Happy Thanksgiving!

It's been a good year and lot to be thankful for and not the least of which is the participation and contributions here on the forum of Don!

His list of projects just keeps on growing! He'll need the "loci method" to remember them all!

I want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving, and I'm grateful for this forum. I did a Thanksgiving post on my blog today and pointed to the New Epicurean website:

Happy Thanksgiving

Photo by krakenimages on Unsplash Happy Thanksgiving! I am grateful for this blog and the friends I have made by starting it years ago. I a...

www.rawillumination.net

Good to hear from you Cleveland Oakie and Happy Thanksgiving to you too!

Thanksgiving-appropriate philosophy as we partake in holiday meals:

A good time to think about how "he who, not thirsty himself, mixes mead for another, and he who, being thirsty, drinks the mead, are in just the same state of pleasure:"

While we are getting it filtered through a negative-sounding Cicero, sounds to me like this example was used to emphasize the viewpoint that the person who -- "thirsty himself" -- meaning not in pain, falls within the definition of pleasure just as much as the person who chases away the pain of thirst by drinking!

This variation does not stress the host and the guest being "totally without pain," but that might be implied too from the fact that no other aspect of their experience is mentioned.

So either way, from (1) the "whole person totally without pain" perspective (if we assume that) or (2) from the "discrete experience" perspective (that the experience of drinking while thirsty falls under the same label of "pleasure" as the person who is not thirsty at all) the point is being driven home that "absence of pain" can mean either stimulation or simply normal life without pain.

I apologize to everyone that my typing lately is so awful:

of course that was supposed to be "meals"

If anyone sees me type someone that seemingly makes no sense don't hesitate to let me know.

Of course that presumes you can separate out my posts that "make no sense" from those that do!

Don :

This old man, trying to secure anchor in a pleasant harbor, wishes to express his gratitude and thanksgiving for the essay you linked in post #7 of this thread (as well as for the thread, and your opening comments).

[As I read it, I recalled a friend whose 12-step sponsor asked him to keep regular journal entries of things for which he was grateful: a diary to remind him of the therapeutic value of an “attitude of gratitude”. I am not a journaler – but I do keep reminders of such things on my computer.]

Thank you.

Thanks be to blessed Nature because she has made what is necessary easy to supply, and what is not easy, unnecessary. (Ioannes Stobaeus Anthology, XVII.23)

We cannot say that the good which has rounded out a happy life, the good for which Epicurus rendered thanks in the last words he uttered, is not equal to the greatest. (Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 66.47)

But what epithet do they deserve – with your "roars" of ecstasy and "cries of thanksgiving" and tumultuous "bursts of applause" and "reverential demonstrations," and the whole apparatus of adoration that you all resort to in supplicating and hymning the man who summons you to sustained and frequent pleasures? (Plutarch, Against Colotes, 1117A)

[Epicurus] writes this to his friends about himself: "The way in which you have provided for me in the matter of sending the grain was godlike and magnificent, and you have given tokens of your regard form me that reach to high heaven." So if someone had taken that corn ration of his bread-stuff from our philosopher’s letter, the expressions of gratitude would have conveyed the impression that it was written in thanksgiving for the freedom or deliverance of the whole Greek nation or of the Athenian state. (Plutarch, Contra Epicuri Beatitudinem, 1097C)

A great collection for Thanksgiving!

We should probably develop a complete Thanksgiving list, to which we could add some Lucretius no doubt as well.