Posts by Cassius

Yes and also I think the result can depend on whether the linked website is equipped to serve a picture.

As to Joshua's comment I thought he did a great job as to "meaningfulness" to which I would add that "I spit upon the concept of existence of meaningfulness unless it being pleasure.".

There are a lot of issues we need to explore from this podcast including:

1. I think we can take a common sense interpretation of Cicero's complaint that Epicurus lacks "definition" of pleasure, but there are probably some specifics we can clean from the more formal explanation of "definition" that we can use to understand what Epicurus was objecting to.
   1. Here is part of that objection from book one: "VII. And as for the second part of philosophy, which belongs to investigating and discussing, and which is called λογικὴ, there your master as it seems to me is wholly unarmed and defenceless. He abolishes definitions; he lays down no rules for division and partition; he gives no method for drawing conclusions or establishing principles; he does not point out how captious objections may be refuted, or ambiguous terms explained. He places all our judgments of things in our senses; and if they are once led to approve of anything false as if it were true, then he thinks that there is an end to all our power of distinguishing between truth and falsehood.
2. We also need to hammer home specifically that when Torquatus is saying that a man who is conscious of anything is experiencing either pleasure or pain does not mean that there is some abstract new status of "pleasure" or "pain" that somehow in some mysterious way constitutes a new higher category, but that he is referring (as he says) to a a predominance of pleasures over pains, meaning that we are experiencing many combinations of pleasure and pain at once. Pleasure and pain do not mix, and in any part of our experience we only experience one at a time, but they do coexist in different parts of our experience (or he would not have said that the wise man can experience continuous pleasure by offsetting pleasures against pains).

If anyone is aware of good articles or sources on these (particularly "definition") please post them.

Episode 194 of Lucretius Today is Now Available! We cover a lot of material that is very relevant to recent discussions, so I wanted to get this out as quickly as possible.

Peter your reference to modern politics in Greece is again skirting against our "no partisan politics" rule and probably is over it. The references to Caesar are entirely appropriate given the time lapse, but when we talk contemporary politics we are endangering the purpose of the board to promote Epicurean philosophy rather than to take sides on modern issues. Rather than my delete that from your post I would appreciate your editing to remove from "to take a modern example" up to "That's the person Caesar was too."

I regret asking you to do this because I don't want to sour what appears to me to be promising commentary you are offering on other issues, but if we lower the bridge an inch on modern politics then we are going to have an inequitable situation. I hope you understand that if we play favorites then the purpose of the rule and the objectives of the board are jeopardized.

I'd have to look back to see if we ever stated a specific rule as to where "modern" off limits begins and "historical" ok commentary starts, but pretty much up to 1900 the wounds are so deep and recent that it is best to stay away from them.

Thanks for your understanding in this request.

Thanks for the birthday wishes. Before this gets too confusing I better point people to this post from Don and my reply on my timeline here at the forum:

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Looking forward to having you Rocco. If you or anyone else who plans to attend have specific topics of interest that you would like to address please let us know.

Also I need to apologize to everyone that I seem half dead in this podcast. I had some strange back pains in the days before the recording and I think I may have been podcasting under the influence of the medications I was taking.

I plan to be sure we backtrack as needed this next episode to be sure we cover what we need to cover, so if anyone has comments please add them

We will probably be on basically this same topic for the next several weeks.

Peter I understand that there are Greek Epicureans who have been much more successful than elsewhere in having live seminars and meetings. Have you had the opportunity to associate with any of that and do you have any thoughts on their efforts?

Quote from Don

We should enjoy both mental and physical pleasure, but we can just access the mental ones with more confidence

Yep I would say that Epicurus' final days would be an example of that.

I am thinking to myself what implications flow from that observation.

One of the primary ones would be that this allows the "continuous pleasure" position in which we always have access to mental pleasures. This doesn't mean that the mental pleasures are necessarily better, but if we can be confident that we always have the ability to find pleasure in life, then we can be confident that life is worth living, and that in itself is a very important character trait and provides resistance against nihilism.

Quote from Godfrey

An existing text that we do have is PD09. I'm currently interpreting it as defining the three components of pleasure as intensity, duration and location. The more I think on it, the more useful these seem to be for working with maximizing one’s pleasure. And if I'm interpreting PD09 correctly, which is open to debate, then to my mind it has more relevance than the texts dealing with k/k, as it is directly attributed to Epicurus.

Your analysis of PD09 seems on target to me. I think most of the time that people pick up this subject the first places they intuitively go are (1) time /duration, (2) intensity, and (3) part of the body or mind being affected (location). It's hard for me to think of what additional classifications would deserve the same level in the hierarchy as those three. They apply to every kind of experience I can imagine, and all the other ways you can categorize pleasure seem to fit within those.

Quote from Godfrey

opponents such as Cicero and his ilk have cynically sent us off on a wild goose chase!)

And my current favorite explanation for that is that everyone in a competition knows the strategy of "divide and conquer." Suggesting that some "pleasures" are abstractly better than others creates a competition between the advocates of pleasure. Maybe someone needs to play the game against the other side and suggest that the virtue of courage is MUCH better than the virtue of wisdom, or piety to the gods is MUCH better than virtue. But then again those games have always been played too, and most everyone is as confused as ever even though 2000 years have gone by.

Welcome to Episode 194 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the only complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts, and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where you will find a discussion thread for each of our podcast episodes and many other topics.

This week we continue our discussion of Books One and Two of Cicero's On Ends, which are largely devoted to Epicurean Philosophy. "On Ends" contains important criticisms of Epicurus that have set the tone for standard analysis of his philosophy for the last 2000 years. Going through this book gives us the opportunity to review those attacks, take them apart, and respond to them as an ancient Epicurean might have done, and much more fully than Cicero allowed Torquatus, his Epicurean spokesman, to do.

This week we continue in Book One, and we will be starting with section XIX. Follow along with us here: Cicero's On Ends - Complete Reid Edition

We are using the Reid edition, so check any typos or other questions against the original PDF which can be found here.

As we proceed we will keep track of Cicero's arguments and outline them here:

Cicero's Objections to Epicurean Philosophy

Episode 193 of Lucretius Today is Now Available:

Peter what you wrote about de facto atheism gives your thoughts on part of the question, but maybe does not address whether you think Epicurus was serious about life elsewhere in the universe and whether he was serious that there are (or that we should think there are) blessed and imperishable beings who should (for our own benefit at the very least) be thought of as examples of the best way to live. It's interesting how people take different positions on that. What are your thoughts on that aspect?

Quote from Godfrey

What I'm thinking is that looking at feelings in terms of the particular components of intensity, duration and location gives us a practical set of tools. Katastematic/kinetic is just a way of talking about the tool of duration. This line of reasoning was prompted by the texts, but I haven't yet gone back through the existing texts (studiously excluding Cicero) to see how fully it's supported.

I generally agree with this perspective. Specific pleasures obviously differ from one another in their unique qualities, and intensity, duration, and location are practical ways of distinguishing them for purposes of discussion.

It makes sense also to focus on what Epicurus and Lucretius and Diogenes Laertius and any other self-proclaimed advocates wrote. However I would not exclude Cicero for too long, because when he records an advocate of Epicurus (Torquatus or Velleius, I am not sure if there are any others) speaking, I think a lot of stock can be put in those words. I can't cite an example at the moment but it seems I have read that commentators think that Cicero had before him texts from the various schools when he was writing, and it seems to me that the extended presentations by Torquatus and Velleius deserve a lot of consideration.

Quote from Godfrey

I'm leaning toward the idea that katastematic/kinetic is really just a description of durability. Breadth is important, but not katastematic or kinetic. Breadth would be something like "does this thing bring me both physical and mental pleasure? Does it affect one part of my body, or is it a more widely distributed feeling? Does it give me mental satisfaction in one way or in a variety of ways?"

I'm not sure I follow what you are saying here. I see why you are saying that breadth is important but why is "duration" not important?

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It would be best to take the remainder of any discussion of specific politics to private conversation so that we don't have to start talking about our no-politics rule. That having been said, you've put your finger Peter on the reason for our rule on the subject. It's all a very complicated subject, but one aspect of it that I think is clear is that our community project is better off keeping clear of the subject and leaving it entirely to our participants' private lives. Anyone smart enough to be attracted to Epicurus is going to opinionated on lots of topics, including politics. The calculation that we have made here, and that has served us well, is that we can accomplish more and get more out of our work if we focus on what unifies us and stay away from subjects that others can do as a group much better than we can.

We're hoping to interview soon a professor who has written that the ancient Epicureans weren't nearly as non-political as they are now regarded to be, but no matter where one comes down on that issue I am confident that we here at the EpicureanFriends.com forum are always going to work to stay together on the core work even at the expense of conducing interesting political discussions elsewhere.

Lots of great questions and i am sure that you will get some interesting responses. I don't think anyone has had any success in forming an intentionally-Epicurean community in modern times, but it's a topic that is frequently talked about, and I agree with you that it is doable. Now that we have the internet to bring together people who would not normally have been able to find each other in the past, things like this become more possible.

Probably you would need a "leader" to ultimately make decisions on most of the issues you raise, but over time I would think that groups who share similar viewpoints would be able to pull something together. It's a big hurdle though -- as you will see here, even where we make a strong effort to keep things within defined boundaries there are many different opinions as to what is essential and what is not. I expect that there's no substitute for time and effort and it will not be soon, but it will be possible, for a critical mass of people who see things similarly to make plans on closer association. All the issues you raised have to be addressed first, and there will be lots of differing opinions on most of them.

Welcome! I think you will find our group to be both modest and courteous. I'm not sure those are the generally regarded as the two most distinguishing aspects of Epicurean philosophy, but we'll be very courteous and modest as we talk about the absence of supernatural gods, the end of life at death, the role of pleasure as guide to life rather than virtue or idealism or piety, and the primacy of nature over logical abstractions!