August 2, 2023 - Wednesday Night Zoom Agenda - Vatican Sayings 16 & 17

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Here are our topics for this week:

1 - The Vatican Sayings:

VS16. No one when he sees evil deliberately chooses it, but is enticed by it as being good in comparison with a greater evil, and so pursues it. ^[7]

VS17. It is not the young man who should be thought happy, but the old man who has lived a good life. For the young man at the height of his powers is unstable, and is carried this way and that by fortune, like a headlong stream. But the old man has come to anchor in old age, as though in port, and the good things for which before he hardly hoped he has brought into safe harbor in his grateful recollections.

And Fernando has suggested that in connection with these (especially 16) we discuss the issue of the Greek view of whether there is a battle in the world/universe between "good" and "evil." See also this on the Socratic position: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_intellectualism Is this something with which Epicurus would have agreed?

2 - Our Special Topic

Aside from general guidance to follow pleasure and avoid pain, is there anything in Epicurean philosophy that tells a particular person what particular pleasure to choose or pain to avoid at any particular time. In other words, this is a variation of the old question: "Is one pleasure or activity in itself 'better' than another?" Is it possible to come up with a coherent analysis of how we would recommend a particular person at a particular time to proceed? Is all we can say is "It's contextual and up to you!" Or is there more for which we can find justification in the Epicurean texts?

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One of the things that came up in this session was discussion of the recent work by Don and Nate and others on how to number/organize/present the Principal Doctrines. Seems like we are closer but not actually there yet to pin down when the numbering was "first" added and by whom.

A related question came up of "who was the first" to apply the label "tetrapharmakos" to the four statements that are preserved apparently by Philosdemus in the Herculaneum papyrus.

This seems to be the record on which everything is based:

Principal Doctrines - Wikipedia

The "tetrapharmakos" was originally a compound of four drugs (wax, tallow, pitch and resin); the word has been used metaphorically by Roman-era Epicureans^[5] to refer to the four remedies for healing the soul.^[6]

Those notes are to Pamela Gordon who says this cannot be traced further back than Cicero (and doesn't in this source refer to anyone else who used the term):

And Liddel and Scott:

Those references would be interesting to track down to see how many "friendly" references to the term can be documented, or whether it was used disparagingly, especially in light of the ability to interpret it as disparaging or trivializing, as DeWitt hints here:

Don given that you are adept at Perseus, does this reference at Wikipedia mean that someone thinks there is a "page" at Perseus where we can find references in the ancient texts where the term tetrapharmakos is used? When you have time could you link that entry here? My first effort turned up nothing. Thanks.

So I suppose we are looking for this so would need to figure out wha "Ph.1.433" references as well as Gal.1.242 - but I presume those are about the drug - unless Meno is as to the drug and Ph.1 is not.

I don't see what he is citing as a reference for the usage as to Epicurus two except the text from Philodemus, so is one of these words transcribed above translated as tetrapharmakos? That wikipedia entry doesn't look like it has a word for word transcription such as the epicurus wiki offers for other texts, which would be desirable.

A.compounded of four drugs:—as Subst., τετραφάρμακος, ἡ, a compound of wax, tallow, pitch, resin, Meno Iatr. 14.19, Ph.1.433 (= Stoic.2.154), Gal.1.242; also -κον, τό, Id.12.328.
II. -κος, ἡ, metaph., of the first four Κύριαι Δόξαι of Epicurus, Phld.Herc.1005.4.

Henry George Liddell. Robert Scott. A Greek-English Lexicon. revised and augmented throughout by. Sir Henry Stuart Jones. with the assistance of. Roderick McKenzie. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1940.

The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.

Thanks Don!

Ok thanks again. This is really interesting, in addition to being a good use of "sidenotes" we've discussed recently:

So this reference to the Galen and the Stoics does not refer explicitly or implicitly to our Philodemus reference (?) but to an independent Stoic concern for what happens to individual elements when they are mixed. So this reference appears to be a true discussion of physical medicine and is not related to our medicine for the "soul."

So there is apparently a reference to it in Cicero that we don't yet have nailed down (per the Gordon reference in wikipedia).

Quote

The point that might seem somewhat confusing is that, despite the process of fusion, the initial ingredients nevertheless always keep in a pharmacopoeia a form of presence, even if only etiological; we cannot explain the action of the tetrapharmakos only by the virtues of the ingredients which compose it, just as one can explain nature only by the action of primordial principles which however no longer exist as such in the bodies of which they are causes. To really understand the scope of the argument, it is necessary to return to the distinction to be made between this type of fused mixture and the mixture of moods, which does not eliminate the identity of the elements which compose it. This distinction can allow us to underline the all-out very paradoxical relationship of Galien to Stoic physics. This provides him, with the total mixture, with an epistemological model almost perfect for thinking of the humoral mixture (crash), and this even though: 1) the physical background explicitly claimed by Galien is not Stoic but Aristotelian and 2) metaphysical reflection upstream of the properly physical content of From elementis uses, to think of the disciplinary division between physics, medicine and metaphysics, an example of mixture which is not total but fused30.

Don's post as to the Julie G. article have been split out to a separate thread here:

Thread

Julie Giovacchini - "The Tetrapharmakos, Authentic Formula Or Simplistic Summary Of Epicurean Ethics?"

[CASSIUS ADMIN NOTE: Thanks to Don for finding these two articles by Julie Giovacchini. At present I only have the second in google translate form (see post below) but they look to contain a lot of interesting information and deserve a thread of their own - especially the one linked in post 2 below.]

Gal. (Galen) and the tetrapharmakos
https://journals.openedition.org/aitia/1899
(Suggest using Google Translate for French website)

Don

Aug 3rd 2023