Gassendi On Happiness

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    Almost offhandedly Robert wins the award for the day, probably the week, and possibly for the month for bringing something we've not discussed before to our attention. I highly recommend his link on Gassendi on Happiness. I suspect we're not going to agree with everything that Gassendi has to say but this is VERY interesting. Thanks Robert!

    You'll probably want to start reading from page one, but i'm clipping the following just to show how it's directly on point with our discussions.


    The opening section right at the beginning about how to judge the man who is roasted in the bull of Phalaris as still happy is an excellent extrapolation of Epicurus and right on point with our discussion in the Zoom today!

    Possibly the best explanation of Happiness as I personally think Epicurus would define it that i have seen.

    As should be expected, the usefulness of this is limited almost immediately into the discussion by Gassendi's insistence that there is both a Providential god whom we should worship and an eternal soul that survives death.

    I see on page 10 that Gassendi holds that Epicurus did *not* hasten his own death / commit suicide. Note that Gassendi is denouncing the Stoics for allowing suicide, and he is praising the religious view that only God should determine the end of our lives.

    Gassendi quotes Lactantius saying that Cleanthes, Chrysippus, and Zeno killed themselves "in hopes of being instantly transported to heaven."


    looks to me like he is referring to Stoicism when he says "this is a cursed and abominable doctrine which drives men out of their lives."

    Quote from Cassius

    I suspect we're not going to agree with everything that Gassendi has to say but this is VERY interesting. Thanks Robert!

    Robert

    Thanks for this paper from Gassendi. Even Karl Marx held contrary views on Gassendi as an ‘Epicurean’ 🤪

    Quote

    The experts know that no preliminary studies that are even of the slightest use exist for the subject of this treatise. What Cicero and Plutarch have babbled has been babbled after them up to the present day. Gassendi, who freed Epicurus from the interdict which the Fathers of the Church and the whole Middle Ages, the period of realised unreason, had placed upon him, presents in his expositions [15] only one interesting element. He seeks to accommodate his Catholic conscience to his pagan knowledge and Epicurus to the Church, which certainly was wasted effort. It is as though one wanted to throw the habit of a Christian nun over the bright and flourishing body of the Greek Lais. It is rather that Gassendi learns philosophy from Epicurus than that he could teach us about Epicurus' philosophy.


    Karl Marx, doctoral dissertation – The Difference Between the Democreatin and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature – Robert C. Tucker translation as rendered by Eikadistes here: https://twentiers.com/marx/

    Patrikios

    OMG -- On page 21 it seems that Gassendi is denying that Epicurus made the statement that Epicurus would not know the good but for the pleasures of taste, etc. And this PDF glosses over the entire argument with an aside which does not include the key material!


    Reading through this section that deprecates active pleasures and seems to elevate an overly high estimation of Seneca makes me want to agree even more firmly with Karl Marx that Gassendi does not have all of his Epicurean philosophy correct.

    I am still reading it fast and furiously but this document clearly merits Gassendi's reputation as a defender and transmitter of Epicurus. But I have lots of questions including:

    1. When was it written?
    2. To whom was it published?
    3. When was it first translated into English?
    4. Is this what Jefferson and others had access to which acquainted them with Epicurean arguments?
    5. Lots and lots of questions in my mind about this document, not the least of which is:
    6. Why hasn't this document been one of the centerpieces of discussion of Epicurean philosophy for the last 100 years?

    I doubt we've mentioned Maximus of Tyre at all here on this forum, or if we have we certainly haven't mentioned him much, and yet he bursts out of this article as having some of the best takes since Epicurus himself!

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