Posts by Joshua

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Trace the line of life backwards, and see it approaching more and more to what we call the purely physical condition. We come at length to those organisms which I have compared to drops of oil suspended in a mixture of alcohol and water. We reach the protogenes of Haeckel, in which we have 'a type distinguishable from a fragment of albumen only by its finely granular character.' Can we pause here? We break a magnet and find two poles in each of its fragments. We continue the process of breaking, but, however small the parts, each carries with it, though enfeebled, the polarity of the whole. And when we can break no longer, we prolong the intellectual vision to the polar molecules. Are we not urged to do something similar in the case of life? Is there not a temptation to close to some extent with Lucretius, when he affirms that 'nature is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself without the meddling of the gods?' or with Bruno, when he declares that Matter is not 'that mere empty capacity which philosophers have pictured her to be, but the universal mother who brings forth all things as the fruit of her own womb?' Believing as I do in the continuity of Nature, I cannot stop abruptly where our microscopes cease to be of use. Here the vision of the mind authoritatively supplements the vision of the eye. By an intellectual necessity I cross the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in that Matter which we, in our ignorance of its latent powers, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of all terrestial Life.

-John Tyndall, Belfast Address, August 1874

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It required some rudeness to disturb with our boat the mirror-like surface of the water, in which every twig and blade of grass was so faithfully reflected; too faithfully indeed for art to imitate, for only Nature may exaggerate herself. The shallowest still water is unfathomable. Wherever the trees and skies are reflected, there is more than Atlantic depth, and no danger of fancy running aground. We notice that it required a separate intention of the eye, a more free and abstracted vision, to see the reflected trees and the sky, than to see the river bottom merely; and so are there manifold visions in the direction of every object, and even the most opaque reflect the heavens from their surface. Some men have their eyes naturally intended to the one and some to the other object.

-Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

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How familiar do you think More might have been with Epicurus?

Thomas More (1478-1535) published Utopia in 1516; for reference, here are some of the relevant texts from antiquity by first Latin translation, first Latin printing, and the first Aldine press edition of the Greek text:

And here is the editor of a 1964 edition [archive.org] of Utopia commenting on More's sources;

So to answer your question, he appears to have been quite familiar with the standard texts on Epicureanism!

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Those two Joshua along with the material on Archimedes we need to come back to next week on the podcast

From the same work of Plutarch linked above:

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And yet Archimedes possessed such a lofty spirit, so profound a soul, and such a wealth of scientific theory, that although his inventions had won for him a name and fame for superhuman sagacity, he would not consent to leave behind him any treatise on this subject, but regarding the work of an engineer and every art that ministers to the needs of life as ignoble and vulgar, he devoted his earnest efforts only to those studies the subtlety and charm of which are not affected by the claims of necessity. These studies, he thought, are not to be compared with any others; in them the subject matter vies with the demonstration, the former supplying grandeur and beauty, the latter precision and surpassing power. For it is not possible to find in geometry more profound and difficult questions treated in simpler and purer terms. Some attribute this success to his natural endowments; others think it due to excessive labour that everything he did seemed to have been performed without labour and with ease. For no one could by his own efforts discover the proof, and yet as soon as he learns it from him, he thinks he might have discovered it himself; so smooth and rapid is the path by which he leads one to the desired conclusion. 6 And therefore we may not disbelieve the stories told about him, how, under the lasting charm of some familiar and domestic Siren, he forgot even his food and neglected the care of his person; and how, when he was dragged by main force, as he often was, to the place for bathing and anointing his body, he would trace geometrical figures in the ashes, and draw lines with his finger in the oil with which his body was anointed, being possessed by a great delight, and in very truth a captive of the Muses. And although he made many excellent discoveries, he is said to have asked his kinsmen and friends to place over the grave where he should be buried a cylinder enclosing a sphere, with an inscription giving the proportion by which the containing solid exceeds the contained.

Robert From the Thread on Thomas More's Utopia:

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[Utopus] made a solemn and severe law against such as should so far degenerate from the dignity of human nature, as to think that our souls died with our bodies, or that the world was governed by chance, without a wise overruling Providence: for they all formerly believed that there was a state of rewards and punishments to the good and bad after this life; and they now look on those that think otherwise as scarce fit to be counted men, since they degrade so noble a being as the soul, and reckon it no better than a beast’s: thus they are far from looking on such men as fit for human society, or to be citizens of a well-ordered commonwealth; since a man of such principles must needs, as oft as he dares do it, despise all their laws and customs: for there is no doubt to be made, that a man who is afraid of nothing but the law, and apprehends nothing after death, will not scruple to break through all the laws of his country, either by fraud or force, when by this means he may satisfy his appetites.

Robert From the Thread on Thomas More's Utopia:

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[Utopus] made a solemn and severe law against such as should so far degenerate from the dignity of human nature, as to think that our souls died with our bodies, or that the world was governed by chance, without a wise overruling Providence: for they all formerly believed that there was a state of rewards and punishments to the good and bad after this life; and they now look on those that think otherwise as scarce fit to be counted men, since they degrade so noble a being as the soul, and reckon it no better than a beast’s: thus they are far from looking on such men as fit for human society, or to be citizens of a well-ordered commonwealth; since a man of such principles must needs, as oft as he dares do it, despise all their laws and customs: for there is no doubt to be made, that a man who is afraid of nothing but the law, and apprehends nothing after death, will not scruple to break through all the laws of his country, either by fraud or force, when by this means he may satisfy his appetites.

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For the art of mechanics, now so celebrated and admired, was first originated by Eudoxus and Archytas, who embellished geometry with its subtleties, and gave to problems incapable of proof by word and diagram, a support derived from mechanical illustrations that were patent to the senses. For instance, in solving the problem of finding two mean proportional lines, a necessary requisite for many geometrical figures, both mathematicians had recourse to mechanical arrangements, adapting to their purposes certain intermediate portions of curved lines and sections. But Plato was incensed at this, and inveighed against them as corrupters and destroyers of the pure excellence of geometry, which thus turned her back upon the incorporeal things of abstract thought and descended to the things of sense, making use, moreover, of objects which required much mean and manual labour. For this reason mechanics was made entirely distinct from geometry, and being for a long time ignored by philosophers, came to be regarded as one of the military arts.

-Plutarch, Life of Marcellus

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For the art of mechanics, now so celebrated and admired, was first originated by Eudoxus and Archytas, who embellished geometry with its subtleties, and gave to problems incapable of proof by word and diagram, a support derived from mechanical illustrations that were patent to the senses. For instance, in solving the problem of finding two mean proportional lines, a necessary requisite for many geometrical figures, both mathematicians had recourse to mechanical arrangements, adapting to their purposes certain intermediate portions of curved lines and sections. But Plato was incensed at this, and inveighed against them as corrupters and destroyers of the pure excellence of geometry, which thus turned her back upon the incorporeal things of abstract thought and descended to the things of sense, making use, moreover, of objects which required much mean and manual labour. For this reason mechanics was made entirely distinct from geometry, and being for a long time ignored by philosophers, came to be regarded as one of the military arts.

-Plutarch, Life of Marcellus

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Do you mean Lucian's view as elsewhere stated? Because I was taking the thrust of his position as you stated to be applicable to Epicurus' school as well as other ones.

I was primarily thinking of this other letter, which is the most relevant and accessible of Lucian's works that I've read. His expressed admiration for Epicurus in this letter may be a courtesy to his Epicurean correspondent, but I personally think Lucian found Epicureanism less exasperating than some of the other schools.

Letter to Celsus, Alexander the Oracle-Monger:

Alexander, the Oracle-Monger, the False Prophet | Alexander [The Lucian of Samosata Project]

That one is a fun read, I definitely recommend it!

I'm not sure I succeeded in using "far fewer words", but here it is

I didn't listen to it, but I did finally read this dialogue yesterday for the first time, and I did find it interesting.

Dramatis Personae

Lycinus is generally regarded as an authorial self-insert for Lucian, and like the author he is satirical, skeptical, and sarcastic.

Hermotimus is a novice Stoic, full of admiration for the masters of that sect, but considering himself to be still toiling on the lower slopes of Mount Virtue while the leading lights he follows are enraptured with bliss at the summits.

The Argument

The dialogue takes its beginning from a problem suggested by Lycinus. This is the problem: suppose you want to get to Corinth, but have never been there yourself. There are many roads leading out of the city you are in now, but you do not know which of them, if any, lead on to Corinth. By each road there is a plausible-seeming, respectable-looking man who claims that this road, the one he stands by, is the one that will get you there.

However;

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Lycinus: I find that each of them, as well as his guide, has tried one only [road], which he now recommends and will have to be the only one leading to the city. Whether he tells the truth I have no means of knowing; that he has attained some end, and seen some city, I may perhaps allow; but whether he saw the right one, or whether, Corinth being the real goal, he got to Babylon and thought he had seen Corinth—that is still undecided; for surely every one who has seen a city has not seen Corinth, unless Corinth is the only city there is. But my greatest difficulty of all is the absolute certainty that the true road is one; for Corinth is one, and the other roads lead anywhere but to Corinth, though there may be people deluded enough to suppose that the North road and the South road lead equally to Corinth.

Let Corinth be Wisdom; a thousand guides claim to show the way, and by a thousand different roads. Because you have not known Wisdom, and are not yet Wise, your search of it is vexed an intransigent difficulty; how can one who is not Wise find the right road that leads to Wisdom?

By what standard will he judge each road on offer? He cannot take them all; in the course of a whole human life, there isn't the time to follow every road to its end. He cannot ask a guide, because even if he assumes that they are not wilfully deceiving him, they all say different things and cannot all be right. It's really important he gets this right, because some roads lead on to disaster. Some might lead him farther away from Wisdom than he is even now.

An obvious comparison can be made to Matthew 7: 13-14;

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“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."

So what, do we just take this random guy at his word? Why? Because he said so? Or, rather, because he was reported to have said so by some other random guy, who only wrote this after his subject was dead?

Of course not. It's not a reasonable thing to ask. "I had rather be a dog, and bay the moon, / Than such a Roman" (Brutus, Julius Caesar)

Objections

Hermotimus does not immediately see the difficulty. He raises several objections:

You don't have to drink a whole jar of wine to know the quality; you only need a small taste. And so with Wisdom.

• But a jar of wine is all the same; but the schools of philosophy each make a variety of claims, and you cannot possible judge them all until you have heard them all.

Well, suppose you were to judge the school not by sampling its doctrines, but by the character of the man who leads the school.

• Two problems; first, the same problem as before. How does one who lacks Wisdom judge the character of the man who claims to possess it? Second; How do you know that your master is not of one character in your company, or in public, and of quite a different character entirely in private? You cannot study him at all times; he may seem virtuous before you, but behave with pettiness, anger, drunkenness, and jealousy in other circumstances.

And there are other objections that Hermotimus does not raise, but which might be raised:

For instance, one ought to be able to quickly rule out one school or one thinker if they were clearly wrong on an important point, or were shown to be inaccurate with regard to some fact or other, or were found to have employed a faulty syllogism. If someone tells me that in his system the Sun goes around the Earth, when I know it to be otherwise, I can disregard what he says without further explanation. He is unreliable.

• And yet, if you do not understand his system in general outline as well as in the particulars, it is possible that you have merely misunderstood him. Or that elsewhere he resolves the matter by another doctrine. For example, I do not believe that in the Catholic sacrament of the Eucharist wine really does become blood. But if it is further explained to me that only the underlying and undetectable substance of the wine turns to blood, and that the surface appearance, scent, and taste of the wine remains unchanged, I may find it challenging to refute this metaphysic.

Conclusion

Hermotimus is finally won over. Philosophy is a game for fools and liars and something worse.

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Hermotimus. You are quite right. And now I will be off to metamorphose myself. When we next meet, there will be no long, shaggy beard, no artificial composure; I shall be natural, as a gentleman should. I may go as far as a fashionable coat, by way of publishing my renunciation of nonsense. I only wish there were an emetic that would purge out every doctrine they have instilled into me; I assure you, if I could reverse Chrysippus's plan with the hellebore, and drink forgetfulness, not of the world but of Stoicism, I would not think twice about it. Well, Lycinus, I owe you a debt indeed; I was being swept along in a rough turbid torrent, unresisting, drifting with the stream; when lo, you stood there and fished me out, a true deus ex machina. I have good enough reason, I think, to shave my head like the people who get clear off from a wreck; for I am to make votive offerings to-day for the dispersion of that thick cloud which was over my eyes. Henceforth, if I meet a philosopher on my walks (and it will not be with my will), I shall turn aside and avoid him as I would a mad dog.

My thoughts

I wanted you to have a normal life. That's something that you can't have when Rick shows up. Everything real turns fake, everything right is wrong, all you know is that you know nothing and he knows everything. And, well... well, he's not a villain, Summer, but he shouldn't be your hero. He's more like a demon, or a super fucked-up god.

-Morty Smith, Rick and Morty; The Rickshank Rickdemption

"Do they not Epicurise gloriously?" "Yes, if coming often to the powdering tub [for a syphilis remedy] be doing so."

-The Epicurean, Desiderius Erasmus

"ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. it is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus. if it could be understood it would not answer their purpose. their security is in their faculty of shedding darkness, like the cuttlefish, thro’ the element in which they move, and making it impenetrable to the eye of a pursuing enemy."

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp, 30 July 1816

Ok, now these are my thoughts;

Lucian achieved something remarkable. A Syrian boy, born in Mesopotamia, probably tutored in Greek as a second language, he went on to become one of the most successful and enduring writers in that tongue of his age. His influence, through devoted admirers like François Rabelais (Gargantua and Pantagruel), Desiderius Erasmus (In Praise of Folly), Thomas More (Utopia), and Jonathan Swift (A Modest Proposal), has set the standard for our conception of modern satire as a literary form.

He sparred with conmen, mountebanks, flatterers, and charlatans. His skepticism is not the tired, stale and rigidly syllogistic or geometric mental emptiness of the Xenos and Stilpos of centuries prior. It is a lively, vivacious, and penetrating spirit of genuine doubt and uncertainty that drives his work: he reminds me of Columbo raising two fingers and a cigarette as he is nearly out of the room, intoning almost as an afterthought;

"Just one more thing..."

Just one more thing; how can you be sure your philosopher isn't lying to your face? How can you be certain that the travelogue you just paid real money for in the marketplace isn't a pack of fables from beginning to end? How can you know that the oracle who appears to be flogging you for all the gold you can carry isn't prying open your seals, reading your secrets, inquiring after your confidants, and showering you with any line of bullshit he can think of just to keep you on the hook?

For me, the value of this dialogue is in the the following lesson; the very same arguments that I employ myself against claims of revealed religion can just as easily be turned against me. Indeed, they have been anticipated for use against me since long before I started using them myself.

Was Lucian an Epicurean? Well, probably not. I detect in him a sympathy for our school, and in this very dialogue he makes a very Epicurean point about the misuse of geometry by philosophers, a subject that I covered all too hastily in a video last January. In a letter to his friend Celsus on Alexander the false oracle, he speaks of Epicurus and Metrodorus with great admiration. This is probably because his correspondant was an Epicurean, but it may also have been genuine comraderie; the Epicureans at least saw right through many of the same scams he did. They were devoid of superstition, sought only causes in nature to explain phenomena in nature, and went for humble pleasure as their good rather than high-minded self-aggrandizing virtue.

Whatever else he was, Lucian offers an indispensable view into the Epicureanism of Asia Minor in the second century.

I'm going to have a lot to say about causes in the coming episode, and I'll start gathering citations here with this passage from William Paley's Natural Theology published in 1809;

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Another system [that proposed by Erasmus Darwin], which has lately been brought forward, and with much ingenuity, is that of appetencies. The principle, and the short account, of the theory, is this: Pieces of soft, ductile matter, being endued with propensities or appetencies for particular actions, would, by continual endeavours, carried on through a long series of generations, work themselves gradually into suitable forms: and, at length, acquire, though perhaps by obscure and almost imperceptible improvements, an organization fitted to the action which their respective propensities led them to exert. A piece of animated matter, for example, that was endued with a propensity to fly, though ever so shapeless, though no other we will suppose than a round ball, to begin with, would, in a course of ages, if not in a million of years, perhaps in a hundred millions of

[page] 432

years (for our theorists, having eternity to dispose of, are never sparing in time), acquire wings. The same tendency to loco-motion in an aquatic animal, or rather in an animated lump which might happen to be surrounded by water, would end in the production of fins: in a living substance, confined to the solid earth, would put out legs and feet; or, if it took a different turn, would break the body into ringlets, and conclude by crawlingupon the ground.
Although I have introduced the mention of this theory into this place, I am unwilling to give to it the name of an atheistic scheme, for two reasons; first, because, so far as I am able to understand it, the original propensities and the numberless varieties of them (so different, in this respect, from the laws of mechanical nature, which are few and simple), are, in the plan itself, attributed to the ordination and appointment of an intelligent and designing Creator: secondly, because, likewise, that large postulatum, which is all along assumed and presupposed, the faculty in living bodies of producing other bodies organized like themselves, seems to be referred to the same cause; at least is not attempted to be accounted for by any other. In one important respect, however, the theory

[page] 433

before us coincides with atheistic systems, viz. in that, in the formation of plants and animals, in the structure and use of their parts, it does away final causes. Instead of the parts of a plant or animal, or the particular structure of the parts, having been intended for the action or the use to which we see them applied, according to this theory, they have themselves grown out of that action, sprung from that use. The theory therefore dispenses with that which we [Creationists] insist upon, the necessity, in each particular case, of an intelligent, designing mind, for the contriving and determining of the forms which organized bodies bear. Give our philosopher these appetencies; give him a portion of living irritable matter (a nerve, or the clipping of a nerve), to work upon; give also to his incipient or progressive forms, the power, in every stage of their alteration, of propagating their like; and, if he is to be believed, he could replenish the world with all the vegetable and animal productions which we at present see in it.

We will, I think, begin to better understand the ancient Academic objections to Epicureanism if we first understand why Charles Darwin's theory of evolution constituted such a body blow to the theological and philosophical synthesis of Platonism and Christianity.

I haven't read the article, but I notice that we are going to be encountering related ideas in Academic Questions, Book 1, section 2 this weekend;

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[Varro speaking] But now, if I approved of the doctrines of Epicurus, that is to say, of Democritus, I could write of natural philosophy in as plain a style as Amafanius. For what is the great difficulty when you have put an end to all efficient causes, in speaking of the fortuitous concourse of corpuscules, for this is the name he gives to atoms. You know our system of natural philosophy, which depends upon the two principles, the efficient cause, and the subject matter out of which the efficient cause forms and produces what it does produce. For we must have recourse to geometry, since, if we do not, in what words will any one be able to enunciate the principles he wishes, or whom will he be able to cause to comprehend those assertions about life, and manners, and desiring and avoiding such and such things?

And I also recall that Alfred Tennyson in Lucretius makes reference to 'streams' of atoms;

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A void was made in Nature, all her bonds
Crack'd; and I saw the flaring atom-streams
And torrents of her myriad universe,
Ruining along the illimitable inane,
Fly on to clash together again, and make
Another and another frame of things
For ever.

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Apart from all of this, my own view on the matter is in agreement with Bryan's. Lucretius is translating (finding Latin words with which to convey the 'dark discoveries of the Greeks') rather than innovating.

Usener 135

Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology, 3.17.24:

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Again from Epicurus: "If you wish to make Pythocles rich, do not give him more money, but diminish his desire."

The question in the thread title is far too broad to be meaningful, but this and other quotes seem relevant.

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other philosophers are wrong in asserting the existence of anything of any nature that falls outside that "either one or the other" structure

My point is that when it comes to ethics almost everything falls outside of that structure. This is parallel to atomism only by happenstance; there is no Sith rule-of-two that governs every aspect of Epicureanism, or of nature, or of human life.

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And Sedley observes that in both lines of argument, Epicurus follows up this "either/or" starting point by arguing that other philosophers are wrong in asserting the existence of anything of any nature that falls outside that "either one or the other" structure.

Not only do I reject the Ethical side of this argument except insofar as it is restricted exclusively to pathos, I also notice that this is exactly the kind of absolutism that Cicero employs himself:

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There is indeed a law, right reason, which is in accordance with nature; existing in all, unchangeable, eternal. Commanding us to do what is right, forbidding us to do what is wrong. It has dominion over good men, but possesses no influence over bad ones. No other law can be substituted for it, no part of it can be taken away, nor can it be abrogated altogether. Neither the people or the senate can absolve from it. It is not one thing at Rome, and another thing at Athens: one thing to-day, and another thing to-morrow; but it is eternal and immutable for all nations and for all time.

***

For Justice is one; it binds all human society, and is based on one Law, which is right reason applied to command and prohibition. Whoever knows not this Law, whether it has been recorded in writing anywhere or not, is without Justice.

So I say again, it is no good blaming Cicero for this!

As I mentioned in the other thread, Lucretius himself uses Summum Bonum. It's no good blaming Cicero before one addresses this!

How does he respond to Lucretius' use of Summum Bonum in the early lines of Book 6?

Greenblatt was also invited to deliver a lecture connected with his book at the Getty Villa, which I also recommend watching!

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„The Swerve“ I haven‘t read yet. It is a little bit older or ? Is its content still intetresting and has valid ideas/ views about Epicurean Philosophy ? Would you recommend it ? Maybe I would read it next.

I'm not very good about keeping up with the secondary literature, but The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt was my main introduction to Epicureanism and I am always happy to write in his defense.

I first encountered Greenblatt's work as an under-graduate English/History major. He was (is?) the editor of the magisterial Norton Anthology of English Literature in many volumes, and this venerable anthology formed the backbone of the English Literature curriculum. This was a rather impersonal introduction, but we also read his biography of William Shakespeare (Will in the World), which a friend of mine thought was one of the better supplementary texts we studied that semester. So I graduated with at least a sense of Greenblatt's work, and recognized the name a few years later on the front of a paperback while I was looking for something new to read on my upcoming travels.

I have since listened many times to the audiobook narrated by Edoardo Ballerini (a great help with the pronunciation of the Italian names), and always with pleasure.

The Swerve does contain a chapter dedicated to an outline of Epicurean philosophy, which, though I might quibble here and there, I don't find at all objectionable. But that's not really what this book is about. It is a study of the loss, submergence, survival, and rediscovery of the literature, language, and culture of classical antiquity, as seen through the eyes of a group of Italian Humanists of the Quattrocento who were trying to save what was left of the ancient past.

It tells of the lives, livelihoods, rivalries, vanities, and ambitions of men like Poggio Bracciolini, Leonardo Bruni, Lorenzo Valla, Marsilio Ficino, Coluccio Salutati, Niccolò de' Niccoli, Pier Paolo Vergerio, and many others.

Since several of these figures were prominent and learned scribes of the Papal Curia at the Vatican, the book also dwells on the faith and politics of the 15th century, the executions of Giordano Bruno, Jerome of Prague, and Jan Hus; and the trial of Antipope John XXIII, the schism of the church, as well as the Council of Constance that brought many of these matters to a head.

Since the common thread that runs through all of this is the rediscovery and recirculation of Lucretius' grand Epicurean poem, I certainly think Greenblatt's book is worth reading!

Great to hear from you, Onenski!