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All of my poems (and those of others as well it seems) lost their formatting. I went through and fixed mine. We'll see what happens when new ones come up.
Oh no! I didn't notice one of them before you fixed them - if you see a sample that is not formatted correctly let me know so I can think about the implications. Perhaps line feeds were converted to hard paragraphs, or what?
Welcome tariq !
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Please say "Hello" by introducing yourself, tell us what prompted your interest in Epicureanism and which particular aspects of Epicureanism most interest you, and/or post a question.
This forum is the place for students of Epicurus to coordinate their studies and work together to promote the philosophy of Epicurus. Please remember that all posting here is subject to our Community Standards / Rules of the Forum our Not Neo-Epicurean, But Epicurean and our Posting Policy statements and associated posts.
Please understand that the leaders of this forum are well aware that many fans of Epicurus may have sincerely-held views of what Epicurus taught that are incompatible with the purposes and standards of this forum. This forum is dedicated exclusively to the study and support of people who are committed to classical Epicurean views. As a result, this forum is not for people who seek to mix and match some Epicurean views with positions that are inherently inconsistent with the core teachings of Epicurus.
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!
Thank you Joshua - we will get this fixed tonight!
Here's a feature I can imagine several of you liking: "PERSONAL NOTES"
Click under the Tools / Personal Notes top menu, or under the User icon/dropdown "Personal Notes" and it will take you to a page where you can keep a list of frequently used notes or text blurbs for easy reuse and pasting into new threads
Eikadistes it does look like the Bookmarks feature will come back, and hopefully if you have some stored those will come back too.
Also, there are lots and lots of themes/styles to replace the ones we lost. We'll get some dark/colored versions available soon.
Here's an example of a change. You'll note that some of the old editing functions are under the ... (three dot dropdown). They've replaced the color editor with "highlights" such as here:
You'll note that when you drop down you first get a "paragraph" choice for headers or normal text, and then TO THE RIGHT you'll see several other options that are also below the main editor line, and that's where the "highlighter" is. I totally missed seeing those the first time through.
At the moment there are only two STYLES, but hopefully they will cover most uses. There is a LIGHT style and a DARK style --- change it by going to the bottom right of a page where you will see:
CHANGE STYLE
There are LOTS of changes, to say the least, that we will need to work through.
One immediate downside especially for Eikadistes is that it looks like we lost the "BOOKMARK" function. I am still exploring whether we can get that back Nate!
We also lost the FAQ formatting from the older version. Until we can set that up again, the old FAQ material is available in a separate page.
Yes posts made before the upgrade goes through may be lost. We should be back to full operation for new posts by noon at the latest. As soon as the upgrade is complete I will remove the "maintenance" notice from the top of the page.
Thank you for reposting that Martin!
Yesterday we had a failed attempt to upgrade to the latest software package that runs the forum, and unfortunately several posts were lost. We're back up now and running normally, and this time I will take additional precautions to schedule this at a time of low usage and to ensure data is not in jeopardy.
Apologies to anyone who lost data - if you see any additional impact from the incident please post in this thread.
Aren't emergent properties a form of randomness? Or do they fall under the idea of "if we knew enough about everything, we would see how they actually emerged"?
That would *not* be my understanding Godfrey. Emergent qualities would arise from the attributes of the atoms and void which make them up in a mechanistic way. There is no function assigned to the swerve of the atom other than free will and bringing atoms together to form worlds in the first place. Sedley thinks the swerve was only developed later in response to the need to respond to the hard determinists.
It's been a long time since I read it but I always recommend the Long article on this -- Chance and Natural Law in Epicureanism, the basic thrust of which is to argue that virtually everything in the Epicurean universe IS determined except for the free will of intelligent animals, which is the one place that the swerve "breaks through" into observability. If the swerve were constantly making many things random then the whole basis of atomism would implode because atomism would not be able to explain the regularity that we do see.
Or also, if what matters is practical life for ordinary people, then would it be valid for us to accept things like biases just because we feel it although they are unjustified?
If when you say "bias" what you are talking about is "stereotypes" or "generalities" then I have had several discussions about this subject recently.
I personally relate this to issues of "statistics."
The nature of a generality is that it is "generally" true, even if exceptions exist. Working with them it is essential to recognize that generalities are "statistically more likely" while at the very same time you are affirming that "exceptions do exist."
Does the fact that exceptions exist nullify the beneficial uses of generalities? I would say clearly "no!" Generally speaking, we can expect the sun to rise in the east tomorrow. Does our firm conviction that the sun will one day explode (or something else bad will happen) mean that we should not plan to get up tomorrow morning? No.
In the case of free will, Epicurus is being very clear that some things are determined while others are not. Both are affirmed to be true. Depending on what you choose to look at, the fact may be that *most* things are determined in some way, and what we have firm control over is a much smaller subset. But it can still be true that both categories exist, and I don't see that we should let one overwhelm the other, any more than we should let the perfect be the enemy of the good. 
OK now finished and finally after far too long I am in position to place a fix on where this book fits in with a general study of Epicurus. Here's my summary:
David Sedley is probably one of the top five scholars of Epicurus alive today, and he might be at the very top. Everything he writes is full of good information about Epicurus. His speculations are always based on lots of evidence and I'd go with his speculation on something before most anyone else's.
I think I put of reading this book so long because I was unsure what to make of the title. Now after reading it I'd say the title could be "translated" into something more like this:
"The Story of How Lucretius decided to follow the example of Empedocles and write a poem on physics, How Epicurus took much of the order of his "On Nature" by responding to Theoprastus' physics, How these observations allow us to reconstruct the Table of Contents in On Nature, and How, from those starting points, we can decode the way Lucretius reworked the order of Epicurus' arguments in "On Nature" to create a poem with more OOMPH than if he had followed Epicurus' own order of topics."
As such, there's not a lot of ethical insight that most of our readers here won't already be familiar with, but the book provides a good framework for why Lucretius started the poem off with the "hymn to Venus" that seems to some people to be so out of place. Dr Sedley says that aspect arises from Lucretius' apparent decision to mimic the opening of Empedocles' poem, which started in a similar way, but to totally rearrange Empedocles' view of nature to conform to Epicurean philosophy.
Dr. Sedley also does a good job of taking on the question of the ending of the poem, and his conclusion is that Lucretius simply had not finished reworking the final books of the poem before he died. He doesn't go in Emily Austin's direction of noting that Lucretius failed to include what the original plague narrative had said about the citizens of Athens learning the lessons of how short life can be, but rather he argues that Lucretius intended a significant recap of Principle Doctrine 4 to explain how even pain like that of the plague comes under the scope of Epicurus' advice about the manageability of pain.
So there's a tremendous amount of good material here and I wish I had read this long ago. It's not however what I would call the best place to start for a newer reader, but it will really fascinate anyone who wants to dive into an analysis of Lucretius or get a better idea of what was likely included in Epicurus' own "On Nature."
Over the holidays I am going to remedy my slackness and read this book in full. I have started the first two chapters and I can echo what Godfrey wrote as to Empedocles with this additional comment:
I don't think the observation really changes a whole lot as to how to interpret what Lucretius is saying in the opening "hymn to Venus," but it probably does help explain why he was motivated to start with imagery of Venus and then her interaction with Mars. Sedley is saying that Empedocles' poem on physics is lost, but that there is good reason to believe that it started with a similar poetic analogy to Venus / Aphrodite. Sedley's theory is that Empedocles' poem on nature inspired Lucretius to open his poem with analogous imagery, but that Lucretius almost immediately started deviating from Empedocles to restate what Empedocles had presented in (dramatically different) Epicurean terms.
[btn='Empedocles in Wikipedia','wikipedia-w']https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empedocles[/btn]
Is it then wise for me to offer the Epicurean evidence and thinking or is it more prudent to just let it be?
Ok I see that question as particularly important. "Offering it" brings to mind the issues of Lucian's "Alexander the Oracle Monger" where the Epicurean almost got stoned to death and Lucian criticizes him for being foolhardy.
I see the question more as one of electing whom to live among ... And that would be a very individual decision. Certainly Epicurus recommends living among friends, and being a closer friend is going to involve shared views. But as for the calculation of how to do that and where to compromise, that's very hard to say.
What seems to me *not" hard to say is (1) you only live once, (2) life is short, and (3) you get no credit after death for doing things that did not bring you pleasure. So to me these questions come down to what you personally find desirable into getting the most you can out of life. In my own situation I am as cordial and nice to everyone as I can be when I come into contact with them, but I also organize my time to spend as much of it as possible with people I share the closest friendships.
There are many people with whom I come into casual contact who I try to be nice to, but who end up having no clue that I have any interest in philosophy at all.
I think one of the sayings is that you should run risks for friendship, and I think that plays into the answer too. If someone is so clearly not a candidate for discussing the most important things in life with you, then that person would seem to be a poor candidate to want to devote much time to.
If the wellbeing of the whole society (and individuals) depends on how well individuals understand and accept the covenant, isn't it easier to have the majority believe in a simple fairy tale (punishment after death and the all seeing eye of god)?
If "the wellbeing of the society" were indeed the ultimate Epicurean goal, then that argument would at least be entertainable. But the great weight of the evidence in the texts is that "the wellbeing of the society" is *NOT* the ultimate Epicurean goal, so using such a presumption would not carry much weight with an Epicurean.
isn't it easier to have the majority believe in a simple fairy tale (punishment after death and the all seeing eye of god)?
And that might be true too if you're content for the society to be composed of people who are ignorant of natural science, but there's no evidence that an Epicuran would be content with such a thing.
And as far as the relative hardness of convincing people to believe in 'virtue' for it's own sake (and I would say this also applies to trying to people who have studied natural science to believe in a god:
"For it is hard to convince men that "the good is to be chosen for its own sake"; but that pleasure and tranquility of mind is acquired by virtue, justice, and the good is both true and demonstrable. " --
Cassius to Cicero, [15.19] [Brundisium, latter half of January, 45 B.C.]
as individuals some may choose the truth, while others would prefer comfortable ignorance.
And those individuals who would choose "comfortable ignorance" rather than truth would not be following Epicurean philosophy. Choosing "comfortable ignorance" would not be consistent with choosing wisdom, and as Torquatus put it:
[46] XIV. But if we see that all human life is agitated by confusion and ignorance, and that wisdom alone can redeem us from the violence of our lusts and from the menace of our fears, and alone can teach us to endure humbly even the outrages of fortune, and alone can guide us into every path which leads to peace and calm, why should we hesitate to say that wisdom is desirable in view of pleasures, and unwisdom to be shunned on account of annoyances?
EDIT: I had to add the *NOT* early in the post above to correct a typo/admission that changed the meaning of my sentence. Hopefully the mistake was obvious, but it is corrected now 
Episode 207 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is now available. This week we address Cicero's contention that Epicurean philosophy leads to injustice.
(I'm using infallible here to mean "a reliable source of information".
Yes that's the key - my fingers were prepared for a comment til you clarified that - I was going to say that yes they all share the same level of infallibility - zero! (In the sense of their being correct *opinion*).
Yes to the post in general but as to this part:
There are an innumerable but not infinite number of particles that make up the universe, constantly being reused and recycled into new bodies.
Slight tweak: Isn't it an infinite *number* of individual atoms but not an infinite number of *types* (or sizes)- in that an infinite number of atoms is needed to offset the infinite extent of the void?
With the limit on number of sizes required because there can't be atoms that are infinitely large (or that would itself take up all the space in the universe)?
