Posts by Cassius

  • Using AI to create flow charts of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura

    Quote from Kalosyni

    can we then compare this with modern pyschology and science (and the understanding of clinical death and brain death).

    The first step is making clear what "this" means.

    Most of us here (including me) have a lot more to learn about what Epicurus and Lucretius really taught. And the bottom line is that they taught that the soul is material and is in no way supernatural and does not survive death. I am not aware that any new details of mechanics offered by "modern psychology and science" really have much to say on those ultimate conclusions.

    If one does not realize that a heap of sand is made of individual grains of sand, and nothing more, and if one does not take a position that the bodies our senses reveal to us are true and real, then no amount of detail about the operation of cells and synapses is going to move you closer to taking a position on whether there is an "immortal soul" somewhere in those cells and synapses. As far as I can tell modern science and psychology most of the time refuse to answer such ultimate questions, and they defer it to "philosophy" or 'religion" as if the question has no answer. Epicurus says that these questions DO have answers we can consider to be true.

    the must more productive use of AI diagramming would be to help explain what Epicurus and Lucretius are actually saying. Only once that is clear does any amount of cellular biology or clinical psychology have any relevance.

    And all that is because if you do indeed have an immortal soul designed by God and destined to either heaven or hell, then you darn well better put aside any other questions so you can "get right with god" as you could be called to meet your maker at any time!

  • Welcome Thomas Karion!

    Quote from Patrikios

    Its health is found in the moderation of passions and the removal of groundless fears.

    I think Kalsyni is quoting a part of this sentence but the whole context helps.

    Diogenes Laertiius wrote that Epicurus held at line 117 of Book 10:

    Quote

    117

    Such was his teaching on things celestial. As regards the principles of living and the grounds on which we ought to choose some things and avoid others, he writes the following letter. But before considering it let us explain what he and his followers think about the wise man. Injuries are done by men either through hate or through envy or through contempt, all of which the wise man overcomes by reasoning. When once a man has attained wisdom, he no longer has any tendency contrary to it or willingly pretends that he has. He will be more deeply moved by feelings, but this will not prove an obstacle to wisdom.

    So i'd say that discussion of "moderation of passions" needs to be clear that what we are talking about is not eliminating strong passions, because the wise man is going to work to feel them more deeply than others. Instead, when passions are treated wisely they are not an obstacle to wisdom but motivate us to work toward happiness. It is unfortunate that this needs to be said but Stoics and others have turned "moderation of passions" into a goal that seems to be a goal in itself as if there is something wrong with feeling strong passions, even if those passions are pleasurable.

    No doubt the context of how people use "passions" varies widely in modern discussion, but I'd say that the word is used predominately negatively, even though it is occasionally used favorably as in passionate pursuit of one's art or work or productive desire. Of course i don't mean to say that Patrikios is doing this, but if we aren't careful we can reinforce Stoic/Buddhist/ quietest stereotypes that are the opposite of Epicurean pursuit of pleasure.


    I'd equally say that this sentence is overbroad

    Quote from Kalosyni

    Also, from a modern psychology standpoint, t is actually healthy and motivates you to take action when you feel strong passions (or strong emotions/feelings) when you aren't getting your basic necessities for life met.

    Because I personally hold "modern psychology" to be something that i view with strong suspicion, as it is not rooted in Epicurean views of the best life.

    Bottom line: our purpose here is not to nitpick each others' posts, but to draw out in conversation fine points that help us and others to better apply the philosophy and articulate it to others. So I see both posts above as useful contributions.


    For another example:

    Quote from Patrikios

    Epicurus would also likely speak to his basic physics and ethics topics, but they all come back to living for pleasure through a healthy body & mind.

    That gets back to the original question raised earlier, about what Epicurus might talk about if he were here today. No doubt everything suggested would be something he would want to talk about, and it is very interesting to consider whether the current situation we find ourselves is in best addressed by (1) advocating generally for "a healthy body and mind" or (2) first defining what a healthy body and mind entails, which in my view cannot be done without first establishing a proper physics and canonics to allow for a proper standard of what "health" means.

  • Using AI to create flow charts of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura

    That seems pretty accurate to me and illustrates what can be done with these tools. The construction of models that make things clearer, combined with illustrations and other features ai can offer, looks to be a very productive way forward in exploring the texts. Where do you plan to take this? The issue always is going to be that the person generating the material needs to be closely involved in proofing it and discussing whether it is accurate or how it can be improved. Posts that are just "chatgpt did this" aren't much better than posting a link to an encyclopaedia article. The way these things help ourselves and others is to discuss them and improve them, pointing out both defects and how they can be improved.

  • Episode 358 - EATAQ40 - The Hypocrisy And Darkness of Academic Skepticism

    Welcome to Episode 358 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 are continuing our series reviewing Cicero's "Academic Questions" from an Epicurean perspective, which gives us an overview of the issues that split Plato's Academy and helps us understand Epicurus' position on the same issues. This week will continue in Section 19 of Book 2.

    Our text will come from
    Cicero - Academic Questions - Yonge We'll likely stick with Yonge primarily, but we'll also refer to the Rackham translation here: Cicero On Nature Of Gods Academica Loeb Rackham : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

    As we proceed through the end of Academic Questions, these are the topics we expect to cover:

    24. Lucullus's Extended Rebuttal of the Academic Doctrine, and His Concluding Appeal to Cicero (2:XIII)
    25. Cicero Begins His Reply (2:XX)
    26. Cicero Lays Out the Syllogism About Assent and Opinion (2:XXI)
    27. Cicero Turns to Antiochus's Own Inconsistency (2:XXII)
    28. Cicero Defends His Citation of the Ancient Philosophers (2:XXIII)
    29. Cicero Adds Chrysippus and the Cyrenaics, Then Returns to Arcesilas and Zeno (2:XXIV)
    30. Cicero Returns to Attacking the Senses (2:XXV)
    31. Cicero Presses the Sun's Size and the Limits of Trained Perception (2:XXVI)
    32. Cicero Turns the "Art" Argument Back on Lucullus (2:XXVII)
    33. Cicero Multiplies Examples From Madness (2:XXVIII)
    34. Cicero Attacks Reason and Dialectics: The Sorites Paradox (2:XXIX)
    35. Cicero Presses the Liar Paradox (2:XXX)
    36. Cicero Presents Carneades's Own Positive Doctrine of Probability (2:XXXI)
    37. Cicero Distinguishes the Academic Position From Epicurus's (2:XXXII)
    38. Cicero Defends Probability Against the Charge That It Cannot Support Memory or Action (2:XXXIII)
    39. Cicero Answers the "Self-Refuting" and "Two Incompatible Propositions" Objections (2:XXXIV)
    40. Cicero Broadens the Argument Beyond the Stoics (2:XXXV)
    41. Cicero Reflects on His Own Position Among the Competing Schools (2:XXXVI)
    42. Cicero's Survey of Disagreement Among the Natural Philosophers (2:XXXVII)
    43. Cicero Presses the Problem of Providence and the Limits of Physics (2:XXXVIII)
    44. Cicero's Survey Continues: The Soul, the Antipodes, and the Motion of the Earth (2:XXXIX)
    45. Cicero Asks Which Natural Philosopher He Would Even Choose to Follow (2:XL)
    46. Cicero Turns to Ethics: Even the Gods Are Disputed (2:XLI)
    47. Cicero's Roll Call of Rival Schools on the Chief Good, Part One (2:XLII)
    48. Cicero's Roll Call of Rival Schools on the Chief Good, Part Two (2:XLIII)
    49. Cicero Weighs Zeno Against Antiochus on Virtue and the Happy Life (2:XLIV)
    50. Cicero Catalogs the Stoic Paradoxes About the Wise Man (2:XLV)
    51. Cicero's Climactic Debate Between Pleasure and Honor (2:XLVI)
    52. Cicero Turns to the Canon of Truth, and Zeno's Hand (2:XLVII)
    53. The Dialogue's Close (2:XLVIII)


  • Episode 357 - EATAQ39 - A Brief Word On Sextus Empiricus And The Goal of Skepticism

    Lucretius Today Podcast Episode 357 is now available: "A Brief Word On Sextus Empiricus And The Goal Of Skepticism"


    Summary

    With Joshua and Kalosyni away this week, Cassius records a short solo episode to tie up a couple of loose ends before Section 19 of Book Two of Cicero's Academic Questions. First, background on Antiochus of Ascalon and Philo of Larissa from David Sedley's 1981 review of John Glucker's Antiochus and the Late Academy: the quarrel at Alexandria in 87 BC, when Antiochus, traveling with the quaestor Lucullus, received a new work of Philo's that outraged him, set two of Cicero's own teachers against each other over whether knowledge is possible. Second, a look ahead to Sextus Empiricus: in Outlines of Pyrrhonism I.12 the Skeptic's end is "quietude in respect of matters of opinion," reached by suspending judgment, like the painter Apelles who threw his sponge at the picture and got the horse's foam by accident. In I.31 Sextus says this quietude is "the opposite" of the Cyrenaic end of pleasure. Cassius reads the abstract of an article asking whether a Greek skeptic can be eudaimon, and lyrics from Ray Davies's song "Quiet Life," posted in a forum thread, as a picture of the skeptical attitude: "No ambition to rock the boat." He argues that this is the reverse of Epicurus, who searched for the truth, took firm positions in the Letter to Menoeceus, founded a school, and fought for what he thought was correct. Ataraxia is one pleasure among others, not the goal; the goal is pleasure.

    Transcript

    Display Spoiler

    Cassius:

    Welcome to Episode 357 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're continuing in our series reviewing Cicero's Academic Questions from an Epicurean perspective. Last week we finished Section 18 of Book Two, and we would be going into Section 19 this week, but for the fact that both Joshua and Kalosyni are unavailable this week. So I'm just going to say a few words about where we are. We'll have a very short episode, and then come back next week to continue on into 19, complete Lucullus, and get started with Cicero's defense of the skeptic position.

    One bit of background I'd like to add about the material that we've been covering is in regard to Antiochus of Ascalon and Philo of Larissa, who we've mentioned in past episodes. These are not particularly important characters in the great scheme of things, but knowing a little about their background may be helpful in terms of where we're going. Most of us don't need to know too much about them, but those who are interested can pursue a review by David Sedley, published in 1981, entitled "The End of the Academy," which was a review of the book Antiochus and the Late Academy by John Glucker. Dr. Sedley says, quote:

    "In 87 BC, the upheavals of the First Mithridatic War had driven Philo of Larissa, scholarch of the Athenian Academy, to exile in Rome. Meanwhile, his pupils Antiochus of Ascalon and Heraclitus of Tyre were to be found in the eastern Mediterranean with the entourage of the quaestor Lucullus."

    And that Lucullus, of course, is the Lucullus who is speaking here in Academic Questions for the Stoics.

    "It was while the party was at Alexandria that there occurred the celebrated furore described by Cicero at Academic Questions II.11–12. Antiochus received from Rome a copy of Philo's latest work, the contents of which so outraged him that he pretended to doubt their authenticity. Heraclitus, when challenged on this, could cite no Academic precedent for them. Yet the work's authenticity was confirmed by two witnesses who had recently been with Philo in Rome. This scene of discord between his two revered masters, Antiochus and Philo, must have been distressing to Cicero."

    Dr. Sedley says it must have been distressing to Cicero to see two of his own teachers fighting among themselves, and fighting over this issue of the possibility of knowledge and how to construct a criterion of truth to decide whether anything can be judged to be true or false. That's the issue that we'll be addressing as we continue through Academic Questions.

    But as we've also said before, we're doing that in preparation for Philodemus's On Signs. And that will also enable us to eventually take up maybe one of the most important summaries of the skeptical school that's available to us today, and that's in the surviving works of Sextus Empiricus.

    To briefly touch on Sextus, I'm going to turn to his Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Book One, Chapter 12, which is entitled "What Is the End of Scepticism?", the end in the sense of the goal. Let me read just a little bit of that, because that will help us identify the direction in which Cicero's skepticism eventually leads. Here's what Sextus says in Chapter 12, quote:

    "Our next subject will be the End of the Sceptic system. Now an 'End' is 'that for which all actions or reasonings are undertaken, while it exists for the sake of none.'"

    Now, let me insert here that that's almost exactly the way that Torquatus starts off his introduction to Epicurus's ethics in Cicero's On Ends: the same kind of statement, that the end is that which you do for itself and not for the sake of anything else. Continuing on, Sextus says:

    "We assert still that the Sceptic's End is quietude in respect of matters of opinion and moderate feeling in respect of things unavoidable."

    So there are two categories there that Sextus is addressing. For things that are unavoidable, he says, he wants moderate feeling. But for those things that are avoidable, which he calls "matters of opinion," his goal is quietude. Notice there's no mention whatsoever of pleasure or pain in this discussion. Continuing on, quote:

    "For the Sceptic, having set out to philosophize with the object of passing judgement on the sense-impressions and ascertaining which of them are true and which false, so as to attain quietude thereby, found himself involved in contradictions of equal weight, and being unable to decide between them suspended judgement; and as he was thus in suspense there followed, as it happened, the state of quietude in respect of matters of opinion.

    "For the man who opines that anything is by nature good or bad is for ever being disquieted: when he is without the things which he deems good he believes himself to be tormented by things naturally bad and he pursues after the things which are, as he thinks, good; which when he has obtained he keeps falling into still more perturbations because of his irrational and immoderate elation, and in his dread of a change of fortune he uses every endeavour to avoid losing the things which he deems good.

    "On the other hand, the man who determines nothing as to what is naturally good or bad neither shuns nor pursues anything eagerly; and, in consequence, he is unperturbed."

    So this is a clear statement of where the skeptics are going. Their goal is quietude. They aren't going to concern themselves with whether something is good or bad. They aren't going to concern themselves with anything that they don't have to concern themselves with. Further on, Sextus admits that pain, at least, is something that can't be avoided, so he does have to concern himself with it to some extent. But he's not going to take a position on whether anything, including pain, is good or bad, because doing so is basically impossible from his skeptical position, and that just leads to disquiet. So he's going to give up the entire search for truth and just accept that it's all a matter of opinion that can't be resolved. And that leads, in his skeptical mind, to quietude.

    The parallels between this type of quietude and certain types of tranquility advocated by some people who think they like Epicurus should be clear by now.

    Further on, Sextus gives the example of an artist who was frustrated at his inability to portray accurately the foam in a horse's mouth. The artist ended up, in frustration, throwing his materials at the artwork, and simply by accident, he saw that what resulted looked better as a representation of the foam than anything he had done intentionally. This is the analogy that Sextus embraces for the happy accident that he thinks arises from the decision not to care about whether anything is true or false. You end up with quietude by abandoning your search for truth. By abandoning your attempt to get it right, you accidentally end up where you wanted to be. That's the skeptical attitude that Sextus is embracing after hundreds of years of development of the skeptical school.

    And this is exactly the result that you might predict, because over in Chapter 31, where Sextus addresses the Cyrenaics, Sextus says this:

    "Some assert that the Cyrenaic doctrine is identical with Scepticism since it too affirms that only mental states are apprehended. But it differs from Scepticism inasmuch as it says that the End is pleasure and the smooth motion of the flesh, whereas we [the Skeptics] say it is 'quietude,' which is the opposite of their End; for whether pleasure be present or not present the man who positively affirms pleasure to be the End undergoes perturbations, as I have argued in my chapter 'Of the End.'"

    So this is all about as clear as it could possibly be: the end of skepticism that they pursue is not pleasure but quietude, a version of ataraxia, if you want to use that word, in which you dismiss any concern about the truth or falsity or goodness or badness of anything, and simply put the question out of your mind to the extent that you can.

    And of course, nothing could be further from Epicurus's pursuit of pleasure and the happy life through truth, through proper attitudes about the gods and death and what the real goal of life is. And so, of course, with the skeptics, what does it mean to them to pursue truth or falsity, or find out the goodness or badness of something, but to take a position on those things? That's something that comes under the category of dogmatism, and that category of dogmatism is where Sextus places Epicurus, as someone who is able to say that he has discovered certain things to be true.

    So Epicurus is concerned about finding answers to questions. He's not about suspending judgment and giving up on everything he possibly can. Again, Epicurus is focused on finding answers to the most important questions of life, answers that will allow us to live successfully in the best way possible.

    We have a thread on this aspect of Sextus Empiricus on the EpicureanFriends forum, and one person posted to that thread a link to a Ray Davies song entitled "Quiet Life," the lyrics of which provide a good way of examining the issues that are involved in this question. We also have in the same thread another link, this time to an article from the Journal of Ancient Philosophy entitled "Can an Ancient Greek Skeptic Be Eudaimon, or Happy? And What Difference Does the Answer Make to Us?" That's the title of the article because the writer acknowledges that if you're a skeptic, what sense does it make to aim to be happy, when you have to take a position on what happiness is?

    Let me read briefly the abstract of that article to give a flavor for why this question is so important. Here's the abstract, quote:

    "This paper explores how far the Greek skeptics in fact accept, and how far they should accept, the central Greek ethical notion of eudaimonia, usually translated 'happiness,' and what, if anything, the answers may tell us today.

    "The first section shows that skeptics of both the Academic and Pyrrhonist traditions frequently employ the notion of eudaimonia, apparently without discomfort.

    "The second section draws attention to a contrast within the relevant works of Sextus Empiricus, one of them being willing to speak of the skeptic's eudaimonia, and the other entirely avoiding this, and considers some possible reasons why, at some point in his life, Sextus might have found the notion problematic. The answers suggested are, first, that the term eudaimonia, at least as normally used by non-skeptical philosophers, presupposes that it is possible to rank human lives objectively in terms of their levels of well-being; and second, that the term standardly carries with it a commitment to a certain kind of long-term structure in one's life. There is at least a serious question whether either of these is consistent with the skeptical suspension of judgment.

    "The third section examines how far a skeptic could aspire to happiness, where this is not assumed to be the equivalent of eudaimonia, and touches on several modern philosophers who have focused on happiness or, more generally, on well-being.

    "The conclusions are that the notions of happiness and eudaimonia are closer in their presuppositions than one might have expected, that a skeptic would be well advised to avoid either one, and that this constitutes a sobering lesson for anyone today who regards values as in some sense subjective, but who aims to construct a satisfactory conception of happiness."

    Now, I'd recommend that entire article to anyone who's interested in this subject, because it points out the critical issue, which is consistent with the direction we've been going in our podcast for many weeks: skeptics, by fundamental commitment, are not going to be able to say that there is anything certain, such as eudaimonia or happiness or any other word, which they can clearly identify and set forth as their goal. It's the nature of skepticism to say that nothing can be known. The true skeptic suspends judgment on everything, including eudaimonia, including happiness, and that's exactly what Epicurus does not do, and tells everyone not to do, as the worst thing you could possibly do. You can't be happy unless you have that as your goal.

    The Letter to Menoeceus, for example, is not a document that says "it's possible this, it's possible that, some people say this, some people say that," and sets people against each other in an argument. Epicurus clearly says in the Letter to Menoeceus what he believes happiness and pleasure are and how they interact with each other, and he takes a firm position on these things. He's not suspending judgment on the key questions of life, like a skeptic will.

    So that's what's going on in the background here, and why it's so important for us to go through Academic Questions as we continue to do, because skepticism is a major infection that many people have. They think it's the proper, reasonable thing not to take a position unless they absolutely have to. Cicero himself gave in to this despite his Stoic leanings, and that's why Cicero ends up arguing against the Stoics in Academic Questions, even though Cicero is widely acknowledged to be heavily influenced by the ethics of the Stoics.

    So the song "Quiet Life," posted in our thread, does a good job of representing some of these issues in today's world. Let me quote a couple of its lyrics, again by Ray Davies, and it goes like this, quote:

    "Something's happening, but I'm just going to turn a blind eye. If I see no evil, ask no questions, and I hear no lies...

    "I can't communicate with minds that are small. With some people, it's like talking to the wall. But a fellow who walks away lives to battle another day, and I've really got no appetite for a fight, not tonight.

    "All I want is a quiet life, anything for a quiet life. No ambition to rock the boat when I can just stay afloat. Be content with a quiet life. All I want is a quiet life, anything for a quiet life.

    "Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil at all. Confidentially, between these walls, I'm on top of it all. I'd rather have them think I'm deaf, dumb, and blind than aggravation every time I speak my mind. Keep it a quiet life, anything for a quiet life.

    "I could easily blow my top, start a row, but why start now? Give your daddy a quiet life. Give your mother a quiet life. Anything for a quiet life."

    That's the end of the lyrics, and I want to say again, I really appreciate the posting of that, because I think it does a great job of dramatizing exactly what's at stake. This is not Epicurus's position about how to live your life. Epicurus lived his life confronting issues, confronting questions, looking for answers, and talking about what he thought those answers were. The idea that Epicurus would walk away, that he had no appetite for a fight, that he didn't want to rock the boat, is contrary to everything we know about the life of Epicurus.

    His life was dedicated to searching for the truth from the time he was young, questioning Chaos. He then moved forward assembling friends, building a school, recruiting friends to help him write against the other schools he was campaigning against, and doing what he could to take the positions that he thought were correct to the people, in the face of those positions that he thought were wrong. That's the very opposite of what Ray Davies is describing in "Quiet Life."

    So what I think this gives us is a lot of food for thought about where the skeptics are really going, what quietude ends up really meaning in terms of practical reality if it is warped into something that Epicurus would not approve of, and why it's so important not to set up quietude or tranquility, or any version of terms such as ataraxia, in a way that eliminates and ignores the fundamental direction that Epicurus was going in: pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain, all of which requires you to take positions on the hard questions of life, and not just close your eyes and go along with the crowd.

    Epicurus talks about ataraxia in the context of pleasure. It's clearly pleasure that's the goal for Epicurus. Ataraxia is a pleasure, but it is certainly not the only pleasure, nor is it the highest pleasure in the sense of something that should be put ahead of everything else. Epicurus makes clear that when pleasure requires pain, we undergo that pain. We are more than willing to accept what it takes to live the happiest life possible. That includes having disputes with other people who disagree, or who try to prevent us from searching for the truth, who try to get in our way of discovering the truth. We're not going to simply walk away from every controversy, and certainly not take the position that by walking away you live to battle another day, when you've set the goal of never participating in a battle in the first place.

    Some battles you certainly walk away from, and we have an example of that in Lucian's Alexander the Oracle-Monger, where an Epicurean was about to get himself stoned to death for making accusations against the oracle Alexander, who was claiming to be able to foretell the future. As Lucian reports there, the Stoics, the Christians, and others had no problem with Alexander being a fraud in predicting the future. But the Epicureans were the ones who stood up to him and attempted to tell the people that it was a fraud.

    If you take it as a matter of philosophy that you're never going to fight about anything, then it makes no sense to say that you're walking away to live to fight another day. Epicurus did not walk away from the philosophical fights of his time, and that's the example that I'd submit we need to follow ourselves.

    So I don't want to go too much further today without Joshua and Kalosyni present to help make sure we cover everything that's important in Section 19. So therefore, we'll bring today's episode to a conclusion and come back next week and pick up with Section 19. We'll continue to not just discuss these issues and say how interesting they are, but we will take positions and point out where Epicurus said something was true and something was false on these important questions that are vital to living the best life possible.

    So with that, as always, we invite everyone to drop by the EpicureanFriends forum and let us know if you have any questions or comments about our discussions of Epicurus. Thanks for your time today, and we'll be back again soon. See you then. Bye.

  • Welcome Thomas Karion!

    Quote from Thomas Karion

    “A man conscious of his condition necessarily experiences either pleasure or pain.” So to me, it’s clear that a conscious man experiences either pleasure or pain, but not both at the same time. What do you think, Cassius?

    i think this is a subset of how we have to deal with concepts as well as particulars simultaneously. As I read Epicurus, he acknowedges the reality of BOTH (1) atoms and void and (2) things that are made of atoms and void. Epicurus is not a radical reductionists who ththeinks that atoms and void are the only reality. Pleasure and pain as concepts are considered to be neither atoms nor void, but they do not exist as concepts apart from the individual examples of their existence. If you were to try to subtract all of the specific pleasures of life from the concept you would not succeed any more than you could still have a "heap" after you subtracted all grains of sand or wheat.

    So when Epicurus is talking about feeling either pleasure or pain he is not abstracting away from reality. Reality is that you and your feelings are an accumulation of atoms and void through which your mind and body generate feelings and concepts in tremendous numbers at all times. We choose to categorize our feelings into pleasure and pain for purposes of communicating about them, but that does not mean that there is "pleasure" or "pain" floating the air.

    I think part of the issue behind your question is something that is a big hurdle to a lot of people - they think that by identifying "pleasure" as the goal that Epicurus was talking about a particular experience or type of pleasure. And then they combine that error with the discussion of by pleasure we mean the absence of pain and problem explodes into Buddhism or Asceticism. Pleasure as a concept includes all that is felt to be desirable, but it is also important to see that it is nothing else. If it's not desirable it's not pleasure, so any inference that Buddhist-like thinkers want to draw (Ah he's talking about nirvana or nothingness!) is out of court because Epicurean physics previously establishes that absence of sensation is nothing to us so we're not going to entertain imaginative suggestions of anything other than that which is part of our material universe.

    So you're right to be asking about how many things you can actually "focus" on at a particular moment. The nature of the way we use "focus" may imply that we can only "focus" on one thing at a time - if we define it that way. But in reality higher animals are in practice aware of many different things at once. I am aware mentally of the many things that I enjoy even when I have a hangnail or a toothache. And there are many citations in Epicurean texts where Epicurus is obviously doing exactly that, weighing and balancing desirable things against undesirable things simultaneously.

  • Welcome Thomas Karion!

    Great questions and will take some time to address them in detail. But first I want to be sure you have seen the book recommendation to Norman DeWitt's "Epicurus and His Philosophy" which is in my view the best general reference that addresses these issues in the most detailed way. As to your specific points I can start with this below:

    As to the role of consciousness we have this from Torquatus:

    Quote

    "Epicurus consequently maintained that there 'is no such thing as a neutral state of feeling' intermediate between pleasure and pain; for the state supposed by some thinkers to be neutral, being characterized as it is by entire absence of pain, is itself, he held, a pleasure, and, what is more, a pleasure of the highest order. A man who is conscious of his condition at all must necessarily feel either pleasure or pain." (Cicero, On Ends I.38, tr. Rackham)

    Just before this: "When we are released from pain, the mere sensation of complete emancipation and relief from uneasiness is in itself a source of gratification. But everything that causes gratification is a pleasure ... when hunger and thirst are banished by food and drink, the mere fact of getting rid of uneasiness brings a resultant pleasure in its train" (I.37).

    So it's neither "awareness of health" as a judgment nor "health" as an unfelt condition, but health as it is felt by a conscious being. The condition "conscious of his condition at all" does not require that we stop and think "I am now experiencing pleasure." It requires only that he be awake and feeling because pleasure exists directly in the felt condition of being alive and well.

    As to attention directly, Cicero records this:

    Quote

    "He makes the alleviation of grief depend on two things, a ceasing to think on evil, and a turning to the contemplation of pleasure. For he thinks that the mind may possibly be under the power of reason, and follow her directions; he forbids us, therefore, to mind trouble, and calls us off from sorrowful reflections." (Cicero, Tusculan Disputations III.15, tr. Yonge)

    And as you referenced in Epicurus' dying period:

    Quote

    "On this truly happy day of my life, as I am at the point of death, I write this to you. The disease in my bladder and stomach are pursuing their course, lacking nothing of their natural severity: but against all this is the joy in my heart at the recollection of my conversations with you." (DL X.22)

    I read this as not denying pain but turning attention to a pleasure, and this sets that pleasure against the pain.

    As to experiencing pleasure and pain at the same time not being a contradiction, we are talking about different parts of our experience:

    Quote

    "Pain does not last continuously in the flesh, but the acutest pain is there for a very short time, and even that which just exceeds the pleasure in the flesh does not continue for many days at once. But chronic illnesses permit a predominance of pleasure over pain in the flesh." (Principal Doctrine 4, tr. Bailey)

    A "predominance of pleasure over pain" only makes sense if both are present in different parts of one's experience at the same time. Pain that "just exceeds the pleasure in the flesh" also presupposes that both are there to be compared.

    Epicurus's last letter do not say that the joy of memory stopped him from feeling his illness. They say the reverse: the disease was "pursuing [its] course, lacking nothing of [its] natural severity: but against all this is the joy in my heart" (DL X.22). I read that as pleasure and pain felt at the same time but in different places, with the pleasure of the mind outweighing the pain of the body.

    Also, Diogenes Laertius records that it is possible to be tortured yet feel happiness at the same time:

    Quote

    "And even if the wise man be put on the rack, he is happy. ... Yet when he is on the rack, then he will cry out and lament." (DL X.118)

    He cries out, so the pain is real and felt. Even so he can be happy because the pleasures of his life, of memory, of understanding and of friendship can be judged to outweigh it if we turn our attention to it.


    As to boredom:

    Quote

    "The right understanding of these facts enables us to refer all choice and avoidance to the health of the body and (the soul's) freedom from disturbance, since this is the aim of the life of blessedness. For it is to obtain this end that we always act, namely, to avoid pain and fear. And when this is once secured for us, all the tempest of the soul is dispersed, since the living creature has not to wander as though in search of something that is missing, and to look for some other thing by which he can fulfill the good of the soul and the good of the body." (Letter to Menoeceus, DL X.128)

    "Wandering as though in search of something that is missing" is very close to what you are describing as boredom and an indication that some natural desire is not being met. Epicurus does not say to extinguish that desire but to satisfy it wisely in a way that produces more pleasure than pain. A feeling that something is missing likely points to a natural desire that has gone unmet and which Epicurus would say you should act to meet.

    Also remember that Epicurus does not limit pleasure to "absence of disturbance." Diogenes Laertius records that "Epicurus admits both kinds" of pleasure, the pleasure of motion as well as the pleasure of rest, "both in the soul and in the body" (DL X.136). Active pleasures are pleasures too, and most experiences in life are active, even if described in terms of conversation, study, or friendship. A life arranged so that it is merely free from trouble, with nothing to do and no one to enjoy it with will not be a life of happiness based on pleasure but a life of pain.

  • Welcome Thomas Karion!

    Quote from Thomas Karion

    If I don’t feel pleasure, it’s indeed because I’m experiencing suffering, however slight it may be.

    I think that's true. Whether this is clear to people will probably depend on how they view the meaning of "pleasure," and someone new to the philosophy not realize that there is a question as to the meaning of the word.

  • Welcome Thomas Karion!

    Also Thomas:

    I personally find most discussions of katastematic pleasure on the internet to be worth very little. They seem to think that repeating "Epicurus said the highest pleasure is absence of pain" is self-explanatory and needs no further elaboration or defense. Or maybe they think that statement can't be explained satisfactorily. I do not believe most of those discussions are helpful at all, and I don't believe an adequate answer can be given without digging into the details of Epicurean physics and canonics which most websites do not explore. or make an effort to explain their connection to ethics.

    We can come back later to the question of in what sense it is proper to think of absence of pain as the "highest" pleasure.

    The initial question to establish is whether and in what sense absence of pain qualifies as "a" pleasure at all. If one doesn't accept that first point, it makes no sense to get caught up in the second question.

    Also I suspect others here will have things to say about this so I hope they will. You have raised the issue in a very clear way:

    Quote from Thomas Karion

    I have a second question.

    In his third important maxim, Epicurus says that the removal of all suffering is the limit of the magnitude of pleasures.

    Now, I am not experiencing any fear, physical pain, or mental distress at this moment.

    However, I am not feeling any pleasure right now.

    From an Epicurean perspective, can you explain why?

  • Welcome Thomas Karion!

    Quote from Thomas Karion

    Are you perhaps referring to “pleasures in motion” and “catastematic pleasure”?

    These are very deep subjects, especially getting into the details of "katatestematic" pleasure, which I do not personally recommend you try to do at the beginning.

    The place to start is that Epicurus held that there are only two categories of feeling - pleasure and pain - and that if you are not feeling one you are feeling the other.

    The justification for that classification scheme is the issue, because it widens the nature of pleasure into both being stimulated from the outside (the standard view of pleasure) plus all other awareness that you have of being alive, which can also be viewed as pleasure.

    There are all sorts of debates about "the highest pleasure" and exactly what is meant by "katastematic" and what is meant by pleasures in motion and at rest, but those are not the first hurdle.

    The first hurdle is exactly what Cicero raised in objection to Epicurus, and that is the question of whether it is acceptable usage to consider all non-painful feeling to be pleasure.

    You haven't said much about your level of past reading and how far you're comfortable reading the academic articles. We can point you to all sorts of resources depending on your level of interest, so let us know what you might be interested in.

    There is one academic article in particular that makes this point plain - David Sedley's "Inferential Foundations of Epicurean Ethics" where he discussed the parallel between dividing all of the universe at large into matter and void and dividing all feelings between pleasure and pain.

    But you are right to focus on this question at the very start, because it is a logical basis of how Epicurean ethics work.

  • Welcome Thomas Karion!

    Thomas that is definitely an issue to to pursue til you understand the reason for Epicurus' position, so let us know as you read further about it. Epicurus' definition of pleasure is wider than the normal view, and his philosophy can't really be understood - nor can you decide whether you agree with it or not, without examining why Epicurus held that there are only two classes of feelings. Keep reading and asking until you are satisfied. You may not agree with the point but you can't be sure til you see it.

    Additional quotations here:

    Epicurean Ethics - Epicureanfriends.com
    www.epicureanfriends.com

  • Welcome Thomas Karion!

    Quote from Kalosyni

    this phrase is way too vague, and so I personally wouldn't state the following:

    That's in the context of:

    Quote from Torquatus in On Ends Book One

    We are inquiring, then, what is the final and ultimate Good, which as all philosophers are agreed must be of such a nature as to be the End to which all other things are means, while it is not itself a means to anything else. This Epicurus finds in pleasure; pleasure he holds to be the Chief Good, pain the Chief Evil. This he sets out to prove as follows:

    Reason, piety, and virtue are means to the end of pleasure, not ends in themselves, and that's a real key to Epicurean philosophy clarifying how things are prioritized.

  • Welcome Thomas Karion!

    Thinking further about this question - even if we stick to "ethics," we know Epicurus' own approximate ranking of problems when he left:

    1 - People life hoping for divine assistance or trying to escape divine punishment for their actions, thinking that there is divine influence on our lives. Is that a problem that has gone away over the last two thousand years? Maybe in terms of raw superstition, but in more "respectable" terms (the major religions) I would say those problems are every bit as bad today and then - and arguable much worse.

    2 - People live thinking that they will somehow survive death and will be either punished or rewarded for their actions after death. Is that something that has gone away over the last two thousand years? Again I would say that the instances of that are at least as widespread as then, and probably worse.

    3- People live thinking that they should follow "virtue," or "reason," or "piety" rather than pursuing happiness through pleasure. Is this something that people have improved on in the last two thousand years? If I had to debate both sides of that issue I'd think I was on the much stronger team if I were arguing "no."

    4 - People have all sorts of concerns about pain arising from disease or wars or poverty or numerous other things, and as a result they panic and do all sorts of stupid things. Is this a problem that has gotten better or gone away by people realizing that pain is manageable? Again I would say no.

    And we could go down the rest of the principle doctrines one by one and ask if they have gotten better, or if people understand that the world is wholly natural and not run by arbitrary gods, or if people understand that there are rational ways to be confident in making difficult decisions (rather than being wholly skeptical or nihilistic. At the time of Epicurus' death he might well have thought that the future looked better. But if were transported to the Athens of today via time machine, I suspect that any respect he might have for modern technology would be outweighed when he discovered that the problems that he campaigned against then are just as bad today - or worse.

  • Welcome Thomas Karion!

    Welcome to the forum and that's a very interesting question.

    Quote from Thomas Karion

    If I were to attempt an approximate and unsatisfactory answer myself, I would begin by saying that, these days, most people seem to me to be less troubled by what he calls celestial realities (particularly the gods) and death. Because of this, I imagine that if Epicurus were to write books about nature today, it would be primarily to fully understand the limits of pain and desire (especially in the capitalist society of overconsumption in which we live). Furthermore, Epicurus would write about the Canon.


    I suppose it would be necessary to evaluate the context in which one might imagine Epicurus appearing and how he would arrive.

    If you were to literally have a time machine and transport the literal Epicurus, he would have a lot to do to pick up where he left off and decide how to evaluate what had happened in the intervening 2000 years. And if you allowed him time to investigate the history of the intervening time, I suspect he would be very unhappy about how society and social structures had developed during that time.

    When he left, Epicurean views were young and gaining popularity, as they did for hundreds of years after he died. The views that the espoused on most major issues of life were well respected and even opposition was within reasonable limits. Much of what has happened since that time represents a setback for those views, however, and I suspect that first and foremost he would want to know "why" and "what happened" to prevent the continuing development of his nature-based viewpoint.

    So in the most general terms I think "catching up" and then diagnosing "what happened and why" would probably be his first step. Then depending on what circumstances you placed him in, you'd probably have his attention drawn according to those circumstances (rich, poor, peaceful, at war, etc).

    That's only a general initial answer but thanks for your post and welcome to the forum!