Posts by Don

Welcome aboard, Evan!

See, now this is an application where AI would come in handy. This sounds like some academic master's thesis or something. Well done, Joshua. This would be fascinating.

I like your metaphors, Pacatus

Quote from Pacatus

Note: I am aware that “canon” can be translated as “rule” – but I take it more in the sense of a measuring (or weighing) tool, a set of guiding principles to make life easier and more enjoyable.

I think your spot on with seeing the canon like a tool. A κανών (kanon) was originally a measuring tool, like a yardstick (or meter-stick), plumb line, or the like.

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, κα^νών

Quote from Eoghan Gardiner

to experience the pleasure freely without a need to thank anyone.

Agreed... with the following addendum Your post got me to thinking.

When you say "without a need to thank anyone," I'm assuming (correct me if I'm misinterpreting) you're referring to a god or a capital-G God. "Someone" who has "bestowed" their "blessings" upon you. Scare quotes used intentionally here. Fully and completely agree with that sentiment.

However...

Epicurus's writings and associated texts contain multiple references to the importance of gratitude in the Epicurean life, including:

• "The life of folly is empty of gratitude and full of anxiety – it is focused wholly on the future." (U491, quoted by Seneca)
• He will be grateful to anyone when he is corrected. (Diogenes Laertius' characteristics of the sage)
• "the old can be young by means of gratitude for the pleasures which have happened" (Letter to Menoikeus)
• VS17: 17. It is not the young man who is most happy, but the old man who has lived beautifully; for despite being at his very peak the young man stumbles around as if he were of many minds, whereas the old man has settled into old age as if in a harbor, secure in his gratitude (χάριτι) for the good things he was once unsure of.
• VS55: Misfortune must be cured through gratitude (χάριτι) for what has been lost and the knowledge that it is impossible to change what has happened.
• VS69: The ingratitude (ἀχάριστον) of the soul makes a creature greedy for endless variation in its way of life.
• VS75: This saying is utterly ungrateful (ἀχάριστος) for the good things one has achieved: Provide for the end of a long life (τέλος ὅρα μακροῦ βίου.). (Saint-Andre note: The force of ὅρα here might be "provide for" (as I have translated it), "beware", or even just "look to"; the overall sense is that preparing for a supposed afterlife shows a lack of appreciation for the good things of life on earth.)
• VS35: Don't ruin the things you have by wanting what you don't have, but realize that they too are things you once did wish for. (Note: Doesn't specifically use gratitude but is implied)

So, gratitude appears to be an important component of the Epicurean life, of an Epicurean perspective on the world. For me, this includes gratitude directed toward people (not gods) or just gratitude for the joy of living, gratitude for the fact that I'm around to experience both the little pleasures and the big pleasures available to me. As silly as it may sound, I say "Thank you" when the alarm goes off in my car to tell me I've left the keys in the ignition. I'm not thanking the universe; I am literally thanking the engineer that came up with the idea of including this in my car. That's what I'm thinking when I say that. I am sure to thank people for doing nice things for me and not letting them pass by. I'm not a god. I don't see gratitude as a weakness I can also feel gratitude for the sun shining on my face when I'm walking through the woods or seeing the sun streaming through the leaves. Not to some Deity for His Creation but gratitude for the *fact* of my existence and my ability to be here and now and to experience that pleasing sensation.

I don't mean to belabor this point, but I have found this attitude helpful and felt the need to share it.

Quote from Kalosyni

Quote from Kalosyni

And then remember to ask yourself: "What will happen to me if I get this or do this?, and what will happen to me if I don't get this or don't do this?"

Just wanted to add... when you ask this of yourself, also consider the wider circle of people around you, remembering that what you do will bring consequences for others as well, and any harm done to them will evoke some kind of reaction, breakdown of friendship, or retribution. (Ultimately the best way of functioning would be "post-conventional moral reasoning").

Good points, Kalosyni. I'd offer some emphases to your statement: "what you do will bring consequences for others as well, and any harm done to them will evoke some kind of reaction" towards you, "breakdown of" your "friendship, or retribution" towards you! We do not exist in a vacuum. One of the things that flows from having responsibility for our choices and rejections is that we need to weigh the consequences to ourselves. I'm not saying that others' concerns are more important than our feelings. I'm saying that our feelings are inextricably linked to our interactions with others. Our well-being is caught up in social interactions of all kinds. We need to be cognizant of how we can provide ourselves with the best social interactions we can have to provide ourselves with the most pleasurable life. If we lie, cheat, steal, belittle or even just disregard others, our lives will be less secure and thus most likely less pleasurable. Epicurus's observation is of great importance: "a pleasurable life does not exist without the traits of wisdom, morality, and justice; nor do the traits of wisdom, morality, and justice without pleasure: because the virtues grow together with a pleasurable life and the pleasurable life is inseparable from these."

Quote from Cassius

Is any of the rest decipherable?

Most of it, I believe. On Anger is one of the most intact Herculaneum papyri.

ΒΥΒΛΙΑΚΟΙC

I have no idea with which emoticon to respond to your find, Joshua!!

😲😆😭😱🤯🤢

"Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum." I've never been more glad that I wasn't raised Catholic than after reading the post above. That's very unfortunate.

For what it's worth, I really like the Perseus Lucretius. Not for the translation, but the clickability of each word.

Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Liber Primus, line 1

Maybe helpful?

In Perseus:

animans † part sg pres masc nom of animo

Charlton T. Lewis, Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary, ănĭmo

Quote

b. Subst., any living, animate being; an animal (orig. in a wider sense than animal, since it included men, animals, and plants; but usu., like that word, for animals in opp. to men.

Quote from Joshua

It's clear that Epicurus makes no distinction between lower animals and humans in this paragraph--both are equally motivated to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. In fact, the reference to fear in the preceding sentence really seems to drive home the point; it is humans and gods even more than animals that are under discussion.

Agreed. Living being means living being. All living beings.

I think another interesting way to look at this is using the title of one of Epicurus's books in that list of Diogenes Laertius:

Περὶ βίων δ᾽

On Modes of Living, in 4 books

Those was a book on the ways to make living a opposed to the physical process of living itself.

I get the idea that living is living for Epicurus, in using ζωή since he can use it for humans and gods.

Diogenes uses ζωή here:

[74] "And further, we must not suppose that the worlds have necessarily one and the same shape. [On the contrary, in the twelfth book "On Nature" he himself says that the shapes of the worlds differ, some being spherical, some oval, others again of shapes different from these. They do not, however, admit of every shape. Nor are they living beings which have been separated from the infinite.] For nobody can prove that in one sort of world there might not be contained, whereas in another sort of world there could not possibly be, the seeds out of which animals and plants arise and all the rest of the things we see. [And the same holds good for their nurture in a world after they have arisen. And so too we must think it happens upon the earth also.]

And here in 34:

They affirm that there are two states of feeling, pleasure and pain, which arise in every animate being παν ζωον, and that the one is favourable and the other hostile to that being, and by their means choice and avoidance are determined; and that there are two kinds of inquiry, the one concerned with things, the other with nothing but words.53So much, then, for his division54 and criterion in their main outline.

OH!! The passage is from Menoikeus!! Egads! I feel dense!

Here's my translation, first:

For the sake of this, we do everything in order to neither be in bodily or mental pain nor to be in fear or dread; and so, when once this has come into being around us, it sets free all of the calamity, distress, and suffering of the mind, seeing that the living being has no need to go in search of something that is lacking for the good of our mental and physical existence.

Here's my commentary on that word in 128e.

τοῦ ζῴου "the living being" genitive singular of ζῷον, the word we met way back in 123b in Epicurus's discussion of the gods. "A god" was described as a ζῷον. So, are we to take the word in 123b as "living being" there as the word implies here in 128b? Or is the ambiguous nature of the word still at play in the description of a god? The debate continues.

The ambiguous nature of the word is:

τὸν θεὸν ζῷον "a god (is a) ζῷον. But what is a ζῷον?

ζῷον (zōon) is where English zoology comes from.

LSJ gives two primary definitions:

living being, animal

in art, figure, image, not necessarily of animals (or a sign of the Zodiac)

So, unfortunately, at this point in the Letter we can't necessarily resolve the question of what the nature of the gods (or of a god) is according to Epicurus. Some scholars think Epicurus believed the gods were material beings ("living being, animal") somehow living between the various world-systems (cosmos) in the universe. Some think Epicurus believed the gods were mental representations or personifications of the concepts ("figure, image, sign") of blessedness.

Looks sweet! But a monumental task you've set for yourself!

You raise an interesting question about ζωή vs βίος.

It appears entire theses have been written on that very question! Ex...

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/226161443.pdf

An Examination of “Life” in Aristotle Concerning the Distinction Between βίος (Bios) and ζωή (Zoe)

See also

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, βίος

βίος .life, i. e. not animal life (ζωή), but mode of life.

It seems that βίος is more the mode of life, the way of living; ζωή is more the substance of life, the physical processes of life. I can't see this in the references to this in Menoikeus:

124. ὅθεν γνῶσις ὀρθὴ τοῦ μηθὲν εἶναι πρὸς ἡμᾶς τὸν θάνατον ἀπολαυστὸν ποιεῖ τὸ τῆς ζωῆς θνητόν.

So, correct understanding is that death is nothing for us, and this is what makes the mortality of life enjoyable.

126.

Ὀ δὲ παραγγέλλων τὸν μὲν νέον καλῶς ζῆν, τὸν δὲ γέροντα καλῶς καταστρέφειν εὐήθης ἐστὶν οὐ μόνον διὰ τὸ τῆς ζωῆς ἀσπαστόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ διὰ τὸ τὴν αὐτὴν εἶναι μελέτην τοῦ καλῶς ζῆν καὶ τοῦ καλῶς ἀποθνήσκειν.

So, the one who exhorts, on the one hand, for the one who is young to live nobly; and, on the other hand, the one who is old to come to an end nobly is a good-hearted simpleton not only because life is to be welcomed but also because the practice of living well, nobly, and beautifully and the practice of dying well, nobly, and beautifully are the same.

Now... Having said all that....I realize I'm not sure if that's helpful at all to you, Joshua Feel free to let me know!!

Cassius: Take a look at that pdf I linked to. Some good thoughts there.

And I personally don't have a problem with that line:

Every disturbance and unprofitable desire is removed by the love of true philosophy.

Usener calls that U457. disturbing there is ταραχώδης tarakhōdēs which is related to ataraxia.

It looks like sections 27-31 of the letter are supposed to be from an Epicurean text. Again, check out that pdf.

Oh, this looks promising?

http://www.epicuros.gr/pages/en/Tempelis_Epicurus_Porphyry.pdf

Checking our copy of Long & Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, entry 25C , is Usener 221. Their note reads:

Quote

Context: culmination of a long string of ethical quotations from Epicurus. For the Epicurean medical metaphor, cf. Gigante [271], Nussbaum [270].

So, we should look at the preceding "string" to see if we agree with that context in the letter. The anonymous nature of the quotes just gives me pause.

Gigante is in Italian in Cronache Ercolanesi, 1975, 53-61

Nussbaum is her chapter in Schofield & Striker, The norms of nature: studies in Hellenistic ethics (1986)

Quote from Little Rocker

Usener fr. 221)

Since we're getting down the thread here, here's a link to the can of worms that got opened on that fragment :

Thread

Porphyry - Letter to Marcella -"Vain Is the Word of the Philosopher..."

I was talking to @EricR this morning and trying to remember the source of this quote. In tracking it down it seems to come from Porphyry's letter to Marcella -- but do we really know this is attributable to Epicurus? Usener seems to think so, but why? Anyone recall?

U221

Porphyry, Letter to Marcella, 31, [p. 209, 23 Nauck]: Vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man. For just as there is no profit in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body,…

Cassius

June 12, 2023 at 11:34 AM