Posts by Cassius

in relation to this topic we also have what Diogenes Laertius recorded about Epicurus' view of the wise man on the rack. i note that Yonge disagrees with Bailey and Hicks as to whether the wise man will cry out in pain (Yonge says that he will not; the other two say he will) but that all agree that the wise man is considered to be happy even while on the rack / under torture.

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Laërtius, c. 222-235 κἂν στρεβλωθῇ δ’ ὁ σοφός, εἶναι αὐτὸν εὐδαίμονα. μόνον τε χάριν ἕξειν τὸν σοφόν, καὶ ἐπὶ φίλοις καὶ παροῦσι καὶ ἀποῦσιν ὁμοίως διατε εὐλογοῦντα. ὅτε μέντοι στρεβλοῦται, ἔνθα καὶ μύζει καὶ οἰμώζει. γυναικί τ’ οὐ μιγήσεσθαι τὸν σοφὸν ᾗ οἱ νόμοι ἀπαγορεύουσιν, ὥς φησι Διογένης ἐν τῇ Ἐπιτομῇ τῶν Ἐπικούρου ἠθικῶν δογμάτων. ...

Yonge, 1853 That even if the wise man were to be put to the torture, he would still be happy. That the wise man will only feel gratitude to his friends, but to them equally whether they are present or absent. Nor will he groan and howl when he is put to the torture.

Hicks, 1925 Even on the rack the wise man is happy. He alone will feel gratitude towards friends, present and absent alike, and show it by word and deed. When on the rack, however, he will give vent to cries and groans.

Bailey, 1926 And even if the wise man be put on the rack, he is happy. Only the wise man will show gratitude, and will constantly speak well of his friends alike in their presence and their absence. Yet when he is on the rack, then he will cry out and lament.

I cite this because - not trying to flippant but to make a point -- i am not aware that anyone has good evidence that Epicurus had first-hand experience of being on the rack. We know that he was in extreme pain from kidney disease at the end of his life, but that's not the same as being under intentional torture, and yet Epicurus (or later Epicureans) none of whom we know to have been speaking from personal experience, took a strong position on the point.

I would cite this as additional evidence that Epicurus was motivated to speak "philosophically" about "absence of pain." My point in the first post was that the perfect is not the enemy of the good, and that the presence of some amount of pain, even a large amount, does not prevent an Epicurean from pronouncing himself "happy."

Epicurus would never have suggested that we regularly choose pain if a literal state of "total absence of pain" was required to be happy. Epicurus wasn't totally without pain on his last day, and a person on the rack is also not without pain, so there's something about the definition of the term "happy" from an Epicurean viewpoint that allows it to coexist with pain. And a "reduction to the absurd" interpretation of "absence of pain" therefore clearly cannot be what Epicurus was holding up as the practical goal of life from an Epicurean perspective.

Just like happiness can coexist with pain, the goal of life has to take into account that some degree of pain will be present, even chosen, unless we have literally advanced to the state of being totally in control of our circumstances, which no one we know of has yet achieved.

So to close again on my ultimate point, it appears to me that what Epicurus is doing is laying out an extremely practical goal that is also logically consistent. In a universe with no supernatural god and no absolute right and wrong there can be no single course of life that is "best" for everyone. Instead, the general way to state the goal is to take Nature's guidance - physical and mental pleasure and pain - and then do the best we can to make sure that our pleasures outweigh our pains as much as possible. Everyone is different, and for some of us that is indeed going to mean a life of predominantly physical pleasures.

But may of us think more deeply about how we only live for a short time and forever after cease to exist. Those people are going to remember (per Torquatus) that Epicurus held that mental experiences are often longer-lasting and more intense that physical ones. Those people are then going to make a personal assessment of what mental and physical activities bring them the most pleasure, and they will make their choices accordingly. And they will do everything they can to pursue that goal as vigorously as possible, regardless of what anyone tells them that "the gods" want or what "virtue" calls them to do.

I saw the following posted recently, and the comment about gulags prompts me to use it as an exercise in talking about several ongoing issues. For easy of reading I've placed the original post in separate quote blocks, with my comments following each block. The original, of course, was a single post.

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I’m currently studying Hellenistic philosophy so I’ve got a decent familiarity with epicureanism and stoicism. The stoics tended to really dislike epicurean ideas, especially the virtues being good for pleasure rather than for their own sake, but their ends look kind of similar in a lot of places if you ignore the semantics (eg am I removing desires because unfilled desires are painful and pain is bad, or because desire comes from the false belief that its object is good?). The idea of the Sage being happy on the rack is common to both philosophies.

I think it’s important to emphasize that the Epicureans were not passive, and that the Epicureans were no less vigorous than the Stoics in denouncing their rival school, especially as to the relationship between virtue and pleasure. Both Torquatus in Cicero’s “On Ends” and Diogenes of Oinoanda in the inscription on his wall strongly denounce the stoic viewpoint. Most importantly, the Stoics and Epicureans don’t end up in the same place as to general removal of desires. Probably its fair to say that the Stoics were against all desire in general other than the desire for virtue, since the stoics held virtue is the only thing in life worth pursuing. But the Epicureans were far calling for the removal of all desires “in general.” The only desires that were explicitly ruled out where those which are by nature impossible to fulfill and therefore by nature lead to more pain than pleasure. This paragraph seems to be presuming that all desire is inherently unfulfilled and therefore painful, and that’s simply not true, at least from an Epicurean perspective. Epicurus held that life is desirable, and it’s not correct to say that we find tomorrow painful, even though we desire to live it if we can do so with more pleasure than pain. As for “happiness,” yes it appears that both schools said that it is possible to be “happy” even while on the wrack, but from an Epicurean perspective that doesn’t mean that being on the rack is desirable. Stoics are likely to say that they are indifferent to the pain and claim that it should be disregarded for the sake of virtue, while an Epicurean is going to admit the pain, and even cry out in pain, and contemplation of “virtue” is going to be the furthest thing from his mind at the time.

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Yes, Epicurus believed that pleasure is the highest moral good. However, pleasure in the Epicurean view is freedom from pain. Anything else is just a variation of pleasures. Needing to have fancy meals or the like to be happy is antithetical to epicureanism. You don’t need to abstain from nice things, and having those memories is part of how an epicurean copes with hard times, but you can’t rely on them.

This formulation has numerous problems. Yes Epicureans identify “pleasure” as the highest good, but summarizing pleasure as “freedom from pain” with no further explanation leads to the error here of implying that “fancy meals or the like” are “just variations” and are not pleasures themselves and are “antithetical to Epicureanism.” It is correct to say that “needing” such pleasures is a problem, and it is correct to say that you should not “rely on them” when they are not available. But isn’t it obvious that there’s a problem with saying that “memories [of such pleasures] is part of how an Epicurean copes with hard times?” That sounds like we shouldn’t be interested in eating tasty food, but it’s ok to rely on memories of tasty food when times are hard. The basic problem here is that “freedom from pain” is made to sound like something different from pleasure, when in fact everything that is not painful is pleasurable when there are only two alternatives, and tasty food is as legitimate a part of the set of total pleasures as is poetry or literature or friendship or anything else. Epicureans don’t narrow the definition of pleasure to an ambiguous state of “absence of XXX” - they expand the definition of pleasure to include all experiences of life that are desirable – and life itself is desirable, with the only undesirable experience falling under the name of “pain.”

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In Epicureanism, death is nothing to us since our souls dissipate after leaving the body, so we can’t suffer. Similarly, bodily pain is either brief or bearable. Thus we don’t need to worry about either of those.

A causal reader of this paragraph might take away that this means that we don’t have to worry about when we die or how we die, or when or how we experience pain. That would not be consistent with the thrust of the philosophy. We are always concerned about avoiding experiences involving unnecessary pain, meaning that we always avoid experiences and activities that we cannot justify as bringing us more pleasure in total than pain. The better way to say what is the target here is that we don’t have to worry about anything happening to us after we die, and we don’t have to worry about pain in life being unmanageable and impossible to escape. Pains that are long but not intense can be managed; pains which are intense and cannot be alleviated can be escaped by death. But there are many situations in life where you don’t want have to go through the process of making that calculation in real time, and “worrying” about those situations (meaning devoting your thoughts to how to act to avoid those situations) is perfectly appropriate.

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An epicurean alleviates irrational fears of the unknown and of death or pain by understanding that they can’t actually hurt them. It’s pretty similar to how death to stoics is a dispreferred indifferent.

This statement has the same problem as the prior paragraph. Yes indeed pain can actually hurt us, and depending on the timing and how it occurs, the process of dying can hurt us too. The Epicurean is going identify and dismiss irrational fear of death and pain, but he will also devote all the vigor of mind and body that he can muster to avoiding the very many real dangers that can in fact bring death and pain.

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From the perspective of an Epicurean, having good friends and forming memories with them means when you are suffering, those memories will be there to comfort you. If you are in a gulag, you can overcome your bodily suffering by thinking about your friends and your pleasant memories.

This sentence: “If you are in a gulag, you can overcome your bodily suffering by thinking about your friends and your pleasant memories.” is what motivated me to write this post.

Yes, if you wrap that last sentence in a lot of context and parse it carefully, there are certainly aspects of this that are true. But without that context and explanation, it’s the worst kind of characterization of Epicurean philosophy.

First, “overcome” is not the correct word at all. The reference to being “in a gulag” epitomizes the modern “passive” approach to philosophy in general and Epicurus in particular. The entire purpose of Epicurean philosophy is to avoid “being in a gulag” in the first place, and if you approach everything in life from the point of view of “maybe I’ll happen to find myself in XXXXX” then that’s the best way to end up being there. As with Epicurus on his last day, you can offset mental pleasures against bodily pains, but those mental pleasures aren’t going to make the bodily pains go away. Stoicism has planted in the minds of many people that it is in fact possible for the mind to override the real world – since nothing else matters to them but “virtue,” it makes sense to say that pain is irrelevant, no matter how intense. That’s what most people see as the insufferable arrogance and unreality of Stoicism. But the opposite of insufferable arrogance and unreality is not “I’m happy-go-lucky and I’ll take whatever comes my way because I have a lot of stored up memories of ice cream and cake to offset against the tortures of the gulag.”

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TLDR In epicureanism, pleasure doesn’t mean “I’m enjoying eating this caviar” it’s freedom from pain and worry—ataraxia/tranquility is specifically about having no mental pain because that’s easier to control. Epicureanism supposedly teaches you how to be free from mental pain even in the worst circumstances.

No doubt the “supposedly” is included here because the writer sees the weakness of his argument. Epicurean philosophy cannot teach you to be “free” from mental pain “even in the worst circumstances,” but that is the trap that people get into when they take “absence of pain” to be the real goal of Epicurean philosophy.

No one in real life is ever completely free from mental pain, and if we think Epicurus was realistic then that is not what he could have meant the “absence of pain” discussion to mean. When you get past superficial readings of the letter to Menoeceus, there’s plenty of textual evidence that explains that Epicurus held there to be only two feelings, and that means - just as stated in Principal Doctrine 3, that when pain is absent then pleasure is present, and the reverse also.

While it is proper to state the “goal of life” in terms of absolute pleasure from which pain is absent, no person in real life is completely free of all mental and physical pain at any particular moment. And it hardly needs to be said that death (which is the only time when all pain is gone) is certainly not a pleasure.

The total elimination of all mental and physical pain from our lives is a very explicit and useful statement of the Epicurean goal. However Epicurus is nothing if not practical, and Epicurus does not make the perfect the enemy of the good. Every person’s circumstances are different, and because of those differences the highest and practical good cannot be stated more precisely and universally than maximum pleasure and minimum pain, or as Cicero stated in regard to Clodius, sarcastically but accurately, “nothing is preferable to a life of tranquility crammed full of pleasures.” (The Latin is “nihil esse praestabilius otiosa vita, plena et conferta voluptatibus.” Cicero, In defense Of Publius Sestius, 10.23)

Nothing can be better than a life full of pleasures combined with no disturbances of any kind, but for us this means that at times we will choose pain, when that choice avoids worse pain or brings more pleasure than pain. Epicurus would never have advised the choice of pain - even for a moment - if he had expected “absence of pain” to be applied rigidly or hyperlogically as the true goal of life. The true Epicurean goal is to do the best we can to achieve a happy life through the predominance of pleasure over pain. Identifying that properly and working to achieve it realistically requires both dismissing Stoic pretensions to “virtue” as well avoiding well-meaning but misguided attempts to reconcile Epicurus with Stoicism, Buddhism, and other philosophies of passivity and detachment.

Yes I agree we can pick up the pace and that outline will be helpful! Most of what needs to be said about death we've covered already, and we have four more major topics to pick up when we're finished with death.

I was thinking Don might weigh in from another direction as well. Don is very strong on PD10 being a reference to reprobate acts being bad because they do in fact lead to pain in most cases. I always insist that it is important to observe that there is no "necessity" that they lead to a bad result, and that that is part of the point of PD10. But we both agree that Epicurus is saying that pursuing the life of a reprobate is a bad idea. And in that case someone who is against making lists of undesirable characteristics might say that both Don and I sound like prudish Stoics to dare to say anything that implies that being a reprobate is generally bad.

As I read Kalosyni, she is objecting to Lucretius listing these character traits as undesirable "in general" because she thinks that sounds too much like a Stoic.

I would apply Don's reasoning on PD10 to this list by Lucretius, and I think most people would say, as Don would, that even though it might be theoretically possible that a particular human being might pursue these courses and yet still manage to experience a happy life, the weight of experience is strongly against anyone being successful in doing so except in the most unusual of circumstances.

(As a reminder, the list is : (1) lusts that tear a man in two and trouble his life! How many (2) fears will follow! What (3) insolence, (4) filth, and (5) shamelessness! How many Disasters they deal! What (6) sloth and (7) debauchery!)

Therefore I do not think it smacks of Stoicism to think that generally sloth and debauchery and filth and the rest are going to lead in the end to more pain than pleasure. Therefore I think it's fine for an Epicurean like Lucretius to create a list of such things to be generally avoided.

The red line I think needs to be respected is that you need to be clear, like Lucretius is being, that this list doesn't come from the gods, or from abstract logic divorced from experience. An Epicurean gets lists like this from practical experience, and that's all the difference in the world from a Stoic who says that these things are "bad in themselves" or "bad because Zeus / Home / Plato's ideal forms say so."

So I think an Epicurean can easily maintain a personal list of desirable character traits that is in many cases (not all) similar to a list written by a Stoic. Certainly a Stoic would embrace Lucretius' list (and that's probably why Kalosyni is suspicious of it.) Further, making such a list is explicitly what PD05 is doing in saying that the happy life requires prudence, honor, and justice.

But the difference in how you get your list, and how you support it and explain it to other people, makes all the difference in the world.

I don't agree that this list indicates what you are concerned about, but before I weigh in much more I'd like to hear what others have to say. This should be a good opportunity to talk about where Stoicism and Epicureanism diverge and why.

Welcome to Episode 278 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 we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes.

This week we continue our series covering Cicero's "Tusculan Disputations" from an Epicurean viewpoint. This series addresses five of the greatest questions in philosophy, with Cicero speaking for the majority and Epicurus the main opponent:

1. Is Death An Evil? (Cicero says no and Epicurus says no, but for very different reasons)
2. Is Pain An Evil? (Cicero says no, Epicurus says yes)
3. Does the Wise Man Experience Grief and Fear? (Cicero says no, Epicurus says yes)
4. Does the Wise Man Experience Joy and Desire? (Cicero says no, Epicurus says yes)
5. Is Virtue Sufficient For A Happy Life? (Cicero says yes, Epicurus says no)

As we found in Cicero's "On Ends" and "On The Nature of the Gods," Cicero treated Epicurean Philosophy as a major contender in the battle between the philosophies. In discussing this conflict and explaining Epicurus' answers to these questions, we will deepen our understanding of Epicurus and how he compares to the other major schools.

Today we continue debating the nature of death in Section XXXII.

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Our general discussion guide for Tusculun Disputations is here: https://epicureanfriends.github.io/tusculundisput…lish/section:12

And a side-by-side version with comments is here:

EpicureanFriends SideBySide Commentary on TD

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In the past we have had threads that touched on the issue of pain, pleasure, and addition, such as this one.

In addition, we regularly get questions such as:

I've been rethinking my relationship with XXXXX and how to navigate it in a way that’s consistent with a grounded materialist worldview. The religious structure of some self-help programs (like AA in particular) just doesn’t seem consistent with what Epicurus would recommend.

First of all, we always remind people that clinical / biological / genetic problems require professional help. No matter what the Stoics might say, you can't through sheer willpower "think" your way out of problems like that. Epicurus is reported by Diogenes Laertius at 117 that "A man cannot become wise with every kind of physical constitution, nor in every nation." It seems to me that that "physical constitution" part definitely includes issues that we'd describe as "clinical."

So the first step in this analysis is always to determine if you have a problem that requires professional help, and then get that professional help if you do.

But if the problem we are talking about is more on the order of "bad habits," then Epicurus definitely had things to say about that, such as:

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VS46. "Let us utterly drive from us our bad habits, as if they were evil men who have long done us great harm." (Bailey)

That certainly seems to indicate that bad habits are to be taken seriously and are to be dealt with vigorously, not because there is anything intrinsically sinful in them, but because they produce great pain.

It's also likely that bad habits and addictions were addressed face to face among the ancient Epicureans, and it's for that reason that we see so much discussion of "frank speech." A personal level of interaction and accountability is very helpful and probably necessary. That's something that probably doesn't exist and probably impossible to get in an online communities.

Also, when we get questions about particular additions or habits, it's helpful to find someone in the community with recovery experience in the precise issue (either firsthand or as a therapist). If someone has experience in that area and is willing to let others know about it, starting a Zoom support group could be a baby step toward a fuller expression of Epicurus' original vision of friendship and support. If this strikes you as something you would be interested in volunteering to do in some capacity, let me know by private conversation and we can explore setting something like that up

We've definitely had people let us know that they've been through tough experiences and would have benefited from support with philosophically like-minded people. So if anyone has any experience or interest in being resources in such situations, again let us know.

So let's use this thread for those who can offer general comments that they've found helpful themselves and that fit within an Epicurean perspective. We'll see what direction this goes, and if we have any people who are interested in volunteering to be resources, let us know.

Quote from Eikadistes

Flickr, Imgur, Photobucket, DeviantArt, and Pinterest

Thanks for that list - that's what I've lost track of. I will take a look at those. Obviously no one wants to post and then lose images, so we need to investigate how long images stay there. I suppose there's some kind of facility through Google that does something similar

In a nearby thread today I have raised the issue of image sharing in the context of long term sustainability of the website - making sure our data does not balloon so large as to be unmanageable if we ever have to change web providers.

In addition, AI image generation raises all sorts of issues, one of which is that many people (not excluding me) are tempted to explore the technology.and post endless streams of draft graphics.

It seems to me in past years on other forums that people were urged to used image sharing websites (I seem to remember imgur as a name?) and then post their images here as links rather than uploads. The posts end up looking the same as now, but the images are stored elsewhere and don't count against our storage or transfer limits.

So this thread is to solicit ideas from our tech-oriented people on ideas how to implement such a system. We will obviously continue to have image uploads here as well, but lots of short-term-use photos could just as well go somewhere else.

I am sympathetic to Eikadistes ' view and will solicit comments from the moderators about how we can balance competing interests.

Even more than that, however, I need to review where we are on disk space and figure out a way to make sure that we keep image uploads that aren't long-term assets under control.

On that point too I'll ask for comments (separate thread) as we need to consider recommending some sort of image-sharing site so that people know how to post large images and then just post the links here. That will show up the same way but won't permanently occupy disk space here.

So far we have had no real issues but we are now in our tenth year and we probably need to reevaluate disk space issues.

UPDATE: Image Sharing Alternatives

After you've played with that for a while I'd like to post a version of that over on Facebook and make the revised version available in a reasonably high resolution, perhaps accompanied by colorized versions that reconstruct the idea that the ancient statues were painted.

That gives a 100% improved result that is much more consistent with the other representations.

Happy birthday to all with birthdays today but especially to Pacatus with thanks for all his contributions to the forum!

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Episode 277 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is now available. Today's episode is entitled: "Platonism Says This World Is Darkness and the Next World is Light - Epicurus Disagrees!"

If you only have 10 minutes to spare, be sure to listen to the closing by Joshua and Kalosyni starting at about 47:12.

Thank you Titus! You were definitely on the list to receive a personal invitation, along with others who immediately come to mind such as Eoghan Gardiner and Julia and no doubt many others whose locations have dropped out of my mind.

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It demonstrates that pleasure is a regulatory mechanism for the health of the person, even if it's gone a little awry in modern times.

Yes, I'd say it demonstrates that pleasure is a regulatory mechanism for the health of the person that is subject to distortion both by our own error and at the initiative of others. And both problems have have reached new levels in modern times.

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Can we say then that "one cannot understand Nietzsche without understanding Epicurus"?

Well I wouldn't go that far. No doubt understanding how subtle Epicurus can be would help understanding Nietzsche to some degree, but Nietzsche sure didn't approach the idea of "clarity" the way Epicurus did.

So I'm not sure that it's a good idea to look at Epicurus as a prerequisite to Nietzsche. At first thought I tend to I think the main issue is the common devotion to "this world" and to the intensity of warfare against "otherworlders." Nietzsche's "AntiChrist" to me is a good example of that, and of course that's one of Nietzsche's most clear commendations of Lucretius.