Episode 286 - TD16 - Confronting Pain With Reason Rather Than With "Virtue"

Sunday Weekly Zoom.  12:30 PM EDT - This week's discussion topic: "The Nature of Divinity." To find out how to attend CLICK HERE. To read more on the discussion topic CLICK HERE.
Regularly Checking In On A Small Screen Device? Bookmark THIS page!
    • New

    Welcome to Episode 286 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world.

    Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts, and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes.

    This week we continue our series covering Cicero's "Tusculan Disputations" from an Epicurean viewpoint. This series addresses five of the greatest questions in human life (Death, Pain, Grief/Fear, Joy/Desire, and Virtue) with Cicero speaking for the majority and Epicurus the main opponent:

    Today we close in on the ending of Part 2 - "Is Pain An Evil?." Last week we focused on Cicero's criticisms of Epicurus' PD04, and Cicero's argument that all we need to do to overcome pain is to approach it "like a man."

    This week, Cicero says that the call to virtuous conduct and overcoming of pain come from reason itself, which is the master of the soul. We'll be picking up with Section XX.


    --------------------------

  • Cassius June 20, 2025 at 4:21 PM

    Changed the title of the thread from “Episode 286 - Not Yet Recorded” to “Episode 286 - Confronting Pain With Reason Rather Than With "Virtue"”.
    • New

    Cassius , Joshua ,

    Thanks for the helpful discussion in this podcast on managing pain. In II-XXI.

    Quote

    The whole, then, consists in this, that you should have command over yourself. I have already told you what kind of command this is; and by considering what is most consistent with patience, fortitude, and greatness of soul, a man not only restrains himself, but somehow or other mitigates even pain itself.


    These admonitions from Cicero reminds me of the quote from “Lawrence of Arabia”.

    "The trick is not minding that it hurts...”

    But this was more a display of stoic behavior.

    [linkdb]

    [/linkdb]

    Patrikios

  • Cassius June 22, 2025 at 4:12 PM

    Changed the title of the thread from “Episode 286 - Confronting Pain With Reason Rather Than With "Virtue"” to “Episode 286 - TD16 - Confronting Pain With Reason Rather Than With "Virtue"”.

Unread Threads

    1. Title
    2. Replies
    3. Last Reply

    2. Philodemus' "On Anger" - General - Texts and Resources 20

      • Cassius
      • July 8, 2025 at 7:33 AM
    3. Replies
      20
      Views
      6.8k
      20

    4. Kalosyni

      July 8, 2025 at 7:33 AM

    2. Mocking Epithets 3

      • Bryan
      • July 6, 2025 at 9:47 PM
    3. Replies
      3
      Views
      375
      3

    4. Bryan

      July 6, 2025 at 9:47 PM

    2. Best Lucretius translation? 12

      • Rolf
      • July 1, 2025 at 1:59 PM
    3. Replies
      12
      Views
      1k
      12

    4. Eikadistes

      July 1, 2025 at 1:59 PM

    2. The Religion of Nature - as supported by Lucretius' De Rerum Natura 4

      • Kalosyni
      • June 23, 2025 at 12:36 AM
    3. Replies
      4
      Views
      923
      4

    4. Godfrey

      June 23, 2025 at 12:36 AM

    2. New Blog Post From Elli - " Fanaticism and the Danger of Dogmatism in Political and Religious Thought: An Epicurean Reading"

      • Cassius
      • June 20, 2025 at 4:31 PM
    3. Replies
      0
      Views
      2.3k

Finding Things At EpicureanFriends.com

What's the best strategy for finding things on EpicureanFriends.com? Here's a suggested search strategy:

  • First, familiarize yourself with the list of forums. The best way to find threads related to a particular topic is to look in the relevant forum. Over the years most people have tried to start threads according to forum topic, and we regularly move threads from our "general discussion" area over to forums with more descriptive titles.
  • Use the "Search" facility at the top right of every page. Note that the search box asks you what section of the forum you'd like to search. If you don't know, select "Everywhere." Also check the "Search Assistance" page.
  • Use the "Tag" facility, starting with the "Key Tags By Topic" in the right hand navigation pane, or using the "Search By Tag" page, or the "Tag Overview" page which contains a list of all tags alphabetically. We curate the available tags to keep them to a manageable number that is descriptive of frequently-searched topics.