Plato and Epicurus on Empty Pleasure

In this article I want to explore some common ground between the thinking of two ancient Greek philosophers, Plato and Epicurus, about the nature of pleasure and how it fits into the good life. Then, I will add a new coat of paint to some terminology hopefully to make these useful ideas feel a bit more inviting in the modern age. Finally, I’ll review a few different ways of making practical determinations about how to live a good and pleasant life

The restoration model of pleasure

In his dialogue the Philebus, Plato lays out the following model for bodily pleasure: bodily health results from the harmonious fitting together of the different parts of the body. When the body experiences a significant disruption to this state of health, we feel pain, and when the body is restored toward this state, we feel pleasure (Philebus 31d–32b). The harmonious state of health itself is neither pleasant nor painful but a hedonic neutral state (Philebus 32e, 42b–44b). That is, our bodies are likely never in a state of perfect harmony, but some disruptions to the harmony that comprises our health are so small that we don’t notice or feel them (Philebus 43a–c).

For example, as I go about my workday I forget to drink anything for hours. My body begins to deteriorate from its healthy state, though for a while these movements are so small that I don’t notice them. When the deterioration reaches a certain point, I start to feel mild pangs of thirst, and these slowly increase in severity the more dehydrated I become. Eventually, I decide that I ought to drink some water. When I do, I feel pleasure from quenching my thirst as my body is restored to its harmonious, healthy state.

Epicurus, who was active shortly after Plato, appears to adopt a similar model of pleasure as it relates the concept of a harmonious state of health, including pain as bodily deterioration and pleasure as bodily restoration (Ortiz, 291; Arenson, 15; Boeri, 364; Riel, 81–85). Where he breaks with Plato is on the question of whether the harmonious state of health is itself pleasant, with Epicurus taking the position that it is (Ortiz, 14).

As one example of this general model’s ongoing relevance, observe the language used in this graph from researchers Rollin McCraty, et. al., on stress reduction and heart rhythm coherence: “Anger is characterized by a lower frequency, disordered heart rhythm pattern and increasing heart rate […] In contrast, sustained positive emotions such as appreciation are associated with a highly ordered, smooth, sine wave-like heart rhythm pattern […] there is increased harmony and synchronization in nervous system and heart-brain dynamics [from sustained positive emotions] (McCraty, et. al., 495).” Note particularly how the authors associate correlate healthy functioning with sustained positive emotions and increased physical harmony.

Does being healthy feel good?

As we’ve seen, Plato’s and Epicurus’ models differ when it comes to the harmonious state of health itself. While Plato argues that this state is hedonically neutral, Epicurus argues that it is itself a pleasure state, albeit a pleasure of a different sort from the restorative kind reviewed above. He calls the pleasures of health katastematic pleasures, or pleasures of rest, likely because they are the pleasures of a stable state of health, while he calls restorative pleasures kinetic pleasures, or pleasures of motion, likely because these pleasures are linked with the movement of restoration towards a stable state of health. (Diogenes Laertius 10.136; Riel 81–85).

But, while Plato and Epicurus have different answers to the question of whether health is pleasant in itself, these answers may share more common ground than initially appears. For Epicurus, while the states of mental and physical health are inherently pleasant, there is a ‘perception requirement’ for feeling this pleasure – we have to perceive our own good health in order to feel the pleasure associated with it, otherwise we will be numb to it (Arenson 97–98). I may be in good health, for example, but if my mind is occupied with a dozen other things and I fail to notice it, I will not feel the pleasure of good health. 

According to Plato, while the states of good mental and physical health are hedonically neutral, if we perceive these states welcomingly we may take pleasure in them. For example, I may be going about my day with a dozen things on my mind, but if I take the time to notice and welcome my good health, then it can be a source of attitudinal pleasure (Sommerville 6; Arenson 28). As Fred Feldman explains, attitudinal pleasure is the pleasure we take in a given state of affairs, such as, for example, the pleasure a parent may take in seeing her child taking his first steps, the pleasure one make take in the fact that a war has ended, or the pleasure one may take in perceiving one’s own good health. It is a pleasure that derives from a mental state and is not sensory-based as are bodily pleasures (Feldman 55–56).

So, in Plato and Epicurus’ models, the state of health can be pleasant if we perceive it welcomingly, but it also can be neutral if we fail to perceive it. Further, Fred Feldman finds in Epicurus’s katastematic pleasure what Brooks Sommerville finds in Plato’s appreciation of health – an early attempt to articulate a model of attitudinal pleasure as the pleasure one may take in one’s own good health (Feldman, 97).

Differentiating pleasures

Both Plato and Epicurus differentiate between the pleasures that fit into the good life and those that don’t, and while they do so in different ways, there is a through-line.

Plato’s true and false pleasures

Plato controversially introduces to his analysis of pleasure the concept of true and false pleasures (Philebus 36cff). 

Here Plato refers to the pleasures that accompany true beliefs (including true beliefs about what is good for our health) as true pleasures, and pleasures that accompany false beliefs (including false beliefs about what is good for our health) as false pleasures. Importantly, false pleasures for Plato feel the same as true pleasures but are enmeshed with false beliefs. For example, if I abuse an opiate, it may feel pleasant, and I may come to believe that I’ve stumbled onto some amazing source of happiness in pill form, but if I develop an addiction, with all of the mental and physical suffering that that implies, it will turn out that my belief and its concomitant pleasure are false. For Plato, happiness or good mental health, conceived of much the same way that we think of it today, is our goal (Arenson, 28), and any pleasure that does not contribute to that goal is false (Ortiz, 289).

Because false pleasures ultimately fail to bring us toward good mental and physical health, they are to be avoided, and we can achieve this by arriving at true beliefs by way of practical reasoning (e.g. Philebus 21b). 

Epicurus’ choiceworthy and unchoiceworthy pleasures

While Epicurus denies that a pleasure can be false in the way Plato suggests (Principle Doctrines [PD] 24), like Plato he draws a line between pleasures that truly help us to achieve mental and physical health and those that compromise these goals (Letter to Menoeceus [LTM] 128). The former are choiceworthy and the latter are not. He advises that we use “sober reasoning” to determine which pleasures to choose and avoid based on this criteria (LTM 132). And while he views both mental and physical health as our ultimate aim, he puts the greatest emphasis on mental pleasures (Tusculan Disputations, 5.96).

So, for Plato and Epicurus, happiness is our ultimate aim and true belief is a crucial factor for determining whether a given action and its related pleasure is to be pursued (Boeri, 368). What is and isn’t true, and the extent to which we can know the truth, is a whole different can of worms, and something which the two philosophers do not always agree on, but both agree that reasoning is our means of arriving at true belief, which in turn helps us to differentiate between which pleasures to choose and avoid.

A new coat of paint

As we’ve seen, the elements of these models of pleasure that we have reviewed so far are quite similar. I also think they are highly useful and intuitive even today. However, they both have their difficulties. Plato’s notion that pleasure can be false in the way that a belief can be false rubs many the wrong way, and Epicurus’ terminology of choiceworthy and unchoiceworthy kinetic pleasure is quite the mouthful.

In my practice as a psychotherapist, I would not risk valuable session time explaining to my clients these models with the aforementioned terminology. But the basic idea these models convey has seemed to resonate when I have adapted language from the field of human nutrition in order to filter them through a contemporary, well-understood reference point:

We speak of healthy foods (or, sometimes, real foods – not too far from what Plato might call true foods) as those foods with nutritional value, that is, with beneficial vitamins and nutrients in them that therefore fulfill the real function of food for us, which is nourishment. We also speak of empty calories as foods that contain little-to-no nutritional value. These foods are lacking in beneficial vitamins and minerals and therefore fail to fulfill the real function of food.

Applying this terminology to the models of pleasure sketched above, Plato’s true pleasures and Epicurus’ choiceworthy kinetic pleasures might be thought of as healthy pleasures, while Plato’s false pleasures and Epicurus’s unchoiceworthy kinetic pleasures might be thought of as empty pleasures.

Further, where food scientists speak of nutritional value as a measurement of the potential for a given food to nourish the body based on that food’s contents, we might think of therapeutic value as the measurement of the potential for the pleasures of certain activities to bring us towards or keep us in a harmonious state of happiness. This introduces the much needed notion of a gradient, as no pleasure is likely to be completely healthy or empty. 

Where with food, indulging in empty calories here and there isn’t likely to do significant harm as long as our diet mostly consists of healthy foods, we may also find that indulging in mild, empty pleasures here and there isn’t likely to do significant harm to our wellbeing either as long as we mostly fill our days with healthy pleasures.

Happiness, or good mental health, is the standard by which we measure the therapeutic value of a given pleasure (Philebus 11b; LTM 128; Arenson 28, 86). The pleasures that bring us toward or keep us at that standard are healthy, with positive therapeutic value, and those that don’t are empty or devoid of that value.

The measure of therapeutic value

Further, nutritional value can be measured empirically in some sense – the density of essential nutrients in a given food can be quantified and then placed into the context of a daily recommended allowance (however imperfect that measurement is for a given individual). 

With pleasure, therapeutic value is much more contextual. A given pleasure can be therapeutic or not, depending on the circumstance. For example, the pleasure I derive from reading a book for an hour in the evening may be highly therapeutic, or, it may not be, if the reason I am reading is to avoid making an anxiety-provoking phone call I have to make. The pleasure of exercise can have high therapeutic value, but if I exercise too much or too vigorously, I may seriously injure myself and negate that value. Having a piece of sugary cake after dinner may be an empty pleasure that does negligible harm in moderation, while eating that same piece of cake on an empty stomach could have even lower therapeutic value due to the increased spike in my blood sugar relative to having eaten it after a balanced meal. Broccoli may be good for me, but if I eat so much of it that I crowd out other essential nutrients from my diet, then the pleasure I get from eating broccoli may even turn out to be empty (as implausible as this last example is!). In other words, even eating a food with high nutritional value can have low therapeutic value if we are not smart about it.

With pleasure, then, we determine its therapeutic value in real time, by measuring the degree to which a given activity is good for us. This is why in Plato’s Philebus, when he provides a final ranking of the elements that comprise the good life, he gives first place to “measure” itself and then ranks reason above pleasure (Philebus 66a–b). Epicurus takes a similar position – though he ranks pleasure higher in the good life than reason, he recognizes the necessity of reason in that life (Boeri 368; PD 5, 20). As Michael Erler puts it, for Epicurus, “measurement, calculus and rational thinking are needed” to live happily (Erler, 26). 

So, how do we go about measuring our pleasure to set its therapeutic value?

Hedonic calculus: does it add up?

Notably, both Plato and Epicurus discuss the idea of a hedonic calculus, or the weighing of pleasures and pains in order to determine which choices will produce the most pleasure over the long term (Protagoras 356bff, LTM 129–30). Both, in their respective discussions, leave the exact nature of this calculus exceedingly vague. In Epicurus’s case, it may be that he went into greater detail of how he envisioned this calculus to work in one of his many lost works, though in Plato’s case, for whom we have copies of all of his known works, it seems we can’t make that excuse.

I prefer the explanation offered by Francisco Gonzalez as to why Plato does not go into any great detail about hedonic calculus. Put simply, “no such science could ever be developed by mere mortals like ourselves […] [it] would require precise knowledge of all of an action’s long-term consequences. We would need, in short, divine omniscience (Gonzalez, 56).” Gonzalez goes on to explain how hedonic calculus strains plausibility in several ways, including the uncertainty of projected future outcomes on which the calculus hinges, the incommensurability of different kinds of pleasurable activities (like eating and listening to music), and the seeming difficulty of accurately quantifying pleasure and pain at all.

I think, in some shorter-term cases, a hedonic calculus may be effective. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to determine that the pleasure of staying up all night binge-watching TV will likely be outweighed by the pain of tomorrow’s sleep deprivation. But whether the pain of skipping out on an expensive social activity to save money today will be outweighed by the pleasure of a similar experience during a secure retirement 30 years from now is a much shakier proposition. How could I really claim that hedonic calculus bears this out with any certainty? What if my interests or capabilities change in that time? What if I’m not even alive at that time?

Hedonic calculus turns out to have some significant shortcomings. And while this is just speculation on my part, we may not have access to a more detailed hedonic calculus from Epicurus because he may have recognized these shortcomings, too, and so did not feel the need to develop it much.

Measuring desire: is it all that we want it to be?

Another avenue explored by Plato and Epicurus by which to seek measured determinations about pleasure is by analysis of desire. Each employs a similar system, which I will briefly review below.

Plato’s division of desire

Plato breaks down desire into two categories: necessary and unnecessary desires (Republic 558d–559d). 

Necessary desires include those that track underlying physiological needs and therefore cannot be gotten rid of, as well as the desires that are beneficial to us if not necessary in the strictest sense. So, for example, a necessary desire may be the desire for food, whereas a beneficial desire is the desire for fortified food (Russel, 216). A necessary desire is the desire for shelter, and a beneficial desire is the desire for shelter that doesn’t fall apart after every rainstorm. Etc.

Unnecessary desires are desires that can be gotten rid of (however difficult) and therefore do not have to cause pain if left unfulfilled, as well as the desires that either do no good or actually harm us when satisfied. For example, an unnecessary desire may be the desire to eat a spinach salad with mushrooms and crushed almonds for lunch (Russel 216–17). We need food, even fortified food, but we don’t need a spinach salad with mushrooms and crushed almonds in particular, and so a desire for that is unnecessary. Another example is the desire to have a glass of wine on a Saturday night – it may be harmful or it may not be, depending, but it isn’t strictly necessary. 

And then there are the unnecessary desires that are most often harmful when fulfilled. Harmful desires at their worst are “insatiable,” and “capable of wrecking lives,” such as the desires for extravagant wealth, power, and fame (Gill, 1996, 259; Russell 219). These desires are harmful because they have no natural end. They are limitless, their objects always out ahead of us. (Austin, 51; Philebus 24d).

Epicurus’ division of desire

Epicurus’ division of desire is quite similar to Plato’s and therefore I will only gloss over it here. While Plato divides desire into two broad categories (necessary and unnecessary), Epicurus uses three: natural and necessary, natural and unnecessary, and unnatural and unnecessary (LTM 127–28). 

For the most part, it seems Epicurus’ natural and necessary desires map onto Plato’s necessary desires (e.g. the desires for food, water, shelter, safety, et. al.); Epicurus’ natural and unnecessary desires map onto Plato’s harmless unnecessary desires (e.g. the desire for spinach salad from above); and Epicurus’ unnatural and unnecessary desires map onto Plato’s harmful unnecessary desires (e.g. the desires for wealth, fame, and power). Phew, that’s a lot of jargon!

When we are pained by unfulfilled, unnecessary desires, the pain is caused by a false belief and not the underlying need for the object of the desire (Fragments, 75). For example, if I want a spinach salad for lunch, but I only have lettuce on hand, and I am pained by this reality, then the pain is likely rooted in a false belief that the spinach is actually necessary at that moment, rather than in the notion that spinach and only spinach can make me happy. Or, as another example, if I want to be a billionaire when in reality I am a middle class therapist, and I am pained by this fact, then the pain is not caused by the fact that I am not a billionaire but by the false belief that I need to be a billionaire to be happy.

The way that false belief interacts with empty desires (desire, too, could be thought of as healthy or empty as opposed to necessary or unnecessary, etc) is another reason why the quality of our beliefs is so important to living well.

The (large) gray area

While these divisions of desire can be useful, it is important to recognize that different desires will fall into different categories for different people at different times. For example, a glass of wine may be relatively harmless for one person and extremely harmful for another, if the second person is an alcoholic. Further, even if a glass of wine is normally harmless for one person, if that person is, say, temporarily taking a medication, then the glass may turn out to be harmful after all. Then there are desires for things like creative expression, social connection, and spiritual fulfillment. For example, one person may find emotional intimacy to be as necessary as food and water. Another — *ahem,* Mauro Morandi — may not.

Therefore, a division of desires, however one draws it up, will not do the work for us of infallibly determining which desires we ought to fulfill. Additionally, as we’ve seen, while a desire for something like food is necessary, we can still overeat.

Practical reason: the true measure for pleasure

Therefore, we come back to practical reasoning. Perhaps there is no infallible tool for living a good life, and instead living well requires the non-technical application of practical reasoning (Gadamer 33–36, 49), and it is with this non-technical practical reasoning that we can most effectively ‘measure’ pleasure (by non-technical I mean that practical reasoning is not a technique or system that can codified or set down as a series of infallible rules or steps). 

Plato and Epicurus have provided us with some valuable tools, but neither they nor their tools can do our thinking for us. This is why, I think, they both ultimately put their emphasis on practical reasoning over these tools (for Epicurus, note that at LTM 132 he introduces “sober reasoning” after his division of desire at LTM 127 and his discussion of hedonic calculus at LTM 129–130). Hedonic calculus can be useful, but sometimes it isn’t, and it takes practical reasoning to determine which cases are which; a division of desire can be useful, if we take the time and effort to reason through how it applies to us as individuals in different contexts. Any technical solution we may come up with will fall into the same boat: it can be useful, if we know how to use it well.

To learn how to use these tools well, we have to think about how to apply them, that is, we have to engage in practical reasoning (Gonzalez 2, 176; PD 5). This may include reflecting on the strength of arguments for and against a given choice, exploring whether a given pleasure or desire is healthy or empty, or whether a belief or opinion is unfounded (LTM 132), with the ultimate aim of arriving at a course of action that seems most likely to lead to real happiness. 

In conclusion

While I have not reviewed either Plato’s or Epicurus’ thoughts on pleasure in full, and while the full philosophies of each differ starkly in some ways, I have attempted to sketch a basic outline of some common ground between them, and hope to have made the case that these ideas can be useful for practical decision-making in today’s world, especially if given a new coat of paint to make the terminology involved a bit more contemporary.

References

Arenson, K. (2019). Health and Hedonism in Plato and Epicurus. Bloomsbury.

Austin, E. (2023). Living for Pleasure: An Epicurean Guide to Life. Oxford University Press.

Boeri, M. (2010). Epicurus the Platonist. M. Erler et. al. (ed’s), Plato’s Philebus Selected Papers From The Eighth Symposium Platonicum (363–368). International Plato Society.

Diogenes Laertius & Yonge, C. (1853). The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. H. G. Bohn.

Epicurus (1926), Letter to Menoeceus [LTM]. C. Bailey (trans.) Epicurus: The Extant Remains (327–343). England: Oxford University Press.

Epicurus (1926), Principle Doctrines [PD]. C. Bailey (trans.) Epicurus: The Extant Remains (344–374). England: Oxford University Press.

Erler, M. (2020). Epicurus: An Introduction to his Practical Ethics and Politics. Schwabe Verlag.

Gill, C. (1996). Ethical Reflection and the Shaping of Character: Plato’s Republic and Stoicism. Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy (12:1), 193–225.

Gonzalez, Francisco (2002) Socratic Elenchus as Constructive Protreptic [Gonzalez 2]. G. Scott (ed.) Does Socrates Have a Method?: Rethinking the Elenchus in Plato’s Dialogues and Beyond (161–82). Penn State University Press.

Gonzalez, F.  Virtue (2014).  The Virtue of Dialogue, Dialogue as Virtue in Plato’s Protagoras. Philosophical Papers (43:1), 33–66.

McCraty, et. al. (2006). Coherence-Building Techniques and Heart Rhythm Coherence Feedback: New Tools for Stress Reduction, Disease Prevention and Rehabilitation. In E. Molinari, et. al. (eds.) Clinical Psychology and Heart Disease (pp.487-509)

Ortiz, D. (2023). Pleasure, Perception, and Natural Harmony in Plato and Epicurus. [Doctoral dissertation, University of Florida] https://ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu/UF/E0/06/01/15/00001/Ortiz_D.pdf

Plato (1967). Plato in Twelve Volumes, W.R.M. Lamb, Trans). Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

Riel, G. (2000). Pleasure and the good life: Plato, Aristotle, and the Neoplatonists. Brill. 

Russel, D. (2005). Plato on Pleasure and the Good Life. Oxford University Press

Sommerville, B. (2019). Attitudinal Pleasure in Plato’s Philebus. Phronesis (64), 1–30

Usener, H. (1887). Epicurea (E. Anderson, Trans, 2006)

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