Posts by Don

Quote from DavidN

one to poke at Don, Wouldn't the Jefferson Bible count as an epicurean "job".

Oh, exactly.

Somebody now needs to purge the "irrelevant" material out of DeWitt's book on Epicurus.

Quote from Cassius

Is not boredom a pretty general human problem?

I'll have to push back on that statement. Boredom comes from dissatisfaction not lack of variety. Sometimes people looking for variety are running from something - possibly even an emotional trauma. They try to fill a void with novelty. I have a real problem if we start using boredom as a reason for varying pleasures.

(Note: I'm posting this from my previous post so people can respond to this topic without Cassius' and my DeWittean banter)

Quote from Cassius

Don has done a good job of placing his criticisms of DeWitt in context so the only thing I really want to say is to remind everyone that Don has been here a long time; he reads Greek very well; he's read tons of specialized academic articles, and he's far ahead of the curve in understanding the subtleties. He's an expert reader and researcher and he's far from being a novice.

I sincerely appreciate the kind words, even if I don't necessarily see myself in that way all the time. Thank you!

Quote from Cassius

On the other hand, if you are a "normal person"

Hey! Who're you calling "abnormal"!

I'm glad Cassius can at my screeds against Dewitt above. He is well acquainted with my perspective at this point over these last few years on the forum. I do tend to soapbox sometimes.

Quote from Kalosyni

Oh wow! Yikes on DeWitt! -- I've been saving the reading of that book till we have a future book study Zoom. It seems that the excerpt in post number twenty-four above (especially the first few paragraphs) is very helpful

Yes, i don't want to imply that there's not value in reading Dewitt 's magnum opus. Dewitt does provide some insightful, helpful, and refreshing insights. It's just his use of references devoid of context, Epicurean-inspired Christianity notions, and similar dross that irks me. Someone needs to do a "Jefferson Bible" job on "Epicurus and his Philosophy."

Quote

He liveth long who liveth well

See, that's my issue. The "Christian hymnology" citation is superfluous and wrong.

Here's the source of that line that Dewitt is citing:

https://allpoetry.com/He-Liveth-Long-Who-Liveth-Well

That hymn seems to me to be the opposite of what Epicurus stood for. Bonar is saying "living well" is keeping your eye on heavenly rewards not the here and now in THIS life, the only one we have.

Quote

He liveth long who liveth well;

All other life is short and vain;

He liveth longest who can tell

Of living most for heavenly gain.

He liveth long who liveth well;

All else is being flung away;

He liveth longest who can tell

Of true things truly done each day.

Be what thou seemest; live thy creed;

Hold up to earth the torch divine:

Be what thou prayest to be made;

Let the great Master's steps be thine.

Fill up each hour with what will last;

Buy up the moments as they go;

The life above, when this is past,

Is the ripe fruit of life below.

Sow love, and taste its fruitage pure;

Sow peace, and reap its harvest bright;

Sow sunbeams on the rock and moor,

And find a harvest-home of light.

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Yuck!! "The life above, when this is past, Is the ripe fruit of life below"?!   That's certainly not the Epicurean fruit to be plucked.

I find Dewitt doing this too often: taking a line or phrase out of context and imbuing it with meaning it doesn't necessarily have.

Maybe this is another hymn that needs an Epicurean do-over.

PS. I'll stop there. I don't want to derail this thread with a polemic against Dewitt. I think he's a top-shelf scholar and I like his academic papers, but, by Zeus, "Epicurus and His Philosophy" (not to mention his "St Paul..") suffers from some flaws in presentation that, for me, make it hard to fully embrace it.

Quote from Cassius

In this case I think his Christian allusions are maybe better placed than in some other areas.

Well, a broken clock is right twice a day.

Okay, that was harsh, I'll admit that... But you already know I'm triggered by his Christian allusion hobby horse. Those take me right out of his argument with an eye-rolling "By Zeus, another @#$& Epicurean-inspired Bible verse!?? At this point, it wouldn't surprise me if Dewitt wrote "John 11:35 clearly shows that Jesus was an Epicurean because..."

Thanks for posting those excerpts.

I think I'm in agreement with Dewitt in these, but, honestly, it's sometimes hard to tell with his convoluted, almost-Victorian prose style along with his superfluous Christian non sequiturs.

I sometimes have an easier time parsing Ancient Greek than I do Dewitt!

Godfrey , I'm going to take a shot at paraphrasing my understanding of your interpretation. Please correct me if I'm wrong!

• Bounded, finite time is contained within infinite time.
• We can only experience finite time as mortal beings.
• Therefore, the only pleasure we can actually experience is finite no matter how we might desire infinite pleasures; so we need not (nor should not) concern ourselves with worrying about infinite time or infinite pleasures.

Am I close?

Quote from Cassius

Don how would you restate what Godfrey is saying?

Actually, I think Godfrey has done a good job right there of what I might have said

I'm going to at some point go through the manuscripts like I started to for that other post to see if there are any obvious demarcations in the texts.

But this is a good start!!

Cassius !

I am very intrigued by Godfrey 's Interpretation and as it's expanded on by others.

Let's take a look at what pd19 actually says, because I think a case could be made for Godfrey 's novel (to me) take on it.

That specific line says:

Ὁ ἄπειρος χρόνος ἴσην ἔχει τὴν ἡδονὴν καὶ ὁ πεπερασμένος (χρόνος)...

I've added the second χρόνος for clarity.

So we're dealing with:

Ὁ ἄπειρος χρόνος infinite time (khronos)

καὶ ὁ πεπερασμένος (χρόνος) and finite (time)

The infinite is the same word used to describe the number of worlds, the extent of the universe, and atoms.

πεπερασμένος is finite, limited, bounded

Greek can split up phrases like that so the arrangement is no big deal other than that he might emphasized the infinite time by placing it first.

ἴσην ἔχει τὴν ἡδονὴν has equal pleasure

isēn ekhei tēn hēdonēn

isēn is from isos where we get isometric, isosceles, etc. It means Same, equal, etc.

Imma gonna let some others weigh in before I spout off again... Just in case anyone is waiting for my response to Cassius . So...

Tag! You're it, y'all!

Quote from Cassius

Is a normal person using these words normally and giving them their normal and ordinary meanings expected to understand that a life of 25 years contains the same amount of joy as a life of 50 years?

First, the normal/average person would most likely be included in what Epicurus calls the "hoi polloi" "the many/the masses/the crowd", so their understanding of life - almost by definition - may not coincide with what Epicurus would call "correct belief." So their normal understanding may be beside the point. In fact, he says "The flesh assumes that the limits of joy are infinite." That's the "normal" understanding. Epicurus was there to provide medicine not validate someone's preconceived normal understanding. So there's that.

Second, I don't believe it's a quantity, an "amount" of pleasure, that's being referred to. That seems a Platonic or Aristotelian argument against pleasure being able to be the goal of life. Epicurus fought against this "I need to rack up as many hedonic credits as I can. Then I win!"

Third, I am becoming firmly convinced that we need to do away with bulleted list of Principal Doctrines and begin to read it as it was written. As a prose text, not a list. If read that way, the answer is in the text. How do we "reason" it out? "the mind, thinking through the goal and limits of the flesh and dissolving fears about eternity, produces a complete way of life and therefore has no need of infinite time." We think through what it means for pleasure to have a limit. Well, it seems to me Epicurus is saying that once we have filled every nook and cranny of our minds with peace and pleasure and rid it of fears and anxieties and troubled thoughts and have a sure confidence of not losing that, you're filled up. You can vary your pleasure, but at that point your perspective on life is unassailable, filled with joy, in fact your mind never flees from joy, that is your default mode of being and interacting with the world. Living in that way is what can make one equal to the gods.

If someone thinks they need to try and rack up the hedonic points and need infinite time to do it (which will only end in frustration btw), they're welcome to ring up the Cyrenaics.

Quote from Cassius

[Please remember everyone that I am to some extent playing "devil's advocate" here in an attempt to draw this out more clearly.

Ditto.... In some respects

Quote from Cassius

Personally I think it is absolutely inadequate - and not what Epicurus meant - to try to say something like "The limit of pleasure is met when pain is absent and so therefore once you obtain painlessness for a moment if does you no good to live a longer time."

Your comment "for a moment" is off the mark. It's not experiencing "the limit of pleasure" "for a moment" then going about your day. It's experiencing the limit of pleasure as part of your whole life, you experience life with this pleasure filling your mind and body. That's why ataraxia and aponia are important components of an Epicurean life. Once you are experiencing full pleasure without mental troubles or bodily pain, it doesn't matter if it lasts a moment and you die or you live 100 years then die or live an infinite number of years and die. He says, in this state at the limit of pleasure, "the mind does not flee from joy." There are innumerable ways to vary the pleasure, but you can't increase it once the limit has been reached. That's why - "reasoning it out" - a moment or infinity can conceivably contain the same amount of pleasure. Now, is this achievable for any being other than a god? Epicurus seems to think so because we are told that if we do, we live as gods among mortals.

I don't believe you can read PD20 in isolation. You have to read it as it was most likely written, in context with the surrounding text.

In fact, I took a look at the Arundel MS 531 to try and figure out where the breaks in the text were at least in this manuscript from 1450-1500:

https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=arundel_ms_531_fs001r

(Flip to page f.177r (folio 177 reverse))

In line 9, there seems to be a specific gap right before what we call PD18: Οὐκ ἐπαύξεται... So, we start reading this section from PD18 and read on until we get another gap. I'm using Saint-Andre's translations. The next gap to my eye appears to be in line 3 on the next page (177v)

Lo and behold, that ends with καὶ ταραχῆς ἔσται μεστά. which is the end of PD22.

PD18 through PD22 should then be read as a complete paragraph:

Quote

As soon as the pain produced by the lack of something is removed, pleasure in the flesh is not increased but only embellished. Yet the limit of enjoyment in the mind is produced by thinking through these very things and similar things, which once provoked the greatest fears in the mind. Finite time and infinite time contain the same amount of joy, if its limits are measured out through reasoning. The flesh assumes that the limits of joy are infinite, and that infinite joy can be produced only through infinite time. But the mind, thinking through the goal and limits of the flesh and dissolving fears about eternity, produces a complete way of life and therefore has no need of infinite time; yet the mind does not flee from joy, nor when events cause it to exit from life does it look back as if it has missed any aspect of the best life. One who perceives the limits of life knows how easy it is to expel the pain produced by a lack of something and to make one's entire life complete; so that there is no need for the things that are achieved through struggle. You must reflect on the fundamental goal and everything that is clear, to which opinions are referred; if you do not, all will be full of trouble and confusion.

This makes sense in that it begins talking about "thinking through these very things.." and ends with "You must reflect on..."

Those are my initial contributions to the topic: Don't try to parse it in isolation.

I'll no doubt have more to say as the thread continues, but the day calls me and I must answer (if I want to get paid ya know ).

Quote from Joshua

and--even worse--"God" with a capital G in Hicks

I agree that that's absolutely a problematic translation. There is NO monotheistic capital-G God implication in the original text at all that I can see.

Sedley does make a point out of the singular vs plural constructions, using that as one argument for "each person creates their own image of god and uses that as a paradigm of the ideal Epicurean life."

Quote from Cassius

So Helen was not even in Troy during the war? But I presume Paris was?

Exactly. Paris and everyone got fooled by Hera 's eidolon. And Hera did it to get back at Aphrodite for Paris awarding Aphrodite the golden apple. At least, according to this version of the tale.

I wasn't sure where to post this but found it fascinating. I recently found out that Euripides' play Helen shows that Helen of Sparta was actually transported to Egypt before Paris carried "her" to Troy and she safely spent the entirety of the Trojan War in Egypt. What got carried to Troy and what got blamed for being the cause of the war was an eidolon created by Hera. That IS the same word Epicurus used to describe the images emitted by bodies that we perceive. Fascinating!

Introduction to “Helen and her Eidolon” - Classical Inquiries

2016.05.01 | By Donna Zuckerberg Donna Zuckerberg, editor of the online journal Eidolon, introduces the Helen-focused collaboration between two publications…

classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu

Euripides’ Helen – an Alternative View of Helen of Troy

by Sean Kelly, Managing Editor, Classical Wisdom She’s probably the single most famous woman from all of Greek mythology. We think we know the tale – the…

classicalwisdom.com

PS. I'm not saying Euripides' (and others' telling the Helen eidolon story) and Epicurus' use of the word eidolōn are synonymous. However, I did find it very interesting that both could use the same word for (maybe) parallel concepts. Epicurus would have known this story and still used the word. Do we know if the eidolon theory is extant from other Greek philosophers?

For those with enough stamina (I myself have not read the entire paper), this paper by Sedley may prove thought-provoking on the Epicurean gods

Epicurus' theological innatism

Epicurus' theological innatism

www.academia.edu