Posts by Kalosyni

Welcome to the forum shamalamadingdong -- your other post has been moved here into this thread. Perhaps some other members will have some comments for you regarding your interest in Voltaire (post 4 above).

Quote from Joshua

Unlike a hangover, neither eventuality is easily predictable.

Quote from Pacatus

feeling over-full after a delicious meal) will be less than the pleasure indulged (say, the taste-pleasure of the meal – one more bite of delicious fare)?

It really depends on if this is a very rare occurance or a regular habit. After a year of "one more bite" you may have gained 10 lbs. and then if that feels painful enough (pants are too tight to button) then you will have to implement a plan to create a calorie deficit ... i.e. ...a diet (which can be painful). You can't "cheat" with calories - nature will take its course if you eat more calories than you burn.

Also, if you look at the Letter to Menoeceus, it sheds some light on this matter:

"And because this is the primary and inborn good, we do not choose every pleasure. Instead, we pass up many pleasures when we will gain more of what we need from doing so. And we consider many pains to be better than pleasures, if we experience a greater pleasure for a long time from having endured those pains. So every pleasure is a good thing because its nature is favorable to us, yet not every pleasure is to be chosen — just as every pain is a bad thing, yet not every pain is always to be shunned. It is proper to make all these decisions through measuring things side by side and looking at both the advantages and disadvantages, for sometimes we treat a good thing as bad and a bad thing as good."

Quote from Pacatus

Does the pleasure/pain calculus only run one way sequentially?

So according to this you only endure pain if it leads you to "experience a greater pleasure for a long time from having endured those pains".

So I would say that the "one more bite" runs contrary to what is said in Letter to Menoeceus.

Also we have the Vatican Saying 59: "The stomach is not insatiable, as most people say; instead the opinion that the stomach needs unlimited filling is false."

And Vatican Saying 68: "Nothing is enough to one for whom enough is very little."

These almost have a bit of a harsh tone, but worth considering in the choice calculus.

Quote from Kalosyni

Suddenly the phrase "La Dolce Vita" pops into my mind

But as Epicureans, we have Vatican Saying 81:

"One will not banish emotional disturbance or arrive at significant joy through great wealth, fame, celebrity, or anything else which is a result of vague and indefinite causes."

So the "good life" (the removal of emotional disturbance combined with the addition of significant joy) won't happen by itself (or through vague and indefinite causes) and it requires the implementation of certain actions (causes).

Quote from Titus

I remember that the tenor in the German literature on eudaimonia tends to interpret the term as "living/having achieved the good life"

Suddenly the phrase "La Dolce Vita" pops into my mind, and thinking there might have been an earlier Italian original meaning (not the current "English" meaning of a life of excess luxury).

Here is a fun clip with an Italian guy explaining it:

Quote from Cassius

To say a little more about the plan for the Usener material

Sounds great Cassius! Thanks for putting it together, and I am looking forward to studying those fragments.

One more night of Vatican Sayings - tonight! ...and then on to all new material next week!

Tonight at 8pm ET - Vatican Sayings 80 & 81...This will be the last meeting on the Vatican Sayings.

Open to Level 03+ members and Level 01 by pre-approval of the moderating team.

Agenda:

1. Welcome
2. Discuss latest popular forum threads & latest podcast
3. Discussion on Vatican Sayings 80 & 81:

VS80. The first measure of security is to watch over one’s youth, and to guard against what makes havoc of all by means of maddening desires.

VS81. The disturbance of the soul cannot be ended, nor true joy created, either by the possession of the greatest wealth, or by honor and respect in the eyes of the mob, or by anything else that is associated with, or caused by, unlimited desire.

• We will continue with the same Zoom link as previous Wednesday night meetings.
• Level 03 members who haven't previously attended (and need to get the link) please let us know here in this thread if you are interested in attending or message me.
• Level 01 members you can message Cassius if you are interested in attending (to be considered for approval by the moderator team).

Coming up on Wednesday April 3rd - the first night of Usener fragments discussion. We are going through the full Erik Anderson list and pulling out those which will best be suited for the zoom meetings, and if you have any suggestions for additions to or deletions from the list please use the comment feature on the page where we are setting this up. A full announcement on this will go up on the forum soon. A curated list can be found here.

Quote from Don

Would these be akin to Maslow's hierarchy of needs?

The idea of the pyramid is to present information in a manner which gives more weight and importance to the base, and each "good" builds upon the level below it. It is a guide to Epicurean eudaimonia, so different than Maslow's pyramid.

Thinking further about well-being, I made this very tenative graphic to think about the importance of "goods" in relation to happiness and well-being. The base of the pyramid is the most important, and the "goods" are pursued because they bring both "pleasure" and well-being.

Perhaps these could be organized by category...and not limited to ten quotes. Here are some suggestions.

--On the gods

--On natural physics

--On the criteria for truth

--On pleasure

--On the telos

--On happiness

--On justice

--On choices and avoidances

...etc...

Quote from Bryan

here is Butterfield's mapping of Oblongus and Quadratus.

Looks complicated, lots of codes and symbols...but you can see how all stems from one manuscript.

The various translations into English would add in a whole other dimension, for both DRN and Diogenes Book 10

Quote

Thus Usener has edited Book X. in Epicurea (1887)"

It almost seems like we need a flowchart showing how we got to what we have available in English to us now.

The article seems to say that "B" is the best manuscript:

Quote

"What is most necessary now is an edition such as has been long promised, showing the true tradition of the text when BPFCo (and any other good MSS.) have been stripped of the interpolations introduced by Byzantine or Italian scholars. The effect of interpolation superimposed on multifarious errors due to careless copyists is a diversity more apparent than real, which deceives only superficial examination. For we may reasonably assume that a single stray copy, brought to light in the ninth century, was the parent of all extant MSS.² The true text, it is agreed, is often preserved by B alone ; yet F, on which Cobet relied, is not seldom right, though it also palms off makeshift conjectures. Whether the class of inferior or interpolated MSS. supplies any genuine readings independent of BPF is a question sometimes raised ; in any case, not much is to be expected from this quarter. All that can be done by the most careful collation of MSS. has already been done for the more valuable part of Laertius—I mean the fragments of other authors with which his work is filled. Thus Usener has edited Book X. in Epicurea (1887)"

Quote from Don

τὸν θεὸν ζῷον "the god (is a) blessed and imperishable ζῷον. But what is a ζῷον?

First, note the singular "god." Not gods. This use of the singular - a god,

Possibility of transcription error? Perhaps it was originally plural.

We must have already discussed this in a thread somewhere (perhaps it is as yet unfiled). The article talks about the various manuscripts.

Quote

Nor was the tenth book left much longer without a commentator. In due time the energies of Gassendi were concentrated upon it. Both the physical speculations and the ethical doctrine of Epicurus attracted him, and there appeared at Leyden in 1649 Animadversiones in librum X Diogenis Laertii, with a companion volume, De vita et moribus Epicuri. A second edition followed, and a third (Leyden, 1675), in which the two parts, Epicuri philosophiae per Petrum Gassendum, tomus primus, and Epicuri ethicae per Petrum Gassendum, tomus secundus, were united. Gassendi depended less upon MSS. than upon common sense and his own reasoning powers ; nevertheless to him, as to his predecessors, Stephanus, Casaubon, and Aldobrandinus, are due some conjectural restorations of the text which subsequent editors accept without reserve ; for example, there are three such in x. 83.

Diogenes Laertius: the Manuscripts of "The Lives of Eminent Philosphers"

Bryan just posted (over in the thread "On Nature, Book 28") that "Epicurus and Metrodorus originally took a fully conventionalist view of language".

That got me thinking about how different translations of Lucretius, and how words influence feelings and poetic words can push a feeling response.

Here is a side-by-side comparison of the opening of Book 1, between Leonard and Humphries, and you can see that there are very different poetic flourishes in each one (and which that makes me wonder about what the original Latin is actually like).

Leonard says: "the first fowls of the air, smit to the heart by thee foretoken thy approach"

Humphries says: "high in the sky the happy-hearted birds, responsive to your coming, call and cry"

Leonard:

For thee the daedal Earth bears scented flowers,
For thee waters of the unvexed deep
Smile, and the hollows of the serene sky
Glow with diffused radiance for thee!
For soon as comes the springtime face of day,
And procreant gales blow from the West unbarred,
First fowls of air, smit to the heart by thee,
Foretoken thy approach, O thou Divine,

Humphries:

For you that sweet artificer, the earth,
Submits her flowers, and for you the deep
Of ocean smiles, and the calm heaven shines
With shoreless light.
Ah, goddess, when the spring
Makes clear its daytime, and a warmer wind
Stirs from the west, a procreative air,
High in the sky the happy-hearted birds,
Responsive to your coming, call and cry,

Collage I created using art from The Sistine Chapel, The Last Supper, and The Annunciation -- Imagining the eternal bliss of God the Father, Jesus the Son, and Mary the Mother (or Mary as the "Holy Spirit").

Regarding the article I linked to in post 1 above, I am not saying that all of the proposed exercises in the article are "correct" or should be done.

Edit note: moved quoted material up into post one above.

I am considering this with regard to Easter, since this suggests the practice of deconstructing false conceptions of the gods.

This article on Contemplation on the Gods brings up the practice of thinking about the gods as blissful. For some people this may not be necessary, but for others who were brought up with the idea of a punishing god, then it might be helpful (as the things we were taught as children can linger on in the back of the mind).

The article lists the following exercises to deconstruct false conceptions of the gods:

Quote

First lesson: change how we think of the divine. ...Instead, think of the god as a supremely happy biological entity existing within our universe, not above it.

Second lesson: let’s imagine ourselves as living amongst the gods.

Third lesson: picture multiple gods.

Fourth lesson: view the gods as embodiments of happiness. ...we ought to make statues of the gods genial and smiling, so that we may smile back at them rather than be afraid of them.

The proposed exercises in the article suggest a jump off point and give some food for thought. It does bring up in my mind questions about what exactly Philodemus said about "placing before the eyes" practices.

Bryan and DavidN and Cassius what are your thoughts?

Quote from Cassius

Our natures are "saved by pleasures" but "destroyed by pains"

Thinking more correct to say: destroyed by excessive and unnecessary pains.

Important to remember the Letter to Menoeceus says:

"...we pass up many pleasures when we will gain more of what we need from doing so. And we consider many pains to be better than pleasures, if we experience a greater pleasure for a long time from having endured those pains. So every pleasure is a good thing because its nature is favorable to us, yet not every pleasure is to be chosen — just as every pain is a bad thing, yet not every pain is always to be shunned." (...since we are also aiming for health of the body and happiness of the soul).