44 /-9 to /-14
then, the soul also has greater pleasures. And he uses as a proof that the
goal is pleasure the fact that animals, as soon as they are born are satisfied
with it but are in conflict with suffering by nature and apart from reason.
So it is by our experience all on its own that we avoid pain ....
- The virtues too are chosen because of pleasure, and not for their
own sakes, just as medicine is chosen because of health, as Diogenes too
says in book twenty of the Selections; he also says that basic education is
a [form of] pastime. And Epicurus says that only virtue is inseparable
from pleasure, and that the other things, such as food, may be separated
[from pleasure].
Diogenes Laertius 2.88-90 (an account of
Cyrenaic hedonism)
[1-10]- Particular pleasure is worth choosing for its own sake; happiness,
however, is not worth choosing for its own sake but because of the
particular pleasures. A confirmation that the goal is pleasure is found in
the fact that from childhood on we involuntarily find it [i.e., pleasure]
congenial and that when we get it we seek nothing more and that we
flee nothing so much as its opposite, pain. And pleasure is good even if
it comes from the most indecorous sources, as Hippobotus says in his
On Choices. For even if the deed is out of place, the pleasure at any rate
is worth choosing for its own sake and good. - They hold that the removal of the feeling of pain is not pleasure,
as Epicurus said it was, and that absence of pleasure is not pain. For
both are kinetic, while neither absence of pain nor absence of pleasure
is a motion, since absence of pain is like the condition [katastasis] of
somebody who is asleep. They say that it is possible that some people
do not choose pleasure, because they are corrupted. However, not all
pleasures and pains of the soul occur as a result of bodily pleasures and
pains; for joy results from the simple prosperity of one's fatherland, just
as it does from one's own. But further, they say, pleasure is not produced
by the recollection or expectation of good things, as Epicurus thought.
For the soul's movement is dissolved by the passage of time. 90. They
say that pleasures are not produced by the simple act of vision or hearing.
At any rate we enjoy hearing those who imitate lamentations and do not
enjoy hearing genuine lamentations. [They held that] absence of pleasure
and absence of pain are intermediate conditions [katastaseis], and more-
over that bodily pleasures are much better than those of the soul, and
that bodily disturbances are worse. And that is why wrong-doers are
punished with these instead [of those]. For they supposed that being in
pain is more difficult and that enjoying pleasure is more congenial. ...