Posts by Cassius

Quote from Godfrey

Which would Epicurus choose?

That is a very good follow on question to help articulate the answer to the first and main question: Would Epicurus himself have traded places for the week that is under discussion?

I think this poll should be very interesting and after we see some commentary and look for fine tuning I am going to put it on the Facebook group!

The Poll Question is as stated in the header. Please reply, and state your reasoning, with any cites you think are applicable, in the thread below!

Started September 6, 2023:

Quisquis enim sentit quemadmodum sit affectus, eum necesse est aut in voluptate esse aut in dolore.

[A]ny one who is conscious of his own condition must needs be either in a state of pleasure or in a state of pain.

- Torquatus in Cicero's "On Ends" Book One XI:38 (Reid)

Also on this point, from very early in the thread:

Quote from Don

This line caught me by surprise! Is Epicurus endorsing the idea of "neutral states" in addition to pleasure and pain?! As always, back to the books!

Another clear statement that Epicurus held there to be no third or neutral state between pleasure and pain -- at least as to those who are conscious. This is the position we see being hammered over and over and over by Torquatus and explicitly falling on Cicero's deaf (or stubborn) ears:

Quote from Torquatus in Cicero's On Ends, Book One, Section XI

For just as the mere removal of annoyance brings with it the realization of pleasure, whenever hunger and thirst have been banished by food and drink, so in every case the banishment of pain ensures its replacement by pleasure. Therefore Epicurus refused to allow that there is any middle term between pain and pleasure; what was thought by some to be a middle term, the absence of all pain, was not only itself pleasure, but the highest pleasure possible. Surely any one who is conscious of his own condition must needs be either in a state of pleasure or in a state of pain.

Quote from Don

Edit: see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accident_…%29?wprov=sfla1

Now, this being said, I think Cassius 's primary issue with "accident" as a translation being problematic is that it could be misunderstood by the casual reader to imply chance, luck, or fortune as in common parlance. I do think that could be an issue. It is a philosophical jargon word per that Wikipedia article.

Yes that is exactly the point.

In the mechanical aspects of the universe, things are not "accidental/fortuitous" in the sense that the exact same combinations of the same atoms in the same way at the same places will accidentally/fortuitously produce different results - they produce repeatable and reliable results, and that is why we see the regularity in the universe. The word "accident" can imply that the result could be otherwise for unknowable factors, and I would say that that is why Lucretius uses the word "eventum," "Event" at least today has more of an expected quality to it than does accidental. "Today's events will include and eclipse of the sun" means something different than "Today there will accidentally be an eclipse of the sun." It is not at all an accident that there will be an eclipse today, and based on what Epicurus says in the letter to Herodotus things like eclipses have been mechanically set in motion since the time the "world" came into being. Now no doubt there are also some truly "accidental" things, but those are more where the swerve ends up allowing for free will in living things, not in the billiard-ball functioning of much of the universe. If the swerve made all things totally unpredictable and if that is what we infer from the word "accidental" then the whole physics would be destroyed because nothing could ever be predicted. This aspect of the difference between words like chance and fortune etc is discussed in detail in the AA Long article I swear by on this topic: "Chance and Natural Law in Epicureanism."

And relevant to our recent discussions of Cicero, Long points out that of all of CIcero's many criticisms of Epicurus, Cicero never argued that the swerve destroys the regularity of the physics. From the absence of this argument Long concludes that Cicero declined to include it because everyone (including Cicero) understood that Epicurus did not consider the workings of the universe to be "accidental." The universe isn't "intentional" or "intelligent" but it's not "accidental" either.

This is the frequently out-of-tune Bailey using "accident"

Quote

[B-1:449] For all things that have a name, you will find either properties linked to these two things or you will see them to be their accidents. That is a property which in no case can be sundered or separated without the fatal disunion of the thing, as is weight to rocks, heat to fire, moisture to water, touch to all bodies, intangibility to the void. On the other hand, slavery, poverty, riches, liberty, war, concord, and other things by whose coming and going the nature of things abides untouched, these we are used, as is natural, to call accidents. Even so time exists not by itself, but from actual things comes a feeling, what was brought to a close in time past, then what is present now, and further what is going to be hereafter. And it must be avowed that no man feels time by itself apart from the motion or quiet rest of things.

This is Brown 1743 wavering but clearly preferring "event":

Quote

[449] All other things you'll find essential conjuncts, or else the events or accidents of these. I call essential conjunct what's so joined to a thing that it cannot, without fatal violence, be forced or parted from it; is weight to stones, to fire heat, moisture to the Sea, touch to all bodies, and not to be touched essential is to void. But, on the contrary, Bondage, Liberty, Riches, Poverty, War, Concord, or the like, which not affect the nature of the thing, but when they come or go, the thing remains entire; these, as it is fit we should, we call Events. Time, likewise, of itself is nothing; our sense collects from things themselves what has been done long since, the thing that present is, and what's to come. For no one, we must own, ever thought of Time distinct from things in motion or at rest.

And this is Lucretius' Latin using "eventa":

Nam quae cumque cluent, aut his coniuncta duabus
rebus ea invenies aut horum eventa videbis. 450
coniunctum est id quod nusquam sine permitiali
discidio potis est seiungi seque gregari,
pondus uti saxis, calor ignis, liquor aquai,
tactus corporibus cunctis, intactus inani.
servitium contra paupertas divitiaeque, 455
libertas bellum concordia cetera quorum
adventu manet incolumis natura abituque,
haec soliti sumus, ut par est, eventa vocare.
tempus item per se non est, sed rebus ab ipsis
consequitur sensus, transactum quid sit in aevo, 460
tum quae res instet, quid porro deinde sequatur;
nec per se quemquam tempus sentire fatendumst
semotum ab rerum motu placidaque quiete.

I gather the word "accidens" exists too and maybe it appears in some other parts of the texts, but here where the key issue is being discussed the word appears to be eventum.

Also, given Brown 1743's word choice here, this is why I like to check that translation for comparisons, because this edition arguably seems to me to be sometimes more "in tune" with tone or word choice that Epicurus might have used given a broad view of all the texts.

I am with the "quality ofqualities" interpetation, so far. If I recall we often see "accident of accidents" but I dislike that term "accident" as it implies things that I do not think are consistent with what Epicurus is saying. The "eventum" in Lucretius sounds better to me, and would imply an "event of events" which like "quality of qualities" seems to make more sense to me, just like you can combine colors (which I think are qualities) and get new colors (which would seem like qualities of qualities).

I think I remember (?) Lucretius going on about void having no other qualities whatsoever except the ability to yield/give place to matter. Now it's the combination of matter and void that produces bodies and motion, but I can't see void alone giving rise to anything else.

In a sense I see all bodies as being qualities, and bodies coming into larger bodies is the chain all the way up from molecules to mountains. So "qualities of qualities" might not be something unusual, but might actually be the normal expression.

It seems to me the related difficult issue is the "properties" question,m where they say that for example you can't separate wetness from water. It makes sense to me to label things we interact with as qualities of bodies and qualities of qualities, but the question of where to draw the line between properties and non-properties probably requires further explanation as to how it relates to words. Probably as to physical things like water it is a distinction founded in a physical phenomena that doesn't matter what word we use to describe it.

From Epicurus and His Philosophy:

Page 67 - Epicurus was in revolt also against the teachings of Democritus, Socrates, Plato, and the rest concerning the function of philosophy. The Phi Beta Kappa idea that "Philosophy is the guide of life" was already commonplace, but no one was interpreting it very practically, To the great atomist Leucippus, Epicurus even denied right to the name of philosopher, because he concerned himself with physics to the exclusion of ethics. The ground upon which this was denied was neatly expressed: "Vain is the word of that philosopher by which no malady of mankind is healed." This position was arrived at by way of the analogy with medicine, itself an inert commonplace in the then current philosophies. He proposed to put life into it: "For just as there is no profit in medicine unless it expels the diseases of the body, so there is none in philosophy either unless it expels the malady of the soul." With Democritus himself Epicurus was impatient became or his implicit skepticism, which to him was a sort of pessimism paralyzing to action.

page 175 - Concurrently with the labors of the tragedians over the problem of fate and freedom the physicists had been busy erecting an edifice of thought of which the end result was a kind of fatalism even more shocking to the sensibilities of Epicurus. We still possess his pronouncement upon the topic: "It were better to follow the myths concerning the gods than' to be a slave to the Necessity of the physicists, for the former presumes some hope of appeasement through worship of the gods while the latter presumes an inexorable Necessity." The crime of the physicists, in his judgment, had been their failure to deal with the problem of freedom, and their offense was at its worst in the case of the atomists, who found the sole cause of motion and change in the universe to be the motion of the atoms. On this point the feelings of Epicurus were so intense that he denied to Leucippus even the name of philosopher.

page 306 - The first impulse to genuine love of mankind seems to have had its source neither in philosophy nor political theorizing but in Hippocratic medicine. One of its sayings is well known: "Where there is love of mankind there will be love of healing," That the inspiration of Epicurus came to him by this avenue there can hardly be a minimum of doubt. His own mission was conceived to be one of healing: "Vain is the word of that philosopher by which no malady of mankind is healed, for just as there is no benefit in the art of medicine unless it expels the diseases of men's bodies, so there is none in philosophy either unless it expels the malady of the soul." It is on this principle that he denied to Leucippus the right to the name of philosopher and chiefly on the same ground that he broke with Democritus, who seemed in the opinion of his great disciple to impose upon men a paralyzing law of physical necessity.

So are gods totally real to us in the same way that color and time are totally real to us? (If so, is that deriving from (a) dreams of them (b) anticipations of them, or (c) both? Because Epicurus said that we need to consider dreams as "real," if I remember correctly, and presumably anticipations are "real" in this sense too?)

I cannot help but think about these issues in the context of David Sedley's comments on Epicurus being against radical atomic reductionism. I need to find those comments again. (Here they are)

Quote from Don

passiveness and impassibility, movement and repose, are equally comprised in time.

Don why would Epicurus not simply be talking about the movement of the atoms (either in isolation or in bodies, bodies being the big deal), with no reference to human feeling at that point. If the point of time is that the atoms are changing place, that might make sense (?)

I guess we have Yonge and Mench to compare let me see when I get to a computer

I agree first search is of the Greek words so I look forward to what you find.

If needed as a second thought, I might suggest that since the topic is awareness of time, it would make sense to point out that time does not stop just because we are unconscious of it, and some variation of unconsciousness might be viewed as "neutral."

"This line caught me by surprise! Is Epicurus endorsing the idea of "neutral states" in addition to pleasure and pain?! As always, back to the books"

Thanks for pointing that out and yes we need to address it!

For as long as we continue with the front page greeting and footer referencing the traditional calendars, we can plan to use the calculations from Wikipedia in the links below:

Thank You For Visiting EpicureanFriends.com, Where We Are Pleased To Be Alive In September Of The Year 2776 AUC And The 3rd Year Of The 700th Olympiad!

If someone thinks these calculations are not correct please let me know. Those Wikipedia links will stay in the footer version so they will always be easy to find.

Also, it may be tricky to know when to change the Olympiad year calculation, so if someone knows a good way to keep track of that, or sees that we fall behind in updating, please post about that too.

A little more Latin parsing:

Reid's choice of "their chief" sounds a little odd to the modern ear, so I for a moment switched that to Epicurus, but in looking at the Latin the name does appear only once, and in the context of "Epicureans" --

Et quod quaeritur saepe cur tam multi sint Epicurei, sunt aliae quoque causae, sed multitudinem haec maxime allicit quod ita putant dici ab illo, recta et honesta quae sint, ea facere ipsa per se laetitiam, id est voluptatem.

So I'll just annotate the Welcome header to say (Reid), but I wonder as a Latin exam where the reference back comes in.

Nodictionaries.com:

All leading toward a conclusion that seems to be pointed to from many directions, that Epicurus is telling us to consider being alive as itself an experience to identify as pleasurable and to take pleasure in, unless you are specifically in pain - and even then you can take pleasure because pain is short if intense and if long allows for pleasure to offset it.

Cicero is trying to twist that position into something absurd, and it's true that people are often so jaded that they no longer see the pleasure in life.

But this seems like a huge part of the Epicurean "attitude" toward life itself that explains an awful lot, and maybe even relates to this criticism of cynicism and jadedness in Lucretius:

Lucretius Book 2:1023 - "Now turn your mind, I pray, to a true reasoning. For a truth wondrously new is struggling to fall upon your ears, and a new face of things to reveal itself. Yet neither is anything so easy, but that at first it is more difficult to believe, and likewise nothing is so great or so marvelous but that little by little all decrease their wonder at it. First of all the bright clear color of the sky, and all it holds within it, the stars that wander here and there, and the moon and the sheen of the sun with its brilliant light; all these, if now they had come to being for the first time for mortals, if all unforeseen they were in a moment placed before their eyes, what story could be told more marvelous than these things, or what that the nations would less dare to believe beforehand? Nothing, I trow: so worthy of wonder would this sight have been. Yet think how no one now, wearied with satiety of seeing, deigns to gaze up at the shining quarters of the sky! Wherefore cease to spew out reason from your mind, struck with terror at mere newness, but rather with eager judgement weigh things, and, if you see them true, lift your hands and yield, or, if it is false, gird yourself to battle."

Interesting to compare VS27 (Bailey):

"In all other occupations the fruit comes painfully after completion, but, in philosophy, pleasure goes hand in hand with knowledge; for enjoyment does not follow comprehension, but comprehension and enjoyment are simultaneous."

I wouldn't necessarily say that all "occupations" are painful, but here the statement links pain explicitly with the occupation.

Philosophy as an occupation could be considered like baseball as an occupation, it is often if not always pleasurable while you are doing it.

I think that Epicurean theory would say that you could (and should) argue that in any "occupation" which is not painful, then whatever you are doing should be considered pleasurable for the same reason we are discussing.

As for my comment about whether virtuous action is pleasurable itself or instead "productive of pleasure," I am asking that because I think the general rule is that ALL action which is not painful is pleasurable. So I would say that virtuous action which is not immediately painful -- like contemplating art or literature or history is virtuous because it involves wisdom) --- those virtues ARE pleasurable immediately, and like with philosophy, you don't have to wait on some future time for pleasure to arrive.

I am convinced that it is key to the entire Epicurean position to take the position that whatever you are doing (and if you are doing it you are feeling it) in life, unless it is immediately painful, must be and should be considered pleasurable in itself. This is essential in establishing that pleasure is not limited to "sex drugs rock and roll" and that when you are not feeling pain you are feeling pleasure, and indeed that the highest quantity of pleasure is when there is no pain at all.

So I would expect the Latin might say that the virtuous action being referred to IS pleasurable rather than implying that pleasure is a later product, as the "productive of pleasure" translation might imply.

Yes I think he is right there in what is stated on the face of it, but Cicero is ridiculing the concept as if no Epicurean (or anyone else) should believe it.

As I see it Cicero is continuing his argument stated nearby that it is ridiculous to argue that reading history and literature and poetry is pleasurable -- he is building up his argument on the premise that pleasure means only "sex, drugs, and rock and roll."

That's why I think this is revealing. Cicero is basing a LOT of his argument all the way through the whole book on making people believe that pleasure means only bodily and immediate sensory stimulation.

And that's why I think this is a great sentence to contemplate -- an Epicurean needs to understand that ALL action which isn't painful is pleasurable, including what Cicero likes to think of as worthy and virtuous action that Cicero likes to reserve as a "higher" way of life.

As for the worthy and virtuous actions that are immediately painful, like in the wartime examples, an Epicurean would perform those, just as Torquatus eventually answers, because sometimes we choose painful actions when they lead to more less pain or more pleasure later.

This is from our podcast discussion of 9/03/23, taken from On Ends, Book 1:VII:25. It seems to me that this is a very important sentence and that the Latin should be scrutinized to confirm that the translations are correct, especially as to whether Cicero is saying that virtue is "productive of pleasure" or is itself "pleasurable."

Here is Reid:

"And when the question is asked, as it often is, why Epicureans are so numerous, I answer that there are no doubt other motives, but the motive which especially fascinates the crowd is this; they believe their chief to declare that all upright and honorable actions are in themselves productive of delight, or rather pleasure."

Here is Rackham from the Loeb edition:

Again as to the question often asked, why so many men are Epicureans, though it is not the only reason, the thing that most attracts the crowd is the belief that Epicurus declares right conduct and moral worth to be intrinsically and of themselves delightful, which means productive of pleasure.

Here is the Latin:

Et quod quaeritur saepe cur tam multi sint Epicurei, sunt aliae quoque causae, sed multitudinem haec maxime allicit quod ita putant dici ab illo, recta et honesta quae sint, ea facere ipsa per se laetitiam, id est voluptatem.

The arguments we introduced in this episode are:

1. As To Physics:
   1. Epicurus Borrowed from Democritus while at the same time reviling him;
   2. I:VI:20 As to the swerve and downward movement of atoms (which leads to Democritus' determinism);
   3. I:VI:20 As to Epicurus' rejection of infinite divisibility;
   4. I:VI:20 As to Democritus' view of the size of the sun (which leads to Democritus' skepticism) [Note: Cicero notes that the issue of images by which we see but also think comes from Democritus];
2. As To Canonics / Epistemology / Logic:
   1. Epicurus does away with the process of division;
   2. Epicurus says nothing about subdivision and partition;
   3. Epicurus gives no method for constructing an argument;
   4. Epicurus does not show how to unriddle fallacies or clarify ambiguities;
   5. Epicurus places his criteria of objective truth in the senses and thinks that it destroys the senses to admit for a moment that they might err in any way;
3. As to Ethics:
   1. The pursuit of pleasure as the goal belongs to Aristippus and was better and more frankly advocated by the Cyreniacs
   2. The Epicurean system is of such a character that no system is more unworthy of the human race, as “Nature has created and shaped us for higher aims.”
   3. The Torquatii did not look for bodily enjoyment or any pleasure when the ancestor wrenched the necklet from his foe, or punished his son.
   4. Cicero alleges that Epicureans do not value mental pleasure. [“What pleasure do you, Torquatus, or what does our friend Triarius here derive from literature, from records and the investigation of historical facts, from conning the poets, from learning by heart so laboriously so many lines? And do not say to me “Why, these very actions bring me pleasure, as theirs did to the Torquati” Never indeed did Epicurus or Metrodorus or any one possessed of any wisdom or any knowledge of the tenets of your school ever maintain such a position by such arguments. And when the question is asked, as it often is, why Epicureans are so numerous, I answer that there are no doubt other motives, but the motive which especially fascinates the crowd is this; they believe their chief to declare that all upright and honourable actions are in themselves productive of delight, or rather pleasure.”]