Welcome Mike Anyayahan !

Welcome Mike Anyayahan ! Thanks for joining us! When you get a chance, please tell us about yourself and your background in Epicurean philosophy.

It would be particularly helpful if you could tell us (1) how you found this forum, and (2) how much background reading you have done in Epicurus. As an aid in the latter, we have prepared the following list of core reading.

We look forward to talking with you!

----------------------- Epicurean Works I Have Read ---------------------------------

1 The Biography of Epicurus By Diogenes Laertius (Chapter 10). This includes all Epicurus' letters and the Authorized Doctrines. Supplement with the Vatican list of Sayings.

2 "Epicurus And His Philosophy" - Norman DeWitt

3 "On The Nature of Things"- Lucretius

4 Cicero's "On Ends" - Torquatus Section

5 Cicero's "On The Nature of the Gods" - Velleius Section

6 The Inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda - Martin Ferguson Smith translation

7 "A Few Days In Athens" - Frances Wright

8 Lucian Core Texts on Epicurus: (1) Alexander the Oracle-Monger, (2) Hermotimus (3) Others?

9 Plato's Philebus

10 Philodemus "On Methods of Inference" (De Lacy version, including his appendix on relationship of Epicurean canon to Aristotle and other Greeks)

11 "The Greeks on Pleasure" -Gosling & Taylor Sections on Epicurus, especially on katastematic and kinetic pleasure.

Mike as you may have seen elsewhere in my comments i highly recommend the big-picture take on Epicurus found in Norma DeWitt's book "Epicurus and His Philosophy." You will not have any problem seeing the difference in his approach once you start reading it, and that book better than any other I am aware of will help with the "can't see the forest for the trees" problem.

In the end you almost certainly will not agree with every one of DeWitt's conclusions, but he does more than most books to give you a full picture, which then makes it much easier to see how the parts fit together. I continue to think it is very difficult to dive into any of the specific works, especially Lucretius, without a high-level map of how thinks come together as a consistent whole.

But enough of that for now -- welcome to the forum!

Surely in the ancient world the Epicureans also provided higher-level summaries for themselves, even before Diogenes Laertius did. And of course that is pretty much what the letters of Epicurus and the lists of doctrines were supposed to do. But I find that most people I talk to today are so distant from the Epicurean perspective that they have a hard time putting it together. Not necessarily applying to you personally, however, given all the reading you have done. But that makes your reaction to DeWitt of special interest to me, because I feel sure you will find his "take" quite different.