The Academic Questions, Treatise De Finibus, and Tusculan Disputations, of M.T. Cicero, With a Sketch of the Greek Philosophers Mentioned by CiceroCicero, Marcus Tullius
Philosophy
The Academic Questions, Treatise De Finibus, and Tusculan Disputations, of M.T. Cicero, With a Sketch of the Greek Philosophers Mentioned by Cicero
Cicero, Marcus Tullius
Ethics -- Early works to 1800; Happiness -- Early works to 1800
Hieronymus does, who is quite aware of the force of the words which he
employs? But, if he thinks that he ought to add, that pleasure which
consists in motion, (for this is the distinction he draws, that this
agreeable pleasure is pleasure in motion, but the pleasure of him who is
free from pain is a state of pleasure,) then why does he appear to aim at
what is impossible, namely, to make any one who knows himself—that is to
say, who has any proper comprehension of his own nature and
sensations—think freedom from pain, and pleasure, the same thing?
This, O Torquatus, is doing violence to one’s senses; it is wresting out
of our minds the understanding of words with which we are imbued; for who
can avoid seeing that these three states exist in the nature of things:
first, the state of being in pleasure; secondly, that of being in pain;
thirdly, that of being in such a condition as we are at this moment, and
you too, I imagine, that is to say, neither in pleasure nor in pain; in
such pleasure, I mean, as a man who is at a banquet, or in such pain as a
man who is being tortured. What! do you not see a vast multitude of men
who are neither rejoicing nor suffering, but in an intermediate state
between these two conditions? No, indeed, said he; I say that all men who
are free from pain are in pleasure, and in the greatest pleasure too. Do
you, then, say that the man who, not being thirsty himself, mingles some
wine for another, and the thirsty man who drinks it when mixed, are both
enjoying the same pleasure?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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