Reference no: EM133400792

Question: What is the interpretation of each of these quotes from the text Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus?:

Some Epicureans wish to refine this doctrine: they say that it is not enough to judge what is good and bad by the senses. Rather they claim that intellect and reason can also grasp that pleasure is to be sought for its own sake, and likewise pain to be avoided. Hence they say that there is as it were a natural and innate conception in our minds by which we are aware that the one is to be sought, the other shunned.

We do not simply pursue the sort of pleasure which stirs our nature with its sweetness and produces agreeable sensations in us: rather, the pleasure we deem greatest is that which is felt when all pain is removed. For when we are freed from pain, we take delight in that very liberation and release from all that is distressing. Now everything in which one takes delight is a pleasure (just as everything that distresses one is a pain. And so every release from pain is rightly termed a pleasure. When food and drink rid us of hunger and thirst, that very removal of the distress brings with it pleasure in consequence. In every other case too, removal of pain causes a resultant pleasure. Thus Epicurus did not hold that there was some halfway state between pain and pleasure. Rather, that very state which some deem halfway, namely the absence of all pain, he held to be not only true pleasure, but the highest pleasure.

'That pleasure is the highest good can be seen most readily from the following example: let us imagine someone enjoying a large and continuous variety of pleasures, of both mind and body, with no pain present or imminent. What more excellent and desirable state could one name but this one? To be in such a state one must have a strength of mind which fears neither death nor pain, since in death there is no sensation, and pain is generally longlasting but slight, or serious but brief. Thus intense pain is moderated by its short duration, and chronic pain by its lesser force.

Those who locate the highest good in virtue alone, beguiled by the splendour of a name, fail to understand nature's requirements. Such people would be freed from egregious error if they listened to Epicurus. Those exquisitely beautiful virtues of yours - who would deem them praiseworthy or desirable if they did not result in pleasure? We value medical science not as an art in itself but because it brings us good health; navigation too we praise for providing the techniques for steering a ship - for its utility, not as an art in its own right