Posts by Cassius

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Tau Phi just for background I am curious as to how many of the texts you have reviewed in this. Have you gone into the Dirk Obbirk (sp?) material in On Piety as well as the Velleius section of "On the Nature of the Gods"? I really haven't done an exhaustive review of what is out there. Have you done that because just having a list of things to check would be helpful to people studying this.

Definitely an interesting suggestion. I tend to think the standard interpretation makes the most sense, but on the other hand there are lots of subtleties to consider.

Well that's the "quasi-" body material in Velleius / On the nature of the gods, right?

Quote from Nate

about the status of the gods' social lives and their speech patterns; that, combined with the analysis of gratitude, which is a seemingly human-unique, conscious behavioral practice (there are better words for that)

Yes it would be pushing the envelope for the Epicureans to be talking about such things if they viewed them as wholly abstractions.

As for whether the gods evolved to that state, I tend to hesitate there, and to consider this to be a more complex application of the eternality issue - I am not sure there. Maybe individual instances of types of gods in particular intermundia evolved toward and arrived at perfection, but if there was never a start to the universe it's hard to say that applies to the whole.

Evolution might be another aspect of human experience that does not apply to gods.

Quote from Don

Basically, PD05 says, to me, you can't live pleasantly without living virtuously BUT virtue is not the end/goal. The virtues contribute to living pleasantly, and living pleasantly is a result of living virtuously. But one's eye should always be on the pleasant life lived.

Yes i think what you are saying is the correct statement of the Epicurean view, but I don't see PD5 saying that one's eye should be on pleasure than on virtue. It doesn't explicitly or even implicitly say that, does it? (I would think you have to go to Torquatus or to Diogenes of Oinoanda to hit that point home.) In the case of PD5 he seems to be equating the two phrases ("living virtuously" with "living pleasantly") and it seems to me that you have to understand something else which is not stated to make sense of the equivalence.

I agree that one unstated point is, as you say, that (1) the goal is pleasure rather than virtue.

But the other unstated presumption is that (2) virtue is not absolutely tied to a certain set of facts, just like pleasure is not tied to a certain set of facts. (Eating ice cream is sometimes pleasurable and sometimes not, right?)

Actually maybe I should ask, Don, do you agree with this sentence from the paper as written, or would you modify it?

"It is important to remember, in this context, that for Epicureans all virtues—like moderation and justice—are defined not absolutely, by an independent objective standard. They are instrumentally valuable because they contribute to a pleasurable life, and so what counts as virtuous in a case depends on what in fact produces happiness (Ep. Men. 132)."

One more thing -- I think that last observation from the paper is the key to understanding PD5 and Epicurus' whole position on virtue. PD05 isn't the way to accommodate Epicurus to Stoicism and reconcile them as similar, it's the way - by explaining the totally different perspectives on virtue - to show how drastically incompatible they are.

“It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly, and it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living pleasantly. Whenever any one of these is lacking, when, for instance, the man is not able to live wisely, though he lives well and justly, it is impossible for him to live a pleasant life.” Hicks (1925)

"It is important to remember, in this context, that for Epicureans all virtues—like moderation and justice—are defined not absolutely, by an independent objective standard. They are instrumentally valuable because they contribute to a pleasurable life, and so what counts as virtuous in a case depends on what in fact produces happiness (Ep. Men. 132)."

Definitely a paper I want to read. That simple statement has profound implications, and I think is very difficult to appreciate without working on a drastic overhaul of the way we think. The same action that we normally see as courageous becomes in fact foolhardy in the wrong circumstances. The action isn't just "courageous, but sadly turned out wrong" but in fact no longer meets the definition of courageous in the first place.

At least in my mind that is very hard to appreciate. My mind wants to say courage is courage is courage and place the blame for a bad result somewhere else (luck? fate? gods?) rather than think that courage has no set definition that applies at all times and places.

But that seems to be exactly what Epicurus is saying, and he hammers it home apparently in his own words in those statements about "justice" at the end of the PDs.

Quote from Godfrey

he interprets Epicurus one way, but understands Epicureanism another way

Can you summarize his view of the difference?

Thank you Pacatus that gives me more incentive to read this book.

Much as with the other words like "tranquility," I obviously have no problems with the desirability of "serenity," but I continue to think there is something missing when someone seems to be seeking to wrap up in a single word -- which to me constitutes at most an "adverb" (such as "I am living serenely") -- without explicitly stating that the act of "living" in such a way entails all sorts of physical activities that are the true heart of what is going on.

I will eventually get this book so I can see how my concerns compare to Guyau's explanation of the topic. Perhaps many years ago my concern would be out of place, and it would go without saying that the praise of absence of pain was not intended to elevate a state of mind to a self-contained objective. Paraphrasing a Platonist who DeWitt cites in his book, I don't think Epicurus expected that naming "pleasure" the guide of life could ever be interpreted as a call for the draining of all active physical and mental pleasures from life .

But I definitely think in today's intellectual mix this cannot be left unexplained, and I would like to see where Guyau fits into this.

Thanks to those who have attended our first two book review sessions. We have had seven or eight people each night and we are looking forward to our next session on chapters nine through twelve. Further updates to come as we get closer to the next session.

Quote from Nate

... given all of this, I am wondering: what is unique about the employment of kharisi in KD1 that contradicts these other usages

Presumably that a "god" would be so self-sufficient that it would never experience an emotion of receiving something that it lacked previously?

I would see this as tending to show how the human conception of a god is probably constructed logically as an expectation (based on isonomia and similar observations extrapolated out) as much as a subject of particular observation.

In my mind that would not diminish the sincerely of the statement or the expectation of reality that gods do exist, but would parallel other things I see as logical constructs. For example that is how I see "absence of pain" as being the "limit of pleasure" (there are only two so they are defined as the opposite of the other) rather than as a specific positive description of a particular feeling.

So I would see putting a characteristic that is very beneficial to humans in a negative light in relation to the gods as stemming from a similar logical construct. Even pain has actual benefits to us in our world (though we define the best life as having none), but pain would have no benefit to a being living in a perfect state.

Just preliminary thoughts....

Welcome to Episode 173 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."

• The “Summum Bonum” Fallacy
• Pleasure Identified As the Telos

Episode 172 of the podcast is now available!

OK ok I had to look it up: anyone who writes "quotidian" rather than "everyday" or "commonplace" has some interpretive issues of his own to sort out! It's almost as if that note were written by two separate people.

The part I struck out in red represents everything wrong in modern Epicurean commentary.

This illustrates my love-hate relationship with the Epicurus Wiki at Epicurism.info: Two excellent paragraphs followed by immediate schizophrenic retraction -- as if "Oh NO Epicurus can't be in favor of a full life -- that would contradict our orthodox view of him! "

And of course it includes the trope that those poor stupid ROMAN Epicureans just didn't understand what Epicurus was all about! Which of course fails to account for why the Romans would be so stupidly interpreting Epicurus when they had ALL his texts with a complete explanation and 200 years of examples of people applying it, while the writer of this note has access only to a small fraction of that information.

NUTS TO ALL OF THAT!

Vatican Saying 41 - Epicurus Wiki

Quote from Don

To my eye, Metrodorus looked younger - more youthful - than either Hermarchus or Epicurus.

Which is interesting too because Metrodorus died first, if I understand the will correctly.

I guess I was aware of it but I have not focused much on the apparent fact that we have bust of Colotes.

Maybe this book page that Onenski has posted above can be worked over with image enhancement and/or adjusting software to make better copies of all of them for future use. I gather there might be one or two other busts available too? Polyaneus maybe?

We probably have not spent nearly as much time as we should fleshing out what we know about the details of each of these. We at least know their book titles to indicate their areas of interest, plus there are other anecdotes, and we know something of Colotes from Plutarch's response to him.

Now that I see more clearly that many of these guys got together and essentially invaded Athens as a team, the "team" seems to me to be more worthy of highlighting.

Which is important to observe - that the Epicurean school was not at all a one-man project, but required teamwork, just as teamwork is required today.

Quote from Don

Hermarchus's eyes also seem more "sad" (droopy) while Epicurus seems to have a more intense gaze with his brow furrowed in the center.

Yes I can see the somewhat droopy eyes as a signature of Hermarchus, but for some reason I can't gt't a similar fix on something unique about Metrodorus.

Maybe my problem is that the sketch I posted earlier in the thread seems to not be as a close a match to the actual sculpture as is the sketch for Hermarchus and Epicurus (?)

Tonight in our Wednesday meeting Fernando brought this up, and I did not remember that we had discussed this one and had Don's commentary already.

Seems like this is one that bears on the question "What are we doing while we are tranqull / calm / serene?"