Welcome to Episode 296 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world.Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts, and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today.

If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes.Once again this week Joshua is away, and in the absence of our other podcasters today I want to use the time we have to take a look at some of the extensive comment and discussion we've had as a result of last week's episode.

The topic we'll focus on this week is primarily Plutarch's allegations in Section 7 and 8 of his essay "That Living According to Epicurus is Not Possible. In those sections Plutarch alleged that even the animals pursue joy and delight when they have satisfied their essential needs of life such as for food and water, but that Epicurus - according to Plutarch - would deny his followers those same pleasures, on the grounds that the Epicurean goal is "absence of pain" rather than pleasure in the sense of joy and delight.   

https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/4687-episode-296-ancient-criticisms-of-epicurean-absence-of-pain-echo-in-the-modern-w/