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Health and Hedonism in Plato and Epicurus Also Available From Bloomsbury Plato’s Trial of Athens, Mark A. Ralkowski Plato and Plotinus on Mysticism, Epistemology, and Ethics, David J. Yount Plato and Nietzsche, Mark Anderson Health and Hedonism in Plato and Epicurus Kelly Arenson BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2019 Copyright © Kelly Arenson, 2019 Kelly Arenson has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. viii constitute an extension of this copyright page. 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For my parents vi Contents Acknowledgments viii Notes on the Texts and Translations ix List of Abbreviations x Introduction 1 1 The Pleasure of Psychic Harmony in the Republic 11 2 Restorative Pleasure and the Neutral State of Health in the Philebus 29 3 Plato’s Anti-Hedonistic Process Argument 45 4 Cicero’s De Finibus and Epicurean Pleasure 65 5 Epicurean Pleasures of Bodily and Mental Health 85 6 Pleasurable Restorations of Health in Epicurean Hedonism 109 7 Epicureans on Taste, Sex, and Other Non-Restorative Pleasures 137 8 Conclusion: Health and Hedonism in Plato and Epicurus 157 Notes 163 References 204 General Index 210 Index Locorum 213 Acknowledgments Many ideas from this book first took shape in my doctoral dissertation in philosophy at Emory University. The project has since turned into a different animal, but I owe my first thoughts on ancient hedonism to my late director, Steve Strange, who many years ago put me on the scent of the Philebus. I am also especially grateful to Tim O’Keefe for his many helpful criticisms and comments on the entire project. The work also benefited in its early stages from comments by Richard Patterson and Jack Zupko. Any errors that remain are, of course, my own. The book took its current shape since I joined the philosophy department at Duquesne University, whose generous Presidential Scholarship for faculty gave me time to write and revise. I thank my many wonderful colleagues at Duquesne for their encouragement (and commiseration) during this process. I am also indebted to the audiences at the conferences and departments where I presented parts of this book, including Duquesne University, the University of Memphis, the Texas Workshops in Ancient Philosophy, several meetings of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy and the American Philosophical Association, and Western University Canada. Small parts of this book appeared in Kelly Arenson, “Natural and Neutral States in Plato’s Philebus,” Apeiron, 44, no. 2, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011, pp. 191–210. I thank De Gruyter for permission to reprint those parts here. Lastly, my deepest thanks to L. Michael Harrington, for always being the face on the other side of the desk. Notes on the Texts and Translations Most of the Greek text of Epicurus’ letters and sayings as well as the fragments of passages about Epicureanism are from the second edition of Graziano Arrighetti’s compilation Epicuro, Opere (1973). When citing fragments and material concerning Epicureanism that do not appear in more widely available compilations, I provide the passage number from Arrighetti’s edition, followed by ‘A.’ If the passage appears only in Hermann Usener’s compilation Epicurea (1963), I give the passage number from that edition, followed by ‘U.’ Unless otherwise noted, all translations from the Greek of Epicurus’ texts are my own. The Latin text of Cicero’s De Finibus is from L. D. Reynolds’ Oxford edition (1998); my translations are based on Raphael Woolf’s (2001), with many revisions. Translations of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura are those of Martin Ferguson Smith (2001), revised by me where noted; the Latin text is from Cyril Bailey’s second Oxford edition ([1900] 1962). All translations of Plato’s Philebus that appear here are my own, but I frequently referenced Dorothea Frede’s edition (1993). Translations of the Republic are G. M. A. Grube’s, revised by C. D. C. Reeve (1997); I have modified the translation where noted. The Greek texts of all Platonic works are from J. Burnet’s Oxford editions (1900–1907) except for the Greek text of the Republic, which is from S. R. Slings’s Oxford edition (2003). For Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, I have used W. D. Ross’s translation (1983), revised by J. O. Urmson and sometimes by me, and the Greek text from J. Bywater’s edition ([1894] 1970). Details of the Greek and Latin texts and translations of other classical works are provided in the notes.