Posts by Cassius

Aside: I find this subject fascinating, but sometimes I too wonder if we are chasing rabbits down holes where we have no business going.

But then I look back at Epicurus saying explicitly in the letter to Pythocles that these exact subjects should be included in basic studies so as to escape from superstition, so I think we're doing the right thing.

[116] ... All these things, Pythocles, you must bear in mind; for thus you will escape in most things from superstition and will be enabled to understand what is akin to them. And most of all give yourself up to the study of the beginnings and of infinity and of the things akin to them, and also of the criteria of truth and of the feelings, and of the purpose for which we reason out these things. For these points when they are thoroughly studied will most easily enable you to understand the causes of the details. But those who have not thoroughly taken these things to heart could not rightly study them in themselves, nor have they made their own the reason for observing them.

Quote from Bryan

yet nevertheless states that there are “parts of which no one on the planet understands,”

Giving Tong (the presenter) the benefit of the doubt (that the person who suggested that part of the equation understood what he was suggesting) to me this emphasizes how necessary it is to understand the limits of the equation rather than oversell it. In the end, can you take that overall equation and actually do anything with it other than perhaps predict the output of some experiment that you've developed in parallel with the equation? It's not like being able to conceptually state the equation is equivalent to an incantation that can bring something into being from nothing. In the end you are always working from what was there already to change it, not bringing something into being from nothing.

Quote from Bryan

After all, who will choose to seek what he can never find?

This is a line that strikes me as super-important every time I read that. I remember years ago in a Facebook discussion someone made the comment "But yeah, people do that all the time," and he was probably right that they do, at least in a way. But in most cases sane people don't keep searching for things that they know they can never find, and that's where the philosophical point comes in that you have to have an opinion about whether something really exists or not before you decide to invest your life into looking for it. And it seems to me pretty important to start off at the very beginning of this discussion finding some common ground and being clear about the playing field. People like Tong and those who are persuaded by Epicurus are confident that natural answers exist which could answer the questions if we had further details, and so we go on pursuing those details. But that presumption that there is a natural answer is a big one, and can't be left to implication.

Quote from Bryan

how can the empty be represented? What then are they?... for films which are so subtle and lack the depth of a solid constitution cannot possibly possess these faculties.”

Yep. That's a visual description of the disconnect. No way that they video of the globs moving around is what most people would understand by the term "empty."

Quote from Bryan

I feel that the explanation the presenter repeats -- basically the endorsed explanation since the world wars -- simply takes pre-suppositions from other schools, which are contrary to our school, and then labors to argue that recent experiments and technological advances prove their pre-suppositions correct.

Yep. I don't see a reason why most of what is being said could not be stated in traditional "universe means everything" and "nothing means nothing" terms. It's as if somewhere along the line someone decided to intentionally shift the traditional meanings of the words explicitly to undercut the Epicurean interpretation of an eternal and infinite universe. In fact the more I think about it, what possible "good" reason was there to shift the meaning of "universe" and "nothing" *other than* to distance themselves from the ultimate conclusions?

Quote from thatchickinpa

My point is not to convince you or anyone else to accept the Big Bang as true.

This might be understood in what you are saying, but I would say that I wouldn't entertain any doubt that our "corner of the universe" came to be as a result of an explosion from a central location. To the extent that is what big bang implies, I would be fine with it as I would not challenge the idea that the data shows everything in our observation expanding. (I am not aware of anyone challenging that part.)

The points in dispute would be whether what exploded came from nothing, and whether the universe as a whole is indeed unbounded, such that these big bangs are infinite in number and going on eternally, expanding and then collapsing without end.

Quote from Don

For me, the idea that the particles that make me are ripples on a cosmic ocean, connecting me to every other thing in the universe, is awe-inspiring in the best way.

I'm not disagreeing at all, just this thought occurs to me --- does an analogy of ripples on an ocean have any different emotional impact or philosophical implication than the particles in space analogy?

What about the entire structure of the use of "atoms" as the basis for regularity in the processes of nature. We've been talking about the field theory in terms of nothing from nothing, but is it any more difficult to also construct from the field theory the basis for the regularity at which we see the world proceed without the direction of any gods?

I suspect there's no real difference, but worth a thought probably.

Happy Birthday Onenski! It's good to realize that some of us have many more to look forward to than do others like me! (that's a joke - just an age reference )

Happy Birthday to Onenski! Learn more about Onenski and say happy birthday on Onenski's timeline: Onenski

Quote from Don

In modern physics, they're not saying "nothing comes from nothing" either. Their confusing shorthand provocative layman's "nothing" is just the quantum fields permeating all of space. The idea of the cosmos - our observable universe - coming out of a quantum fluctuation... similar to what some cosmologists posit is the ultimate fate of our cosmos (NOT the universe remember) an unimaginable number of billions and trillions of years in the future - strikes me as elegant. The new cosmos and our current one doesn't/ didn't come from nothing. It was birthed from the very existing underlying structure of the infinite universe.

Just watched it and Don's summary is good. Bottom line of his talk is that the latest theories don't talk in terms of "particles" anymore but rather "fields" - though as the lecturer demonstrates, it's easy to fall back into using the word particle because of the way fields tend to clump together. But in the end whether particle or field, most fair-minded people I think would consider a field to be "something," and thus as Don says the cosmos doesn't come from nothing, but from the underlying structure of the infinite universe.

All of which leaves the biggest questions that Epicurus wanted to address, such as whether there is something outside of "this observable universe" that these physicists are talking about (something which implicitly might be "god") totally unanswered. That larger question is at least as important to our daily lives as it is to get a better understanding of fields.

To be clear again I really enjoy watching presentations like this given by people who are obviously enthusiastic about them. But there's a line between this and philosophy that makes the latter a better contender for "Queen of the Sciences."

It seems to me that Epicurus had a great respect for "science" in the way that this lecturer is pursuing it, but he also kept it in perspective as not sufficient for determining how to live one's life. That seems to me to be the right balance.

Quote from thatchickinpa

The observable universe means something different than "the universe", and the former is usually what is meant when people talk about it. Is it the former that is referred to in this essay?

To me that's the key to almost all the issues in these debates. The chasm seems to be that for most of 2000 years when people talked in educated circles about "universe" they meant "Everything" and not "what we can observe."

In this presentation around the 45 minute mark that's where this really pops up. He starts talking about "universe" and seems to be referring to "observable universe" though the terminology to a layman is still as it was 2000 years ago - universe means everything.

I don't mean to sound like Cicero criticizing Epicurus, because it's perfectly acceptable to re-define your terms if you are going to be clear about it.

But for example in Don's video, it appears to me that he's talking to an audience of educated laymen. Educated laymen don't need to be misled by suggesting to them that "everything" is 13.8 billion years old.

It seems to me that the decision to talk in one of these terms or the other is itself a huge philosophical issue and needs to be answered philosophically if you're going to be clear and dedicated to the "truth," rather than simply being caught up in the excitement of your own pleasurable exploration of the latest theories.

I am watching Don's quantum fields video and I am reminded almost immediately that:

1 - Theoretical physicists tend toward the long-winded, no matter how excitedly they talk.

2 - The allusions to all the many experts who came before him in the same room and in front of the same table is a stark reminder that all of them "proved" to be "wrong" in the eyes of him in the early 2000's. Would a layperson be wrong in concluding that this presentation proves that it is impossible to be "right" in physics? And if it is impossible to have confidence in any conclusion in physics, what does that say about confident in anything else? This is not a difficult point to see, so what is the answer that this and similar speakers expect to be understood by their listeners?

3 - Does not that every-changing series of positions on physics amount to a practical philosphical position that it is impossible to be right?

4 - Putting aside the conclusions that I presume he will eventually reach, what does that mean for the many generations of people who lived and died before him? Were the benighted and lost in ignorance and suffer wasted lives because they did not have the opportunity to hear his presentation at Cambridge?

5 - Why do I keep thinking about the movie "Agora" and the Pythagoreans plotting the movements of the stars and planets just before the religious mobs broke in to destroy the science/library buildings and kill Hypatia herself? Would Epicurus, had he lived long enough, cited Agora as an example of how it is not important that we know "everything" but rather enough to be sure that there are rational non-supernatural explanations of things that allow us to live happily? Is it not all too possible that the disconnect between theory and practicality is a continuing problem, and that the halls of Cambridge will one day suffer the same fate as the library at Alexandria?

6 - Doesn't this also ring of the story of Polyaenus, who saw Epicurus' point and turned at least a part of his attention to the important of living happily, rather than making the study of geometry (or math, or whatever it was) an end in itself?

7 - Surely as his excited voice shows, there is a lot of pleasure in studying theoretical physics, and I presume all of us here share that to at least some degree. It would be pretty weird of an internet-based forum not to appreciate science, and I think we have a healthy respect for it. But is the dogged pursuit of ever-smaller particles while leaving unexamined the impact that has on society (at the very least, ourselves and our friends) pretty much the equivalent of "sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll" in regard to its ultimate impact on our "health" if we pursue it without regard to wider issues?

8 - Can it really be true that someone like this speaker can divorce his scientific theories from the impact that they have on himself and his friends? Does get around to addressing that by the end of the presentation?

These are things that occur to me in the intervals of constant interruptions that have prevented me from finishing yet!

Quote from Don

Are you looking for Epicureans expounding ways in which they are misrepresented or misunderstood...

The other one I meant to include was Lucretius early in book one complaining about the misrepresentations of the priests about life after death. So what I am really focusing on is that the Epicureans included identified specific references to people who they not only thought were wrong, but who they thought were affirmatively trying to mislead. And I think their criticism of Socrates probably fits in that same category.

These are great questions and no I did not mean to imply that Krauss himself suggested a supernatural explanation, so I do need to clarify that. I read his book and watched his debate with Richard Dawkins on youtube so that's why his name is prominent in my mind.

Here's a list that I wanted to make for a podcast episode. If anyone can suggest more similar warnings from one of the authoritative Epicureans, please add to the list. I feel like there is something specific that could be included as to Socrates, but I don't have that at hand.

Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus:

[131] When we say, then, that pleasure is the end and aim, we do not mean the pleasures of the prodigal or the pleasures of sensuality, as we are understood to do by some through ignorance, prejudice, or wilful misrepresentation.

Lucretius, Book One:

[635] Wherefore those who have thought that fire is the substance of things, and that the whole sum is composed of fire alone, are seen to fall very far from true reasoning. Heraclitus is their leader who first enters the fray, of bright fame for his dark sayings, yet rather among the empty-headed than among the Greeks of weight, who seek after the truth. For fools laud and love all things more which they can descry hidden beneath twisted sayings, and they set up for true what can tickle the ear with a pretty sound and is tricked out with a smart ring.

Torquatus, On Ends, Book One:

XIII. Those who place the Chief Good in virtue alone are beguiled by the glamour of a name, and do not understand the true demands of nature. If they will consent to listen to Epicurus, they will be delivered from the grossest error. Your school dilates on the transcendent beauty of the virtues; but were they not productive of pleasure, who would deem them either praiseworthy or desirable?

Here is an imperfect transcription of the article by Cyrano. If possible, Cyrano, can you give us more about the background of when you wrote this, etc?

BIG BANG OR BIG FARCE?

After all the blather about Big Bang, Big Bang, a burning question still consumes me: can it really have happened that way? Did the entire vast universe of pulsars and quasars, of neutron stars and supernova, of galaxies – billions and billions of galaxies each with billions and billions of stars – did all this originate from a single explosion the size of a pinpoint? No, not even a pinpoint! Not a point or a thing at all but “a tiny bubble of spacetime a billion- trillion-trillionth of a centimeter across.”

And this infinitesimal bubble “popped spontaneously into existence out of a pure vacuum as the result of a random quantum fluctuation.” That is to say our vast and immeasurable universe came from NOTHING! Well, I myself am nothing - nothing that is, in the way of a physicist, astronomer or cosmologist. But I am intensely interested in this question as a lover of truth – as a philosopher. For that is what the word philosophy means: ‘love of wisdom.’

And as such I echo Sir Arthur Eddington who said “Philosophically the notion of a beginning of the present order is repugnant to me. I simply do not believe the present order of things started off with a bang. The expanding Universe is preposterous.”

Let us make no mistake about what the big bangers are saying. Astrophysicists Fang Li Zhi and Li Shu Xian, in an article entitled “Creation of the Universe” (World Scientific, 1989) certainly make it absolutely clear: “The Time and space, they tell us, did not exist before the big bang. The universe emerged out of a “singularity” they say, a situation in which the laws of physics as we know them do not apply. None of the laws of science pertain. No, not the most fundamental law of science, the conservation of matter, the law which states that matter cannot be created nor destroyed but simply changes form incessantly. No, not even relativity is relevant, and it is relativity theory after all that big bangers employ for their mystifying hypothesis.

evolution of the universe from nothing is described by the big bang theory.”

What can this mean? The laws of science fail at the big bang and it is not possible to know what happened - or if anything at all happened - before it. Think of it: We must accept an absolute limit on our knowledge, on our understanding of how the world works. We must not question: time began with the big bang and all questions about time before the big bang - before there was time! - are pointless. We may not speak of a cause of the Big Bang – it is impossible, impermissible.

Where have we heard this before? Have not we heard theologians claim that God created the universe, and when we ask them who created God, they arrogantly answer that such questions are beyond mortal minds?

In 1981 at a cosmology conference organized in the Vatican scientists were told that it was permissible to scrutinize the progression of the universe after the big bang, but they should not look into the big bang itself because that was the instant of Creation and hence the act of God.

Yes, the Catholic Church gets a big kick out of the big bang. As far back as 1951 Pope Pius XII declared that the Big Bang confirms the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, the dogma that the universe was created out of nothing.

We rightly deplore attempts of religionists to warp the great channel of evolution into the dead end of ‘intelligent design’. And yet the big bang is just such a perverting project.

The big bang is the big daddy of intelligent design: it is creationism pure and simple. A universe created in an instant is the work of a creator. The big bang is just old religious creationism all dressed up in sophisticated scientific gear.

“What is the ultimate solution to the origin of the Universe? The answers provided by the astronomers are disconcerting and remarkable. Most remarkable of all is the fact that in science, as in the Bible, the world begins with an act of creation” - this from astronomer Robert Jastrow in Until the Sun Dies, 1977.

Cosmology today is all enmeshed with religion. Theologians, physicists, novelists, all tell us that big bang theory bears witness to a Christian creator. In the New York Times Book Review (February 1989), we are informed in a front-page article that because of the big bang scientists and novelists are reverting to God.

Does big bang creation differ from biblical creation? No, only in the number of years! The Bible claims that creation took place about 4000 years BC, and the big bang asserts that creation occurred about 15 billion years ago. The whole thing reeks of religion! They say the big bang left a background radiation. I say their Big Bang left a Big Stink: God FARTED and that was the Big Bang.

And so philosophically the big bang is not acceptable. But it is also unacceptable scientifically. It actually spells the death of science. Science is nothing unless it discovers the causes of empirical events. To nothing less than the ultimate repudiation of causality is where the big bang takes us.

The big bang is not a theory for atheists but for theists. A knowledgeable atheist is a scientific materialist: matter and energy exist forever and ever with no beginning and no end, constantly changing, moving, evolving... Why cannot the material universe exist from all eternity? Why not indeed! Because it is heresy to believe so, Augustine warned us two thousand ago. Infinity, he argued, belongs only to the deity; it is forbidden to the material universe. To say that the material universe is unlimited is to mistake the essential distinction between nature and God. It eliminates the need for God. Yes, Augustine sure knew whereof he spoke!

It would be amusing were it not so tragic that so many people have a problem with an infinite material universe but have no difficulty at all in accepting a god existing in eternity. Isn’t the one as easy to imagine as the other? No, in fact the material universe is far easier to come to terms with than futile attempts to grasp a ghost.

The philosophical objections to the big bang are colossal, but let us turn to strictly scientific objections. “The big bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed - inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples.” So states an “Open Letter to the Scientific Community” (signed by over 300 scientists and others) and published in New Scientist, May 22, 2004.

“The successes claimed by the theory’s supporters,” it continues, “consist of its ability to retrospectively fit observations with a steadily increasing array of adjustable parameters, just as the old Earth-centered cosmology of Ptolemy needed layer upon layer of epicycles.”

“In cosmology today doubt and dissent are not tolerated, and young scientists learn to remain silent if they have something negative to say about the standard big bang model. Those who doubt the big bang fear that saying so will cost them their funding.” The entire statement can be read at cosmologystatement.org

So vehement is opposition to anyone who criticizes the big bang that a madman reviewing Eric Lerner’s book, The Big Bang Never Happened: A Startling Refutation of the Dominant Theory of the Origin of the Universe, wrote that his work “deserves to be burned.”
For my part I will burn at the stake like Bruno but I will uphold as he did the concept of an infinite material universe. I will reverse Pascal’s Wager: I’ll bet my life on materialism. I will shout with Shakespeare in the thunderous tones of King Lear “Nothing will come of nothing!”

Something always comes from something. Where did the superclusters of galaxies come from? The moon orbits the earth, the earth orbits the sun, the sun travels around the Milky Way galaxy. Our galaxy circles around in a neighborhood of galaxies called a cluster, and a bunch of clusters rotate as a unit in a supercluster. A number of superclusters form a unit which in turn moves around its hub and this apparently goes on forever. In any case, supercluster complexes have been observed - huge sheets of galaxies called ‘great walls’ stretching over a billion light-years of space. They take hundreds of billions of years to form. But the pathetic big bang is only 15 billion years old. There is more in heaven and earth, dear big banger, than is dreamt of in your philosophy!

Yes, new objects are discovered constantly, larger and larger and further away, with absolutely no end in sight. Yet man, unable (or unwilling!) to comprehend a never-ending material universe will not take 'infinite' for an answer but must impose his ‘final limit’ on everything.

It is utter gibberish to chatter about the “creation of matter” – nonsense to talk about the “beginning of time.” Matter can neither be created nor destroyed and it exists through and only through time, space, and motion. The universe exists through all eternity, forever changing, moving, evolving... Matter and energy, energy and matter forever! A ‘beginning’ or an ‘end’ to the material universe? Every effort to find one will foolishly fail. And the big bang theory will fall before our earth makes ten more trips around the sun.

Quote from Novem

I'm not a physicist so I am not able to comment, but I can say that theoretical physics is very hard to understand, and very theoretical indeed.

Yes, very true, and we need people who really want to dig into these issues to help discuss them intelligently and persuasively.

But in the meantime, I am not going to let the Lawrence Krausses of the world bother me by injecting doubt as to the existence of a possible supernatural factor into my day to day life.

Am I supposed to believe that just maybe some miracle happened with no explanation at all, and that I need to rely on some quantum physicist about whom I know nothing personally and whose good faith and integrity I have no way to judge (and considerable reason to doubt) to tell me how to think about the ultimate issues of nature? I think not.

Episode 209 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is now available. This week will be a special episode in which we feature our "Foundations of Epicurean Philosophy," a collection of excerpts based on the ancient Epicurean texts and rearranged in an order that covers the main aspects of Epicurean philosophy in one presentation.

I suspect that some will have hesitation, but before anyone else responds I want to be on the record.....

I one hundred percent agree with your reasoning, and all the Lawrence Krauss's in the world and his cohorts will never convince me otherwise!

This is not a matter of philosophy vs science, it's a matter of philosophy informing a debate in which scientists of good faith are on both sides of the argument, and the resolution of such issues being ultimately a matter of philosophy.

I doubt there would ever come a time when I would consider the position you take in this article to be a "requirement" here at the forum, but as someone recently said in another context about the issue of Epicurean theology, it's a shame that this position doesn't always get the respect it deserves within Epicurean circles! It is certainly the position that Epicurus himself took.

Thank you for posting this. It would be relatively easy for me or one of us to take he PDF and reduce it to plain text, but I would appreciate it if you would post it into a post rather than just the PDF. I would like to take this and add it into our "articles" section as a featured article. No doubt over time there will be good-faith dissenters, but I think this is the position that Epicurus would take even today, and this needs to be on any site devoted to Epicurean philosophy.

Welcome to Episode 210 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the most 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 Book Two of Cicero's On Ends, which is largely devoted Cicero's attack on Epicurean Philosophy. 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.

Follow along with us here: Cicero's On Ends - Complete Reid Edition. Check any typos or other questions against the original PDF which can be found here.

This week we move into Section XIX:

XIX. Apply the same remarks to self-restraint or temperance, by which I mean a government of the desires which pays allegiance to reason. Well then, supposing a man to yield to vice, in the absence of witnesses, would he shew suffcient regard for modesty, or is there something which is in itself abominable, though attended by no disgrace? What? Do brave men go to battle and pour out their blood for their country, because they have gone through the arithmetic of pleasures, or because they are carried away by a certain enthusiasm and tide of feeling? Pray do you think, Torquatus, that old Imperiosus, if he were listening to our talk, would find greater pleasure in giving ear to your speech about himself, or to mine, in which I stated that he had done nothing from regard for himself, but everything in the interest of the commonwealth; while on the contrary you said he had done nothing but what he did out of regard to himself? If more- over you had further chosen to make the matter clear, and to state your view more plainly, that he acted entirely with an eye to pleasure, how do you think he would have endured it?

Be it so; suppose, if you like, that Torquatus acted for the sake of his own interests (I would rather use this word than pleasures, particularly in relation to so great a man); did his colleague Publius Decius, who was the first of his family to achieve the consulship, think anything of his own pleasures, when he had offered himself up, and was rushing into the midst of the Latin line, with his horse at full gallop? Where did he expect to catch his pleasure or when, knowing that he must instantly die, and seeking his death with more burning zeal than Epicurus thinks should be given to the search for pleasure? And if this exploit of his had not been justly applauded, never would his son have emulated it in his fourth consulship, nor would this man’s son again have died on the field of battle, while conducting as consul the war with Pyrrhus, thus offering himself for his country as a third sacrifice from the same family in unbroken succession. I refrain from further instances. The Greeks have few in this class, Leonidas, Epaminondas, some three or four others ; if I begin to gather up our own examples, I shall indeed compel pleasure to surrender her- self to virtue as her prisoner, but the day will not be long enough for me, and just as Aulus Varius, who was looked upon as a rather severe judge, used to say to his assessor, when witnesses had been examined, and still others were being summoned: Ether we have got enough witnesses or I do not know what is enough, so I think I have supplied enough witnesses. Why, was it pleasure that led you yourself, a most worthy representative of your ancestors, while quite young, to rob Publius Sulla of the consulship? And when you had conferred this office on that staunchest of gentlemen, your father, what a noble consul he was, and what a noble citizen after his consulship, as always! And it was by his advice that I myself carried out a policy which had regard to the general interest rather than my own.

But how excellently you seemed to me to speak, when you set before us on the one side a man crowned with most numerous and most intense pleasures, free from all pain, either actual or impending, and on the other side one racked with most grievous torments over his whole frame, with no pleasure, either attendant or prospective, and then asked who could be more wretched than the latter man or more happy than the former, and thence inferred that pain is the paramount evil, and pleasure the paramount good! XX. There was a man of Lanuvium, Lucius Thorius Balbus, whom you cannot remember; he lived in such fashion that no pleasure could be discovered, however rare, in which he did not revel. Not only was he a zealot for pleasures, but he possessed ability and resource in this line of life ; and he was so devoid of superstition, that he cared nothing for those sacrifices and shrines which are so very numerous in his native place, and so free from fear in face of death, that he died for his country on the field of battle. The bounds to his passions were prescribed not by the classification of Epicurus, but by his own sense of repletion. Yet he took care of his health, he availed himself of such exercise as might send him thirsty and hungry to dinner, and of such food as was at once pleasantest and easiest to digest, and of wine sufficient to give pleasure without doing harm. He gave heed to those other matters in the absence of which Epicurus says he fails to under- stand what goad means. All pain kept aloof; but if it had come, he would have endured it without weakness, though he would have resorted to physicians rather than philosophers. He had an admirable complexion, perfect health, extreme popularity, his life in fact was replete with all the divers forms of pleasure. This is the man you pronounce happy; at least your system compels you to it; but I have hardly the courage to say who it is that I prefer to him; virtue herself shall speak for me, and shall without hesitation prefer to your man of happiness her Marcus Regulus; and virtue proclaims that when he had re- turned from his own country to Carthage of his own choice and under no compulsion but that of his honour, which he had pledged to the enemy, he was happier in the very hour at which he was tortured by want of sleep and hunger, than Thorius when drinking on his bed of roses. He had conducted important wars, had been twice elected consul, had enjoyed a triumph, though he did not regard his previous exploits as so important or so splendid as his last sacrifice, which he had taken upon him from motives of honour and consistency: a sacrifice that seems pitiable to us when we hear of it, but was pleasurable to him while he endured it. In truth, happy men are not always in a state of cheerfulness or boisterousness, or mirth, or jesting, which things accompany light characters, but oftentimes even in stern mood are made happy by their staunchness and endurance. When Lucretia was violated by the king’s son, she called her fellow-countrymen to witness and cut short her life by her own hand. The indignation felt at this by the Roman people, with Brutus for their leader and adviser, gave freedom to the community, and in remembrance of the lady both her husband and her father were elected consuls in the first year. Lucius Verginius, a poor man and sprung from the people, in the sixtieth year after freedom had been won, slew his maiden daughter with his own hand rather than let her be sacrificed to the lust of Appius Claudius, who then held supreme authority.

Sequence of Arguments In Book Two

1. Cicero alleges that Torquatus does not know what pleasure means. “As it is, however, I allege that Epicurus himself is in the dark about it and uncertain in his idea of it, and that the very man who often asserts that the meaning which our terms denote ought to be accurately represented, sometimes does not see what this term pleasure indicates, I mean what the thing is which is denoted by the term.” (End of Section II)
2. No one else talks about Pleasure this way
3. Epicurus is failing to be clear
4. No only do the words differ, but the THINGS differ - freedom from pain is not pleasure
5. In holding that pleasure is the supreme good Epicurus says that ANY kinds of pleasures are desirable, even depraved ones, if they banish pain, which is what he means by evil (Section VII)
6. Epicurus calls a profligate life desirable, and that is despicable. No reputable man speaks that way.
7. How can pleasure be the supreme good, when we can't even say that pleasure is the goal of a dinner? (IX)
8. The natural and necessary distinction is awkwardly worded.
9. Even Epicurus says that pleasure is not the goal, because what he really says is the goal is “absence of pain” (X)
10. Epicurus' defense of pleasure based on looking at babies and animals makes no sense because they are not authorities on the subject.
11. It may be difficult to determine whether pleasure is a primary endowment of man, but certainly there are others that are more important, such as man's intellectual ability, and the virtues.
12. The senses cannot decide as to the goal because they have no jurisdiction to answer that question.
13. If we do refute the claim that pleasure is the supreme good we must turn our backs upon virtue. (XIV)
14. The moral is that which, even if it had no utility, would be desired for its own qualities, regardless of its advantages. (XIV-45)
15. The classical virtues are seen to be lovely and beautiful in themselves.

This thread then took a strong turn into a discussion of very important questions about "meaning" and "meaningfulness" (with a dash of "skepticism vs. dogmatism" thrown in) so it is branched off for easier reference here:

Thread

What Would Epicurus Say About Searching For "Meaning?"

Perhaps this belongs in this column. It is from the excellent article referenced by @Don in #37 above: "In fact, Marcus [Aurelius] admits that if Epicurean natural science were right, he would fall into despair. Without providence, he asks, 'Why care about anything?'" So, is this a pivotal issue: caring? That is, vis a vis Victor Frankl and the search for meaning. If we seek to avoid pain and find pleasure are we thereby finding meaning? Or, do we need to look further? Thoughts?

BrainToBeing

January 12, 2024 at 9:46 AM

This will eventually be referenced in the FAQ under meaningfulness.

I can easily see myself saying at some appropriate time and place to an appropriate person:

The meaning of life is PLEASURE, you dolt, and the reason that you kick back against it is that you have bought into a warped view of the world in which life is not a pleasure but a prison sentence for your "immortal soul" - which is nothing more than a figment of your imagination drummed into you by two thousand years of false religious indoctrination!

And after that I would warm up to be more blunt.

Quote from Pacatus

Third, when such down-to-earth ideas of “meaning” are seriously considered, the notion that Epicurean philosophy offers no means to (or opportunity for) personal meaning itself seems absurd.

I think we are together but i am not 100% sure. Any sense of "meaningfulness" is a pleasure, isn't it?

Once we strip "meaningfulness" of its aura of attempting to do an end-run around pleasure as the ultimate good, i see no problem with it or any of another ten thousand words that could be used to describe a particular aspect of a pleasurable life.

Aren't the issues revolving around "meaningfulness" the same as those around "virtue," with the devil being in the details of whether "meaningful" has some absolute ideal nature, or whether it has meaning only in terms of individual pleasure and pain?

"Virtue" in the hands of Epicurus is a wonderful word, and I see no reason why he wouldn't endorse "meaningfulness" either, as long as the word is clearly positioned within the framework of the Epicurean worldview in which there is nothing good that does not ultimately trace to pleasure and nothing bad which does not ultimately trace to pain.