Posts by Kalosyni

Welcome to the forum!

It comes to me this morning that I find Nietzsche to be a bit beyond what I find enjoyable right now (seems somewhat "dark" or pessimistic to me).

I prefer not to open up a door to eclecticism (by mixing in modern philosophers with Epicurean ideas) and which I would hope to avoid. (Though it could be a spring-board into bringing up new questions).

And also thinking that I actually do like the "myth of arrival" in this very life (that there could be some benefit to it) -- and so thinking about the Epicurean idea of "living like the gods" in this very life -- do we have a thread on that?

Quote from the transcript:

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While all these shadows of god possess flocks of disciples, today the true world theory of choice for the masses is what the 20th century psychologist Michael Mahoney called the myth of arrival. Those who subscribe to this myth believe that one day they will reach a turning point in life; all their frustrations and problems will disappear, and they will finally be happy. In other words, they believe that in the future they will enter their own personal utopia, or true world, or as Mahoney writes:

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“Embedded in the myth of arrival…is the message that…there will come a day when our struggles and suffering will be finished. Depression, anxiety, anger, and all manner of “ill being” will finally end. We will wake up one morning and clearly recognize that we have “arrived”: We will have gotten ourselves and our lives “together” in a way that can never be undone. We will be healthy and happy. We’ll be in the job, the home, and the relationship that we have always wanted, financially comfortable and fundamentally at peace with ourselves.”
Michael Mahoney, Constructive Psychotherapy

What is presented in the above excerpt brings up thoughts for understanding the goal for Epicureans (as it is understood sometimes differently for each person):

Epicurean Goal could be expressed as one (or more) of the following:

1) pleasure

2) pleasure built upon ataraxia

3) happiness/well-being

And it is important to realize we can't ever reach perfect peace of mind or perfect happiness -- this world we live in has uncertainties and things which we can't control -- so life will be filled with a mix of both good and bad emotions which arise depending on the situation. So it would in fact be unreasonable to strive for perfect tranquility. The best we can do is to make smart choices and avoidances while also pursuing the things in life which bring pleasure.

I read both the transcript (which is linked above the video) and also watched the video. I find that the pictures are interesting but also distracting for absorbtion all of the ideas presented, so recommend reading the above linked transcript.

First of all, I feel like I do not understand Plato very well. And found this:

A Non-Philosopher’s Guide to Plato

A primer on Socrates, Plato, and ways their ideas manifest in contemporary art.

blogs.getty.edu

So further questions regarding Plato's ideal forms -- is there something in the human brain or the human pysche which "processes" information in such a way as to bring about abstractions and the longing for a "true world" ("true world" is Nietzsche's idea and which I think should really be called a "furture perfect world")?

What causes humans to distrust the "messiness" of sensations and opinions, and the impermanent nature of experience, and instead want to create a static, nailed-down understanding of permanent objects -- is this a kind of grasping for safety or a longing for the "garden of eden" before the complexities of civilization?

And perhaps, in our own search for the "Epicurean Garden" are we seeking some ideal, perfect peace and safety?

My notes from the Episode 150 podcast (may contain spelling errors)

1:50 -- Epicurus' time in Mytilene, a city on the island of Lesbos. Mytilene was a hotbed of Platonist philosphical thinking, and Artistotle actually taught there himself before going to Macedonia to tutor Alexander the Great.

3:10 -- This is the first place that Epicurus sets up his philosophy against the philosophical milieu, and he gets run out of town.

6: 25 -- Tortoise and Achilles

7:30 -- My grandfather's shovel

9:10 -- Grains of sand and a heap/non-heap

12:15 -- Resolutions of the heap/non-heap problem

13:50 -- If you start removing body parts at what point do you harm your soul

14:25 -- Joshua: these paradoxes are intellectually stimulating but are not useful in epistemology (in Joshua's opinion)

15:25 -- Cassius (flip-side to Joshua's opinion): these kinds of thought exercises, such as in Lucretius -- the issue of whether there is a boundry to the universe, by visualizing the throwing of the javlin -- and this is a way of expressing that there is a question that needs to be examined. Mind experiments are mind expanding and can point to conclusions.

16:30 -- Method of understanding: Do these concepts exist apart from objects which are right in front of you. Do complex concepts like capitalism, communism, socialism or any type of complicated conceptual relationship have definitions somewhere that everyone can be certain of, or aspire towards, or do we in fact have nothing but individual realities, and we are just using words to describe as best we can what those realities are.

17:02 -- Wikipedia lists as first example: The the denial of the existence of the heap. A heap of sand is something that means something to us, we have to understand that what we are describing (as the heap of sand) is not ordained by god, set up by the universe itself in a dimension like Plato would have it, and that is no essence of heaps as Aristotle might say. We got to understand both sides that yes it's useful to describe things with words, but on the otherhand these words don't have any objective meaning to them, established by god or by Plato's ideal forms or essences.

17:56 -- pg 72, 73 of DeWitt book -- Sorites syllogism (paradox)

When other philosophers talk about the good as a conceptual abstraction, Epicurus is saying to subtract various goods from the good and see at what point we no longer have what you're calling the good. Because if we subtract our sensations of taste, and vision and other sensed from our experience, what's left other than a stream of meaningless words, of the term "the good".

20:25 -- small changes vs large changes (Wikipedia chart on Sorites paradox)

22:30 -- looking at the chart of the green and the red, and could consider an analogy to virtue, there is no objective definition of individual virtues. You cannot separate virtue from actions which we decide to be virtuous.

22:50 -- pg. 73 DeWitt: "For my own part I am at a loss to know what meaning I shall attach to the good, subtracting the pleasures of taste, subtracting the pleasures of love, subtracting the pleasures of the ears, subtracting also the pleasure of the eyes in beauty of form and beauty of movement." (Tusc. Disp. 3.18.41; Athenaeus 280ab)

This gets to the heart of what Epicurus meant when he talks about pleasure.

23:25 -- Talk about it a lot as if we are contrasting Plato's view of the good vs Epicurus' view of the good -- and that Epicurus is say that the good is pleasure, but this is also an epistemological/logical aspect to it -- it shows you the way at which he is getting at the question -- how he is getting to the answer -- and this is applicable to the word "pleasure" itself -- that there is no ideal form of pleasure, or no definition given by god, or not essense of pleasure -- other than the individual pleasures that we feel and experience for ourselves.

24:10 -- The syllogism and its argument against Platonism would be of better use if restored into its dialog form, to be made more clear

25:25 -- Not just the pleasures of the mind but also the pleasures of the body

26:30 -- Subtracting until there is nothing left which the common person understands as good in everyday life.

27:04-- Epicurus' understanding of Homer and the Phaeceans -- the joys and pleasures of a banquet

Epicurus citing one of the Platonist's own authorities on virtue -- here's Homor praising pleasure and friendship, things that we can understand from our human lives identifiable with the ultimate good. DeWitt says this would be similar to qouting the Bible in support of evolution.

30:30 -- word euphrosenae used by Plato and Aristotle to signify pleasure superior to hedone (pleasures of the body and pleasures of the moment) -- meaning the enjoyment of pure reason contemplating absolute truth -- that's the telos articulated by the Philobus dialog.

Homer as a hedonist

32:45 -- Sophecles -- pain is considered an evil -- Hercules cried out in pain

35:40 -- New book by Emily Austin

36:25 -- Anaxagerus had positions like the sun is not a god but instead a ball of hot metal, and he escaped and lived out his exile in Lampsicus

37:05 -- Epicurus used various methods to poke and prod the other philosophers in Mytilene, and so then he leaves and goes to Lampsicus, and meets many of the people who are to be his friends, companions, and ultimately his heirs at the school in Athens

38:50 -- when Epicurus gets to Athens he is no longer engaging others in the public square, because he sees where that leads with Anaxagerus and Socraties -- and so he establishes the Garden on his own private land -- school was taught in private

40:05 -- his views were different than the views of the established authorities and he could have ended up being charged as Socrates, as corrupting the youth

41:15 -- in applying Epicurean philosophy in the modern world, and can't expect just to talk about Epicurus as a philosopher of happiness or expect everyone to say "hey great!" -- when you start over-turning existing ideas and say that things need to be re-thought, it can create resistence (at 42:20)

42:40 -- reference to Emily Austin book

44:07 -- Joshua asks Cassius about his re-interpreting and continuing to interpret the texts on the forum

46:20 -- ideas which are difficult to let go of and which take time to let go of: the traditional western consensus about virtue, that there is an absolute virtue and absolute right and wrong; and determinism

48:30 -- take the time to read the material for yourself, be willing to think independently, be will to question basicly everything you've thought previously -- almost a Neitzcheian type approach

49:05 -- need to take an approach which is opposite of "turn on, tune in, drop out" from the 60's -- So digging in to the reality and instead of dropping out engaging with things as "aggressively" as you can

49:40 -- Joshua talks about how his Epicurean ideas have evolved over time on the forum

50:50 -- learning is a process which you have to carry out over time, return to the source material, and yet also make use of books like Norman DeWitt's and Emily Austin's.

51:10 -- study these things with like-minded friends -- discussion and exploration together with others

52:30 -- question authority and use the faculties which nature gave you, to seek out the truth yourself

So it is incorrect to translate it as "culture"? (as Monadnock does in above translation).

Welcome to the forum

Quote from Don

I really like this one! My own translation is "Flee from all indoctrination, O blessed one, and hoist the sail of your own little boat."

From Monadnock:

Also, the following is an excerpt recently posted by Don in this thread.

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Plutarch, On Listening to Lectures, c.1, p. 15D: Shall we ... force them to put to sea in the Epicurean boat, and avoid poetry and steer their course clear of it?

Note: In L&S, under παιδεια - 2. training and teaching, education, opposite of τροφή,

τροφή: nourishment, food; that which provides or procures sustenance; a meal ; nurture, rearing, upbringing; education

II.nurture, rearing, bringing up, Hdt., Trag.; in pl., ἐν τροφαῖσιν while in the nursery, Aesch., etc.

rearing or keeping of animals

a place in which animals are reared

So it looks to me like τροφή has more of a connection to nature whereas παιδεία has more of a sense of acculturation, something imposed or overlayed on the individual.

On the word for boat:

ἀκάτιον Dim. of ἄκατος Note: τἀκάτιον = το + κατιόν e.g., ταγαθον

I. a light boat, Thuc., etc.

II. a small sail, perh. a top-sail, Xen., Luc.

Modern Greek = dinghy, small skiff

ἀράμενος middle masculine participle of "lift, raise" (for yourself with middle sense).

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Don, I just want to double-check regarding the translation -- indoctrination vs. using the word "culture" since the word choice really affects the meaning. (I look at the Greek words and it is very confusing to me).

The question of what the Garden was actually like came up. And I found this interesting overview regarding gardens in ancient Greece:

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In the city states (poleis) which developed in Greece during the early part of the first millennium BC, the municipal centres left space for religious ceremonies and public meetings, but the residential areas had very little green space. Sacred gardens or public sacred groves were mainly located outside the actual housing areas. According to traditional belief, sacred beings dwelt in such places – be they gods, nymphs or heroes. A sacred grove (alsos) was generally a place in open natural surroundings with a cluster of trees, a brook, a field or a grotto. It was marked by a ritual figure and mostly enclosed by a wall, so that the designated plot was called a temenos. However, unlike the Near Eastern royal gardens, it remained accessible to all. Its fundamental features were its communal religious aspect and its untamed natural character, located at the transition to civilisation. Sacred groves were thus protected against uncontrolled intervention (Thuc. 3.70.4; Callim. hymn. 6.24–60). In Athens the sacred olive trees dedicated to Athena were generally protected from being felled or dug up (Lys. 7).

Moreover, private vegetable and fruit gardens (kepoi and orchatoi) are attested for the Greek poleis at an early date. Homer (Od. 7.112ff.) describes a garden surrounded by hedges for the palace of Alcinous, the ruler of Phaeacia, where everything flourished and there was no want; it included an orchard with apples, pears, figs and olives, a vineyard and a vegetable garden, so that it was designed and irrigated without decorative plants or flowers, purely for utility (Od. 7.129). Laertes too, the father of Odysseus, lived in seclusion and cared for his garden, where fruit and olive trees, grapes and vegetables grew (Od. 24.244ff., 340ff.). In the reality of the urban residential areas of the poleis, house gardens were relatively rare. Greek houses had a courtyard or a peristyle (arcade) without gardens. Gardens were often located at the city walls, or formed a green belt around the city, near the rivers.² Here too were the garden-like graveyards, such as the Kerameikos in Athens (Fig. 7). The profession of gardener is attested as early as the fifth century BC (Athen. 9.372b–c; Theophr. hist. plant. 7.5.2). In this context Theophrastus lists a broad range of garden vegetables and seasoning plants.³

In the Athens of the late classical and Hellenistic periods, new ‘philosophers’ gardens’ were created, which provided a landscaping enrichment of the city's surroundings. These included Plato's Academy, Aristotle's Lyceum and Epicurus’ Kepos – which can be translated as ‘garden’. Theophrastus, a pupil of Aristotle's, had a garden near the Lyceum; his works include a comprehensive botanical study (De causis plantarum; Diog. Laert. 5.46, 51ff.). These ‘gardens of learning’ were in private hands, and could, in connection with older public institutions, provide a philosophical and athletic education. They included an assemblage of parks, shrines and sports facilities, and such buildings as gymnasia and palaestras (courts for wrestling matches) as training areas, together with pathways, statues and sacred groves, such as for the Heros Akademos, or shrines such as for Apollo Lykeios. Theophrastus’ Lyceum also had an altar for the Muses.

https://erenow.net/ancient/an-env…-and-rome/9.php

Cassius brought up a good question tonight (if I can remember it correctly):

-- Does trying too hard for happiness get in the way of happiness?

And to respond, I would say it depends on how you go about it. You need to put effort into doing the things that are the causes of happiness, and effort into doing the things that result in happiness. So you aren't chasing some amorphous idea of happiness. It could be more like a science experiment where you chose certain compounds and mix them together to see what the result will be -- so you will have trial and error, but you keep trying and observe, and once you know what works for you then you can repeat that in the future. And, if you are stumped on what to do then, you might need to seek out some friends who tend toward being happy to see how they do it.

Happiness isn't a non-stop feeling - it will naturally rise and fall as an indicator of:

1) an feeling in response to a need being met or a pleasure being experienced

2) a sense of contentment and satisfaction (a quieter feeling of happiness)

You will still feel all the other emotions in life but hopefully will spend less time having feelings such as over-whelm, hopelessness, or sadness.

So there is really a need for both subtractive and additive practices.

Here is a very rough draft of some ideas about Epicurean Therapuetic Principles (hope these are readable):

Hi Charles, we are starting tonight at 8pm ET.

(Which is sort of late for happy hour, but in case anyone on the west coast wants to join, and also this was a good time for Martin)

Quote from Cassius

One thing I personally would like to see too would be an expansion of the chart in post 13 above with so we could add sample "therapies" that fit under each category.

In other words I see the basic organization of a chart as divided up into sort of "areas of life" where the columns list (1) the area of life, then (2) a description of healthy functioning in that area, then (3) a description of misfires or less healthy functioning / pitfalls, then (4) references to texts cites that deal with the issue, and then (5) a final column for suggested "techniques" or "therapies" that apply to that area of functioning.

Thank you Cassius posting the reminder for tonight's happy hour!

I will have an simple outline, yet it will be a slightly different format than the above.

I do want to keep this very informal, and also I want bring in an option of interpersonal exploration of practical therapeutics, if anyone wants to try a kind of talking through of a therapeutic method as it would apply to real life.

And I want to move in the direction of "happy" hour -- so focusing on additive choices (and can explain more on that).

Post here or message me if you have any further questions

Welcome to the forum!

Okay, so even though everyone has the Wikipedia calculations (and I must be clearly wrong) -- I made a graphic to explain (the colored text is only to make it more readable).

What I am saying is that you only count the increase or the decrease of the shape of the moon.

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The Noumenia was marked when the first sliver of moon was visible and was held in honor of Selene, Apollon Noumenios,^[1] Hestia and the other Hellenic household Gods. The Noumenia was also the second day in a three-day household celebration held each lunar month; Hekate's Deipnon is on the last day before the first slice of visible moon and is the last day in a lunar month, then the Noumenia which marks the first day in a lunar month, followed by the Agathos Daimon (Good Spirits) on the second day of the Lunar month.

Actually this confirms my idea:

If you read carefully it says: "when the first sliver of moon was visible" -- by my method that would 1st day waxing and it would look like December 24/25th. And it says that the last day of the lunar month is the day before the first sliver is visible.

But I am unclear as to when to say that the first sliver is visible...for our naked eyes do we need to have it be enough of a sliver to register the presence of light?... and so moon would need to be like on December 25th (even though the picture shows the beginning of a sliver on the 24th, but may not yet be visible to the naked eye).

Also the same problem with waning moon...at what point can we see with our eyes that the moon is waning? I am coming from a very intuitive (and primitive) way of seeing the moon and judging the changing of the shape to determine what day of the month it is.

I wanted to make a dedicated post regarding the calendar used in ancient times. It is such a very different way to measure time for each month (according to the moon), compared to how we keep our time now. Late yesterday afternoon looking up at the moon (a waxing crescent) had me pondering that ancient way of keeping time.

Based on Wikipedia we can deduce that is is very likely that Epicurus would have used the Attic calendar since he was living in Athens. But before he lived in Athens, he may have used different calendars, since it also says this:

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The Attic calendar or Athenian calendar is the lunisolar calendar beginning in midsummer with the lunar month of Hekatombaion, in use in ancient Attica, the ancestral territory of the Athenian polis. It is sometimes called the Greek calendar because of Athens's cultural importance, but it is only one of many ancient Greek calendars.

Although relatively abundant, the evidence for the Attic calendar is still patchy and often contested. As it was well known in Athens and of little use outside Attica, no contemporary source set out to describe the system as a whole. Further, even during the well-sourced 5th and 4th centuries BC, the calendar underwent changes, not all perfectly understood. As such, any account given of it must be a tentative reconstruction.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attic_calendar

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The Greeks, as early as the time of Homer, appear to have been familiar with the division of the year into the twelve lunar months but no intercalary month Embolimos or day is then mentioned, with twelve months of 354 days.^[1] Independent of the division of a month into days, it was divided into periods according to the increase and decrease of the moon. Each of the city-states in ancient Greece had their own calendar that was based on the cycle of the moon, but also the various religious festivals that occurred throughout the year.^[2]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_calendars

Wikipedia goes on with this:

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Monthly and annual festivals were not usually allowed to fall on the same days so every festival month had an opening phase with exactly recurrent practices and celebrations while in the body of each month was a unique schedule of festival days.

A parallel function of this calendar was the positioning of the perhaps 15 or so forbidden days on which business should not be transacted.

Rather than considering the month as a simple duration of thirty days, the three-part numbering scheme focuses on the moon itself. In particular the waning days 10–2 and the waxing days 2–10 frame the crucial moment where the moon vanishes and then reappears.

A date under this scheme might be "the third (day) of Thargelion waning", meaning the 28th day of Thargelion.

Names of the days of the month

new moon	11th	later 10th
2nd waxing	12th	9th waning
3rd waxing	13th	8th waning
4th waxing	14th	7th waning
5th waxing	15th	6th waning
6th waxing	16th	5th waning
7th waxing	17th	4th waning
8th waxing	18th	3rd waning
9th waxing	19th	2nd waning
10th waxing	earlier 10th	old and new [moon]

To summarise the days with special names.

• The first day: noumenia, or new moon.
• The last day: henē kai nea, the "old and the new".
• The 21st day: "the later tenth". The Attic month had three days named "tenth" (equivalent in a straight sequence to the 10th, 20th, and 21st days). These were distinguished as
  • 10th: "the tenth (of the month) waxing"
  • 20th: "the earlier tenth" (i.e. waning)
  • 21st: "the later tenth" (i.e. waning)

This strange juxtapositioning of the two days called the tenth, the earlier and the later, further highlighted the shift into the moon's waning phase.

When a month was to last 29 instead of 30 days (a "hollow" month), the last day of the month ("the old and new") was pulled back by one day. That is to say, the "second day of the waning month" (the 29th in straight sequence) was renamed as month's end.

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Now I want to say that as I was looking at a moon chart, and remembering past times of gazing at the moon, it came to me that it is difficult to know exactly when the moon is completely full by the ordinary eyes -- so then this counting would only apply to days when you can descern clear changes in the size of the moon.

Moongiant - Moon Phase Calendar

Current, past and future Moon Phase Calendar. Click on Moon Phase Calendar to get complete moon phase details for that day.

www.moongiant.com

And I would like to go on to suggest a way of counting which may or may not make sense (but is different than the Wikipedia article) and this way of counting is according to what a human eye can see happening with the moon. My idea would be that you start counting on the day that you see a large enough crescent -- that would be waxing day 1, waxing day 2, etc. and then you continue to count to waxing day 10 (which would be called the "earlier 10th", the following day would be considered full moon of which there would be several days (as you can see from the chart above, that the moon is nearly full both before and after the actual full moon). Then on the day when you can descern that the moon is waning you begin counting waning day 1, waning day 2, etc. and continue counting up (not down) and so this would give you the "later 10th".

But this is just my own idea, my own imagination of trying to make sense of things.

Although now thinking further, we do actually know when the moon is full because it rises opposite of the sun setting. So not sure than if my idea makes any sense to count the way I suggest.

Eikadistes what do you think?

By my counting then, the 20th (which would be the 2nd 10th) would fall on the last day of a visible waning crescent. (And this is different than what Nate calculated on another thread).

Waning crescent:

moon_day_WanC_10.jpg

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Edit note: Dec.1, 2022 -- I have now resigned myself to the Wikipedia version of the counting of the days of the month (and I found nothing to support my own idea). The rest of this thread goes on with a little bit of a back and forth between this and the Wikipedia counting. And also contains Nate's nice graphic design, in multiple colors.

This is slightly off topic, but wondering ...since they used a lunar calendar...what phase of the moon would it be on the evening of the Twentieth, on each month?

Quote from Cassius

stay on the generic level of how we detect imposition in gernal and how we deal with who should be trusted and who not, and related issues of bias and prejudice, at a general level.

Is there a thread on that already?

Some ideas to summarize:

--We must understand the physical nature of the world as built on atoms which have always been in existence and were not created by a god.

--On the earth everything exists from previous physical causes and follows the laws of physics -- no supernatural explanations (and when a child can grasp this then they will understand there is no Santa Claus because Santa violates the natural laws of physics).

--The God Myth has something parallel, in that how could God keep track of every human being's prayers ( Joshua did you recently say something about this and that some writer or philospher said this?)

--We observe to see that things follow from the physical causes and follow the laws of physics. We have to judge other people's claims to these same standards.

***

A further question: How to deal with fake news? We have people who make claims but we can't observe with our senses, so then we have to find out for whom do they work for to see if they can be trusted -- which is why now there is this phrase: "trusted source". Also the people who are doing the "fact checking" -- we have to see who they are working for. So then the scientific method and its correct application is very important also -- but there are studies that show one thing, and then a year later another study says oh that was wrong. So then we will have to emphasize that certain things can't be taken to be absolutely true. And even the news that we read, it seems that we can't always take it to be absolutely true -- but this could be the beginning of the downfall of democracy, when you can't trust the news or the leaders who might be basing their statements on fake news.