Posts by Cassius

Quote from Godfrey

I can't say which approach is most in line with the original meaning of eudaimonia.

Passing comment not meant to claim correctness: I think I remember from college philosophy that Socrates actually spoke about hearing or feeling the prompting of his personal "daemon" - perhaps I am wrong. But I wonder if it is getting far afield from the way the word was originally used to exclude connotations of "blessedness" from a "divinity" point of view. Or the opposite - was the whole meaning of the word just an "idiom" for them, with no specific clear meaning, just many of these words are for us?

I have no real clue, but then again I probably couldn't easily pin down what it means to be "happy" today either, without going off on all sorts of excursions into various perspectives and definitions.

To say a little more about the plan for the Usener material, I have gone through the material at Attalus.org and Epicurism.info and pulled out from the full set of entries those items which have the most interest and which are not simply cites to Diogenes Laertius or to passing comments that are so short as to not have much meaning standing alone. The result of that so far is here.

So for example, the first session will be on the collection entitled "testimonials concerning Epicurus' style and language." After that we will do a select a group of U-numbers for each night.

We'll probably still want to keep the complete version in front of us, but having the most substantive ones pulled out will enable us to cut through the repetitive stuff and be sure we have several significant topics to talk about each week.

However I am not pleased with the way this material is organized. It's not nearly enough "by topic" for my taste.

I am also looking at how we can do more organization of the material as we go through this. The topics which Usener and Bailey chose for their organizational scheme are often not particularly interesting to us. Topics like "Letters to Unknown Persons" don't tell us much about the content, and I think we need a better reference system to find things by content.

I'm looking into how we might implement a "tagging" system here at EpicureanFriends and probably also post the material somewhere in the public domain so that we can develop better reference sources.

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All of us who are here have arrived at our respect for Epicurus after long journeys through other philosophies, and we do not demand of others what we were not able to do ourselves. Epicurean philosophy is very different from other viewpoints, and it takes time to understand how deep those differences really are. That's why we have membership levels here at the forum which allow for new participants to discuss and develop their own learning, but it's also why we have standards that will lead in some cases to arguments being limited, and even participants being removed, when the purposes of the community require it. Epicurean philosophy is not inherently democratic, or committed to unlimited free speech, or devoted to any other form of organization other than the pursuit by our community of happy living through the principles of Epicurean philosophy.

One way you can be most assured of your time here being productive is to tell us a little about yourself and personal your background in reading Epicurean texts. It would also be helpful if you could tell us how you found this forum, and any particular areas of interest that you have which would help us make sure that your questions and thoughts are addressed.

In that regard we have found over the years that there are a number of key texts and references which most all serious students of Epicurus will want to read and evaluate for themselves. Those include the following.

"Epicurus and His Philosophy" by Norman DeWitt

The Biography of Epicurus by Diogenes Laertius. This includes the surviving letters of Epicurus, including those to Herodotus, Pythocles, and Menoeceus.

"On The Nature of Things" - by Lucretius (a poetic abridgement of Epicurus' "On Nature"

"Epicurus on Pleasure" - By Boris Nikolsky

The chapters on Epicurus in Gosling and Taylor's "The Greeks On Pleasure."

Cicero's "On Ends" - Torquatus Section

Cicero's "On The Nature of the Gods" - Velleius Section

The Inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda - Martin Ferguson Smith translation

A Few Days In Athens" - Frances Wright

Lucian Core Texts on Epicurus: (1) Alexander the Oracle-Monger, (2) Hermotimus

Philodemus "On Methods of Inference" (De Lacy version, including his appendix on relationship of Epicurean canon to Aristotle and other Greeks)

"The Greeks on Pleasure" -Gosling & Taylor Sections on Epicurus, especially the section on katastematic and kinetic pleasure which explains why ultimately this distinction was not of great significance to Epicurus.

It is by no means essential or required that you have read these texts before participating in the forum, but your understanding of Epicurus will be much enhanced the more of these you have read. Feel free to join in on one or more of our conversation threads under various topics found throughout the forum, where you can to ask questions or to add in any of your insights as you study the Epicurean philosophy.

And time has also indicated to us that if you can find the time to read one book which will best explain classical Epicurean philosophy, as opposed to most modern "eclectic" interpretations of Epicurus, that book is Norman DeWitt's Epicurus And His Philosophy.

(If you have any questions regarding the usage of the forum or finding info, please post any questions in this thread).

Welcome to the forum!

Today we've upgraded the software to reinstate two popular themes that many people used before the upgrade to version 6 of our forum software.

"Colorplay" is a dark theme in multiple colors, and "Nexus" is a light theme in similar color variations.

If anyone sees any issues with them please let me know and I will report them to the developer.

The only thing I note so far is that on a desktop the "user control panel" with the notifications list at the top right of the screen is not "sticking" as you scroll down the screen, and it disappears off the top til you scroll back to the top. The developer had the same issue with the "ambience" theme when we added that, and he fixed it promptly, so that should be resolved soon too.

Mostly these introduce just subtle changes in colors, rather than any additional features, so if you're happy with your current style there's no reason to change.

We ought to add to this thread: What does "Placita" mean and who (and when) was Aetius?

And what would be a good link (or links) for someone wanting to read up on this further?

Aetius (philosopher) - Wikipedia

Aetius (/eɪˈiːʃiəs/; Greek: Ἀέτιος) was a 1st-^[1] or 2nd-century AD^[2] doxographer and Eclectic philosopher.

None of Aetius' works survives today, but he solves a mystery about two major compilations of philosophical quotes. There are two extant books named De Placita Philosophorum (Περὶ τῶν ἀρεσκόντων φιλοσόφοις φυσικῶν δογμάτων, "Opinions of the Philosophers") and Eclogae Physicae (Ἐκλογαὶ φυσικαὶ καὶ ἠθικαί, "Physical and Moral Extracts"). The first of these is Pseudo-Plutarch and the second is by Stobaeus. They are clearly both abridgements of a larger work. Hermann Diels, in his great Doxographi Graeci (1879), discovered that the 5th-century CE theologian Theodoret had full versions of the quotes which were shortened in the abridgements. This means that Theodoret had managed to procure the original book which Pseudo-Plutarch and Stobaeus had shortened. He calls this book "Aetiou tên peri areskontôn sunagôgên (Ἀετίου περὶ τῶν Ἀρεσκόντων Συναγωγήν)"^[3][4] and therefore we ascribe the original Placita to Aetius.

Diels claimed that Aetius himself was merely abridging a work which Diels (1879) called Oldest Tenets or, in Latin, Vetusta Placita. Unlike Aetius, whose existence is attested by Theodoret, the Vetusta Placita is Diels' invention and is generally disregarded by modern classicists^[5]

Quotes which are ascribed to Aetius in scholarly essays were actually discovered in either the abridgements of Pseudo-Plutarch or Stobaeus, or Theodoret's full quotes in rare cases, or finally one of several ancient authors who provided corrections to misquotes in one of these works.

Thank you Bryan! Very very interesting

Quote from Bryan

(4.9.5) “Epicurus says that every sensation and every impression is true, but of the opinions some are true and some false: and sensation gives us a false picture in one respect only

And yes that is part of what I need on the "all sensations are true part - the sensations are always "true" but the opinions about what the sensations mean certainly are not always true.

Thank Godfrey i am now at home and can type further, and will supplement the list in the first post with that one.

Yes what I am looking for is to make sure I don't overlook some other major doctrinal point for which Epicurus has a well known position. I can rank them in order of notoriety, and those that aren't well known can definitely be on the list. But I am looking for quotes or near quotes (like that one) rather than statements that are arguably not in core Epicurean wording.

As to the gods, it looks to me like if he were quoted widely on the gods it would be on something else rather than not fearing them.

The list probably needs to include a variation of the natural and necessary quote as well.

In the podcast, Cicero is going through in Book 2 and in many cases quoting Epicurus, so there may things from there that fit this description of "slogan" as well.

"All sensations are true" is something I should not have missed including. Apparently even that one may not be an exact quote (if Dewitt's statements about the history are correct) but his position on this seems to have been well known in the ancient world.

A post this morning from PeterK about "all sensations are true" reminded me that we don't have on our front page one of the most recognizable phrases that is attached to Epicurus, along with an explanation. I will remedy that as soon as possible, but this brings to mind that it would be helpful to have a "Top Ten List of Epicurean Slogans."

I don't mean "slogan" in the pejorative sense of something negative, but in the sense of a very recognizable phrasing of words that rings so well that it has come down through the centuries as almost attached to Epicurus's name.

I will set this up as a list, and probably a "poll" so we can rank them, but I need suggestions to add to the list. Here are a few:

1. Nothing can be created from nothing.
2. Death is nothing to us (perhaps in extended form: Death is nothing to us, for that which is dissolved is without sensation; and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us.)
3. All sensations are true.
4. ..."[B]y pleasure we mean the absence of pain."
5. Pleasure is the alpha and omega of the blessed life.
6. Friendship dances around the world, announcing to each of us that we must awaken to happiness. (VS52)
7. Infinite time contains no greater pleasure than limited time, if one measures, by reason, the limits of pleasure. (PD19)
8. ..[T]here is nothing terrible in life for the man who has truly comprehended that there is nothing terrible in not living. [Letter to Menoeceus 125]

I am going to exercise my editorial discretion and exclude from this list the "Tetrapharmakon," as those are not fully accurate to Epicurus' own texts, nor are they debated by opponents of Epicurus in that form. Until the Herculaneum specific text in which it appears was deciphered, that formulation was unknown in discussions of Epicurus surviving from the ancient and medieval periods. (I trust someone will correct me if they have another source besides that scroll which discusses it.)

What other authoritative passages are widely enough known, and have a "ring" to them (rather than being an extended exposition of a detailed point) that they need to be included in this list? Probably at most a single sentence to fit the description of a "slogan" or "memorable line."

Please make suggestions in the thread and then I will expand this first post further.

Quote from Don

This strikes me as similar to Aquinas 's fourth argument for God (which, surprise, I don't think works either):

I am by no means an expert on this argument, but I see two separate things going on in this aspect of the discussion, one of which is valid and one of which is not:

1 - The first part, observing the progression, seems valid to me: "But “more” and “less” are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest;" (But what we're really saying is that they are similar to each other, which we can observe, not something which we can't observe.)

2 - But this part seems to me to involve a leap which is NOT valid: "Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum heat, is the cause of all hot things. Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God."

I don't see how "1" necessarily leads to "2" at all, and at least at the moment that's where I think Epicurus would object: I think he'd say that yes we can see a progressive scale in real things, and we can rank them in order of superiority, using our senses and preconceptions and feelings-- these are all "real" things. But as for then leaping to the conclusion that all of these real items were originally generated by a "perfect" model of them, which was the "cause" of them -- I would say that's totally a hard stop and something that Epicurus would reject.

Possibly this is also a variation of not letting the "perfect" be the enemy of the "good" in that there are many things in this world that we deal with and assess that are in fact "real," but we shouldn't let our assessment of them be colored or watered down by our speculation that there is a "perfect" which makes them all fade in comparison.

Update: I wonder if this "cause" issue as stated here in this way is what Frances Wright had in mind when she swatted hard at it in A Few Days In Athens.

A Few Days In Athens Chapter 15 (and this extends much further in length and detail through the rest of the chapter):

“Without challenging the meaning of the terms you have employed,” said Metrodorus, “I would observe, that there is little danger of our pushing investigation too far. Unhappily the limits prescribed to us by our few and imperfect senses must ever cramp the sphere of our observation, as compared to the boundless range of things; and that even when we shall have strained and improved our senses to the uttermost. We trace an effect to a cause, and that cause to another cause, and so on, till we hold some few links of a chain, whose extent like the charmed circle, is without beginning as without end.”

Quote from Peter Konstans

t seems clear to me that Epicurus considered visions and hallucinations (and therefore the existence of the gods as the sources of those visions) to be true.

Quote from Peter Konstans

The fundamental epistemological requirement is that every aisthesis should be true, i.e. that whatever seems to be the case should in some sense or other actually be the case.

As to post 119, virtually all of it, if I read it correctly, is dealt with by DeWitt's explanation that "true" has multiple meanings, in which "true to the facts" is only one meaning, while "reported honestly without injection of opinion" is the meaning often intended by Epicurus. If the Epicureans had in fact held that all sensations are "true to the fact" then Lucretius would not have spent so much time in Book Four dealing with the topic of illusions.

This issue is dealt with at length in DeWitt's Chapter 8, which includes the sentence: "To assume that Epicurus was unaware of these plain truths, as one must if belief in the infallibility of sensation is imputed to him, is absurd."

Quote

The example of the tower will serve as a transition from the topic of ambiguity to that of confusion. When modern scholars seize upon the saying "all sensations are true," which appears nowhere in the extant writings of Epicurus, and stretch it to mean that all sensations are reliable or trustworthy or "that the senses cannot be deceived," they are confusing the concept of truth with the concept of value.¹⁷ They overlook the fact that even a truthful witness may fall short of delivering the whole truth or may even give false evidence. The distant view of the square tower is quite true relative to the distance but it fails to reveal the whole truth about the tower.

To assume that Epicurus was unaware of these plain truths, as one must if belief in the infallibility of sensation is imputed to him, is absurd. It is because he was aware that the value of sensations, apart from their truth, varied all the way from totality to zero, that he exhorted beginners "under all circumstances to watch the sensations and especially the immediate perceptions whether of the intellect or any of the criteria whatsoever." ¹⁸ Obviously, so far from thinking the sensations infallible, he was keenly aware of the possibility of error and drew sharp attention to the superior values of immediate sensations.

Quote from Don

So, by definition, IF the gods live in the space between cosmoi, they, by the definition of intermundia "between world-systems", they have no world to stand on nor stars to see.

Quote from Don

So, by definition, IF the gods live in the space between cosmoi, they, by the definition of intermundia "between world-systems", they have no world to stand on nor stars to see. There's obviously some matter in that space between worlds but not enough to have a world, otherwise the gods would be *in a cosmos*.

Just to weigh in here, for the reasons stated by Bryan in post 118 I personally would not reach these conclusions myself. I don't see why a boundary area has to be essentially sharply defined or without width. They might not have their own "world" but that doesn't mean to me that they don't have plenty of room within which to be living.

To quip a little, if they have quasi-bodies filled with quasi-blood, they could be standing on quasi-land.

Quote from Peter Konstans

The Epicurean acceptance of the existence of the gods didn't just rely on abstract theories but also on the idea that the existence of the gods is an empirically verifiable fact because of visions or images of them streaming into our mind. So Epicurus is basically telling us that we know gods exist because many people have actually seen them.

I don't think that (which is the foundation for the rest of the post) is correct at all. The weight of the evidence as I understand the sources is that the images of the gods are not perceived by the eyes, but by the mind.

As DeWitt begins his chapter on the Knowledge of the Gods:

Quote

KNOWLEDGE OF THE GODS

An inveterate tendency to classify Epicurus as an empiricist has resulted in the conclusion that according to his thinking knowledge of the gods comes by vision. The absurdity of this view will become clear as abundant items of evidence are assembled against it.

According to these evidences the sources of knowledge are multiple. The Prolepsis apprises men of the blissfulness and incorruptibility of the gods. The Feelings, that is, fears and worries, serve to inform the individual of the true nature of the divine through the distress that follows upon "false opinions." Reason, by deductive inferences from the Twelve Elementary Principles, informs men of the existence of gods, of their corporeal nature, their number, their gradation in kind and their abode. By the method of analogy, that is, progression from similars to similars, reason also produces confirmatory evidence concerning their form, by a chain argument concerning their nature, and by a disjunctive syllogism concerning the kind of life they lead.

And I would in no way or form equate the Epicurean view of the gods with mass hallucinations.

This is a fairly elementary-level video on Epicurean physics, submitted to the Facebook group. Some might find it useful, at least as an inspiration to do something similar while speaking a little more quickly.

And hey - at least the first ten minutes doesn't focus on mangling Epicurean ethics - he waits til around the 11:00 minute mark to start repeating the conventional views of that, and then he skips through that pretty quickly to other basic issues (death, etc).

Update: Actually a good reminder that Epicurus discussed conceptually the "parts of the atom" (around the 10 minute mark.)

Thanks Don! I will also add a link to the Usener at Epicurism and Attalus.

This is a thread for discussing what is available in terms of a Modern Online Public Domain Expanded version of Usener's collection of Epicurean fragments.

Is anyone aware of any individual or institutional efforts to create such a resource?

If not, how could such a project be started to allow maximum ease of contributions and maximum public domain status so as to allow others to expand and modify it?

This is the discussion thread for the FAQ entry of the same name. Feel free to add comments here or to add them to the threads linked in the FAQ itself.

Bryan those are great quotes but not ones I have a command over finding.

Are these collected in Usener as well?

We've got to find a way to bring together our own source of key quotes like this to make them more accessible.

Nowadays it is not so hard to come up with a jointly-editable wiki or database where each entry can be tagged by author and topic. In the past and still today I presume one of the biggest hurdles is that everyone wants their own database and has different ideas on how to organize it, but it seems to me that we ought to now be at the point where the system could be so simple (and therefore so easily adaptable by anyone that everyone is willing to contribute to the same raw data) with everything GPL public domain, that it ought to be doable.

Surely some one or institution has already made a start toward that. Anyone aware of such a thing? It would be logical to name such an online Usener after Usener himself.

I know we have some threads on this topic already. I will collect some of them and make them more easily findable here:

Where Can I Find The Best List of Fragments of Epicurean Texts? - Epicureanfriends.com

www.epicureanfriends.com

If someone wants to discuss this topic, rather than hijacking this thread further, let's post those comments here:

Thread

What is the Best Source of Fragments of Epicurean Texts?

This is the discussion thread for the FAQ entry of the same name. Feel free to add comments here or to add them to the threads linked in the FAQ itself.

Cassius

March 24, 2024 at 5:43 AM

Quote from Godfrey

you do a better job of clarifying isonomy than DeWitt does

i am not sure "clarifying" is the right word, because i am just speculating too. But like DeWitt generally does, i think we should look for ways to reconcile apparent inconsistencies by going back to the more basic fundamentals and working forward again to see if there is a logical way to fit all the pieces together. I think that it's generally possible to think we can retrace Epicurus' own steps by doing so. DeWitt generally seems to do that except....

Quote from Godfrey

Perhaps DeWitt's conclusions were colored by his interest in Christianity....

Yes this may be the problem. However I don't think we've ever really pinned down that DeWitt himself was a strong Christian. We know for sure that he had a personal interest in the linkage, but interestingly to me i've never (or very rarely) seen him cross the line into outright endorsement of Christianity as the superior system. Most Christian or religious writers (even the "humanist" writers) are to my observation much more overt in specifically endorsing or denouncing particular moral theories of Epicurus. I have to admit that your suggest there Godfrey is the most likely one, but even at this point in reading him over and over I am not convinced I know exactly what DeWitt truly believed himself.

Godfrey I would also draw an analogy to what DeWitt discusses (disapprovingly) here:

DeWitt talks several times about "faith in doctrine" as if he thinks Epicurus had gone too far in several cases. I think DeWitt is on the right course in observing that this kind of thing is exactly what Epicurus was doing, but DeWitt is wrong in his analysis of the result, because Epicurus' position is much stronger than DeWitt's assessment of it. I do think DeWitt's right in talking about it in terms of "faith," (confidence is probably a better word) but the "faith" issue is really more like: "I'm never going to know everything I'd like to know, so where do I place my confidence? Do I place it in Epicurean reasoning based on things I do observe, or do I allow any and all speculation, even that which has absolutely no evidence to support it?" Epicurus chose to place his "faith" about things that are unseen in reasoning based on things that are seen. To me that's a decision I can fully agree with.

Observing that pain is short if intense but manageable if long also seems like going too far when we think of how bad pain can be, but the best way to look at this seems to me to be that we NOT consider it "clinical medical advice," but as a philosophic statement that addresses the bigger philosophical issue, which is: While continuous pleasure is available to those who can figure the problem out, continuous pain can never hold us in its grip forever (we have death as an ultimate cure for that).

Seems to me Epicurus is frequently taking this kind of approach, he's using logical reasoning to explain the big picture to us as a way of organizing our lives, while also reminding us that there's no god or fate to magically solve all our problems, and that we have to work our way through them as best we can.

I might as well go ahead and observe that I see myself making this observation over and over in multiple discussions, probably not convincing many people, but becoming more confident of it myself:

In my view, Epicurus needs to be understood as first and foremost a philosopher attacking the big issues who wants to know the truth about them. Epicurus wants the truth more than he wants happiness, because he's convinced that happiness depends on having a logically consistent understanding of nature. That means Epicurus is committed to talking about everything in a rigorously logical way, and he embraces big-picture logical reasoning, so long as it is based on evidence. That's the starting point for understanding Epicurus, not seeing him as a modern psychologist who throws logic out the window in favor of looking haphazardly for whatever seems to work at the moment. A modern clinician is going to want to dissect "pleasure" into thousand different components, but for Epicurus the first step in making practical use of the issue is to observe the big picture and gain the confidence that comes from the highest level logical analysis, that comes from observing reality and then concluding that is is reasonable to classify all pleasures *as being by definition* the absence of pain.

Godfrey I would suspect that if there is a logical inconsistency here, it would be in DeWitt's description of "perfection" rather than in Epicurus' theory. Surely you are right that in fighting Plato's ideals, Epicurus would not then turn around and adopt the same problem in a new form.

No doubt there's a lot more investigation to be done into the background of the isonomia discussion, but I would expect this reasoning to be of the "nature never makes only a single thing of a kind" variety that is clearly described by Lucretius.

In that other case, it seems they were taking from the observation that here on earth there is nothing absolutely unique, but that everything belongs to a class of similars, and extrapolating that to the universe as a whole. That's a reasonable procedure it seems to me, and the burden of proof to refute a theory based on what we see here on earth is on someone who asserts that there IS something that is absolutely unique but which cannot be observed (a burden which cannot be met by observation) rather than on Epicurus' position, which rests deductions from what we do in fact observe.

We'd have to dive into whether in fact Epicurus was talking about "perfection" as a concept, but I would suspect more that he was (1) starting with the observation that there is nothing unique, all belonging to a class of similars, and then proceeding to (2) that within any class of similars, it is possible for us (probably by process related to preconception) to "rank" those similars in terms of varying characteristics.

Happiness and length of life being characteristics of the class of "living beings," it makes logical sense to conclude from the examples we observe that happiness and length of life exist on a spectrum from less happy to completely happy, and from short life to much longer life. Given that we see such spectrums of characteristics here on earth, it is logical to believe that in a universe that is eternally old and boundlessly wide, there exist examples within those classes that extend out in both directions (greater toward total happiness; longer life toward deathlessness).

We could probably compare what Philodemus is saying in "On Signs," but it does seem that the Epicureans were taking the canonical position that it is legitimate to reason in that way, from things that we observe here on earth to how those things might occur in wider variety in an infinite number of places.

Remember too, that the purpose of scientific investigation is not to latch onto a single true theory of everything, which is essentially impossible, but to determine what is both consistent with what we observe and not contradicted by that which we observe. Then, using sound reasoning, we then consider what is possible to be a real possibility, while "waiting" to reduce the number of possibilities if any new evidence arrives to contradict one of more of them.

This is very different, and in my view superior, to the modern arbitrary speculations that sometimes seems to be "if I can't see if for myself here then it didn't and doesn't happen," or that accept some theory that has absolutely no evidential proof behind it, but which makes sense in some logic-only analysis.

So I see this as an area where DeWitt has generally pointed in the right direction, but further research needs to follow his path and extend his observations more precisely.

And yes it's definitely a process that has limitations, but I see this as very similar to logically dividing all experiences of life into pleasure and pain, and then logically observing that the presence of one is the absence of the other. Epicurus wasn't willing to use logical processes to work with Platonic ideals that have no evidence in reality to support them, but he was willing to use logical processes to work with the evidence that the senses provide to us, and Epicurus seems to have been just as sharp a logician as any of his enemies, carrying his reasoning to its logical conclusions.