Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Pleasure and Pain

  • The End of Moderation

    Top o' the Stack

  • Pleasures of the Flesh, Mind, Spirit

    Those who pursue the pleasures of the flesh alone do not know any better: they do not know the pleasures of the mind. Those who pursue the sensuous and intellectual pleasures alone know no better: they do not know the pleasures of the spirit resting in contemplative silence. All seek pleasure; your measure, however, is…

  • Katastematic and Kinetic Pleasures

    David Kaston, emphasis added: . . . happiness (eudaimonia), according to Epicurus, is not simply a neutral or privative condition but rather a form of pleasure in its own right — what Epicurus called catastematic or (following Cicero’s Latin translation) “static” as opposed to “kinetic” pleasure. Although the precise nature of this distinction is debated,…

  • Evil as Privation and the Problem of Pain, Part Two (2021 Version)

    Part One is here. Some pains, though bad in themselves, are instrumentally good. You go for broke on your mountain bike. At the top of a long upgrade your calves are burning from the lactic acid build-up. But it's a 'good' pain. It is instrumentally good despite its intrinsic badness. You are satisfied with having…

  • Evil as Privation and the Problem of Pain, Part One (2021 Version)

    For Vito Caiati.  This 2021 version of a November 2010 post corrects unclarities, infelicities of expression, and outright errors in the initial entry . And the font is more legible for ancient eyes. ……………………. When theists are confronted by atheists with the various arguments from evil, the former should not reject the premise that objective…

  • C. S. Lewis on the (Non) Additivity of Pain in Relation to the Problem of Evil

    In The Problem of Pain (Fontana 1957, pp. 203-204, first publ. in 1940), C. S. Lewis writes, We must never make the problem of pain worse than it is by vague talk about the 'unimaginable sum of human misery'. Suppose that I have a toothache of intensity x: and suppose that you, who are seated…

  • Suffering Pleasure

    We suffer pain, but we also suffer pleasure. Fundamentally, to suffer is to be passive, to be patient rather than agent, to be acted upon, to be in the thrall of another, to be at the mercy of what is not oneself. Excessive pleasure and pain should both be avoided as one avoids heteronomy, the…

  • On the Suffering of Non-Human Animals

    Animal life is “poor, solitary, nasty, brutish, and short.” But this gloomy Hobbesian description must be balanced by the recognition that a suffering animal is not a man suffering as an animal suffers. We must discipline our tendency to project and imagine. To imagine that a cat dying of cancer suffers as a man dying…

  • The Platonist and the Hedonist

    I am a Platonist (broadly speaking), but here I give the floor to the hedonist. The true philosopher aims to examine every side of every issue. He is, qua philosopher, no ideologue and no dogmatist.  Platonist: You pursue paltry pleasures that cannot last and cannot ultimately satisfy.  Hedonist: You  pursue objects lofty and lasting, but…

  • F. H. Bradley on the Non-Intentionality of Pleasure and Pain

    This is a re-do of a post from 13 April 2009. The addenda are new. …………………………………… I have argued at length for the non-intentionality of some conscious states.  Here is an entry that features an uncommonly good comment thread. None of the opposing comments made on the various posts inclined me to modify my view.  …

  • The End of Moderation

    Theodor Haecker, Journal in the Night (Pantheon, 1950, tr. Dru), p. 29: Many a man thinks to satisfy the great virtue of moderation by using all his shrewdness and bringing all his experience to bear upon limiting his pleasure to his capacity for pleasure. But simply by the fact of setting enjoyment as the end,…

  • Pain and Time: An Aporetic Triad

    Here are three extremely plausible propositions that cannot all be true: 1) A wholly past (felt) pain is not nothing: it is real. 2) For (felt) pains, esse est percipi, to be is to be perceived. 3) Wholly past (felt) pains are not perceived. Ad (1): To say that an item is wholly past is…

  • Suffering Without Evil?

    The following entry has been languishing in the cloud for going on ten years.  I think I'll post it now, warts and all. ………………… I argued earlier that there can be instances of evil that do not involve suffering. Now I consider the converse question: Can there be instances of suffering that are not instances…

  • Real Enough to Debase, but Not Real Enough to Satisfy

    St. Augustine at Confessions, Bk. VI, Ch. 11, speaks of "a greed for enjoying present things that both fled me and debased me." A paradox of pleasure.  Certain pleasures madly striven after prove fleeting and unreal, yet not so fleeting and unreal that they cannot degrade and debase their pursuers. At the apogee of this…

  • Physical Pain: Some Distinctions and Theses

    The topic of evil brought us to the topic of pain. Herewith, some distinctions and theses for your examination. With regard to physical pain, at least, we ought to distinguish among: a) The physical substratum of the pain. The cause of the pain. In the case of lower back pain, for example, a pinched nerve.…