Posts by Cassius

Also worth commenting is that everyone (including I think Emily Austin too) struggles with finding the right word for "not natural and not necessary." I think we all -- including Emily -- agree that the real issue is whether the activity produces more pleasure than pain. That's a question that is so fact specific to circumstances that it becomes very difficult to determine what "natural" and "necessary" really means except by setting out a specific set of facts.

And for the sake of appreciating that complexity we should all take a second to revel in the appropriateness of Don's hostility to hypotheticals! How do you set out a hypothetical "natural" and "necessary" that is actually useful without referring to the facts of a particular situation?

"Necessary" to whom and for what? "Natural" for whom and for what? I think there are common sense answers that most of us would agree on, but common sense also probably is what warns us about trying to be too legalistic with what natural and necessary means.

The other issue intertwined in this is that of having children, which we talk about little, but which has traditionally been a critical part of human life. We wouldn't be here otherwise, and Epicurus showed that he himself was concerned about the welfare of children within his philosophical community (at least the children of Metrodorus). Setting out a productive and philosophical view of "family life" would appear to me to be an important part of life in general, even though we talk about it little. I can see the Stoics and those who want to detach from everything downplaying it, but I would not expect that from the ancient Epicureans. Especially if you identify all normal activities of life which are not painful to be a part of pleasure, then you would expect Epicureans probably had a lot to say about this subject too.

I don't have anything specific to contribute at the moment but I think this is an important issue. It's not "necessary" in the sense that a certain individual can live quite a while without it, but it is "necessary" for the "preservation of the species," and Lucretius cites it repeatedly as an important aspect of life. Ebbs and flows of population seems to have many causes but I doubt it's a healthy phenomena.

Yes! Thank you Don! For some reason I have a terrible time remembering Richard Dawkins' name, even though he is one of my favorite modern philosophers.

I don't think we currently have a list of articles or references on this point so I will set up this thread to make the topic more searchable.

Here's one article but I haven't even read it to know whether to suggest it or not. However I know we've talked about this in the past and there are probably already good articles people have identified:

Philosophy v science: which can answer the big questions of life?

Philosopher Julian Baggini challenges physicist Lawrence Krauss over 'mission creep' in the scientific community

www.theguardian.com

I know there is also a relevant youtube debate between Lawrence Krauss and the British philosopher ______ on the "Something from nothing" issue, and we've also discussed Victor Stenger's work on some of these issues.

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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!

Both the book and the author are absolutely new to me, so thanks for pointing this out! Maybe someone else has some familiarity with one or the other.

About the Author

Ken Binmore is a mathematician turned economist and philosopher. He has held chairs at the London School of Economics, the University of Michigan, and University College London. He has been involved in a range of applied projects, including the design of major telecom auctions in various countries across the world. The telecom auction he organized in the UK raised $35 billion, prompting Newsweek magazine to describe him as the “ruthless, poker-playing economist who destroyed the telecom industry”. He has contributed to game theory, experimental economics, evolutionary biology and moral philosophy. His books include Natural Justice (OUP), Does Game Theory Work? (MIT Press), A Very Short Introduction to Game Theory (OUP), and Rational Decisions (PUP). He is currently a Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Bristol and a Visiting Professor of Philosophy at LSE.

We're going to want to eventually move this to one of the "texts" forums where it will show up when people look for sources. Is there a more elaborate way to name the thread that will make it easier to find than the single word "Suda"?

For ease of reference added to the "Special Forum Resources" link on the front page of the forum. That link takes you here:

That's outstanding Joshua.

Also for future reference, you indicated this morning that you found a better "keyword" to use in searching for something like this better than "timeline." Do you recall what that was?

In case what Joshua used to generate that excellent timeline doesn't do SVG, I see that the free program I used to generate the SVG "navigation map" here at the forum -- draw.io -- does do timelines. Here are are references to how to do that:

Proper Way to Use Draw.io in Timeline Chart Making

Blog - Draw timelines and roadmaps in draw.io

More free alternatives:

Create timelines with open-source tools | School of Data - Evidence is Power

An interesting example: https://timeline.knightlab.com/examples/user-interface/index.html

Joshua did you assemble it with a program that can output in SVG format? (That's infinitely zoomable).

Yours is so good it probably shows we need a dedicated timeline generator.

A Zoomable copy of that is pretty much exactly what we need. Did you do that?

To some extent the problems inherent in the phrasing "The only sense in which the child being dead is bad is in the pain it brings to those still living" is the reason for the selection of one of the four "points of emphasis" singled out here at the forum, which comes the letter to Menoeceus:

Quote from Letter to Menoeceus

For all good and evil consists in sensation, but death is deprivation of sensation. And therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not because it adds to it an infinite span of time, but because it takes away the craving for immortality.

"Good and evil" and "good and bad" are phrases that have to mean something in order to be useful. If they don't mean "approved or prohibited by god" or "approved or prohibited by Platonic form / absolutist views of virtue" then what use do those phrases have?

Epicurus grounds ideas of good and evil in sensation, which I think most of us agree means that good and evil comes through pleasure and pain. I think there's a passage where Torquatus says exactly that too (perhaps we even covered it last week in the podcast) and I know Frances Wright brings out the same point.

So anything which causes pain to you as a living being is bad for you, and anything which causes pleasure is good for you. When you no longer exist nothing is good or bad for you.

I think this statement of Don's is tempting (especially the part I underlined) but I think he is right to pull back from it in his last paragraph:

Quote from Don

Actual memories that can be remembered with joy are good. Imagining hypothetical what might have beens, while probably a natural outgrowth of grief, does not lead to healing.

Actually, regardless of whether he's right or wrong to pull back from it, I think it's a point worth discussiing. Does (or can) imagining "hypothetical what-might-have-beens" lead to healing?

Some might draw an analogy here between the "hypothetical what might have been" to the issue of "the Epicurean gods," and say that Epicurus was constructing hypothetical god abstractions for "good" purposes. I personally wouldn't approach it that way because I don't think he saw the gods as pure hypotheticals.

But what about fictional stories of monsters or bad situations from earlier Greek mythology, such as Lucretius references repeatedly in his poem? Lucretius seems to get much productive use out of stories that he clearly does not believe ever happened. The reason I bring those fictional stories up is that they seem to me to be pretty close to "hypothetical what-might-have-beens" that are being used for healing. I am not sure we have any examples of Epicurus using "hypothetical bad things," but Lucretius sure does use them.

[I am close to deleting this whole post because I am not sure the point I am making is worth the space on the page, but maybe it will stir someone else's more productive way of expressing this.]

What I think is interesting to discuss is sort of the entire question of the use of heart-rending hypotheticals or "bad" fictional constructions and how we should consider (or IF we should consider) them as "bad." I don't think anyone would assert that Epicurus would construct an out-and-out falsehood like "hell" in the way that religion does, but what is the general status of hypothetical "what-might-have-beens" or "what-might-be's" as good or bad?

Thinking about the uses of "fiction" might lead to another perspective on: "The only sense in which the child being dead is bad is in the pain it brings to those still living."

I think in the end we'll convert the format to something more like this:

But it will be a lot easier to collaborate over time and use the lexicon entry linked above as the place where we grow the chart and develop the data for the final version.

Based on work Don and Nate have done previously I'd like to continue to work on an easy-to-read table to help people orient to major events in the Epicurean world. The Lexicon section of the forum has been updated to add the following table which can be edited collaboratively. Please comment if you have suggestions - obviously lots more work needed on this. As it continues to come together the table will be easier to cut and paste and use elsewhere.

Timetable Of The Epicurean World - Epicureanfriends.com

www.epicureanfriends.com

Quote from Lowri834

I've just started reading Lucretius, the Martin Ferguson Smith translation.

Thanks for the comment, and that's a good choice of translations. We don't tend to talk about his that often, probably because it's one of the more recent and still in copyright, but his is probably the current best for pure scholarship.

Quote from Don

Suffice to say that I don't think one should pity the potential life that isn't going to exist.

Seems to me this is sort of a continuation of our search for a good way to express the issue that life is desirable, and we want it to continue under favorable circumstances if that is possible, and yet we don't get bent out of shape over the fact that continuous extension isn't possible.

This is an issue that applies to we ourselves or to little girls or to whatever heart-rending example we'd like to pose as the hypothetical.

Quote from Don

Which moves into how one may try to process this. Epicureanism acknowledges that the death of a friend or loved one or family member is going to "bite." There is nothing wrong with feeling grief, unlike the Stoics who teach that losing a child should no more affect one than breaking a tea cup. There is nothing wrong with deeply feeling the loss and sadness. But... Epicureans should not let grief overwhelm them. That isn't healthy. We need to turn to the memories that bring us both joy for the experience and sadness that the person is gone.

This is similar to the way Frances Wright expresses it in chapter 10, and I'd recommend that as additional food for thought:

Quote from A Few Days In Athens Chapter 10

Display Spoiler

But there is yet a pain, which the wisest and the best of men cannot escape; that all of us, my sons, have felt, or have to feel. Do not your hearts whisper it? Do you not tell me, that in death there is yet a sting? That ere he aim at us, he may level the beloved of our soul? The father, whose tender care hath reared our infant minds — the brother, whom the same breast hath nourished, and the same roof sheltered, with whom, side by side, we have grown like two plants by a river, sucking life from the same fountain and strength from the same sun — the child whose gay prattle delights our ears, or whose opening understanding fixes our hopes — the friend of our choice, with whom we have exchanged hearts, and shared all our pains and pleasures, whose eye hath reflected the tear of sympathy, whose hand hath smoothed the couch of sickness. Ah! my sons, here indeed is a pain — a pain that cuts into the soul. There are masters that will tell you otherwise; who will tell you that it is unworthy of a man to mourn even here. But such, my sons, speak not the truth of experience or philosophy, but the subtleties of sophistry and pride. He who feels not the loss, hath never felt the possession. He who knows not the grief, hath never known the joy. See the price of a friend in the duties we render him, and the sacrifices we make to him, and which, in making, we count not sacrifices, but pleasures. We sorrow for his sorrow; we supply his wants, or, if we cannot, we share them. We follow him to exile. We close ourselves in his prison; we soothe him in sickness; we strengthen him in death: nay, if it be possible, we throw down our life for his. Oh! What a treasure is that for which we do so much! And is it forbidden to us to mourn its loss? If it be, the power is not with us to obey.

Should we, then, to avoid the evil, forego the good? Shall we shut love from our hearts, that we may not feel the pain of his departure? No; happiness forbids it. Experience forbids it. Let him who hath laid on the pyre the dearest of his soul, who hath washed the urn with the bitterest tears of grief — let him say if his heart hath ever formed the wish that it had never shrined within it him whom he now deplores. Let him say if the pleasures of the sweet communion of his former days doth not still live in his remembrance. If he love not to recall the image of the departed, the tones of his voice, the words of his discourse, the deeds of his kindness, the amiable virtues of his life. If, while he weeps the loss of his friend, he smiles not to think that he once possessed him. He who knows not friendship, knows not the purest pleasure of earth. Yet if fate deprive us of it, though we grieve, we do not sink; Philosophy is still at hand, and she upholds us with fortitude. And think, my sons, perhaps in the very evil we dread, there is a good; perhaps the very uncertainty of the tenure gives it value in our eyes; perhaps all our pleasures take their zest from the known possibility of their interruption. What were the glories of the sun, if we knew not the gloom of darkness? What the refreshing breezes of morning and evening, if we felt not the fervors of noon? Should we value the lovely-flower, if it bloomed eternally; or the luscious fruit, if it hung always on the bough? Are not the smiles of the heavens more beautiful in contrast with their frowns, and the delights of the seasons more grateful from their vicissitudes? Let us then be slow to blame nature, for perhaps in her apparent errors there is hidden a wisdom. Let us not quarrel with fate, for perhaps in our evils lie the seeds of our good. Were our body never subject to sickness, we might be insensible to the joy of health. Were our life eternal, our tranquillity might sink into inaction. Were our friendship not threatened with interruption, it might want much of its tenderness. This, then, my sons, is our duty, for this is our interest and our happiness; to seek our pleasures from the hands of the virtues, and for the pain which may befall us, to submit to it with patience, or bear up against it with fortitude. To walk, in short, through life innocently and tranquilly; and to look on death as its gentle termination, which it becomes us to meet with ready minds, neither regretting the past, nor anxious for the future.”

Another aspect that I am still rolling over in my mind is the difficulty (at least for me) in applying the "absence of pain" terminology to both (1) my general summation and assessment of my condition which includes both pleasures and pains, and (2) an individual sensation / feeling which can be either pleasure or pain but not both or neither.

I personally (and I do not think I am alone) have a strong tendency to interpret "absence of pain" as conveying a focus on a general assessment in which "unless every ounce of pain is eliminated from my life then I haven't achieved anything." That perspective is akin to the Judeo-Christian attitude that we are worms because we all sin and fall short of the glory of god, or the Stoic attitude that "unless we've reached the summit of the mountain all our mountain-climbing is for nothing."

I'm of the view that this perfectionist "all or nothing" attitude is so baked in the cake of modern religion and philosophy that it makes it very hard to even comprehend any other approach. The detailed analysis of the individual feelings and experiences of a variety of pleasures leads me to conclude that to Epicurus it's not a perfect result of "pure pleasure" that is the main thing (other than as a goal), but the moment-by-moment achievement of the best we can do under our own circumstances to ensure the predominance of feelings of pleasure over feelings of pain. Epicurus wasn't experiencing "pure pleasure" on the last day of his life, but up to the end he was doing the best he could to summon up pleasure to override pain, just as Lucretius analogizes Venus calming Mars.

The only way to break out of the "all or nothing" perspective is to engage in the scheme of systematic study, preferably with others "like ourselves" as Epicurus recommends.

Quote from Blank_Emu43

Would it be right to say that a person who lives for five years can have the same amount of pleasure in their life as someone who lives for eighty years?

I would say that we can't be sure of that (I wouldn't argue that a shorter life necessarily means less pain) but I would definitely argue that this observation **could** be true, depending on the circumstances of the person. It's easy to think of people who live long lives with a negative attitude who seem (at least to us) to be suffering the whole way through. In contrast it's also easy to think of people who "die young" but seem to have had a positive upbeat and happy attitude during most of that shorter life. I'd definitely choose the shorter happier life over the longer miserable life.

Quote from Blank_Emu43

I can't wait to read your reply! I've read a lot of your posts and I always learn something new.

A good reminder that Don has been "slacking off" and still owes us his commentary on this one!