Posts by Cassius

In this podcast we discussed the desirability of consistently taking the same position, and unfortunately I was unable to come up with the exact quote from Diogenes Laertius I was trying to recall. Here's the reference I was thinking of as to being the same both awake and asleep. I feel sure there are others in other texts referencing honesty and clear-speaking:

[121] He will erect statues of others, but whether he had one himself or not, he would be indifferent. Only the Wise man could discourse rightly on music and poetry, but in practice he would not compose poems. One wise man is not wiser than another. He will be ready to make money, but only when he is in straits and by means of his philosophy. He will pay court to a king, if occasion demands. He will rejoice at another’s misfortunes, but only for his correction. And he will gather together a school, but never so as to become a popular leader. He will give lectures in public, but never unless asked; he will give definite teaching and not profess doubt. In his sleep he will be as he is awake, and on occasion he will even die for a friend.

Sounds very promising if it is a discussion of the meaning of "pleasure"! Almost like he was lecturing some Epicureans of today who fail to focus on the importance of this topic.

Are his adversaries Stoics -- or other Epicureans who were failing to argue the details of pleasure forcefully enough? The Stoics had plenty to say about pleasure - they denounced it.

Would not be surprising to see echos of the debate that Cicero memorializes through Torquatus.

For someone who is not strongly wedded to the question you've come up with a very useful list of considerations!

Since we have had a number of threads lately which focus on theory and practice of how Epicurean groups in the present and future might be organizations, I've done some slight rearranging of the forums and created the one below specifically for this. This forum contains links to two of the major articles on the topic, DeWitt's "Organization and Procedure in Epicurean Groups" and Erlend D. MacGillivray's "Epicurean Mission and Membership From The Early Garden To The Late Roman Republic."

This would be a good place to extend some of the recent discussion on how future Epicurean organizational methods might move forward in the future and what they might look like.

Epicurean Organization Theory and Practice

Rackham's notes on two examples of friendship referenced in today's Episode:

(1) Phintias, a Pythagorean, pleading for his friend Damon before Dionysius, 'tyrant' of Syracuse. Dionysius pardoned them both and begged to become a third in such a friendship.

(2) Cicero refers to a scene in the Diilorestes of Pacuvius, where Thoas King of the Tauri wished to kill whichever of the two captives brought before him was Orestes.

Story of Orestes and Pylades:

Pylades - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And me too! We really don't have a good way to keep things promoted.... Maybe this should be on YouTube or some other more visible venue? Perhaps with a voiceover reading It?

Under the influence of reading Cicero in years past, I used to be totally against Caesar and on Longinus' side and content to label Brutus and Longinus' actions as simply "general anti-dictator" and those of a "liberator," which they claimed to be.

I am not nearly so firm on that today. I still have the highest respect for Longinus and think he was sincerely trying to apply Epicurean philosophy as he understood it (and I do think he understood it well). However at this point I focus on that I just don't have enough information about the forces at work in the Roman Civil War to be sure which side I would personally agree with. It seems that some of Caesar's supporters and possibly Caesar himself had substantial Epicurean leanings, so I don't think we can say with confidence that all Epicureans were on Longinus' side.

There's usually at least two sides to every story, and my view today is that I personally don't have enough information to know whether Caesar was or could have been primarily a reformer of a rotten aristocracy, or whether he was truly a power-seeking totalitarian who was driven to be king and happy to overthrow the "Limited" government of the republic. He certainly knew enough to refuse the title of king up to the end, even though some of his supporters wanted to give it to him. That's not an entirely different situation than that of George Washington.

We don't want to turn this into a discussion of modern political assassinations, but I personally am definitely interested in learning whatever there is to be learned about more of the facts of the Roman civil war situation. I think that those historical details would help us better understand the rise and fall of the Epicurean movement in the Roman period.

The big question that generally gets raised is "Cassius couldn't have been a good Epicurean because a good Epicurean would never step forward so firmly into public life...." and that position I totally reject. So I think this would definitely be a useful discussion to learn more details about how Cassius might have viewed the situation. I suspect it was not simply an abstract "I love the Senate and the traditions of the Roman Republic" position, but I just don't know what other factors were involved.

For now let me just say that the specifics of what procedures and Epicurean community might adopt strikes me as a very legitimate topic, so long as we are clear that we here in the forum are not that community, and so such a community would have to start up independently, with some of the people in this forum agreeing with those specifics and some not agreeing. It is extremely hard to get something like that off the ground, quite apart from the issue of whether it is desirable or not.

I often call peoples' attention to this very long thread we had when we (ultimately fruitlessly) discussed whether people in this forum would agree to the principles of the Society of Epicurus.

It proved to be a non-starter even to try to agree on a general set of principles. Agreeing to a much more rigorous set of procedures would be even harder.

I think it's legitimate to discuss here at the forum general ideas as to how such a group might operate, but we probably need to be careful and reserve some of the more aggressive details and let anyone thinking such a group is a good idea take that discussion elsewhere. It's a hard question as to what makes sense to discuss here and what doesn't, but I suggest everyone avoid getting too intense on either side of questions that for the moment at least are purely hypothetical. This is probably an excellent time to remember the problems that Don and others regularly point out about the dangers of hypotheticals and the difficulty of keeping them in touch with reality.

Never heard of this thank you very much!!

Quote from Bryan

I think that "the pictorial views of the mind" (phantastikai epibolai tes dianoias) is just a description of the the "visual stereotypes" (prolepseis), and thus they are used interchangeably.

I agree with the direction of this and given that it appears from Diogenes Laertius that it was not Epicurus himself who elevated the status of this to the level of a criteria, i approach the subject with caution.

I know that there is some material out there which focuses on "casting of the mind" and so forth. Most of what I have seen is combined with discussion of prolepsis. Godfrey is right that Christos Yapijakis has discussed it and I believe DeWitt covers this in is book.

Part of the discussion begins on page 136 or so in relation to empiricim and the discussion of 'phantasia" but I think there is another section that i am not finding at the moment.

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You know, in regard to this use of words issue, I have been struck over the last several months by this passage from page 240 of DeWitt's book:

Quote

“The extension of the name of pleasure to this normal state of being was the major innovation of the new hedonism. It was in the negative form, freedom from pain of body and distress of mind, that it drew the most persistent and vigorous condemnation from adversaries. The contention was that the application of the name of pleasure to this state was unjustified on the ground that two different things were thereby being denominated by one name. Cicero made a great to-do over this argument, but it is really superficial and captious. The fact that the name of pleasure was not customarily applied to the normal or static state did not alter the fact that the name ought to be applied to it; nor that reason justified the application; nor that human beings would be the happier for so reasoning and believing.

I have read lots of books and articles on Epicurus but I can't recall a paragraph that expressed this issue in quite this way - a way I find much more clear than anything else I recall reading.

You could repeat that format over and over with other key concepts such as:

The fact that the name of virtue was not customarily applied to define conduct that is practically efficient to producing a pleasurable life did not alter the fact that the name ought to be applied to it; nor that reason justified the application; nor that human beings would be the happier for so reasoning and believing.

The fact that the name of gods was not customarily applied to beings that are not supernatural, or to blissful ways of life to which we should aspire, did not alter the fact that the name ought to be applied to it; nor that reason justified the application; nor that human beings would be the happier for so reasoning and believing.

The fact that the name "absence of pain" was not customarily applied to all experiences of pleasure did not alter the fact that the name ought to be applied to it; nor that reason justified the application; nor that human beings would be the happier for so reasoning and believing.

The fact that the name "death is nothing to us" was not customarily applied to describe the state of non-being after death, did not alter the fact that the name ought to be applied to it; nor that reason justified the application; nor that human beings would be the happier for so reasoning and believing.

There are probably other examples as well, but those are the first that come to mind.

Further -- I am sure that other writers must have written other short and concise and clear statements of Epicurean "clarification" or "redefinition" as it relates to understanding the philosophy. Maybe some of you guys can think of statements similar to that passage from page 240 of EAHP. Unfortunately, what I seem to remember is statement after statement to the effect that "Epicurus didn't really mean pleasure, he meant absence of pain," with an explicit or implicit nod toward this being a Stoic or Buddhist or apathetic way of looking at the question.

If you can think of other formulations similar to DeWitt's, focusing on "absence of pain" applying to any non-painful experience whatsoever ("the normal state of being") please post them, and if there are enough we'll make a new thread of them.

This is an extremely important issue to understand. People who aren't willing to be flexible in following the twists and turns of word meaning are never going to be anything but frustrated with Epicrurus -- as was one Marcus Tullius Cicero.

Quote from Pacatus

but, again, that seems to reflect a kind of paradigm shift from more conventional understandings of the word

"Paradigm shifts from from conventional understandings of the word" seems to be much of what we're doing lately. It's a real challenge to think about where this goes in terms of how to convey the difference in meaning of words. It's hard to attached the prefix "Epicurean-" to everything but it seems to me that when we're talking about religion and the word cult and the like almost everything has to be considered in that "Epicurean-religion" "Epicurean-gods" context. I am not sure if the word "cult" has enough benefit in it to put it in the class of words that could or should be rehabilitated. Does "cult" add anything that can't be obtained through discussion "religion" in Epicurean terms? I think some people here would take the position that "religion is in itself a bad word" which has no merit worth rehabilitating, and some don't.

Zeno of Sidon comes from the coast of what is now Lebanon. Here's a history site for archaeology in the area:

Sidon Excavation | Sidon Excavation

History of Sidon - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

For some reason (probably because this area of Jordan is for some reason finding its way into headlines nowadays) I decided to look up info on the home area of Philodemus. Looks like the Archaeological Museum in this area has lots of good information and interesting pictures.

Home | UmmQaisHeritage

I think at least for those of us in America an opening statement of our intent to conduct ourselves in our public role as an Epicurean would remind everyone that someone somewhere once said something about all of us possessing the "right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

One might then need to do some Oenoanda-style "shouting" about how a life of happiness is a life of pleasure, but that would still be a good start, I think.

Great use of the forum to coordinate work. Thank you TauPhi for finding that reference!

This is really excellent and challenging material we are going through in sections XXII and XXIII of Book 2 right now, so I managed to complete editing of Episode 212 early in the week, and I am now opening this thread about Episode 213. Please feel free to post any comments or questions about this week's text so we can consider including them in the recording of the podcast which will take place on 2/3/24.