does not. Some men are on the path, others stray.

Christianity inherits both opposing views. On the one hand God's Law, and on the other, through Paul, man is born in sin and powerlessness against it. Augustine goes further with the belief in original sin. What is most natural becomes the source of sin.

Now for the matters you wrote about: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” 2 But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. 3 The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. 5 Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. 6 I say this as a concession, not as a command. 7 I wish that all of you were as I am. But each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.

8 Now to the unmarried[a] and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do.

Textually the easier school to contrast them to is the Stoics, because Cicero's On the Ends is that topic in dialogue form, albeit far after when these were first written. It contains the sorts of back-and-forth you'd expect to see between competing schools of thought.

Still, I can't help but see how much the Epicurean theory of the soul contrasts with the Aristotelian one. And he was very much a person of "the next generation" but still was alive at the time of Aristotle (just looking up dates on the 'net, the garden founded in 306, some odd 16 years after Aristotle's death), and one of the most common ways philosophers engage with one another is to disagree and disprove prior philosophers. Furthermore Aristotle was critical of Democritus' atomic theory, and Epicurus goes on to develop that theory further so we have another point within his philosophy that marks a definite contrast.

A. A. Long, From Epicurus to Epictetus : Studies in Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy:It was Heraclitus, to the best of our knowledge, who pioneered the thesis that human beings cannot live well if they simply retreat into a private world. In explaining the nature of things, as he laid claim to doing, Heraclitus saw himself as waking his audience up to facts that pertain to everyone commonly—facts about living and dying, and the relation between identity and change. Like Lucretius, Heraclitus often juxtaposes a macroscopic view of things—the way things appear from a non-anthropomorphic perspective—with ordinary human viewpoints. Heraclitus’ purpose in doing so was not, I think, to cast doubt on the propriety of all conventional attitudes to life, but rather to show how they can be informed and clari?ed and improved when we also adopt a decentred and objective outlook on our position in the world. We can only live with full authenticity, he suggests, by coming to terms with nature and by integrating knowledge of nature’s procedures with our subjective identity.¹³

The mainstream tradition of Greek philosophy, mutatis mutandis, endorsed this position. It is presumed by Parmenides and Empedocles, and accepted by Plato and Aristotle. Socrates was a dissenter, according to the doxographical tradition on him;¹? so too were the Cyrenaics (DL 2.92) and, for obvious reasons, the sceptics. But the testimony for Pyrrho actually supports my point. For according to Timon’s account of Pyrrho, the ?rst question someone who wants to be happy should ask is: ‘How are things by nature?’ The next question, the ?rst having been settled, is: ‘What attitude should we adopt to things?’, and the third: ‘What will be the outcome for those who have this attitude?’¹? Pyrrho’s programme of questions was probably known to Epicurus (cf. DL 9.64) who, in any case, would have agreed with the pertinence of the questions as distinct from Pyrrho’s answers to them. Most philosophers, unlike Pyrrho, thought that they could give de?nite and demonstrable answers to the question of how things are by nature, and that accommodating oneself to nature, as so disclosed, was the proper policy for anyone interested in a rational foundation for happiness.

The Stoics, of course, are the school of philosophers who articulated this position most explicitly by making ‘agreement with nature’ their formulation of life’s goal (telos). Because Stoic ‘nature’ (physis) makes reference to a divine mind immanent in everything, the implications of their telos may seem to be radically at odds with Epicureanism. That is certainly true with reference to the rational, providential, and teleological properties of the Stoics’ cosmic physis. These properties persuade the Stoic, unlike the Epicurean, that natural events should be accepted as being for the best and divinely mandated. But, as we have already seen, the Stoics’ cosmic physis also signi?es natural causation. A Stoic lives in agreement with cosmic nature by virtue of understanding and assenting to the way things happen in the world, by ‘living in accordance with experience of natural events’ in Chrysippus’ formulation (DL 7.87).

It would be dif?cult to ?nd a better expression than this to describe the ‘rationale of life’ (vitae ratio) that Lucretius praises Epicurus for discovering. As a good Epicurean, Lucretius will not go along with the Stoics in supposing that natural events are for the best; his message is that we need to understand and live in agreement with nature not because nature does things well, but simply because nature’s way of doing things is the way things are and thus constitutes the essential facts and truth. The grasp of nature’s causality underpins our happiness because it teaches us the possibilities and limitations of living in the world as it really is, understanding what can be and cannot be, what it is reasonable and in our power to do and plan for, and what, on the other hand, is irrational and out of step with the way things are.

In the proem of book 5, as he prepares to discourse on cosmology, biology, and anthropology, Lucretius couples eulogy of natura with eulogy of Epicurus: ‘Who is able with mighty mind to build a song worthy of the majesty of these things and these ?ndings? . . . For if we should speak, in the way that the discovered majesty of these things actually requires, he was a god, noble Memmius.’ In these lines Lucretius twice refers to rerum maiestas. Bailey (1947) translates this expression by ‘the majesty of truth’, Smith in the Loeb edition (1975) by ‘the majesty of nature’. In his commentary Bailey comes closer to Smith’s rendering, because he explains the expression as ‘the great- ness of the world’, but ‘greatness’ is much too ?at for rendering the marked noun maiestas, with its divine and regal connotations. Lucretius often uses res as a plain alternative to natura, and I think Smith is right to render rerum here by ‘nature’. Epicurus’ discoveries have revealed that nature, and no god of superstition or philosophers’ demiurge, is in charge of the world.

It's when natural and unnecessary desires are "built up" into groundless desires (that which cannot be satisfied) that we have perverted desire, at least according to the theory I'm offering here.

I think the theory of perverted desire holds, and I want to suggest that desire is the reason why injustice prevails. In fact this could be the beginnings of working out how to make this a falsifiable theory rather than a philosophy of desire -- if perverted desire, in the technical sense, is the cause of injustice, then curing perverted desire ought to result in more just relations.

Letter to Menoeceus:we cannot live pleasantly without living wisely, honorably, and justly; nor live wisely, honorably, and justly without living pleasantly

If we simply don't want to change then, in a sense, we're already a step ahead because we are in unity with our desires. That's surely less anxiety-inducing than having desires which conflict, and so I think it'd follow that from an Epicurean perspective it's better to be in unity with luxurious desires which are satisfied than to be in conflict between luxurious and simple desires.

This is how Epicurus relates pleasure to justice:

"we cannot live pleasantly without living wisely, honorably, and justly; nor live wisely, honorably, and justly without living pleasantly" -- Letter to Menoeceus"

So pleasure requires justice and justice requires pleasure, but there are other factors at play as well, such as wise and honorable living. I myself am not really convinced that perverted desire is the cause of injustice, although it is surely one cause of injustice. For example, scarce resources can lead to injustice even apart from perverted desires. Have you thought any more about this question of justice?

But the second question is whether this really tracks Epicurus. Specifically, you seem to be positing that, for Epicurus, desire which is natural but unnecessary is only disreputable because it is more difficult to satisfy, and that if one were able to satisfy it reliably then there would not be anything problematic about it. If this is right, then it seems to throw a wrench into the Epicurean system, implying that some of the core claims are based on accidental factors. It would be something like, "Live simply, unless you have the means to live luxuriously."

I found it sort of interesting that you would say this, as it rings of the idea that the akolastos is better than the akrat?s (in ). In some ways this is the crucial difference between ancient and modern ethics, and it might be called the question of the normativity of individual action. The modern idea is that the akolastos and the sophon are equally undivided, and therefore equally good.* I think Nietzsche plays a role in this modern conception. A basic counterargument here is that if the akolastos is to become a sophron then he must pass through the stage of akrasia, and therefore the akrat?s is better than the akolastos. The analogy to Epicurus from Aristotle doesn't work perfectly, but it works to a point.

I've thought about it, but my thoughts aren't any deeper than what's been presented so far. The best interpretation of Epicurean justice I can muster is that it comes about because people are living happy and tranquil lives -- but that's a lot like an eschatology to my mind which amounts to the thought: if everyone just followed the same ethical creed then everyone would live in harmony and then justice would prevail! But it seems like a weak theory of justice to me because it sort of begs the question in its own way -- it's not exactly a surprising conclusion that if everyone agreed to what is ethical and lived ethically then they'd agree and continue to live a just life. That's pretty unsatisfactory.

Then there's the fact that while I think Epicurean desire is an interesting theory of desire I'm uncommitted to it as a universal theory of desire -- basically I'd say I'm still stuck on the structure of desire and describing desire, and anytime I try to think the relationship between desire and justice I find myself thinking about desire again.

The Epicurean would hold that it is better to have an ataraxic rather than depraved soul...

I think the uncertainty of the world we inhabit also gives justification to pursue the ataraxic soul over the depraved soul with the means to satisfy them: only the ataraxic soul can say and mean "What is good in life is easy to obtain", where the depraved soul must strive to continue to satisfy their many desires. As you noted above about scarcity: if we lived in a world of infinite resources then perhaps the ataraxic soul would best be seen as a kind of quaint attachment to an ascetic existence, but given the vagaries of a world composed of nothing but atoms and void moving in accord to the swerve it makes sense to want the kind of soul which is happy with anything.

I'd think that for the working Epicurean administering the cure they'd say that the incontinent man is on a path to the cure, but is still not tranquil and so needing the cure. But this brings out another point of contrast here between Aristotle and Epicurus: it's not willpower which brings about the continent man, but a master who prunes your desires such that you desire to and are able to live tranquilly.

Now if there is truly no human nature then the philosophy is a bit of a fib. If one believes that the Christian way of life will transform people to be better than they are born to be -- or any variation on that theme, which is common enough (It's the warped wood theory of human nature combined with a notion of a cure for the soul) -- then the Epicurean philosophy is anathema as well. In fact I think this could go some way to explaining how it became so unpopular. Stoicism, with its emphasis on the life of the mind, could be married to Christianity, but Epicureanism -- with its emphasis on the human life here and now -- brings about more conceptual tensions.

It seems to me that the deeper idea here is not that ethical homogeneity produces harmony, but rather that injustice is a consequence of unhappiness, and that if people were happy then the problem of injustice would solve itself.

A human being in a dream turning into the Eiffel Tower is absurd, but not perverted.

It seems to me that the deeper idea here is not that ethical homogeneity produces harmony, but rather that injustice is a consequence of unhappiness, and that if people were happy then the problem of injustice would solve itself. This is not such an uncommon idea, nor is it so implausible. Epicureanism always faintly reminds me of Indian religion, and I sometimes hear this idea from that subcontinent.

Mostly, I'm not sure if anyone—ancient or modern—really understands how to make people virtuous. It seems to always be a haphazard and uncertain endeavor.

That makes sense to me. It does represent an important facet of desire, but I'm not sure it captures the whole picture. This is more or less why I said above that Aristotle would accept and incorporate Epicurean premises into his thought as a subset, but Epicurus would probably reject many of the Aristotelian add-ons.

Well, for Aristotle the incontinent man is "weak-willed" and the continent man could be considered "strong-willed," but the goal is to be temperate, and the temperate man is well-ordered, not strong-willed. A strong will is only necessary to overcome a disordered soul and disordered passions.

I think there are two distinctions at play, here. The first distinguishes between a focus on earthly life and a focus on the eschaton. The second distinguishes between a conception of human nature and a conception of fallen human nature. I think the second distinction is going to be a bit harsher for Epicureanism, although the first is also significant.

It strikes me that Epicureanism coincides to a large extent with the ascetic traditions of Christianity, particularly the tradition of the desert fathers and the monasticism that grew up out of that. In those traditions exists a Platonism that is agreeable to Epicureanism, whereas the later more Aristotelian strand of Christianity is in many ways more urban and cosmopolitan, and less agreeable to Epicureanism. The irony here is that Epicurean asceticism in certain ways coincides with the more extreme forms of Christian practice, despite lacking some of the motivations.

I always thought that injustice was just the way we talk about competing values from within our own partisan bubble.

I always thought that injustice was just the way we talk about competing values from within our own partisan bubble.
— Joshs

If so -- does this way of talking reduce to desire, or are the competing values from within our partisan bubble distinct from desire?

If values are distinct from -- not identical to -- desire then it would still be possible to articulate a relationship between desire and at least injustice under the presumption that injustice is the way we talk about competing values within our partisan bubble. So for example if desire is a lack, and injustice is an articulation of competing values, then I think I'd say that the two are distinct such that a relationship could be articulated since at least the articulation of competing values is not obviously desire-as-lack.

But if desire just is the basis of competing values then the question of desire would "settle" the question of justice, which is as I understand the Epicurean account to be committed to.

I feel doubt at the proposition that injustice would solve itself.

I think this would depend upon how we'd read the history, honestly. Which facts are we going to emphasize in telling the story of ancient philosophy? In thinking through desire I have reasons to want to find differences -- I'm not really settled on a theory of desire so the differences stand out as important to me as a basis for judgement.

I mean, this is why I emphasize that there's more than one way to read these texts -- my rendition of Epicurus and my rendition of Aristotle definitely disagree :D . Though that does make sense of some things like that they had different schools, rather than Epicurus attending the Lyceum. I had to look up dates on the Lyceum because I wasn't sure, so I thank you for the prodding. Another thing I completely missed is that Cicero's On the Ends features a peripatetic as distinct from both Epicureanism and Stoicism!

So there are some reasons aside from my emphasis to at least think they must be different in some ways.

Cool. So a point of agreement would be that the temperate man does not need a strong will.

But a strong will is not necessary to overcome a disordered soul in the Epicurean philosophy.

In part this is probably due to my emphasizing the concepts and how they fit together from the perspective of Epicurus himself; almost always the way ethical concepts fit together and the practices they inspire are not the same. I know there are more cosmopolitan Epicureans who lived after: Diogenes of Oenoanda was rich enough to have land and build an inscription which details the Epicurean philosophy because, so it claims, it lays the path to salvation. So the concepts would lead one to practice a certain way -- a way in which Epicurus did -- but later practitioners found benefit in the philosophy in spite of not following the ascetic way of life that the ideas clearly outline too. My thought on this is that there was a distinction between The Doctors -- like what Epicurus was -- and the people who learn and live the Epicurean philosophy, in a similar way that many religious communities have at least two social layers with different social rules depending upon how much influence you wield within the social organism.

Well, how is akrasia overcome? I would be surprised if the depraved Epicurean becomes upright without a significant expenditure of effort and will. For example, just because his master tells him to do something, it does not follow that that something will be easy to do.

Okay, that makes sense. I think I associate Epicureanism with asceticism because Epicureans give up a great many things that most people take for granted. It is a minimalism, albeit not practiced for the sake of a religious end.

The cure!

The way I understand it -- if the Epicurean master had a brain surgery he could perform on people that would be effective that'd be acceptable. In a way this is, for the Epicurean, a question for medical science. It's not just telling people what to do, but more or less manipulating them for their own good. It's not just a spiritual practice, it's a cure that must be performed on the human soul for their benefit.

This is what I'd say is the most uncomfortable aspect of the philosophy from my perspective -- but we do practice like this in some circumstances in our society, we just limit it to whether a person can be rightly judged to have agency. The way I'd hodge-podge these two concepts would be to say from the perspective of the Epicurean doctor you don't have agency until you've been cured because people resist the cure. It's just not their will which is being taken into consideration, but rather their happiness. (at least, in accord with the Epicurean notion of happiness)

Okay, so in our culture we would think a lot about consent. So if you are an Epicurean doctor and I submit myself to your care then you can work your magic on me, but as soon as I withdraw my consent then it is no longer permissible for you to operate on me. If the "medicine" is onerous then I will be liable to withdraw consent, and thus continence will be necessary, no?

What have the Epicurean doctors been doing for these millennia? Have they found ways to operate on and transform souls without any effort or difficulty on the part of the soul? This is where my skepticism swells.

Hrmm, not if the cure is making you happier, I'd imagine.

Or here we are -- if you withdraw consent then this is just a failure on the part of the doctor to administer the cure. "Fault" here not in an ethical sense, but rather in an exploratory sense -- if we find a person who is resistant to the cure then we have more to overcome.

But aren't cures almost always painful? And won't patients need to accept and tolerate pain if they want to be cured? I don't track your idea that the cure will be painless, or that a doctor treats a patient without any cooperation on the part of the patient. I mostly think that Epicurus will require Aristotle's continence, unless perhaps he has a cure the likes of which the world has never seen!

it's not a lack of willpower, though a presence of willpower would surely make the doctor's task easier, it's that this person requires something more than willpower (given their total inability in that regard).

I think you are describing Aristotelian continence. The value of continence does not reside in the idea that willpower suffices for happiness.

The overemphasis on willpower is presumably a descendant of Puritanism.

The only thing I disagree with is "total inability." They must be able and willing to undergo the painful cure, and this requires willpower. More than willpower is needed, but without willpower they cannot be cured. Those with a total inability would not commit to the cure, attend the AA meetings, etc. Again, temperance is the goal, not continence, and temperance is not a matter of willpower. For Aristotle continence is not even a virtue, because it is not good in itself.

Fair enough -- if what I'm describing is, in fact, Aristotelian then the distinction between the thinkers isn't as important to me as the line of thought itself.

Let's say that this emphasis on willpower is a common belief, that I have heard it attributed it Aristotle's psychology (in the sense of having authority due to Aristotelian roots), and that I believe this is a bad way of thinking about how human beings change their behaviors. It seems what you're saying is that this is an incorrect way of understanding Aristotle, so fair enough -- then I misunderstand Aristotle.

Why would you disagree with "total inability"? Isn't that the actual problem case that I'm talking about? From the perspective of the doctor, at least, the one who gets themselves to the AA meetings and undergoes change because they realize they have a problem and they need help -- that's the case that's already solved itself. From the perspective of the Epicurean doctor the person who doesn't attend the meetings, that cannot stop themselves from pursuing anxious desire -- those are the cases that need the most help.

The Aristotelian tradition is not at all will-centered in my opinion. Of course that doesn't mean that it might not involve a greater emphasis on the will than Epicureanism.

I am saying that the person who doesn't go to the doctor will never be cured, and no one who sees a doctor has a total inability. In the general case I think there needs to be some baseline of willpower in order to seek the cure in the first place. I want to say that the doctor-patient relation is synergistic.

Well, which is it, do you think? Are they the same or are they different?

And I am saying I don't believe there must be willpower in place for someone to desire change. I'd go so far as to say a person has to want change, but that there are those without willpower and those are the cases in the most need of help.

Willpower is an odd concept -- what is it to act against an inclination other than to be inclined this way? And I'd say some people are so abled, so inclined, and some are not.

If they don't go see the doctor, for instance, the doctor can go see them.

I wouldn't doubt that they are different, but it is not right to say they are so different that for Aristotle willpower suffices for happiness. He certainly does not think that. I don't know enough about Epicurus to say where the exact differences lie.

I'd say that to want change is to exercise willpower.

I think that if willpower is anything it is an expression of agency, and to confuse agency with an inclination is not right. The agent and their will is what stands over inclinations.

Perhaps, but in this case we are talking about a fundamentally different reality.

Let me put it this way. For Aristotle happiness is an activity. It is bound up with a person's agency. To say that a doctor could perform a brain surgery and make someone happy is to make happiness a passivity, a kind of imposable state. A contemporary objection to this idea comes in the form of the "experience machine," which would make one utterly "happy" and is nevertheless rejected.

Thanks for pointing it out: now rather than just some random thought I have some questions and readings for figuring out the questions!

Interesting!

So clearly there are some differences in thought on willpower, at least if we take your reading of Aristotle and my reading of Epicurus as a starting point of comparison. At least this seems to me to be a clear point of disagreement in how we're thinking right now.

Hrrrm... I'm wondering to what extent that their theories of happiness are also at odds, or if it makes sense to say that Epicurus' theory of happiness is an activity -- but a different activity. Your assertions have caused doubt in my understanding of Aristotle, though, so I acknowledge that I'd have to do more homework to make an assertion either way here.

I'm wondering to what extent we could make the claim that ataraxia is a state of mind or an activity -- I know that the passive/active distinction was shared among philosophers at the time, but I'd have to go do homework to feel confident in making an assertion either way.