What Are The Possible Reasons (And Of These, The Most Likely) Why The List of 40 Principal Doctrines Does Not Feature A Statement Explicitly Stating Pleasure To Be The Goal of Life?

Quote from Cassius

Titus could you elaborate on what you mean?

According to my reading of DeWitt, it seems St. Paul is able to offer something greater than the fullness of pleasure to the former Epicureans. He is offering the fullness of the life of immortal beings. These are just some thoughts that touched me while reading your comments on Lucian.

Concerning your initial question, I personally would see pleasure as part of the epistemology rather than something to be treated in the quite ethically centred principal doctrines.

I also want to emphasize that the "40" is superimposed on the text. There is no indication in the manuscripts that they were numbered in any way. There are breaks or spaces in the text, but not in any way indicating each of these "40." The are paragraphs or sections, but not 40 individual doctrines.

Yeah, I think Lucian refers to the Principle Doctrines as "that book".

Now that I think about, I wonder if the Principle Doctrines themselves were the "synoptic" overview of a longer and more detailed text, where he lays out the main points in the introductory material and then explicates each main point in more detail after. The surviving material by itself would make for a very short scroll--although it's possible that was the point.

I suppose the counterargument to that theory would by the Vatican Sayings, culled from many other works, where brevity was the whole point.

I think the Principal Doctrines reads much more coherently if you don't split it into 40 discrete pieces.

Quote from Cassius

Do we also think that the Vatican sayings numberings were added later?

They weren't numbered, but they're definitely an anthology.

DigiVatLib

Vatican Sayings on folio numbers 401v-404v (401v & 402r shown below, VS1 / PD1 is at the bottom of the left page: Το μακαριον και αφθ... etc.)

And here is a link to a previous post of mine that had links to the Principal Doctrines as given in DL, Book 10. You'll see the continuous text as opposed to the red letter initial letters of the Vatican Sayings above:

Post

RE: Presenting the Principal Doctrines in Narrative Form

Okay, as promised, here are the best digitized manuscripts I can find online of Diogenes Laertius with citations and images of where the Principal Doctrines start. I have not begun to go through the various texts to see where gaps appear to be, but the Oxford Arundel MS531 seems to be the most promising for that exercise; however, the others definitely need to be examined.

Oh, and this isn't intended to be just for people who read Greek. I would be curious for anyone to take a look at the…

Don

August 15, 2022 at 11:00 PM

Quote from Cassius

Also as to the possibility that PDO1 is intended to refer to more than just the Epicurean gods even though the term "immortal" is used, there is this:

VS78. The noble soul occupies itself with wisdom and friendship; of these, the one is a mortal good, the other immortal.

Going back to this ...

ὁ γενναῖος περὶ σοφίαν καὶ φιλίαν μάλιστα γίγνεται, ὧν τὸ μέν ἐστι θνητὸν ἀγαθόν, τὸ δὲ ἀθάνατον.

There are two different words used that are translated "immortal" in PD1 and VS78.

PD1 uses άφθαρτος aphthartos which is more like uncorrupted, undecaying, which can be translated as immortal or eternal but places more emphasis on an unchanging nature.

VS78 uses θνητός thnētos for the "mortal" and αθάνατος athanatos "not mortal; not dying" but the former can mean literally "(of things) befitting mortals." ἀθάνατον is "immortal" but better thought of as undying, everlasting, perpetual. So, for me, the emphasis is on the persistence in time in VS78. The wisdom we acquire in our lives dies with us. But friendship lasts in our memories even after the friend dies, as does the memory of ourselves in our friends.

I am still back on Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers,

and found this eyebrow raising qoute in Wikipedia:

Quote

He is criticized primarily for being overly concerned with superficial details of the philosophers' lives and lacking the intellectual capacity to explore their actual philosophical works with any penetration. However, according to statements of the 14th-century monk Walter Burley in his De vita et moribus philosophorum, the text of Diogenes seems to have been much fuller than that which we now possess.

Quote from Kalosyni

I am still back on Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers,

and found this eyebrow raising qoute in Wikipedia:

Quote

He is criticized primarily for being overly concerned with superficial details of the philosophers' lives and lacking the intellectual capacity to explore their actual philosophical works with any penetration. However, according to statements of the 14th-century monk Walter Burley in his De vita et moribus philosophorum, the text of Diogenes seems to have been much fuller than that which we now possess.

Do we know what Burley said specifically?

Quote from Don

Do we know what Burley said specifically?

No, and now I see he may not have been the author of the particular book De vita et moribus philosophorum, (Wikipedia says: "It was formerly attributed to Walter Burley, but is now recognized as anonymous. Its author may be known as "Pseudo-Walter Burley".^[3]) Though it would be interesting to see if we can find out more:

De vita et moribus philosophorum - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Found this:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40858433

Don do you have a JPASS?

I signed in but looks like I can only read the introduction and not the full book.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40858433?seq=1

Quote from Cassius

Interesting that Burley says "he said that pleasure is the highest good." Does Diogenes Laertius' commentary state it that way aside from including the letter to Menoeceus? almost sounds like there his quoting Torquatus' formulation.

I think Burley is just responding to the general consensus of Epicurus at the time.

The JSTOR paper doesn't have much else. It does say that if Burley was using Diogenes Laertius that it would have to be a Latin translation since he didn't read Greek. Burleys sources were primarily medieval not ancient. The chief source was the Speculum Maius by the friar Vincent of Beauvais. And also the Compendiloquium by John of Wales.

Burleys work included poets and philosophers and playwrights from after Diogenes' time. Diogenes also didn't include poets or playwrights in his work.

Two manuscripts erroneously attributed to Laertius were found to be other editions of Burley.

This was interesting from the Wikipedia article on Diogenes Laertius:

Quote

English translations

Thomas Stanley's 1656 History of Philosophy adapts the format and content of Laertius' work into English, but Stanley compiled his book from a number of classical biographies of philosophers.^[36] The first complete English translation was a late 17th-century translation by ten different persons.^[37] A better translation was made by Charles Duke Yonge (1853),^[38] but although this was more literal, it still contained many inaccuracies.^[39] The next translation was by Robert Drew Hicks (1925) for the Loeb Classical Library,^[40] although it is slightly bowdlerized. A new translation by Pamela Mensch was published by Oxford University Press in 2018.^[41]

And before these translations, there is the question of how earlier manuscripts might have been affected (or altered) during the medieval ages.