Posts by Cassius

Here's a much better example of the way to understand this issue as stated by an articulate Roman Epicurean in 50 BC.

After over a hundred years of thinking about what Epicurus taught, you can place the key ideas in the context of how the wise man is always happy. Cicero identifies in Tusculan Disputations that how the wise man is in fact always happy is the most important question in philosophy.

The point about pain is not to callously say that what is terrible is "easy to endure," but that pain ultimately has no unbreakable power over us because it is almost always manageable, and when it is truly not manageable we can always defeat it by departing from life:

Quote from Torquatus in On Ends Book 1

XIX. At the same time this Stoic doctrine can be stated in a form which we do not object to, and indeed ourselves endorse. For Epicurus thus presents his Wise Man who is always happy: (3) his desires are kept within bounds; (2) death he disregards; (1) he has a true conception, untainted by fear, of the Divine nature; (4) he does not hesitate to depart from life, if that would better his condition. Thus equipped he enjoys perpetual pleasure, for there is no moment when the pleasures he experiences do not outbalance the pains; since he remembers the past with gratitude, grasps the present with a full realization of its pleasantness, and does not rely upon the future; he looks forward to it, but finds his true enjoyment in the present.

And I would agree with the thrust of Don's comments that it does indeed appear that the Epicureans saw these four aspects as particularly important. But the four have to be stated clearly in order to be persuasive.

Here they are again in different order stated in much more full terms from earlier in On Ends:

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XII. Again, the truth that pleasure is the supreme good can be most easily apprehended from the following consideration. (3) 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 (2) death is apart from sensation, and (4) 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. When in addition we suppose that such a man is (1) 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?

So there's plenty of information from which to flesh out the full meaning of the fourth item of the list without just saying "what's terrible is easy to endure." Cicero is using the same grouping of four to identify the best way of life / how the wise man is always happy.

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Quote from DaveT

For me, as I learn more about Epicureanism, I identify with most of the tetrapharmikos.

There is nothing to fear from gods or natural phenomenon, yes.

There is no afterlife of which to be suspicious, yes.

And Pleasure is easy to obtain, yes, but it's hard to measure.

while Pain can be easily endured, no, I'm not willing to acknowledge that this is a universal truth.

The problem in my view is not with the germ of thought that apparently gave rise to the phrasing of the fourth of the statements, but that the formulation makes it look like a claim to being an oracular claim to revealed universal truth when the full wording of PD04 is much more realistic and practical.

As bad or worse is that isolating it in this way strips the statement of its context. I'm convinced the context is the very stark question of "how can you be sure that you'll remain happy when the evils of the body and external evils are not within your complete control. That's the challenge that they were answering, such as in the way that Cicero framed it in Part 5 of Tusculan Disputations:

Quote

And this very thing, too, Metrodorus has said, but in better language: “I have anticipated you, Fortune; I have caught you, and cut off every access, so that you cannot possibly reach me.” This would be excellent in the mouth of Aristo the Chian, or Zeno the Stoic, who held nothing to be an evil but what was base; but for you, Metrodorus, to anticipate the approaches of fortune, who confine all that is good to your bowels and marrow,—for you to say so, who define the chief good by a strong constitution of body, and a well assured hope of its continuance,—for you to cut off every access of fortune? Why, you may instantly be deprived of that good. Yet the simple are taken with these propositions, and a vast crowd is led away by such sentences to become their followers.

Cicero may deride this as simplistic snake-oil that takes in the unsophisticated, but PD04 is very reasonable and unchallengable. Moderate pains can be lived with, and if pains get so bad we can't live with them and don't go away, we ourselves have the remedy in that we can terminate our lives. In no way does pain have the ability to hold us in its grip forever. We are in control, not pain. Metrodorus' formulation explains the calculation, especially when it is given in FULL:

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VS47. I have anticipated thee, Fortune, and entrenched myself against all thy secret attacks. And I will not give myself up as captive to thee or to any other circumstance; but when it is time for me to go, spitting contempt on life and on those who vainly cling to it, I will leave life crying aloud a glorious triumph-song that I have lived well.

And that's why I see Dave's concern , which is so often shared by others, The Tetrapharmakon serves well as a memory device for educated Epicureans, but others who throw it around without knowing the full ideas that it outlines are often woefully misinterpreting it.

And to repeat for Dave and for lurkers, you NEVER hear the Tetrapharmakon formulation stated by Epicurus, or by Lucretius, or by DIogenes of Oinoanda, or by anyone else whose text is expansive and fully-preserved and completely clear.

The hazard is exactly what we see Dave stating. Dave thinks he has to reject something that he believes to be a well established and core statement of Epicurean doctrine when it is not.

Please welcome AUtC who tells me:

Hello, I would like to learn more about Epicureanism. I want to talk to others that are also interested in the same things. I have no background or deep education on Epicurean, other than what I have read online in a few spaces.

Thank you.

Welcome AUtC !

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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 most other philosophies, 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 of truth and happy living through pleasure as explained in the principles of Epicurean philosophy.

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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!

As for me personally this may be why i think the word "Quasi" always sounds fake or negative:

kll, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasimodo

Eikadistes thank you for all that commentary!

I don't disagree with any of it but would mention only slight tone question as to "quasi." In my mind that word for some reason carries a negative connotation that evokes space ghosts, but I don't think what Cicero was conveying should be presumed to carry any baggage with it. I would infer it to mean only "something like" or "something analogous too" or "something that functions analogously" and I would not read more into it than that.

Having said that I agree with virtually everything you wrote there. *Everything* gives off images not just gods and not just things that are close or far away.

Now that I have scanned through once the entire book, I've refocused the title of the Zoom meeting. I am pretty sure that this is a work about which most of us are very unfamiliar, so let's just spend the meeting introducing ourselves to Bernier, Gassendi, and what's included in this work.

The paraphrase included at the Early Modern Texts website is useful, but now that I've reviewed the origina PDF at Archive.org l I'd say that we are better off going straight to the source, especially given that the EMT website glosses over or omits entirely part of the text.

We obviously aren't going to have time to go through this in detail, but i think most of us are going to want to add this to our reading list at some point, and we can usefully set the stage for that by talking about Bernier, Gassendi, and how the book is structured.

We're also going to want to make a list of caveats and/or criticisms that we can append to our links to it here at the forum so that new readers can have access to those into the future.

We'll probably refer mostly to the comments contained in this thread and of course to the Archive.org version of the book itself which is here:

Three discourses of happiness, virtue and liberty. 1699 : Gassendi, Pierre. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Three discourses of happiness, virtue and liberty. 1699..Digitized from IA40313015-80.Previous issue:...

archive.org

So Francois Bernier is the person to whom we owe so much here for access to this material:

François Bernier - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Bernier abridged and translated the philosophical writings of his friend Pierre Gassendi from Latin into French. Initial editions of Bernier's Abregé de la Philosophie de Gassendi were published in Paris in 1674 by the family Langlois and in 1675 by Estienne Michallet. A complete edition in eight volumes was published by Anisson and Posuel at Lyon in 1678; Anisson and Posuel joined with Rigaud to publish a second edition in seven volumes in 1684. Bernier objectively and faithfully rendered Gassendi's ideas in his Abregé, without editorial interjection or invention. However, Bernier remained uncomfortable with some of Gassendi's notions: in 1682, Estienne Michallet was again his publisher, putting forth his Doutes de Mr. Bernier sur quelques-uns des principaux Chapitres de son Abregé de la Philosophie de Gassendi.

Page 425

Clear evidence of Gassendi letting his religion get in the way of his reasoning:

Gassendi seems to specifically repudiate Epicurus on the swerve and liberty, leading up to this statement:

Page 405 -

On page 362 there is a discussion of Theophrastus taking the position that it is ok to lie for a friend because friendship is the higher priority. I'm not sure that I have seen where Epicurus commented on that kind of apparent conflict between Friendship and Virtue (honesty) but I suspect that the Stoics would be none to happy with Theophrastus and perhaps Aristotle over this (?)

On page 347 under Virtue I see this paragraph which appears in the midst of a section on Epicurean views of friendship. but seems to deviate what i understand to be the standard understanding that Epicurus took the position that friends should NOT hold their property in common. Could be an example of Gassendi misinterpreting or misstating Epicurus but would need further review. Later in the page he mentions Aristotle so he could be mashing together Epicurus with Aristotle even though much of this section seems to be quoted from the Torquatus section of On Ends.

Note: This will be the thread to post about Gassendi's commentary on Epicurus from the "Liberty" section of his 1699 Three Discourses On Happiness - Virtue - Liberty.

Note thanks to Tau Phi that there is a digital transcription here.

An example of info on Epicurus from page 394:

Note: This will be the thread to post about Gassendi's commentary on Epicurus from the "Virtue" section of his 1699 Three Discourses On Happiness - Virtue - Liberty.

Some PDF page references:
Virtue; 177
Stoics; 184
Epicurus on Following Nature; 209
Lactantius' Objections To Epicurus; 211
Epicurus on Natural Ties Between Men; 226
Politics - Colotes; 230
Epicurus - A mean soul becomes insolent in prosperity and dejected in adversity; 266
Pain (seems to follow Epicurus); 283
Epicurus on sobriety; 287
Epicurus - Extraordinary anger turns a man into a fool; 301
Epicurus on Justice; 317
No justice with those who cannot undersand justice; 325
Epicurus gives the strongest foundation of Justice; 330
Epicurus on Reverencing God; 343
Here Let us leave Epicurus; 346
Cites Cicero on True Law As Right Reason; 348