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In this episode Joshua spends some time going through the background of the Milesian school, and that reminds me that if anyone has not seen Episode 7 of Carl Sagan's Cosmos - "Backbone of Night," he does a great job of describing the background of these early philosophers.
I see that episode can currently be viewed here. If you want to skip the good but extensive lead-in you can start around the 14:30 minute mark:
As i mention in our 20th Zoom, thanks to Kalosyni I have become aware of a new series of five videos put out just in the last month by noted Stoic philosophy professor Greg Sadler. Here's a link to the first of the series of five:
The episodes don't seem to have numbers in their titles, you just start with the oldest and go from oldest to newest to get them in order.
Here in episode three at right around the 14:43 mark is the place where he makes what I think is a pretty clear error - He references how it is interesting that Lucillus is objecting to Cotta's skeptical presentation on the gods. The issue is that he calls Lucilius the EPICUREAN and says it is interesting that an EPICUREAN would talk about defending the gods. At 15:21 he again says that it is the Epicurean who is objecting.
I though to myself that that WOULD be pretty interesting, and actually very impossible, given that the Epicureans were strongly defending their views of the gods. However in checking the actual text it is in fact Lucilius who objects - Professor Sadler just calls Lucilius an Epicurean rather than a Stoic.
I haven't listened to the rest yet, and I am sure it isn't going to go through the book the way we will on the podcast, but it sounds like a very good overview that will be helpful to set the stage for deeper analysis.
To expand on this: "You generally don't know how much more time you have to live, but one thing you know for certain is that once passed you never get that particular moment back again."
I don't have a suggested resolution to this, but to me this points the opposite way from nihilism, which strikes me as the worst enemy, at least for us today. I don't get the idea that the ancient Greeks or Romans were plagued by nihilism like we are today, so maybe that's an example that there really are changes in thought patterns over time, as in some recent discussions we're having. (Or maybe we can just chalk it up to that German word "Zeitgeist.")
If every moment you are alive you are focused on how short life is and how important it should be to you to make the most of your time, then you don't drift through life and inevitably run into the regret that you wish you had done more with your time.
That's pretty much why I have so little sympathy with a flat "me-oh-my-i-am-satisfied-with-what-i-have" approach.
Maybe you should be satisfied with your life, because you understand how the world works and you understand that variation, while it may be desirable, is not necessary in order to be able to say that you have experienced the "greatest" pleasure / "best life" possible.
But maybe you shouldn't be satisfied with your life if you've drifted from one false idea to another, exposing yourself to totally unnecessary pains and forgoing easily possible pleasures, and never really grasped what life is all about.
I think Epicurus' comments about satisfaction have to be taken in that context, such as:
VS68. Nothing is sufficient for him to whom what is sufficient seems too little.
That "what is sufficient" shouldn't be read to mean that "whatever you have is sufficient," but that it's important to think about what really is sufficient and target your plans for pleasure based on your circumstances. The same with:
VS35. We must not spoil the enjoyment of the blessings we have by pining for those we have not, but rather reflect that these too are among the things desirable.
That doesn't mean that you should be happy no matter what your current circumstances are, but that it's likely that during the ups and downs of life you have in fact achieved many thinks that you always wanted but never thought possible.
But even that isn't a blanket endorsement of the status quo. Simply "being satisfied for the sake of being satisfied" sounds like an awfully Platonic or even Stoic reading of Epicurean philosophy to me. Feeling satisfied is certainly a type of pleasure, but it's far from the only type of pleasure. I would reject the idea that "satisfaction' is a complete and correct statement of the goal for the same reason I would reject "tranquility" as a complete and correct statement of the goal. Epicurus and his successors spent hundreds of years debating the precise way to articulate the goal, and it seems to me there's a very good reason that they settled on "pleasure" as the best single word statement, rather than on some more narrow subset of pleasure.
Pondering the Hedonic Calculus or prioritizing "smart choices" would lead one to choose less risky activities.
I think as stated that's overbroad. Risk is only one aspect of the equation, and the major (and really only elements ultimately in play) are the pleasure and pain that result - the question is your prediction as to each and is not limited to chance of failure.
As Godfrey illustrated in post 3 above, sometimes the biggest improvements in life come through the greatest risk. The problem is that no none can make that risk/reward decision for you but yourself, in part because only you can factor in the pain that will come from thinking "you didn't even try" when you get to the end of your life and realize that you have no further options forward.
Certainly everyone has different tolerances for risk and there's no single right or wrong answer, but to adopt a general rule to *always* choose the less risky alternative would almost certainly lead to huge regret in the end.
We have at least one clear example of Epicurus noting this himself, and I would say that he would apply the same rule across the board with all aspects of the context needing to be considered all the time:
VS28. We must not approve either those who are always ready for friendship, or those who hang back, but for friendship’s sake we must run risks.
This is a very important point because I think we see a large number of people who otherwise listen to Epicurus's suggestions think that he is always telling them to flee from ALL pain and ALL risk ALL the time - which I think is perversely wrong in the big Epicurean picture. The *only* way to succeed in a goal stated that way is to choose death.
But this does have me wondering...if the failure is in the mental realm of the mind, such that it doesn't affect the body, but only the mind could be affected by the thought "I tried but I failed" then seems like the risk of failure shouldn't be feared, and because you know that you can then just move on to something else.
But you CAN'T always move on to something else, and that's the point of why it is so important to emphasize that death leads to nothingness. You generally don't know how much more time you have to live, but one thing you know for certain is that once passed you never get that particular moment back again. And you add that to the observation that mental pain and pleasure are often more significant, because the mind is aware of the past, present, and future, while the body is aware only of the present.
Very interesting quote. And I agree with how speculative this reconstruction of the text seemed to me when I first checked out his book. But I agree with his reasoning that Epicurus would have thought that there would always be intelligent beings somewhere thinking about these things.
I was listening yesterday to Greg Sadler deride the Epicurean arguments in "On The Nature of the Gods" as easier to refute than the Stoic arguments, but one of the things he said prompts this comment about what Velleius said:
“You see therefore that the foundation (for such it is) of our inquiry has been well and truly laid. For the belief in the gods has not been established by authority, custom, or law, but rests on the unanimous and abiding consensus of mankind; their existence is therefore a necessary inference, since we possess an instinctive or rather an innate concept of them; but a belief which all men by nature share must necessarily be true; therefore it must be admitted that the gods exist. And since this truth is almost universally accepted not only among philosophers but also among the unlearned, we must admit it as also being an accepted truth that we possess a ‘preconception,’ as I called it above, or ‘prior notion,’ of the gods. (For we are bound to employ novel terms to denote novel ideas, just as Epicurus himself employed the word prolepsis in a sense in which no one had ever used it before)."
Right now I am entertaining the thought that the focus ought to be not on Epicurus inventing the idea and the term prolepsis from nothing, but on the "in a sense in which no one had ever used it before." (I'm sure that this has been probably obvious to everyone but me.
If Epicurus was expanding the term prolepsis to cover more things in the same way that he expanded use of the word "pleasure," then you could analogize that:
- just as Epicurus appears to have expanded the existing term "pleasure" to cover not just agreeable stimulative sensations (which the Cyreniacs and everyone else too agrees with), but to include all awareness of feeling that is not painful (with which standard philosophers would disagree);
would it not make sense to consider that:
- Epicurus may have expanded the existing term "prolepsis" to cover not just the recognition of physical objects like men or horses or oxes as a result of having seen examples of them over time (which is the example Diogenes Laertius gives, and everyone agrees with as a process that definitely happens), but to include identification of abstractions such as justice or divinity which require considerably more organizing in the mind because they aren't physical objects that can be touched or seen or heard or smelled or tasted (which is a process with which other philosophers - especially blank slate philosophers - would disagree).
The point of this post being that maybe the emphasis on prolepsis can be analogized to the expansion of the word as an explanation of why Diogenes Laertius' explanation does not seem complete.
For reference this is pretty close to what Dewitt says around page 142 et seq.
What has "nature used to impress a notion of gods on our minds" if not the very images of the gods that come from their bodies?
Yep I think that is definitely the question, but even as I argue for the realist position I am not sure that the question is answered very easily.
Do we have notions of "atoms" impressed on our minds even though we have never seen them?
Do we have notions of "justice" impressed on our minds even though justice is an abstract concept which cannot be seen in bodily form?
At least for me. But prolepsis really seems to be the key.)
Prolepsis being the key to LOTS of things, not just the gods, and that's a huge subject in itself.
I understand that we have to take the senses, anticipations, and feelings as given, as they are our connection with reality, but it seems to me it's all one big question: We have good reason to think that no supernatural god created them, and that they didn't occur simply by chance, but through the natural aspects of atoms moving through void. But I think we all have the tendency to presume that there must have been a **First** combination or event that led to everything else, and I think we have to get past that to connect with where Epicurus would have been going by asking us to study principles of infinity. Whatever process allows for life to develop and then evolve, that process has *always* been something that is naturally part of the universe, so we have to think through what that *always* means. If we take the optimistic view that mankind (our closest example) won't eventually destroy itself,*** then we've got infinite number of species with tremendously developed technologies all across the universe, and that's going to make it important eventually that we distinguish (1) advanced civilizations far ahead of us, which we expect to exist from (2)universe-creating supernatural gods, which we are confident cannot and do not exist.
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*** And even if mankind does destroy itself, we should presume that it wasn't fated that it do so, and that other speicies would not necessarily destroy themselves.
That's a great quote and I think that's consistent with Dewitt's view too that Velleius (taking that Cicero is simply following some contemporary Epicurean text) has it right.
But just like Velleius doesn't stop there, and he joins with it the isonomy argument, I am thinking that there is no reason that *we* should stop there either. We should also factor in the Epicurean argument for life on other worlds, existing in "equitable distribution" (based on how we see a progression of life here on earth). From those we can conclude that living beings more blessed than us, and deathless, are as certain to exist somewhere as are the atoms, which are also beyond our sensory reach, but about which we are confident, based on reasoning from observations that *are* within our sensory reach.
As far as the gods living "between" the worlds, that sounds to me more like one of those manifold possibilities that must satisfy us, rather than a requirement that they live *only* in that location. The requirement would be that they have mastery over their environment so that it provides all that they need for their happiness, and we could suggest numbers of possibilities for how that could be set up, rather than thinking that "intermundia" gives us a complete physical description of a specific particular location. The main thing is that we see no evidence or reason to believe that they would take any notice of us, wherever they are and no matter how many of them there may be.
I am editing last week's podcast, and we are now going through Velleius' criticisms of standard supernatural religion.
In so doing we will come up with a list (started here) of what Velleius (and presumably the Epicureans) thought to be the most important arguments to deal with . In addition, Joshua and I have already mentioned that we would like to include other issues (such as the "riddle" / problem of evil ) which may not be in Velleius' commentary.
So for those who find this topic of interest, let us know if you think there are particularly influential arguments that we should include in this series. There is probably an endless number of them, but certainly some are more popular than others, and we don't want to miss anything obvious, so please mention in the commente any that you would like us to be sure to cover. We particularly want to cover the "logical" or "natural" arguments that would tend to impress younger people who think they are being fair-minded, as opposed to those who are taking everything explicitly on faith.
Thanks!
maybe it's the self-sufficiency (autarkeia) aspect of the gods. By Epicurean definition, they neither expect praise nor dispense random punishment. They are always "blessed" and have an unshakable (incorrupible) blessed life. So a sage can live a god-like life in the here and now?
I would say it that way too (that the gods are a model of achieving that we can aspire to even if we can't achieve their success ourselves).
Humans, even Epicurus, suffer from diseases and all sorts of nagging pains that detract from a totally pleasant life, and it would be desirable to expand our knowledge and technology to eliminate even those. So even Epicurus himself and the ancient Epicureans would have profited by "reverencing the gods" to the extent that emulating a "better" gives you motivation or ideas to work to maintain your own blessedness (live watching a master tennis player helps younger players get better).
At least that's the way I would interpret the "Captain Kirk perspective" on Epicurean philosophy - do everything possible to achieve more pleasure than pain, and push the envelope as far as you can on what is possible, because you're not going to get a second chance.
That would be another reason why I think there is work to be done on articulating Epicurus' full perspective on "impossible" goals, I don't think we have a well-developed-enough reconciliation of "life is desirable so it's desirable to live longer" with "it's impossible to live forever." Variation may not be new, and may not make the pleasure "greater" in every respect, but it seems clear that variation is itself desirable even if it doesn't "greaten" the total pleasure. Unless this calculation is made clear it seems a lot of people are tempted to accept less than what they could actually obtain if they focused their efforts on trying harder. (And of course I realize that some are going to say "you're just setting yourself up for disappointment," and I would respond with something like: "Since I know there is pain in life, and that I only have one life, I'll gladly accept the inevitability that at some point I will fail to stay alive in exchange for the pleasure that I will obtain by living longer. My goal is not running from every moment of pain, but achieving the most pleasurable life possible, so I gladly accept some pain in exchange for greater pleasure."
For some reason as I write this I am reminded of the abortion debate, and how medical technology has shifted the date of "viability" shorter and shorter and effectively overturned what seemed to be a way to come up with a dividing line. We surely don't want to talk too much about abortion here, but I think this specific analogy is relevant -- as medical technology advances, it's likely that humans can live longer and longer under better and better conditions, and old dividing lines about how long is reasonable to live will become obsolete.
My reading of Epicurus is that he would fully endorse living longer so long as conditions remain more pleasurable than painful, so it seems to me the focus really needs to be on "live as long as you can reasonably expect to experience more pleasure than pain" rather than suggesting that there is any period of XX number of years that everyone should deem to be sufficient - or too short.
I'll admit that I hadn't heard the term "bicameral mind" before
A lot of this discussion is entirely new to me to, so I have little comment at least at this point. I am glad we have intelligent people who can bring things like this to our attention.
Is there any way to make subtitles available on videos, it would make it much easier for those who understand little English. Thanks.
Thank you JM for the comment and to the responses.
I definitely agree that this is desirable and i will appreciate comments on other options.
The main affordable option i am aware of is to upload a media file to youtube and let it do the transcription and then hand-edit them afterwards.
But I also see and like what people are doing on videos on Facebook / TicTok /etc where the word that is spoken is highlighted as the voice goes forward - i have not even seen a hint on how that it is done.
This is definitely an area where i would appreciate input from any and all or our tech-savvy people. We have a lot of old material that would be good to convert over time, plus we can get started on making new material the best way.
Luckily for purposes of the podcast there is no reason to prejudice the issue. We will methodically go through the texts and see where we end up at the other end.
Going though On Ends was a cathartic experience for me, and I expect "On the Nature of the Gods," combined with Joshua's color commentary, to be the same!
2. The gods have no influence on our lives.
i agree with points one and three, but on this one the formulation is probably too broad. I think Epicurus was saying that the gods don't INTERVENE in our lives, but that doesn't mean that their existence, and (I don't like the word contemplation so I will use) "consideration" of them does have a very strong influence on our lives.
If we consider them incorrectly that leads to disaster. If we consider them incorrectly that leads to the greatest confidence in the ability to live happily.
f the gods are incorruptible that means they cannot be corrupted. That also mean they do not have to act to maintain their blessedness as it cannot be taken from them. They are immortal. And since only atoms, void and the universe as a placeholder for them are eternal and cannot be corrupted, thanks to the Epicurean gods we can kiss Epicurean atomism bye, bye.
I don't agree that this is rigorous application of Epicuean principles. "Incorruptble" does not contain within it an explanation of how that incorruptibility is maintained. As DeWitt argues, only atoms and void are eternally unchangeable. Something must maintain the status of incorruptibility, and since there is no god over them to do so for them, the gods must maintain their incorruptibility themselves.
This is supported by Velleius' statement in the material we are covering:
"But, what is more remarkable, he gives us a world which has been not only created, but, if I may so say, in a manner formed with hands, and yet he says it is eternal. Do you conceive him to have the least skill in natural philosophy who is capable of thinking anything to be everlasting that had a beginning? For what can possibly ever have been put together which cannot be dissolved again? Or what is there that had a beginning which will not have an end? If your Providence, Lucilius, is the same as Plato’s God, I ask you, as before, who were the assistants, what were the engines, what was the plan and preparation of the whole work? If it is not the same, then why did she make the world mortal, and not everlasting, like Plato’s God?"
No one I have seen has asserted that Epicurus definitely held that an individual god has existed ETERNALLY, so unless you are contending that it is clear that Epicurus held that a particular god has existed eternally, just like an atom, then a god came together from atoms at some point just like we did. I am not saying it is the only difference, but for purpose of this discussion I would say that the major distinction is that the god has found a way to maintain his togetherness indefinitely (being in the intermundia is part of that) and that there is no necessity for a god to worry that he will cease to exist, unless the god were to for some reason stop doing the things that keeps it alive. I don't see anything beyond that as necessarily a part of "incorruptibility." Maybe there are ways to trace the etymology and definitions of the words used to a different conclusion, but again unless someone can point to clear references that the god (a god, the gods) had no beginning, then they are not exempt from the rule that only atoms have eternally unchanging nature.
Again, it's perfectly understandable if someone says that all this discussion of these issues is pure speculation and they want nothing to do with it, but that's not the position that Epicurus or the Epicureans took, and eliminating it from discussion is not Epicurean philosophy. It is, in fact, arguably the subject that the Epicureans considered of number one prime importance above all others.
To emulate anything we at the very least need to be exposed to it to have a vague idea of what we are supposed to be emulating. The only exposure in Epicureanism I'm aware of is 'eidola' and that is nothing more that: 'Hey, I imagined something so it must be true. From now on I will emulate it.' And with that approach I can only hope nobody starts imagining Freddie Kruger in a birthday balloon shop.
I think that objection is met by a rigorous application of what Epicurus said: believe NOTHING about them that is alien to incorruption or blessedness. I suspect this is where prolepsis comes in and the argument would be that it is no more appropriate to take from prolepisis that a god could be like Freddie Kruger than that oars when inserted in water are bent and when withdrawn from water return to their straight shape. Sure there are temporary "illusions" that cause some people at some times to form false opinions, when they don't apply prudent canonics to distinguish what they really know from what they don't, but these illusions are overcome by repeated rigorous observations -- and the same kind of repeated and rigorous examination of prolepsis leads to the conclusion that "blessedness" and "incorruptibility" do not comport with being a Freddie Kruger.
An awful lot of Epicurean philosophy depends on rigor in applying the fundamental premises. There are ONLY TWO FEELINGS, pleasure and pain, and if you don't *rigorously* apply that then you are going to spin your wheels forever on what "absence of pain" mean and fall into the trap of concluding that it means something other than pleasure.
If you don't *rigorously* apply proleptic concepts of blessedness and incorruptibility then you'll fall into the trap of thinking that *anything goes* and that a god could be like Freddie Kruger. Proper evaluation of prolepses leads to the conclusion that blessedness and incorruptibility involve self-sufficiency, happiness, and not playing enemies and favorites with others. Sure someone can argue over whether that assertion is correct, but they can also argue over whether oars get bent when they get placed in water. We all, in the end, have to make our own decisions about reality. Epicurus chooses to trust the senses, anticipations, and feelings, rather than to embrace skepticism or divine revelation or rationalism as replacing them.
And if you don't *rigorously* apply the viewpoint that some things are possible and some things are not possible, then you'll take the position that an infinity of time and boundlessness of space means that "anything goes." --- And on this last point I think that you and I are already together that it most certainly does NOT mean that, and that "anything goes" as an argument for where life came from (as in that Intelligent Design article) would be a perversion of Epicurean philosophy.
It seems to me that someone suggesting that Freddie Kruger could be like a god would be met by a classical Epicurean with the same kind of heated reaction as suggesting that infinity means that "anything is possible." Both are nonsensical contentions. (blasphemy! 
)
Letter to Menoeceus [123] The things which I used unceasingly to commend to you, these do and practice, considering them to be the first principles of the good life. First of all believe that god is a being immortal and blessed, even as the common idea of a god is engraved on men’s minds, and do not assign to him anything alien to his incorruption or ill-suited to his blessedness: but believe about him everything that can uphold his blessedness and incorruption.
Tau Phi I think that you've stated the relationship. There are lots of things that we cannot perceive directly, like atoms, but we hold firmly that they exist and we base our actions on confidence that they (atoms) are at the basis of all things, and not supernatural gods.
Further, I think those who say that we "cannot interact" with the gods have to be careful that they are not going further than the texts support. They were talking about perceiving images of the gods, and those images would not be magical and would presumably be traveling from the intermundia to us (although that section seems to indicate the opposite direction). A fair reading of the various texts certainly seems to imply that while we DO not see them, the reason is that they are too far off to see, not that there is some kind of magical impenetrable barrier to seeing them, if we were closer, just like we see that the tower up close is square rather than round.
Also, I do not think that the "cannot" should be extended to more than the observation that in Epicurus' time they "could not" travel to the moon. I would see no theoretical reason why, having advanced to space travel, humans could not travel toward or even to the intermundia, just as Lucretius analogizes when he talks about what he sees of the intermundia in his mind's eye in the poem.
I see no reason at all not to conclude that Epicurus thought that it was important to affirm that there is life throughout the universe, that there is life that operates more successfully (and less successfully) than we do, and that "the gods" are examples of what we expect to find as we extend our observations out into the universe.
I understand that there are people, Frances Wright among them, as seen in her writings after "A Few Days In Athens," who have no use for that kind of theorizing. They think we should focus our entire attention here on earth and not worry about more cosmic issues. But I think Epicurus thought that huge numbers of people DO have need for such theorizing as part of their confidence that the universe is entirely natural and has no supernatural component. I think that way myself, and I am confident that there are large numbers of people who, as part of their Epicurean reading, want to understand where Epicurus was coming from as a part of their overall thinking about the universe.
Those who are following along in the YONGE translation will note that I have changed the link to a different version, available at Archive.org here.
This version contains not only "On The Nature of the Gods" but also "On Divination" and "On Fate," as those works also contain commentary that is relevant to Epicurus' position on these issues.
What does it tell us, if anything, that Cicero equates gnawing on De Voluptate as analgous to the cost of yearly produce in the market?
Cassius, I agree with most of DeWitt's thinking regarding the gods not being inherently immortal -
Let's grapple directly with the most infrequently-discussed of DeWitt's assertions: That any particular god has not by nature existed from eternity, and will not by nature remain immortal without attending to its own immortality.
In support of this beginning page 267 DeWitt cites:
What do you guys think of those, especially the reference to the letter to Menoeceus? Obviously here DeWitt is trying to make things more clear by adding section titles, and in addition he is asserting by adding in a reference in brackets that the latter part is an independent reference to the gods and not a continuation of what was being asserted previously as to incorrect ideas about the gods. Is this another area where is asserting that the texts were emended? I did not include this reference in the podcast because I did not get a chance to check it beforehand.
If anyone has time I would appreciate comments on all three: this, the Eusebius reference, and the Plutarch reference. They aren't really needed to support the logical argument that Epicurean any single Epicurean god has not and will not exist "from everlasting to everlasting," but if any or all of them are persuasive then it's obvious why DeWitt cited them.
Let me be sure to call this post to the attention not only of Don and Bryan but also Eikadistes as I think this (if DeWitt can be supported) is a particularly important aspect of Epicurean theology. In emulating the gods, we would not only be emulating a *result*, but one aspect of that role model that we would be emulating comes in realizing that the gods, just like us, must act to maintain their blessedness. This would help stengthen the usefulness of the suggestion that the gods are objects of emulation -- Epicurus would be suggesting that we not only emulate them in result, but that we are emulation the act of working to sustain blessedness. I agree with DeWitt's suggestion that this would be a logical extension of Epicurus' theories about the gods. An example of that would be that when Torquatus describes to Cicero the characteristics of the best life, those are characteristics which must be maintained, whether by gods or by men.
[40] XII. Again, the truth that pleasure is the supreme good can be most easily apprehended from the following consideration. Let us imagine an individual in the enjoyment of pleasures great, numerous and constant, both mental and bodily, with no pain to thwart or threaten them; I ask what circumstances can we describe as more excellent than these or more desirable? A man whose circumstances are such must needs possess, as well as other things, a robust mind subject to no fear of death or pain, because death is apart from sensation, and pain when lasting is usually slight, when oppressive is of short duration, so that its temporariness reconciles us to its intensity, and its slightness to its continuance. [41] When in addition we suppose that such a man is in no awe of the influence of the gods, and does not allow his past pleasures to slip away, but takes delight in constantly recalling them, what circumstance is it possible to add to these, to make his condition better?
