Brain-storming Ideas for Future Study Groups

I like the first Mondays idea and focusing on the Principal Doctrines, not just for new members and people new to the philosophy but having more experienced guides present to really sharpen and condense answers to the most basic questions that people have.

The doctrines should be supported I think by references to the letters as much as possible. This is so that people's first conversations are about Epicurus own words and leaving the secondary sources and commentaries for later study and conversation.

While we may want to extend the time frame of the Monday night meeting, and set it up for Principal doctrines of other introductory material (as if the PD's can be fully appreciated by a brand new beginner!! ) that isn't going to solve our need for something to offer people who can't make our eastern-US centered time zone.

I'm pretty much ready to commit to a regular early-Sunday-afternoon session, which would be workable for most of the Western Hemisphere, because I really want to expand our forum participation into Europe. Even if many of our current participants aren't able to make it, I'm ok with starting largely from scratch with just a few people as we did in the past with our earlier meetings.

So let me figure out which weekend makes sense to get started, and we'll see what we can put together.

Quote from Kalosyni

start a half hour early and run from 7:30pm ET till 9pm ET.

This cuts into dinner time and PBS Newshour time for some

Quote from Patrikios

This cuts into dinner time and PBS Newshour time for some

What about starting same time and just going longer?

• Organizing is hard work, so thanks for thinking about this topic. Although I am reluctant to do so, may I suggest a couple of my thoughts on this type of zoom, considering that you may have discussed these ideas before I joined?
  • I'm thinking that probably most new members are readers, which is a rather solitary learning experience, and since there is such a rich collection of written materials here on the site, I'm wondering if a survey might be a way to ask, what further topics new members might want to discuss in a give and take zoom.
  • Then perhaps creating a syllabus for a set number of zooms, perhaps less than half a dozen, might help you get feedback.
  • And as far as timing: staggering possible dates among two or three start times along the way to get a grip on how many members can make one or more times might be helpful.
  • Lastly, Is there a way to record the zoom, and make it available for a set time so anyone missing it, can comment and perhaps revisit the discussion at the following zoom?

Great suggestions DaveT thank you very much!

Please note: If you are new and interested in attending Sunday Zooms, visit this other thread to post your RSVP and to receive the link.

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I'm going to add an announcement box that I'll conduct a Zoom meeting this Sunday the 18th at 12:30 PM Eastern Time. I don't expect that most of our regulars will be there but they are of course welcome, and anyone who's new who would like to attend can post here or message me to ask for the link. I think Rolf will be there and we probably need one more session to deal getting to know people who don't regularly attend our existing zooms, with general discussion and questions, and then we'll work up a structure to go over an outline of the main topics in the future.

Quote from Kalosyni

The thought is that we need a regular series for those who mainly want to get "introduced" to the basics of the philosophy

We've done several series in the past on the Principal Doctrines, the Vatican Sayings, Frances Wright's Book, DeWitt's book, and Emily Austin's book.

I like the idea of the Sunday meeting being more of an interactive study group with reading material ahead of class. Consider scheduling for 90 minutes with full class participation.

While DeWitt said there is very little info on how the Epicurean school classes were conducted over the 800 years of existence, are there some educational practices we should be learning? Is there a learning process we can incorporate into a study session like this, if there are others with similar interests?

The First Monday sessions are good for an intro to key doctrine and welcome to meeting new faces.

The Wednesday sessions appear to be for more advanced practitioners.

The Sunday sessions could oriented towards grappling with some of the more complex principles, and those that address how to apply Epicurean principles in our daily lives.

As for topics to consider:

What was meant by the knowledge of gods comes from receiving images of god via prolepsis?

What, if any, preconceptions (prolepses) are innate?


While it is great to hear our leading minds discuss key topics on the Lucretius Today podcast, and some of these topics get text interactions online, but having live Q&A helps to understand the nuances of applying Epicurean principles daily.

Thanks for all the thoughts and time that goes into making these Zoom sessions productive!