From Philodemus

Bearing in mind our agreed on caveat for this group regarding secondary sources like Philodemus, I question whether this idea of gods _feeling_ congeniality or alienation for us is consistent with the assertion that they are entirely blissful.

In the first place, a _feeling_ of alienation is either a pleasure or a pain, because all feelings in EP are one or the other. Alienation sounds like a pain, something the gods would want to avoid, so if they feel alienation then they are not entirely blissful on a continuous basis and then by definition are not Epicurean Gods. If that is the correct translation-- if he said and meant feeling.

If a being feels congeniality for a human and then that human experiences pain-- let us even say pain impossible to avoid, which Epicurus agreed is a thing-- then to remain entirely and continually blissful, this being could not feel empathetic pain triggered by the pain of the human it feels congenial towards. And what kind of congeniality is that? Certainly not an anthropormorphic congeniality-- not the type of friendship Epicurus describes here in VS 56 "The wise man feels no more pain, when being tortured himself than when his friend is tortured" (which does not mean a wise man feels no pain when being tortured-- that's impossible-- but that the torture of a friend is like his own torture).

Gods who are unable to know how things are going with humans and are amongst their god friends who are not having pain would have no reason to experience empathetic pain. But if we start believing they can have some sort of relational connection with us, and that they have no sorrow at all over our pain, then we could at least say they would be of a very different nature than we are, in a way that we are not encouraged by Epicurus to emulate.

Christians, although many of them do believe their god has sorrow for us, have a mechanism for getting around any god attribute that a member does not understand-- they just have to say it is over their heads and that we can't understand the mind of god. However, nothing in Epicurus' original words implied creatures who would have incomprehensible features-- some behaviors about which we would have to shrug our shoulders and say well who knows, we can't understand gods. Instead, he has made them fairly anthropomorphic in what it would take to cause them pleasure.

This is another reason, besides the material implausibility, that I do not think the original Epicurean description of the gods is compatible with where Philodemus has taken it.

Quote

From Philodemus "On Piety", referring to Epicurus' "On Nature", Bk. 13. Translation from "The Epicurus Reader" by Brad Inwood: "In book 13 [he mentions] the congeniality which god feels for some and the alienation [for others]."

This sounds also like the section of the Letter to Menoikeus that is notoriously difficult to translate (not just by me, but by others)

124c. ταῖς γὰρ ἰδίαις οἰκειούμενοι διὰ παν τὸς ἀρεταῖς τοὺς ὁμοίους ἀποδέχονται,

Again, γάρ "for, because"...

ταῖς ἰδίαις = tais idiais (dative)

"to/for the peculiar, distinct, personal … "

οἰκειούμενοι = oikeioumenoi "to be familiarized to; become familiar with" (Note: again connected with the οικείος "house, family, household, private sphere.")

διὰ παντὸς ἀρεταῖς = dia pantos aretais "through/by means of all ἀρεταῖς" ἀρεταῖς is the plural of ἀρετή = aretē which is usually translated "virtue" especially in works of other schools of philosophy. However, its semantic spectrum is a little wider than this:

goodness, excellence

manliness, prowess, rank, valour

virtue

character, reputation, glory, fame, dignity, distinction

miracle, wonder

More on the difficulty of translating this passage below, but suffice it to say that we should regroup in smaller passages. So, so far we have:

ταῖς γὰρ ἰδίαις οἰκειούμενοι διὰ παντὸς ἀρεταῖς… "Because those who are familiar with each other through all excellences and goodness

ὁμοίους ἀποδέχονται, = homoious apodekhontai, τούς ὁμοίους (accusative) "those who are like, resembling" ἀποδέχονται "admit, accept, demonstrate" (3d person plural)

"Because those who are familiar with each other through all excellences and goodness (the gods) accept those who resemble themselves.."

124d. πᾶν τὸ μὴ τοιοῦτον ὡς ἀλλότριον νομίζοντες. = pan to mē toiouton hōs allotrion nomizontes. πᾶν "all, everything" τὸ μὴ τοιοῦτον "one not of this sort" ὡς "like, as" ἀλλότριον "foreign, strange, alien" (accusative) νομῐ́ζοντες = "believing" (masculine nominative/vocative plural of νομῐ́ζων)

124b-d isn't the easiest section to parse, evidently for both myself and scholars. According to Peter Saint-Andre: "This is a puzzling sentence. Some translators understand it as applying to "the gods" from the previous sentence, with the sense that the gods would not interfere in human affairs because they don't care about ("consider as alien") mortal creatures who are so different from themselves. Other translators understand it as applying to "most people" from the previous sentence, with the sense that most people assume that immortal beings so different from themselves must want to interfere in human affairs. I lean toward the former interpretation." I am inclined to agree with Saint-Andre's position here and have used a variation on this understanding to get the literal translation below.

Since 124a-d finish the topic started in 123, let's bring together that section before proceeding:

Greek: οὐ γὰρ προλήψεις εἰσίν, ἀλλ᾽ ὑπολήψεις ψευδεῖς αἱ τῶν πολλῶν ὑπὲρ θεῶν ἀποφάσεις: ἔνθεν αἱ μέγισται βλάβαι τε τοῖς κακοῖς ἐκ θεῶν ἐπάγονται καὶ ὠφέλειαι τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς. ταῖς γὰρ ἰδίαις οἰκειούμενοι διὰ παντὸς ἀρεταῖς τοὺς ὁμοίους ἀποδέχονται, πᾶν τὸ μὴ τοιοῦτον ὡς ἀλλότριον νομίζοντες.

Literal translation: "For they are not prolepses, but the judgements of the hoi polloi concerning the gods [are] false hasty assumptions. Thence, the greatest evils are brought to the wicked from the gods as well as the greatest aid to the good. Because they (the hoi polloi) are believing that those who are familiar with each other through all excellences and goodness (the gods) accept those who resemble themselves; all those not of their sort (are) strange and alien."

I take this to mean the gods, as conceived of by the hoi polloi, believe that they gods - who are full of all excellences and virtue - grant favors and aid to good humans because they are like themselves; those who are evil, the gods reject as foreign and strange.

Quote from Susan Hill

From Philodemus "On Piety", referring to Epicurus' "On Nature", Bk. 13. Translation from "The Epicurus Reader" by Brad Inwood

"In book 13 [he mentions] the congeniality which god feels for some and the alienation [for others]."

This is the first quote I would focus on here, but I'll discuss it below in context of Elayne's comment.

Quote from Elayne

This is another reason, besides the material implausibility, that I do not think the original Epicurean description of the gods is compatible with where Philodemus has taken it.

First, I agree with the drift of Elayne's post that this quote needs to be scrutinized very closely. On it's face, it would contradict the most basic statements that gods show no concern whatsoever for humans, plus even more, it contradicts the specific statement that they don't play favorites and enemies.

But rather than assume that this is where Philodemus has taken it, I first question the accuracy of the rendition. Even as quoted, it appears to be a fragment, and indeed if in Book 13 Epicurus did "mention" the issue of congeniality and alienation, I would first and strongly presume that he mentioned it only to denounce it - and it doesn't seem firm from the quote which is the case. This (when the rendition creates a clear conflict) is an example where I don't trust the compilers whatsoever, and would not put any stock in that until we traced back exactly what condition this particular text was in that produced this rendition.

Without intending to sound negative toward anyone in particular, almost every time I have gone back to the more academic texts which print renditions of the texts in addition to the proposed translation, it seems to me that I have found HIGHLY fragmentary material, wherein even the fragments that are left are largely guesswork on which we are relying on someone we may not even know at all to recreate the letters. Despite the best of intentions, people have a tendency to see what they want to see, or what they expect to see, so whenever there is a proposed rendition that would conflict with a more basic principle, the highest level of scrutiny should be required.

Thus while I am prepared to believe that Philodemus may not always have been an "orthodox" Epicurean, I tend to give him the benefit of the doubt and put the suspicion on the transmission rather than on the original text.

So in this example, for instance, it's highly helpful to cite these along with the proposed rendition. Now the task is up to those of us who can find the time to do it to trace back further and see where In Inwood and Gerson got their original text.

All of this keeps constantly bouncing me back and forth between the divinity and the "methods of inference" discussion. I don't think we have any choice in much of what we do but to rely on "experts." I certainly don't know a word of Greek myself. But even worse than that is that we have to trust that the texts are not corrupted, and in many cases we have no idea about the chain of transmission.

What do we do in those cases? Roughly speaking,. we have to verify the experts as much as we can, I think, and then we are basically in the situation discussed in Hermotimus.

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All of this keeps constantly bouncing me back and forth between the divinity and the "methods of inference" discussion. I don't think we have any choice in much of what we do but to rely on "experts." I certainly don't know a word of Greek myself. But even worse than that is that we have to trust that the texts are not corrupted, and in many cases we have no idea about the chain of transmission.

Cmon, Cassius , you know some Greek! Don't be so hard on yourself eudaimonia, ataraxia, ....

But I hear you on the fragmentary nature of our sources. That's why that digitized Diogenes Laertius manuscript at Oxford is so helpful. The Herculaneum papyri especially are problematic, both from a preservation perspective and from a public access perspective. That seems to be some closely guarded scholarship there!

Biblical scholars have similar issues; however, it doesn't seem to slow them down. That's one of the reasons I like Bart Ehrman so much! He doesn't shy away from sharing the difficulties in biblical scholarship, but he's also not shy about sharing conclusions and how he gets there.