Posts by Noah Calderon

I live in a country (Finland) that consistently has very high levels of social trust and trust in government and other institutions. As a result, I do often feel at ease and confident in the future containing the same necessities for happiness that I have experienced in the past. I also have quite few close friends, to the point that I can see in practice very often the difference in my resilience to pain, sense of security, and enjoyment of pleasure when I am alone and when I am with friends. In my mind, I can separate these two sources of pleasure from social life, but they also feel very similar to me.

So when reading about Epicurus, I can see clearly the unique benefits of strong friendships on lifetime pleasure. One thing that I do not understand though is whether, in Epicurus' time, there was such a thing as "social trust" among communities larger than say, the Garden, and whether this is thought to possibly contribute to a similar sense of security. Is a sense of security drawn from strangers and political institutions less reliable and therefore a false opinion? I have the sense that modern egalitarian democracies that are resilient to corruption have achieved remarkable levels of trust and accountability from institutions and it is possible ancient societies could have been lacking in this department. I don't have the historical knowledge to say this with certainty, however.

Are there bounds to the concept of friendship in the sense thought of by Epicurus (the characteristics of it and the specific benefits it provides) that rule out other forms of kinship with human beings, kinds that do not even necessarily require knowing the other person? Thank you to anyone who understands what is confusing me here and can maybe point to some texts that elucidate the issue for me.

Marriage and children don't seem to have been out of the question for Epicureans, but Epicurus and his followers definitely seemed to place more emphasis on friendship more generally than on pair-bonding, romance, and reproduction. This makes sense because strong friendship and community provide the strongest and most natural sense of security and freedom from worry about not having access to the necessary things in life. It would require a lot of zeroes to already be in one's bank statement or budget to be confident that raising children would be pleasurable enough to justify the cost, as this post points out. Having a good group of friends one is on equal grounds with allows one to spread costs and energy and also just amplifies enjoyment. The same goes for your friendship with the person you are producing the children with or who you are marrying. Lacking respect or equality in gender relations might engender resentment and pain and distort the relationship which should be one of support and mutual pleasure.

Of course, the environment one lives in must also be conducive to raising children, but that veers into how we organize society and therefore politics. If we're looking for just advice for the Epicurean on raising children and marrying, I would say the philosophy makes it quite clear that you have to have a strong community and strong friendships (especially with the person you are marrying) first. Maybe seeing these things as purely individual or familial is eroding the personal pleasure they produce, and placed in the context of supportive friendships they become more bearable. In any case, that's the reason I am personally not prioritizing them as a young person, and I live in a country with very supportive politics for childrearing.

On this note it would be interesting to hear from anyone on this forum that has researched what the marriage institution in Epicurean communities in ancient times actually looked like, and how it might have differed from today.

Hello everyone and especially the mod team. I just wanted to add a post here because it has been a year (and I don't want to be mistaken as inactive, even though I haven't posted).

Over the past 12 months I have read Norman DeWitt's Epicurus and His Philosophy as well as Emily Austin's Living For Pleasure. The former was pretty dense and historical for me, but very informative. The latter gave me a pretty good reading list in the very beginning of all the texts which I ended up putting into a to-read list of sorts that I'm working through now. It was also very approachable.

Despite this I find it very difficult to find places where I can provide a valuable input on the forum. I feel like most of my questions will eventually be answered by reading more. I don't know if this is reasonable approach given the emphasis Epicurus placed on personal development through social bonds specifically, but I am quite shy.

Anyway, just wanted to say that this is still my philosophy of choice and I am enjoying the process of learning and growing my practical understanding of it.

Thank you for maintaining the forum!

Thank you, Kalosyni. I ended up watching both of these and they were really insightful (especially the first one). It really does seem like there's a lot to get into.

The book I ordered is not among those recommended on this site, so I'll look into these other resources after I've finished it. Hopefully I begin to get a more holistic understanding beyond just the Ethics as time goes on.

Thanks, Cassius, for being so inviting. I will try to participate in discussions as I learn.

Also, I see you're from the Nordics too Rolf. I grew up with the series and you're right, that's something I felt in the character too.

Hi all,

I'm young enough to have mostly missed the days of community-oriented forums like this one, but I was happy to find that one existed for this exciting new (or should I say old?) school of thought I have recently become quite interested in.

Some things about myself: I am from Finland, and am writing under a pseudonym. I have read the Letter to Menoeceus, and the Principal Doctrines, and some other material on the web. Having become interested, I ordered a book by one Catherine Wilson on the topic as applied to modern life, and in the meantime have especially struggled with what really constitutes a wise and rational pursuit of pleasure in life.

Speaking of, this is the primary reason I joined the forum and began reading about Epicurean philosophy. Having tried and failed to fit various competing but ultimately contrived value hierarchies into an ultimately nihilistic worldview I think I kind of settled on the conclusion that "If You Were Certain That There Are No Supernatural Gods And No Life After Death" you ought to make the most of life and stop clinging to ideals and imposed order and whatnot. How this is achieved is an art of its own, and upon looking into it, it seems that Epicurus and the school he founded got pretty far.

Thanks! Hoping to learn a lot from all of you before I start posting, since I am still quite a novice.