„Near the end of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle concludes that the highest form of human activity is intellectual contemplation, because—as he says—it gives us pleasure in its own right, not as a result of pursuing any additional goal.“
Because it gives pleasure in its own right. Between the lines the Epicurean goal of life ->Pleasure<- is confirmed by Aristoreles.
I think everything what is pursued for „it own sake“ like virtue, friendship means we have a positive affection for it and so in the end a kind of Pleasure in the core.
Matthias, for Aristotle, and the Stoics, one should do the virtuous thing regardless of whether it brings pleasure or not. Pleasure is just a bonus. For the Epicureans is the opposite: virtue is instrumental and pleasure fundamental. Big difference. I also think the Epicureans simply got it wrong in terms of what “nature” wants, as I explain here: https://thephilosophygarden.substack.com/p/why-epicureans-and-utilitarians-are
I read more of Socrates to understand the motivation of virtue as the only good.
I'm currently still working on where our values come from, in the end it's probably a mixture of reason and feelings. But I find it difficult to distinguish between the Stoics and the Epicureans. For Stoics, emotions are also cognitive expressions, Epicureans are apparently more open to feelings and the basis of values, which they also weigh up and assess against each other with reason.
Regarding the article mentioned, I ´ve read it a few days ago and will take a closer look at it the next days I think.
I don't have a final opinion on it yet.
But at the moment I think the authors are making a mistake. They consider pleasure/pain to be instrumental for the "goals" of evolution => preservation/reproduction. Virtue is in the same category, by the way but not mentioned here.
But these are the "goals" of the genes, not of the self / agent.
Evolution has no "goals", agents do. And Epicureans are not concerned with the goal of genes or life, but with the -> happy life<-
This can even be contrary to evolutionary drives, for example, in that someone may have a better relationship with a friend rather than a relative, or decide to have fewer or no children.
Or even do suicide.
Going back to the first living beings/cells, there is a fundamental faculty for positive and negative evaluations of the entire organism, and Epicurus calls this the faculty of pleasure and pain.
As you know, it has existed much longer than human reason, which probably emerged later from it, as David Hume and others describe as instrumental.
What is the basic motivation of the Stoics to live in harmony with the cosmos? To become like their Stoic God? If suffering doesn't matter, then why not just live unvirtuously, what is the problem to not live in harmony with the cosmos/logos ?
But I'll have to think about that for a while longer. Maybe its just a subject of perspective. If everything is rational than also pain/pleasure and emotions are.... And in some ways they are I think.
Thank you, I agree in most points and you always enrich my understanding.
Pro Social behavior leads to Preservation what is a drive of Evolution so that makes sense for me. So virtue is instrumental but preserves itself like the body which consists of functions for preservation => Virtue leads to the preservation of Virtue that could makes sense.
But why is something good because it is the exception and not the common ? Other living beings have also prosocial behavior lots of even more than humans they regularly sacrifice for the group and have reason/ kind of language.
That with the Suffering, yes it matters as a disprefered indifferent and Virtue give the value.
It is more the question of motivation for Cynics and Aristo. Why is Vice bad when nothing else has any value ? A vicious Cynic would live a miserable life in suffering, but that is all indifferent for him, so what ?….
Matthias, always happy to help, these discussions are useful to me as well, to clarify my own thoughts.
At the end of the day, I believe that both pleasure and virtue are instrumental, and that they both aim at survival (biological evolution) and flourishing (cultural evolution). So in that I differ from the ancient Epicurean and Stoics, who thought that pleasure and virtue, respectively, are ultimate goods. The ultimate good is eudaimonia, a life worth living.
I don’t think that something is good because it’s the exception. Something is good because it’s valuable, and one has to spell out the reason why it’s valuable. Other animals are prosocial and even engage in acts of altruism, but their reasoning and communication abilities are limited compared to humans. That’s why reason and language are so important for us.
Vice is bad because it gets in the way of eudaimonia. Again, things other than virtue do have value, but their value is secondary in comparison with virtue. So suffering is “indifferent” not in the sense that one doesn’t care, but in the narrow sense that it does not make a difference to one’s virtue.
Matthias, the main difference between Epicureans and Stoics is that for Epicureans the goal of life is tranquillity and virtue is a means to that end; for the Stoics virtue is the goal, and tranquillity a side effect. Very different.
Interesting point about pleasure/pain, virtue, and evolution/nature. But the difference is that the Epicureans argue that pleasure is the goal because nature says so. The Stoics think that nature endows us with the basics of virtue, but that it is up to us to expand on such basics. So, again, not the same thing.
Here is another way to put it: for the Epicureans nature tells us that pleasure is the ultimate goal. It very plainly is not. Pleasure is always instrumental to something else. The Stoics can argue, by contrast, that virtue is the true goal of nature, because they understand virtue as prosocial behavior, which does make us happy, since we are social animals. But you are correct, they of course neither speaks of evolution, and that evolution’s “goal” is survival and reproduction, neither pleasure nor virtue.
The fact that pleasure/pain have existed much longer than reason is a point in favor of the Stoics, since they argue that we should focus on what is specifically human, not on what we share with other animals.
The point of living in harmony with the cosmos, for the ancient Stoics, is because we are literally bits of the living god. For modern Stoics one can couch things in more environmentalist ways.
It is not true that for the Stoics suffering doesn’t matter.
„Near the end of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle concludes that the highest form of human activity is intellectual contemplation, because—as he says—it gives us pleasure in its own right, not as a result of pursuing any additional goal.“
Because it gives pleasure in its own right. Between the lines the Epicurean goal of life ->Pleasure<- is confirmed by Aristoreles.
I think everything what is pursued for „it own sake“ like virtue, friendship means we have a positive affection for it and so in the end a kind of Pleasure in the core.
Matthias, for Aristotle, and the Stoics, one should do the virtuous thing regardless of whether it brings pleasure or not. Pleasure is just a bonus. For the Epicureans is the opposite: virtue is instrumental and pleasure fundamental. Big difference. I also think the Epicureans simply got it wrong in terms of what “nature” wants, as I explain here: https://thephilosophygarden.substack.com/p/why-epicureans-and-utilitarians-are
I read more of Socrates to understand the motivation of virtue as the only good.
I'm currently still working on where our values come from, in the end it's probably a mixture of reason and feelings. But I find it difficult to distinguish between the Stoics and the Epicureans. For Stoics, emotions are also cognitive expressions, Epicureans are apparently more open to feelings and the basis of values, which they also weigh up and assess against each other with reason.
Regarding the article mentioned, I ´ve read it a few days ago and will take a closer look at it the next days I think.
I don't have a final opinion on it yet.
But at the moment I think the authors are making a mistake. They consider pleasure/pain to be instrumental for the "goals" of evolution => preservation/reproduction. Virtue is in the same category, by the way but not mentioned here.
But these are the "goals" of the genes, not of the self / agent.
Evolution has no "goals", agents do. And Epicureans are not concerned with the goal of genes or life, but with the -> happy life<-
This can even be contrary to evolutionary drives, for example, in that someone may have a better relationship with a friend rather than a relative, or decide to have fewer or no children.
Or even do suicide.
Going back to the first living beings/cells, there is a fundamental faculty for positive and negative evaluations of the entire organism, and Epicurus calls this the faculty of pleasure and pain.
As you know, it has existed much longer than human reason, which probably emerged later from it, as David Hume and others describe as instrumental.
What is the basic motivation of the Stoics to live in harmony with the cosmos? To become like their Stoic God? If suffering doesn't matter, then why not just live unvirtuously, what is the problem to not live in harmony with the cosmos/logos ?
But I'll have to think about that for a while longer. Maybe its just a subject of perspective. If everything is rational than also pain/pleasure and emotions are.... And in some ways they are I think.
Thank you, I agree in most points and you always enrich my understanding.
Pro Social behavior leads to Preservation what is a drive of Evolution so that makes sense for me. So virtue is instrumental but preserves itself like the body which consists of functions for preservation => Virtue leads to the preservation of Virtue that could makes sense.
But why is something good because it is the exception and not the common ? Other living beings have also prosocial behavior lots of even more than humans they regularly sacrifice for the group and have reason/ kind of language.
That with the Suffering, yes it matters as a disprefered indifferent and Virtue give the value.
It is more the question of motivation for Cynics and Aristo. Why is Vice bad when nothing else has any value ? A vicious Cynic would live a miserable life in suffering, but that is all indifferent for him, so what ?….
Matthias, always happy to help, these discussions are useful to me as well, to clarify my own thoughts.
At the end of the day, I believe that both pleasure and virtue are instrumental, and that they both aim at survival (biological evolution) and flourishing (cultural evolution). So in that I differ from the ancient Epicurean and Stoics, who thought that pleasure and virtue, respectively, are ultimate goods. The ultimate good is eudaimonia, a life worth living.
I don’t think that something is good because it’s the exception. Something is good because it’s valuable, and one has to spell out the reason why it’s valuable. Other animals are prosocial and even engage in acts of altruism, but their reasoning and communication abilities are limited compared to humans. That’s why reason and language are so important for us.
Vice is bad because it gets in the way of eudaimonia. Again, things other than virtue do have value, but their value is secondary in comparison with virtue. So suffering is “indifferent” not in the sense that one doesn’t care, but in the narrow sense that it does not make a difference to one’s virtue.
Matthias, the main difference between Epicureans and Stoics is that for Epicureans the goal of life is tranquillity and virtue is a means to that end; for the Stoics virtue is the goal, and tranquillity a side effect. Very different.
Interesting point about pleasure/pain, virtue, and evolution/nature. But the difference is that the Epicureans argue that pleasure is the goal because nature says so. The Stoics think that nature endows us with the basics of virtue, but that it is up to us to expand on such basics. So, again, not the same thing.
Here is another way to put it: for the Epicureans nature tells us that pleasure is the ultimate goal. It very plainly is not. Pleasure is always instrumental to something else. The Stoics can argue, by contrast, that virtue is the true goal of nature, because they understand virtue as prosocial behavior, which does make us happy, since we are social animals. But you are correct, they of course neither speaks of evolution, and that evolution’s “goal” is survival and reproduction, neither pleasure nor virtue.
The fact that pleasure/pain have existed much longer than reason is a point in favor of the Stoics, since they argue that we should focus on what is specifically human, not on what we share with other animals.
The point of living in harmony with the cosmos, for the ancient Stoics, is because we are literally bits of the living god. For modern Stoics one can couch things in more environmentalist ways.
It is not true that for the Stoics suffering doesn’t matter.
Exoterica--and golden means--forever! Thanks, Massimo.