Posts by Cassius

Starting this thread just in case you don't get a notification of the existence of the new file. Be sure to check this out:

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When Does Epicurus' Birthday Fall?

When is the celebration of the Hegemon this year?

Eikadistes

May 29, 2023 at 1:39 PM

Also worth noting is that it is not hard to decide which approach works best for you. Read Chapter One of Dewitt and Chapter One of Austin and you will quickly determine which style best suits you personally.

I'm now out of time to read further in More, but boy he seems to exemplify all that goes wrong when you start out thinking that Epicurus is all about running from pain. The ethical ideal of the garden is summed up as "living unknown?" Really?

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Certainly, when we pass from consideration of the chief good to the philosophical theories which Epicurus developed to explain and justify his choice of that good, the idea of security becomes altogether predominant ; it is the keynote equally of his ethics, his science, and his attitude towards religion.

The ethical ideal of the Garden is summed up in the famous maxim, "Live concealed" (lathe biosas), or, as Horace exquisitely phrases it, the fallentis semita vitae. In this way alone would the perfect ataraxy be attained.

First thought:

Accepting Epicurus means that I have good reason for taking responsibility for my own life as well as the tools with which to do it.

I think a lot of More's problem can be traced back, and thus met head on, by identifying that his argument rest on an absolutist viewpoint:

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Into such paradoxical combinations and antagonisms we are driven as soon as we try to shun the simple truth that good is good and evil is evil, each in its own right and judged by its immediate effect in the soul.

And yet never in this argument does he identify what the good is, or what the evil is, other than hint that it exists somewhere and that Epicurus is a fool for not realizing it. Probably the rest of the book includes something that would tell us whether More is a skeptic, and maintains that good and evil really don't exist at all, or (more likely) that he places knowledge of them in religion or in "logic," but as I see it that's the basic issue. Epicurus is honest enough to go with allowing Nature to be the judge of this through the feelings of pleasure and pain. More has some other and allegedly higher point of reference, for the existence of which I personally (and I think Epicurus) see no good evidence for believing in.

Thank you Don for tracking that down. I have never previously taken the time to track it down. Having now seen it I think it is worth us considering the full attack:

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"The difficulty that confronts us when we try to understand Epicurus is the extraordinary paradox of his logic. What, in a word, is to be said of a philosophy that begins with regarding pleasure as the only positive good and ends by emptying pleasure of all positive content ? There is no possibility, I think, of really reconciling this blunt contradiction, which was sufficiently obvious to the enemies of Epicurus in antiquity, but it is possible, with the aid of Plutarch's shrewd analysis, to follow him step by step from his premises to his conclusions, and so to discover the source of his entanglement.

Epicurus began with the materialistic and monistic theses which had allured Aristippus, and which, mingled in varying proportions from the teaching of Heraclitus and Protagoras and Democritus, had come to be the prevailing belief of the Greek people; they were, indeed, no more than the essence refined out of the voluble lecturing and debating of the so-called sophists against whom Socrates and Plato had waged a relentless but unsuccessful warfare. This visible palpable world of bodies is the only reality, and the only thing which to man, in such a world, has any certain value is his own immediate physical sensations. Pleasure we feel and pain we feel, in their various degrees and complications; and we know that all men welcome pleasure and shrink from pain by a necessity of nature. Pleasure, in fact, is simply a name for the sensation which we do welcome, and pain for the sensation from which we do shrink. The example of infants and animals is before us to nullify any attempt to argue away this primary distinction.

These are the premises of Epicurus, as they had been of Aristippus, and to these he will cling through thick and thin, whatever their consequences may be and however they may entangle him in self-contradictions. He seems even to have gone out of his way at times to find the grossest terms to express the doctrine, whether his motive was to shock the Philistines of morality or to fortify himself and his friends in their positive belief. The avowed programme of the school was "not to save the Greeks, but to indulge the belly to the limit of safety with meat and drink"; and in a letter to a friend Epicurus says : "I invite you to continuous pleasures, not to virtues that unsettle the mind with vain and empty hopes of fruition."

The programme is simple enough in all conscience, and might satisfy the most cynical votary of the flesh, but, desiring like his predecessor to be a voluptuary, Epicurus was driven despite himself to be a philosopher, even more a philosopher than the Cyrenaic, whether his wisdom came from deeper reflection or greater timidity. His experience might be described as the opposite of that of Johnson's humble acquaintance who had been trying all his life to attain philosophy but failed because cheerfulness would break in.

Aristippus could make a boast of his "Habeo, non habeor" but, however he might twist about, his dependence on the fleeting sensation of the moment left him at last a prey to the hazards of circumstance. Clearly the hedonist who was enough of a philosopher to aim at liberty and security must embrace a wider view of life than the Cyrenaic; and so the first step of Epicurus was to take happiness, conceived as a continuous state of pleasure, rather than particular pleasures, for the goal. This is the initial, and perhaps the most fundamental, difference between the strictly Epicurean and the Cyrenaic brand of hedonism.

But how, taking individual pleasures still in the grossly physical sense, was a man to assure himself of their consummation in happiness? It was well to make a god of the belly and, in the Epicurean language, of any other passage of the body that admitted pleasure and not pain, but, as soon as he began to reflect, the philosopher was confronted by the ugly fact that the entrances of pain are more numerous than those of pleasure, and that the paroxysms of pain may surpass in intensity any conceivable pleasure. He saw that there was something ephemeral and insecure in the very nature of pleasure, whereas pain had terrible rights over the flesh, and could dispute her domain with a vigour far beyond the power of her antagonist. Evidently, in a world so constituted, the aim of the philosopher will be lowered from a bold search for sensations to the humbler task of attaining some measure of security against forces he cannot control; and so, I think, we shall interpret the curious phenomenon that the greatest of all hedonists was driven to a purely defensive attitude towards life.

On the one hand he knew, as Plato had shown, that the recovery from disease and the relief from anguish do bring a sense of active well-being, and hence it was possible for him to define pleasure in negative terms without seeming to contradict flagrantly his grosser views about the belly and other bodily organs. Again, since positive pleasure and pain by some law of nature are so intimately bound together that the cessation of one is associated with access of the other, then, clearly, the only pleasure free of this unpleasant termination is that which is itself not positively induced but comes as the result of receding pain. For the content of happiness, therefore, the Epicurean will look to sensation of a negative sort: "The limit of pleasure is reached by the removal of all that gives pain," and "Pleasure in the flesh admits no increase, when once the pain of want is removed; it can only be variegated."

But the philosopher cannot stop here. 'Such a state of release, though in itself it may not be subject to the laws of alternative pleasure and pain, is yet open to interruption from the hazards of life. And so Epicurus, in his pursuit of happiness, is carried a step further. Not on the present possession of pleasure, whether positive or negative, will he depend for security of hap- piness, but on the power of memory. Here, at least, we appear to be free and safe, for memory is our own. Nothing can deprive us of that recollected joy, "which is the bliss of solitude" ; even what was distressful at the time may often, by some alchemy of the mind, be transmuted into a happy reminiscence:

"Things which offend when present, and affright,

In memory, well painted, move delight"

The true hedonism, then, will be a creation in the mind from material furnished it by the body. Plutarch describes the procedure of Epicurus thus, and exposes also its inadequacy:

Seeing that the field of joy in our poor bodies cannot be smooth and equal, but harsh and broken and mingled with much that is contrary, he transfers the exercise of philosophy from the flesh, as from a lean and barren soil, to the mind, in the hopes of enjoying there, as it were, large pastures and fair meadows of delight. Not in the body but in the soul is the true garden of the Epicurean to be cultivated. It might seem as if by the waving of a magic wand we had been translated from a materialistic hedonism to a region like that in which Socrates and Plato looked for unearthly happiness.

But in fact there is no such magic for the Epicurean. The source of the pleasures which compose our happiness is still physical, and only physical; the office of the soul, so-called, is merely to retain by an act of selective memory the scattered impressions of sensuous pleasure and to forestall these by an act of selective expectation. If you hear the Epicurean crying out and testifying that the soul has no power of joy and tranquillity save in what it draws from the flesh, and that this is its only good, what can you say but that he uses the soul as a kind of vessel to receive the strainings from the body, as men rack wine from an old and leaky jar into a new one to take age, and so think they have done some wonderful thing.

And no doubt wine may be kept and mellowed with time, but the soul preserves no more than a feeble scent of what it takes into memory; for pleasure, as soon as it has given out one hiss in the body, forthwith expires, and that little of it which lags behind in memory is but flat and like a queasy fume, as if a man should undertake to feed himself today on the stale recollection of what he ate and drank yesterday. What the Epicureans have is but the empty shadow and dream of a pleasure that has taken wing and fled away, and that serves but for fuel to foment their untamed desires, as in sleep the unreal satisfaction of thirst and love only stings to a sharper lust of waking intemperance.

Memory, though it promise a release from the vicissitudes of fortune, is still too dependent on the facts of life, too deeply implicated in the recurrence of passionate desires. There is no finality of happiness here, and so the Epicurean is driven on to further refinement. If pushed hard, he will take refuge in imagining a possible painlessness of the body and a possible stability of untroubled ease. Life itself, in some rare instances, may afford the substance of this comfort, and memory then will be sufficient; but if the substance eludes us, we have still that within us which by the exercise of free will can lull the mind into fancying it remembers what it never possessed.

Step by step the reflective hedonist has been driven by the lessons of experience from the pursuit of positive pleasure to acquiescence in pleasure conceived as the removal of pain; from present ease in the flesh to the subtilizing power of memory in the mind, and, when memory is starved, to the voluntary imagination that life has gone well with him. The fabled ataraxy, or imperturbable calm, of the Epicurean turns out to be something very like a pale beatitude of illusory abstraction from the tyranny of facts, the wilful mirage of a soul which imagines itself, but is not really, set apart from the material universe of chance and change. "Habeo, non habeor," was the challenge of Aristippus to the world; the master of the Garden will be content with the more modest half : Non habeor.

There is something to startle the mind in this defensive conclusion of a philosophy which opened its attack on life under such brave and flaunting colours. There is much to cause reflection when one considers how in the end hedonism is forced into an unnatural conjunction with the other monistic philosophy with which its principles are in such violent conflict. For this ataraxy of the avowed lover of ease and pleasure can scarcely be distinguished from the apathy which the Stoic devotees of pain and labour glorified as the goal of life.

This is strange. It is stranger still, remembering this negative conclusion of Epicurean and Stoic, by which good becomes a mere deprivation of evil, to cast the mind forward to the metaphysics of another and later school of monism which led the Neoplatonist to reckon evil as a mere deprivation of good. Into such paradoxical combinations and antagonisms we are driven as soon as we try to shun the simple truth that good is good and evil is evil, each in its own right and judged by its immediate effect in the soul.

It may appear from the foregoing that the hedonist, in his pursuit of the summum bonum, argues from point to point in a straight line; in practice he seems rather to follow no single guide, but to fluctuate between two disparate yet inseparable motives. At one time, in a world where sensation is the only criterion of truth and the basis of all reality, the liberty of enjoyment is the lure that draws him on; at another - a world of chance and change or of mechanical law which takes no great heed of our wants, it seems as if security from misadventure must be the limit of man's desire. Other philosophers, the Platonist in his vision of the world of Ideas, the Christian in his submission to the will of God, may see their way running straight before them to the one sure goal of spiritual happiness, in which liberty and security join hands. The path of the hedonist wavers from side to side, aiming now at positive pleasure and now at mere escape from pain; and this, I take it, is one of the curious reprisals of truth, that the dualist should have in view a single end, whereas the monist should be distracted by a double purpose.

Whether one or the other of the revolving objects shall stand out clearer before the hedonist's gaze, will depend perhaps chiefly upon his temperament. With an Aristippus the pleasure of the moment is supreme, though he too will have his eye open for the need of safety; with an Epicurus, more timid by nature and more reflective, the thought of security at the last will almost, if never quite, obliterate the enticement of pleasure. It was still as a good Epicurean that Horace could write :

Sperne voluptates, nocet empta dolore voluptas.

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"𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝐰𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐢𝐧 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐩𝐬 𝐮𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐬𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐰". - Pericles the Athenian

I consider this sentence by Pericles (through the great Historian Thucydides) to be very important. He says that the pleasure which we 𝐝𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐲 feel helps us to banish any sorrow. Yes, this is clear and obvious: when many people in a society feel sorrow and melancholy are due to their fear of god, fear of death and are the same issues that lead to loneliness and depression the persons in a society. In this society people are not participating with gladness in common affairs political or religious. They are not creative. They are not grateful. They are not eudeamonic/blissful.

They are fatalists, apathetics and suspicious to each other. And they blindly vote for leaders like themselves, who think that are like the axis of Earth spinning around the Universe. Because if the common affairs (philosophical, political, religious etc.) became boring, we may think and also this : Is there any virus in these peoples' life that provoke to them an illness as a great plague? Is there something that is going against to these peoples' nature?

IF the 𝐝𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐲 things and common issues, in any society, bring to people the painful feelings of sorrow, stress, agony, depression and melancholy, this society is doomed to be dissolved, because these feelings lead to suspicion and disastrous actions among same people. This society has no coherence anymore. And as the greek idiom says : "in any disaster, only the carnivorous wolves are feeling happy".

And here we read from Meneoceus : "I (Epicurus) have abolished the Necessity that is introduced by some thinkers as the mistress of all things, for it were better to subscribe to the myths concerning the gods than to be a slave to the Destiny of the physicists, because the former presumes a hope of mercy through worship but the latter assumes Necessity to be inexorable".

And that means for being united with the others in my society I will put all the probabilities on the table for doing the hedonic calculus according to the right study of Nature and my nature, and even to subscribe worshiping with others our common gods. Because for being bliss and happy I will use all the tools that lead myself and my society living our unique life in pleasure. Since we all 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 that there is no other life nowhere else.

But when these tools do not bring us pleasure anymore e.g. worshiping some gods, we are able to change and even the image of those gods because we are 𝗳𝗿𝗲𝗲 to choose whatever brings to us pleasure. And when we say we are free, we are also 𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗼𝘂𝘀.

What does mean 𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗼𝘂𝘀 ? It means also self-sufficient, and as Epicurus says, the great fruit of self-sufficiency is freedom. A𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗼𝘂𝘀 also is the epicurean swerve (pareglisi) which means we are responsible and capable to give all the laws by ourselves and for ourselves since, we do not accept that the laws are given by some leaders or by any god when they are proved harmful. We are able to change and the laws, and the leaders and the gods when they do not bring to us any 𝗽𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲 in our daily common affairs.

However, what the new greeks are doing now in Epicurus homeland? They insist to vote the same stupid leaders. They insist to follow stupid religious leaders who are spreading the same image of a foreign stupid god.

I want back again all the 30 thousand ancient greek gods that their image was given clearly by Epicurus as natural beings that were living in bliss and pleasure that is according to the natural and not the unnatural. I want back that Democracy of Pericles that is all described of how can be achieved in his epitaph. I want hundreds of epicurean Gardens to be established in the cities of Epicurus' homeland. I want the epicurean philosophy to be taught properly inside the schools and academies. This choice and option is against the new greeks' sorrow and melancholy that became higher after the financial crisis.

No, thrice NO in Greece - and not only in Greece - the crisis 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥. The crisis is in all the values that have been turned upside down. The means i.e. the virtues became as abstract goals, and the real goal i.e. the pleasure and eudaemonia, and the proclaimer of these feelings Epicurus, is hidden and be slandered for centuries and centuries till our days.

𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲𝘀 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗻𝗼𝘄!

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Glad to have you Blank_Emu43!

Welcome @Blank_Emu43 !

There is one last step to complete your registration:

All new registrants must post a response to this message here in this welcome thread (we do this in order to minimize spam registrations).

You must post your response within 72 hours, or your account will be subject to deletion. All that is required is a "Hello!" but of course we hope you will introduce yourself -- tell us a little about yourself and what prompted your interest in Epicureanism -- 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.

1. "Epicurus and His Philosophy" by Norman DeWitt
2. The Biography of Epicurus by Diogenes Laertius. This includes the surviving letters of Epicurus, including those to Herodotus, Pythocles, and Menoeceus.
3. "On The Nature of Things" - by Lucretius (a poetic abridgement of Epicurus' "On Nature"
4. "Epicurus on Pleasure" - By Boris Nikolsky
5. The chapters on Epicurus in Gosling and Taylor's "The Greeks On Pleasure."
6. Cicero's "On Ends" - Torquatus Section
7. Cicero's "On The Nature of the Gods" - Velleius Section
8. The Inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda - Martin Ferguson Smith translation
9. A Few Days In Athens" - Frances Wright
10. Lucian Core Texts on Epicurus: (1) Alexander the Oracle-Monger, (2) Hermotimus
11. Philodemus "On Methods of Inference" (De Lacy version, including his appendix on relationship of Epicurean canon to Aristotle and other Greeks)
12. "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!

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In our discussions we spend most of our time talking about Torquatus' positive presentation of Epicurean ethics in Book One of "On Ends," but there is a lot of material also in Book Two.

In this episode of the podcast DeWitt reminds us of the criticism that Cicero raised that we should not be calling a state of absence of pain as a positive pleasure. Cicero knew that it is important to Epicurean theory that we be able to do just that, so to be sure we are on top of this issue here is some of the important material, this from the Reid translation of On Ends.

I have highlighted at the end of this passage CIcero's attempt to ridicule the idea that the host who pours a libation for a thirsty guest can be thought of as experiencing just as much pleasure as the guest who drinks it.

Cicero seeks to make that look ridiculous, but this is true if we think logically of all types of pleasure as pleasure (this is the "Unity of Pleasure" that DeWitt is talking about). In this example each person is experiencing the positive pleasure of being alive without pain, and even if they are experiencing different types of pleasure at the particular moment, if they are experiencing no pain then they are experiencing the height of pleasure open to them (as pleasure is filling their experience so they are in no pain.)

(Note - the following quotes are from Reid)

DeWitt sees this "unity of pleasure" perspective as the intent of the point to be taken from PD09:

PD09. If every pleasure could be intensified so that it lasted, and influenced the whole organism or the most essential parts of our nature, pleasures would never differ from one another.

And I think he is probably correct.

As Kalosyni and others have noted, we interviewed Emily Austin earlier in Podcasts 156 and 157, so we don't want a straight repeat of what we've already discussed with her before. I'm thinking that the intervening months since then have opened up lots of room for follow-up thought on interviews and responses she has received since then, so let's think about that angle as part of thinking up questions so we can make the most of our time with her.

Thread

Episode 156 - Lucretius Today Interviews Dr. Emily Austin - Part One

Welcome to episode 156, a special two-part Episode 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 too find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where…

Cassius

January 10, 2023 at 12:58 AM

Thread

Episode 157 - Lucretius Today Interviews Dr. Emily Austin - Part Two

Welcome to episode 157, part two of a special two part Episode 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 too find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at…

Cassius

January 19, 2023 at 10:13 AM

Quote from Godfrey

Then I discovered this forum; at that time writing and developing personal outlines of the philosophy was being emphasized. I found writing and getting feedback on an outline was very helpful, a bit intimidating, and just a beginning.

We should begin to emphasis that again and keep at it!

Also as to the Cyreniacs, Diogenes Laertius records:

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He differs from the Cyrenaics with regard to pleasure. They do not include under the term the pleasure which is a state of rest, but only that which consists in motion. Epicurus admits both; also pleasure of mind as well as of body, as he states in his work On Choice and Avoidance and in that On the Ethical End, and in the first book of his work On Human Life and in the epistle to his philosopher friends in Mytilene.

So also Diogenes in the seventeenth book of his Epilecta, and Metrodorus in his Timocrates, whose actual words are: “Thus Pleasure being conceived both as that species which consists in motion and that which is a state of rest.” The words of Epicurus in his work On Choice are : “Peace of mind and freedom from pain are pleasures which imply a state of rest; joy and delight are seen to consist in motion and activity.”

He further disagrees with the Cyrenaics in that they hold that pains of body are worse than mental pains; at all events evil-doers are made to suffer bodily punishment; whereas Epicurus holds the pains of the mind to be the worse; at any rate the flesh endures the storms of the present alone, the mind those of the past and future as well as the present. In this way also he holds mental pleasures to be greater than those of the body.

Don is this commentary from Bailey about the section we are examining? As usual Bailey spins hard for minimalism...

An admonition against sleeping or idleness would remind me of this from Jefferson's letter to William Short:

Quote from Thomas Jefferson to William Short

I take the liberty of observing that you are not a true disciple of our master Epicurus, in indulging the indolence to which you say you are yielding. One of his canons, you know, was that “that indulgence which prevents a greater pleasure, or produces a greater pain, is to be avoided.” Your love of repose will lead, in its progress, to a suspension of healthy exercise, a relaxation of mind, an indifference to everything around you, and finally to a debility of body, and hebetude of mind, the farthest of all things from the happiness which the well-regulated indulgences of Epicurus ensure; fortitude, you know is one of his four cardinal virtues. That teaches us to meet and surmount difficulties; not to fly from them, like cowards; and to fly, too, in vain, for they will meet and arrest us at every turn of our road. Weigh this matter well; brace yourself up;

Kalsoyni asked me about that and every other translation I can find (Bailey, Hicks, Yonge, Epicurus Wiki) focuses on prodigal and sensuality.

If it is correct that "sleeping" or "idleness" should be in here, that places a much different spin on the advice and will be very helpful in fighting back the slant that "tranquility' means that Epicureans just want to lay around and do nothing. It would almost be a mirror of VS63 warning against opposite extremes of luxury and frugality.

Also: VS11. For most men rest is stagnation, and activity is madness.

I wonder if the word translated as "stagnation" there is relevant?

How could the standard translations be incorrect on this? Are they bringing to the table what they expect to see?

TC - You are right to want to read the original materials, and right that there is much disagreement.

The biography by Diogenes Laertius contains three letters by Epicurus himself, and there are fragments that seem reliable but no way to be sure.

This is a continuing source of confusion that is not going away. Most everyone has exactly the same question, and if they don't, they aren't paying attention.

This should be a great thread to get lots of different views from those of us who have been through this before.

Welcome to Episode 176 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. We are now in the process of a series of podcasts intended to provide a general overview of Epicurean philosophy based on the organizational structure employed by Norman DeWitt in his book "Epicurus and His Philosophy." This week we continue our discussion of Chapter 12, entitled "The New Hedonism."

This week;

The Root of All Good

Pleasure Can Be Continuous

Next Week:

Continuous Pain Impossible

The Relation of Pleasure To Virtue

Let's use THIS thread of Kalosyni's to accumulate questions for Emily Austin:

Thread

Questions for Emily Austin - "Living for Pleasure" Zoom Meeting June 4

Let's use this thread to accumulate questions for Emily Austin. Everyone can post their questions here in this thread, and then as we go along we will update this post with the best questions and use it as a guide at the meeting.

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Questions for Dr. Emily Austin: Well be coming from a slightly different vantage point compared to our previous interview on the Lucretius Today Podcast. We'd like to gear this interview for…

Kalosyni

May 26, 2023 at 4:15 PM

In order for us to handle the Q&A with Dr. Austin efficiently, it would be good to have a list of prepared questions that Kalosyni or other moderators of the discussion can use to start everything off.

We will compile a list such as (for example only):

1 - If you were writing the book over again today, would you change anything?

2 - What plans do you have for future writing on Epicurus?