Today we're introducing a new home page attraction - a new media presentation of Torquatus's Defense of Epicurus in On Ends. There's lots to say about the current state of this and where this will go, but let's start with this:
- This audio voice is far from perfect. Much effort has been put into this version, but the AI voice has a long way to go, so lower your expectations. We want the best, but we also want to reach as many people with this information as possible. If we wait for perfection, some will miss having this available to him that might otherwise see it.
- The text is adapted from the same versions that we already have on the website, but it needs to be improved. i will be placing this text on "Github," a public site where text can be edited in a collaborative manner. I will appreciate submissions for corrections and will get them up as soon as possible. Again, the tradeoff here is that if we wait for perfection before we publish this, some will miss it who might otherwise profit from it.
- One merit of this audio voice is that it is entirely in the public domain. We can continue to work on improving it and distribute this with no copyright concerns whatsoever.
- It will be desirable to add graphics throughout the video to illustrate the text. That will be a huge task , and suggestions on how to do that will be appreciated.
- As this text is not copyrighted, anyone who wants to proceed on their own to produce a better version is welcome to do so. Our goal is to promote the philosophy of Epicurus with the best material available, not to promote the graphics skill of me (which are obviously poor) or of anyone else.
Recent podcast discussions have called back to my mind that this narrative preserved by Cicero is probably, even more so than Lucretius, the most concise and insightful presentation of Epicurean philosophy in the last 2000 years. it deserves a prominent place here, so this is to get started in bringing it to a larger audience.
