Epicurean pleasure is typically considered in terms of absence: ataraxia is the lack of mental disturbance, aponia the lack of physical disturbance. In this important book, Kelly Arenson mounts a convincing case for the sensory presence of Epicurus’ highest good, arguing that ‘non-restorative’ pleasures such as taste and sex are katastematic rather than kinetic. In other words, positive sensory pleasures that do not restore an individual to health (pleasures most scholars would consider kinetic, or ancillary to the highest goods of ataraxia and aponia) are in the same category of katastematic pleasure as these neutral states of painlessness. Arenson’s major contribution is to decentre Cicero’s De finibus as the primary source for understanding Epicurean hedonism. While Arenson is not the first to question Cicero’s account of Epicurean pleasure (see J.C.B. Gosling and C.C.W. Taylor, The Greeks on Pleasure (Oxford 1984), 365–96, and B. Nikolsky, ‘Epicurus on Pleasure’, Phronesis 46.4 (2001), 440–65), her book offers the most compelling criticism to date by situating Epicurus within Plato’s earlier discussions of pleasure and health. This framing allows Arenson to redefine katastematic and kinetic pleasure as (1) non-restorative and (2) restorative rather than the widely accepted Ciceronian classification of (1) painless state and (2) sensory activity.
A series of carefully scaffolded chapters establishes the connection between pleasure and healthy bodily function, first in Plato and then in Epicurus, building to Arenson’s dynamite conclusion on the katastematic value of non-restorative sensory pleasures. Chapters 1–3 draw on evidence from Plato’s Republic and Philebus as well as Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Nicomachean Ethics to establish that Epicurus’ immediate predecessors, while disagreeing on pleasure’s nature and value, each framed their discussions within a twofold conception of pleasure as (1) a condition of health (for example, a state of satisfaction and fulfilment, 28) and (2) the process of restoring health (for example, drinking to quench one’s thirst, 35). Chapter 1 establishes the Platonic background for understanding Epicurean hedonism as a holistic experience of mental and bodily health, while Chapter 2 shifts from Socrates’ focus in the Republic on primarily psychic contentment to his discussion of physical pleasure and bodily health in the Philebus. Here, Socrates poses a question familiar to students of Epicureanism: is lack of disturbance a pleasure? Socrates responds with a firm ‘no’. Painlessness is a state of health, which is not itself pleasurable; pleasure is found instead in the perceptible process of restoring health. Socrates concludes that pleasure is a means rather than an end, an argument detailed in Chapter 3. As a restorative process, pleasure is always seeking something else (like health) and cannot be considered the highest good. A discussion of Aristotle’s criticism of this ‘process argument’ both confirms Arenson’s reading of Plato and looks forward to her correction of current understandings of Epicurean pleasure, demonstrating that the pleasurable nature of health was an open question in the fourth century BC.
Before turning in chapters 5–7 to Epicurus’ response to this question, Arenson must first deal with Cicero’s classification of Epicurean pleasure in De finibus (Chapter 4). Arenson argues that Cicero erroneously identifies kinetic pleasure with all sensory experiences, falsely opposing sensory stimulation and painlessness. When read within an existing philosophical debate that considers pleasure a process of returning to health, the absence of pain does not rule out the presence of sensory experience. In Chapter 5, Arenson defends the existence of the two types of Epicurean pleasure that Cicero describes while correcting his particular definitions. Epicurus refines Plato’s language of process-as-restoration (katastasis), altering it ‘to describe a condition of painless functioning’ (katastēmatikē, 85). This includes the pleasure of both mental and physical health, since mental health is ‘unstable without [a corresponding] confidence’ in one’s long-term physical health (103). Arenson next turns to kinetic pleasure (Chapter 6), which she distinguishes from katastematic pleasure by restoration rather than sensory stimulation. Kinetic pleasures include eating when hungry, drinking when thirsty and reflecting on previous joys when in pain. In Chapter 7, Arenson uses her carefully refined framework of kinetic and katastematic pleasures to argue that Epicurus’ highest good entails not merely the lack of pain but also sensory luxuries or non-restorative pleasures. Pleasures like dessert are not aNotitions to the suprovidedum bonum, which would contradict Epicurus’ claim that pleasure cannot be increased beyond the removal of pain (KD 18), but variations. Arenson categorizes non-restorative pleasures as katastematic realizations of an enjoyable state of painlessness, also understood as a fully functioning, healthy body: eating dessert requires that a person be well enough to enjoy it. A brief conclusion (Chapter 8) sums up the benefits of reading Epicurean hedonism in response to Plato and Aristotle.
Arenson’s book is an excellent addition to studies of Epicureanism, the ancient senses and intellectual history; while many will disagree with her arguments, she has convinced at least me of the sensory quality of Epicurus’ highest good.
