Posts by Cassius

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  • A. Le Grand's Divine Epicurus

    The file section thread is linked below.

    As part of his Wikipedia biography I see that LeGrande was highly religious and (sarcasm) a real prince of a guy:

    Quote

    Le Grand argued against animal rights and authored Dissertatio de carentia sensus et cognitionis in brutis (On the Lack of Sense and Cognition in Brutes) in 1675 which defends the Cartesian idea that animals are mere machines.[3][4]

    I'm getting a highly negative impression of LeGrande and this work but let me emphasize that I am very appreciative to Tau Phi for preparing this because I think there's a lot to be learned by dissecting it. Had he not done so I might never have found out any more about it.

    This kind of contribution by Tau Phi is a great contribution to the forum and example of what we can accomplish working in an online community.

  • A. Le Grand's Divine Epicurus

    I have scanned over about 50% so far. Couple of comments:

    1. I am not able to get the link in Don's original post to work anymore. Not sure what's up with that.
    2. It's difficult to read because of its archaic constructions and flowery language, much worse than the sections of Frances Wright that I also find overly-flowery. (As we are discussing "suavity" in another current thread, I'll say that if this kind of floweriness were what was meant by "suavity" I would be in favor of banishing it from the face of the earth. But I don't think this is what is meant by "suavity.")
    3. I definitely think this is historically useful. As in my original comment above this seems to be a Gassendi-like attempt to blend Christian morality with Epicurus, and I am seeing long sections that are sort of "conventional morality" that don't make much effort to tie back to Epicurus at all.
    4. At the moment my reaction is that this work may constitute a milestone in the "corruption" of Epicurus into something that the Christian world could find acceptable. Parts of it are no doubt ok, but it seems to contain lots of material such as the following from page 45 of the PDF:


    My main thought is that this is going to be very useful in tracking down the process of "dumbind down" Epicurean philosophy over the centuries. In what I've read so far there's no mention of Epicurean Physics and Epicurean Canonics and so what's left is being massaged - with many words and flowery phrases - into something very meek and mild that anyone of any philosophical position could accept.

    I'd like to know more about this Le Grande so we could place him in context with Gassendi.

    So again thank you very much Tau Phi!

    I will add this to the files section.

  • Suavity - General Discussion

    Also the word "unctuous" comes to mind.

    I can think of numbers of people who will remain unnamed who have that kind of sickly-sweet demeanor.

    On the other hand (despite it being my least favorite part of her book) Frances Wright spends her Chapter One describing Epicurus in terms that probably are close to "suave" but in an entirely positive way.

  • Suavity - General Discussion

    Since suavity appears to be more Latin than Greek we probably need to look more to the Latin use of it.

    Quote from Don

    I freely admit I have no grasp on what "suavity" means,

    I suspect that this is a very bad thing for the culture if even Don finds the word to be highly suspicious (as I do myself).

    Certainly the times have changed and calling someone "gentlemanly" has lost all of its earlier appeal, at least in many circles. Must all gentlemen be back-slapping good-old-boys? Was that always considered to be the case? I suspect not.

    And I completely agree that "Smooth" in terms of character has many more negative connotations than bad ones.

    But I am old enough to suspect that this wasn't always the case, I would think courtesy and grace (especially but not always under pressure) and gentlemanliness had strong positiive means that are separate and apart from "gratitude" in the sense of a transactional appreciation for what someone has done for us.

    The discussion so far indicates to me that it would be well worth while separating out the "good aspects" from the "bad aspects" of what is being referenced here. The pendulum seems to have swung way too far to the side of insincerity on something that should not be lost. And it does look like there were significant attacks against Epicurus (wording as to Colotes etc) that need to be understood in terms of a proper appreciation of good qualities, rather than insincere flattery. Must all flattery be "insincere"? Can't we praise someone or something without being guitly of manipulation?

    This looks to be another area where it is going to be necessary to look to the Roman sources for better preserved discussion of what is going on. The quotes from Cicero and Augustine and about Atticus seem particularly promising if the words being used are forms of suavitas.

    Certainly foods can be oversweet, but sweetness is often and even generally (?) desirable. And Iit wouldn't in general conversation be normal to call a man "sweet."


    Latin definition for: suavitas, suavitatis

    suavitas, suavitatis

    noun

    • declension: 3rd declension
    • gender: feminine

    Definitions:

    1. charm, attractiveness
    2. sweetness
    • Age: In use throughout the ages/unknown
    • Area: All or none
    • Geography: All or none
    • Frequency: Frequent, top 2000+ words
    • Source: General, unknown or too common to say

  • Suavity - General Discussion

    Tonight we discussed briefly on the forum that just as there was an emphasis on "frank Speech" there was also an Epicurean emphasis on "Suavity" - at least according to the sources collected below by DeWitt. Given the hazards that "frank speech" can entail we probably ought to have at least as much discussion on suavity, as well as the Consideration that DeWitt also covers in the next following subsection. No doubt DeWitt is stretching somewhat here but I would say most all of it is well reasoned and makes very good sense for an Epicurean to pursue.

  • Ongoing Discussion of Jack Gedney's "Untroubled" Substack Blog

    Quote from Pacatus

    Just for my own edification, when (or with whom) does the classical period end? (No argument with your point.)

    I gather that when we start talking about the "latest" old-school Epicureans who would have access to authentic texts and teachers we are probably talking about Lucian or Diogene of Oinoanda or Diogenes Laertius. I gather that their dates are approximate so I'm not sure which order to place them in.

    After that period, it would appear to me that the continuity of the school was completely broken in terms of living teachers and readily available texts. Everyone after that general period would likely have been doing what we are doing - trying to reconstruct the full picture from relatively sparse remaining texts.

    As time went by and fewer and fewer texts and teachers remained it would have become more and more tempting to narrow the focus onto the main surviving ethical texts and lose the context in which they were originally written.

    Which eventually resulted in the modern phenomena of people who think that they can grasp all they need to know about Epicurus from the four short sentences of the Tetrapharmakon, which does not even mention pleasure or physics or canonics.

  • Episode 336 - EATAQ18 - A Coherent Whole Or An Arbitrary Mess - The Necessity of The Study of Nature and Knowledge In Addition To Ethics

    Notes for today: On Natue of the Gods Book 1

    15 ” ‘Yes, but Epicurus actually wrote books about holiness43 and piety.’ But what is the language of these books? Such that you think you are listening to a Coruncanius or a Scaevola, high priests, not to the man who destroyed the very foundations of religion, and overthrew — not by main force like Xerxes, but by argument — the temples and the altars of the immortal gods. Why, what reason have you for maintaining that men owe worship to the gods, if the gods not only pay no respect to men,44 but care for nothing and do nothing at all? 116 ‘But deity possesses an excellence and pre‑eminence which must of its own nature attract the worship of the wise.’ Now how can there be any excellence in a being so p113 engrossed in the delights of his own pleasure that he always has been, is, and will continue to be entirely idle and inactive? Furthermore how can you owe piety to a person who has bestowed nothing upon you? or how can you owe anything at all to one who has done you no service? Piety is justice towards the gods; but how can any claims of justice exist between us and them, if god and man have nothing in common? Holiness is the science of divine worship; but I fail to see why the gods should be worshipped if we neither have received nor hope to receive benefit from them. 42 117 On the other hand what reason is there for adoring the gods on the ground of our admiration for the divine nature, if we cannot see that that nature possesses any special excellence?


    One of the clearest statements comes in On the Nature of the Gods 1.51–52, where Velleius explains that the gods are perfectly happy and immortal and therefore undertake no labor, administration, or governance of the world. The Epicurean gods:

    Quote

    are not burdened with any occupation,
    have no business to perform,
    enjoy their own wisdom and virtue,
    and live in complete happiness.

    Cotta then repeatedly ridicules this position. In 1.93–124 he argues that the Epicurean gods are practically useless because they neither create the world, govern it, care for mankind, punish the wicked, nor reward the good.

    One of Cicero's most famous formulations occurs in On the Nature of the Gods 1.121, where Cotta essentially asks what sort of deity can be imagined that:

    Quote

    does nothing, undertakes nothing, cares about nothing.

    The Latin often quoted is:

    Quote

    nihil agit, nihil molitur, nulla re occupatur

    ("does nothing, undertakes nothing, is occupied with nothing").

    This is probably the passage most often cited when people say that Cicero accused the Epicureans of believing that the gods "do nothing."

    There are also related criticisms in On the Nature of the Gods 1.115–124, where Cotta argues that a god who neither acts nor governs is little different from a decorative figure.

  • Eudaimonia and Makariotēs in the Letter to Menoeceus

    I just noticed something about this article that should have jumped out at me from the beginning. My failure to notice it reinforces to me that there's a test that above all others ought to be applied in evaluating any discussion of Epicurean ethics.

    The test is: "How often and how clearly and how strongly does the discussion mention pleasure?"

    So let me apply that test here, just as I hope people will apply that to my own articles on these subjects.

    In this case, the first mention of pleasure occurs in the second paragraph, but only to exclude "temporary pleasure" from the meaning of Epicurean happiness.

    The next mention of pleasure does not occur until the table near the end of the article, where the fourth of six items under happiness is stated to be "A stable life with many more pleasures than pains."

    The only other and final mention is in the next-to-last paragraph, where "enjoys prudent pleasures" is the third of three items listed as allowing one to obtain happiness.

    -----

    Apparently even in the ancient world Diogenes of Oinoanda felt it necessary to "shout loudly" about this issue:

    But since, as I say, the issue is not «what is the means of happiness?» but «what is happiness and what is the ultimate goal of our nature?», I say both now and always, shouting out loudly to all Greeks and non-Greeks, that pleasure is the end of the best mode of life....

    And nothing could be more clear than the way Torquatus expressed it:

    [54] But if the encomium passed even on the virtues themselves, over which the eloquence of all other philosophers especially runs riot, can find no vent unless it be referred to pleasure, and pleasure is the only thing which invites us to the pursuit of itself, and attracts us by reason of its own nature, then there can be no doubt that of all things good it is the supreme and ultimate good, and that a life of happiness means nothing else but a life attended by pleasure.

    In other contexts here on the forum we are discussing the problem of the rhetorical choice to portray Epicurus as a philosopher of withdrawal, resignation, and primarily relief from pain, rather than as the philosopher whose ethics focuses on a life of pleasure and who said that:

    [129] And for this cause we call pleasure the beginning and end of the blessed life. For we recognize pleasure as the first good innate in us, and from pleasure we begin every act of choice and avoidance, and to pleasure we return again, using the feeling as the standard by which we judge every good.

    Note that pleasure is the standard by which we judge every good. That means that pleasure is the standard by which we judge the existence and desirability of both happiness and blessedness - not the other way around.

    The letter to Menoeceus itself provides more than a few opportunities to stress the primary place of pleasure in Epicurean philosophy. When that doesn't happen, it's an important reminder to all of us that there are powerful pressures at work -- even among those of us who admire Epicurus -- that cause us to downplay the role of pleasure in discussing ethics.

    At least here at EpicureanFriends, those pressures need to be called out and "shouted" down, just as Epicurus himself in writing to Menoeceus pointed out that he himself was being misrepresented and misunderstood.

    Certainly happiness and blessedness are important and useful terms, and it is helpful to talk about them. But we should never let pleasure lose its central focus. It's the means without which we would never even recognize happiness and blessedness as desirable in the first place.

  • Eudaimonia and Makariotēs in the Letter to Menoeceus

    Quote from Kalosyni

    For Epicurus, happiness is not a temporary feeling of pleasure or excitement but a stable condition of living well. In Epicurean thought, it refers to a life that is complete, satisfying, and free from suffering. It is not merely an emotion but an enduring state of flourishing.

    In regard to "free from suffering" that does not mean totally free, right, because we have the example of Epicurus bring happy on his last days while still under great pain?

  • Ongoing Discussion of Jack Gedney's "Untroubled" Substack Blog

    While I was writing on this topic and also thinking about what we are discussing in the podcast, I came across a Substack post by Doug Bates entitled "The Symbol Of What's Wrong With Stoicism" which is critical of Zeno's hand gesture explanation of knowledge as reported by Cicero. This is something that Joshua specifically criticized in our recent podcasts as well.

    I found the article a little puzzling however, because it didn't focus on the purpose of the hand gesture as essential to the issue of knowledge, but rather discussed it in terms of "openness" which became the focus of the article (Put another way, the open hand is openness to all of experience. The partially closed hand is a curating of that experience: this part to focus on; that part to ignore. The fist is that which one is certain one wants to hold onto, and the left hand over the fist is the certainty of the certainty.........)

    I seem to recall that Doug Bates has written in the past more favorably of Stoicism, but maybe my memory is wrong. His blog is now subtitled Articles about the intersection of ancient Greek philosophy and Buddhism; and in particular, the philosophy that resulted from that intersection: Pyrrhonism.

    Ok, so as skeptic I wouldn't expect him to speak favorably of Stoic ideas of knowledge, but I sort of expected him to track the arguments of Cicero, also a skeptic, rather than Pyrrho.

    All that's a long way of saying that this reminded me that there IS an active group of modern Stoics for whom I do have significant respect (not agreement, but respect) - those like Christ Fischer who write at TraditionalStoicism.com. They refuse to limit themselves to a narrow slice of Stoic philosophy and they insist on studying and pursuing the full spectrum of stoic ideas - physics, epistemology, and ethics.

    Their statements in their ABOUT page could have been written to describe the purpose of the founding of EpicureanFriends.com, just by substituting "Epicurean" for "Stoic," and appropriately replacing the names dropped at the end:

    Quote

    About the Traditional Stoicism website

    While this website and blog are the creation of Chris Fisher, the inspiration and encouragement came from a group of like-minded traditional Stoics from The Society of Epictetus. Traditional Stoics are not as numerous as modern Stoics on social media sites. As a result, our voice is often lost amidst numerous atheists and agnostics who place the divine and providential cosmos of Stoicism somewhere on the spectrum between “unnecessary” and “unreasonable.” Traditional Stoics consider the physics and theology of Stoicism an essential part of this philosophical way of life. Why? Because the ancient Stoics said it was essential and we have found that to be true in our individual practice. We believe this deeply spiritual, philosophical way of life is a legitimate option for many moderns seeking a rational form of spirituality that is not tied to organized religion. This website and the Traditional Stoicism Facebook group will provide resources to support traditional Stoics in their practice, and allow interested individuals to explore the traditional form of Stoicism for themselves. While many may find one of the recently formulated modern versions of Stoicism more to their liking, traditional Stoics attempt to follow, as much as possible, the same path toward excellence and happiness trod by Roman Senator, Seneca; freed slave turned philosopher, Epictetus; and Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius.

    The same goes for their "What Is Traditional Stoicism?" which could have been written for EpicureanFriends:

    Quote

    What is Traditional Stoicism?

    These posts differentiate traditional Stoicism from the various modern iterations that diverge, often dramatically, from the essential elements of Stoic philosophy as historically understood. The assertion of traditional Stoicism is not that the philosophical system cannot change and evolve, nor does it assert that moderns must assent to everything the ancients did. Instead, traditional Stoicism rests on the demonstrable fact that the ancient Stoics built their philosophical theory and practice around a set of fundamental assumptions about the nature of humankind and the nature of the cosmos. Those assumptions define Stoicism and empower its practice to affect change in lives. Clearly, our understanding of both human nature and the cosmos has increased over time and those new facts can be assimilated into the framework of the original system. However, in our current secular age, many want to abandon fundamental aspects of the framework itself because they conflict with their assumed worldview. The ancient Stoics denied that their system could be changed in this manner; traditional Stoics agree. Traditional Stoicism asserts that we must avoid the impulse to change Stoic practice into something which is no longer recognizable as Stoicism simply to make it more palatable for moderns.


    EpicureanFriends goes by "Classical Epicurean" rather than "Traditional Epicurean," but the point is the same. In the case of the Stoics you probably don't have to go back too many centuries or even decades to find the majority of self-proclaimed stoics to be exactly in line with classical stoic views, with the only required tweak being the name of gods being referenced.

    In the case of Epicureans, I'd maintain you have to go all the way back to the classical period to find advocates for Epicurus whom the ancient Epicureans themselves would truly recognize as being part of their own school.

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