Posts by Cassius

Supportive of the main point:

Why Perfect Is The Enemy Of Good

Why obsession with perfection can paralyze.

www.psychologytoday.com

Quote from Little Rocker

chief among them is the view that there is no meaning or purpose behind suffering

Great point

Even from the Nietzschean "what doesn't kill us makes us stronger" perspective, there darn well better be a goal of "making us stronger" for engaging in any suffering or else I want no part of it!

Certainly standing alone the idea of fixating on suffering is awful. I haven't really absorbed or am ready to endorse N's view of "pity" as being such a bad thing, but I think he has a point there too which could eventually be made more clear. In my case I concretize the issue by thinking about how easy it would be for me to sit around thinking constantly about people in nursing homes or animals in animal shelters or in factory farms. But I can usually catch myself by realizing that if I did nothing but continue to think about those issues there would be no time for anything else in life, much less the possibility of finding time to help at least a few of them where possible.

I guess we need a specific thread on "perfect as the enemy of the good" so here it is, starting with Wikipedia citing Voltaire:

"Perfect As the Enemy of the Good"

This is a thread specifically devoted to "perfect as the enemy of the good." Seems to me this has a lot of application in Epicurean decisionmaking, although this thread stems from the discussion of Hegesias the Death Persuader. Some apparently assert that the perfect "is" the enemy of the good, but others react that we cannot allow this to be accepted. While the two things may not be the same, having the imperfect is superior to taking positions or actions that never allow us to obtain the perfect. Absence of pain may be desirable in the abstract, but for humans the only way to achieve total freedom from pain is death, and the dead can experience neither pleasure nor pain, so obsessing on total absence of pain is self-defeating for humans. That's why I think it is unfair to Epicurus to interpret him as doing so, and that when he "seems" to do so he is engaged in philosophical debate about competing philosophic definitions, not stating that we should forgo the pleasures of life in order to make sure we never experience pain.

This is the current 5/18/23 content of the Wikipedia page:

Perfect is the enemy of good is an aphorism which means insistence on perfection often prevents implementation of good improvements. The Pareto principle or 80–20 rule explains this numerically. For example, it commonly takes 20% of the full time to complete 80% of a task while to complete the last 20% of a task takes 80% of the effort.^[1] Achieving absolute perfection may be impossible and so, as increasing effort results in diminishing returns, further activity becomes increasingly inefficient.

Origin[edit]

In the English-speaking world the aphorism is commonly attributed to Voltaire, who quoted an Italian proverb in his Questions sur l'Encyclopédie [fr] in 1770: "Il meglio è l'inimico del bene".^[2] It subsequently appeared in his moral poem, La Bégueule, which starts^[3]

Quote

Dans ses écrits, un sage Italien
Dit que le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.

(In his writings, a wise Italian
says that the best is the enemy of the good)

Previously, around 1726, in his Pensées, Montesquieu wrote "Le mieux est le mortel ennemi du bien" (The best is the mortal enemy of the good).^[4]

Antecedents[edit]

Aristotle and other classical philosophers propounded the principle of the golden mean which counsels against extremism in general.^[5]

Its sense in English literature can be traced back to Shakespeare,^[6] In his tragedy, King Lear (1606), the Duke of Albany warns of "striving to better, oft we mar what's well" and in Sonnet 103:

Quote

Were it not sinful then, striving to mend,
To mar the subject that before was well?

Variations[edit]

The 1893 Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources lists a similar proverb, which it claims is of Chinese provenance: "Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without one."

More recent applications include Robert Watson-Watt propounding a "cult of the imperfect", which he stated as "Give them the third best to go on with; the second best comes too late, the best never comes";^[7] economist George Stigler's assertion that "If you never miss a plane, you're spending too much time at the airport";^[8][9] and, in

Seems to me too that at a very basic level we can pin a lot of the problem of Buddhism and Stoicism to their "physics" views that there is essentially a soul that survives death to experience new things in some type of future existence. That's at bottom of what they use to justify renouncing pleasure while it is available in this life, and even to consider that it might have been better not to have been born. In the absence of some reward for ascetic behavior somewhere down the road, why would any sane person ever choose it? (And for the present conversation we can just refer to the "sane" rather than worrying about the insane.)

With Epicurean physics and Epicurean canonics you can't even entertain such a suggestion as reasonable to consider, so you steer clear of ideas that what will happen after death justifies counter-intuitive decisions in this life.

At the same time, Epicurus does recognize that for at least most of us today is not the last day of life, so we do in fact make short-term decisions to choose pain for the sake of pleasure that comes afterwards.

But when you know that the playing field is exclusively *this* life, you keep that calculation in check, and come to reasonable conclusions in balancing the present and the future.

Just as an aside, in flipping over to the Latin Library, I see that google is now more ready than in the past to translate to Latin.

But it's really NOT ready - here's the google translate of the section on Epicurus at the start of Book 1:

Human eyes were filthy with life 62
In countries under severe religion ,
the head of the air, countries showed
dreadful upon the appearance of mortals , 65
Gray was the first person to take the mortal
The eyes dared to oppose ;
the fame of the gods, neither the thunderbolts, nor threatening them with whom they have neither
murmurs sky, but the more severe
provokes the power to break tight 70
nature of the first gates barriers desire.
Therefore, the force of the lively and out
Then there came out the walls of the world by far the flame-like
and every soul of the mind and soul ,
What matters to us is the winner can rise , 75
what can not be, the power of the finite, in short, to each one
for it is the reason and the high-term clinging to the.
Why is religion in the feet, subject to the other hand
it is necessary that we match the victory of the sky.

Although Hieronymous of Rhodes was not a Cyreniac, it's useful to contrast HIS views too in this conversation. Hieronymous held that not pleasure, but absence of pain, was the goal of life:

These seem to me to be the kinds of errors that people run into when they fail to appreciate how Epicurean physics and Epicurean canonics steers you to a reasonable conclusion about how to deal with guides and goals of life. Cicero is doing us a favor by showing us how contrasting these different views helps to sort them out.

Post

RE: Are You Epicurean Or Hieronymian?

Thanks for the detailed post Titus. Here are my thoughts:

[…]

I very much agree with that. It seems to me that most of the people whose interpretations I find reason to criticize focus almost exclusively on one aspect (most frequently, the letter to Meoneceus) and act as if the epistemology and physics are irrelevant. In a nearby (in time) thread I think we see an example of that in an American philosopher (Pierce) who embraces one aspect of Epicurus to support his own views, but rejects the…

Cassius

February 28, 2021 at 6:58 AM

This deserves a post of its own, and ought to be in full caps:

It has been thought by some that Hegesias was influenced by Buddhist teachings.[2]

That such a statement is even reasonable to entertain is an indictment of Buddhism.

I don't have time for a full post but I want to get this out there before I forget about it. Credit to Emily Austin for bring this to our attention, which we touched on briefly in a short zoom discussion on 5/17/23.:

"Some contemporaries and predecessors of Epicurus did run around telling people that life is bleak, and that death is a welcome reprieve from human suffering, but Epicurus thinks that’s nonsense. The Cyrenaics were a competing hedonistic philosophical school and numbered among them was a man dubbed “Hegesias the Death Persuader” for the power of his argument that life is more painful than pleasant. Hegesias was reportedly run out of town for his effects on the young. That life is unpleasant is an odd view for a hedonist, and Epicurus felt at pains to deny it."

Seems to me that there is a lot to be learned from looking into this to see if we can figure out what weaknesses in Cyreniac philosophy held the door open for this kind of craziness and how Epicurean philosophy deals with it and prevents it. It's not clear to me how the dates relate and whether Epicurus was aware of Hegesias, and whether the reference in the letter to Menoeceus about those who wish never to have been born applies to him, but I think we could gain some good points of comparison by following the trail. -- especially as to the danger of inarticulately holding "freedom from pain" to be the goal of life without a lot of background explanation of how that perspective can make sense if you understand that freedom from pain is just a measurement of living completely engaged in pleasures without any component of pain of body or mind.

Seems to me also that there is a discussion here about the danger of letting "the perfect be the enemy of the good" if these clips are correct. What kind of logic is it that would say that because "perfect" happiness cannot be achieved we should consider the pleasure we can experience in life to be of indifference to us?

I wonder also if the title of this thread might better be: "Hedonism Gone Wrong....." which gets me back to why I personally do not in general conversation describe Epicureanism as "hedonism" or "pleasurism" (which would be the English term for hedonism if we were willing to be straightforward in English). Warning against the disasters that come from pursuing a feeling - even pleasure - without prudence is maybe the main subject of Epicurean ethics.

Here are references:

Hegesias of Cyrene - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Hegesias followed Aristippus in considering pleasure as the goal of life; but, the view which he took of human life was more pessimistic. Because eudaimonia was unattainable, the sage's goal should be to become free from pain and sorrow. Since, too, every person is self-sufficient, all external goods were rejected as not being true sources of pleasure:

Quote

Complete happiness cannot possibly exist; for that the body is full of many sensations, and that the mind sympathizes with the body, and is troubled when that is troubled, and also that fortune prevents many things which we cherished in anticipation; so that for all these reasons, perfect happiness eludes our grasp. Moreover, that both life and death are desirable. They also say that there is nothing naturally pleasant or unpleasant, but that owing to want, or rarity, or satiety, some people are pleased and some vexed; and that wealth and poverty have no influence at all on pleasure, for that rich people are not affected by pleasure in a different manner from poor people. In the same way they say that slavery and freedom are things indifferent, if measured by the standard of pleasure, and nobility and baseness of birth, and glory and infamy. They add that, for the foolish person it is expedient to live, but to the wise person it is a matter of indifference; and that the wise person will do everything for his own sake; for that he will not consider any one else of equal importance with himself; and he will see that if he were to obtain ever such great advantages from any one else, they would not be equal to what he could himself bestow.^[3]

Hence the sage ought to regard nothing but himself; action is quite indifferent; and if action, so also is life, which, therefore, is in no way more desirable than death:

Quote

The wise person would not be so much absorbed in the pursuit of what is good, as in the attempt to avoid what is bad, considering the chief good to be living free from all trouble and pain: and that this end was attained best by those who looked upon the efficient causes of pleasure as indifferent.^[3]

None of this, however, is as strong as the testimony of Cicero,^[4] who claims that Hegesias wrote a book called Death by Starvation (Greek: ἀποκαρτερῶν), in which a man who has resolved to starve himself is introduced as representing to his friends that death is actually more to be desired than life, and that the gloomy descriptions of human misery which this work contained were so overpowering that they inspired many people to kill themselves, in consequence of which the author received the surname of Death-persuader (Peisithanatos). The book was said to have been published at Alexandria, where he was, in consequence, forbidden to teach by king Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–246 BC).

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3751954

But if you're going to take the time to OCR it, and that gives us a fully digital version without formatting issues, then that too would be worthwhile. For lots of reasons reduction to basic text and/or markdown format is very desirable for use in many ways

But don't let these others stop you from digitizing this is you can! It would be great to have one that we know is reviewed by Bailey, possibly with his comments as to issues in the text and selecting from various versions.

Just read it. Your criticism is spot on. Deliberate and stubborn refusal to identify "meaning" as "pleasurable" for reasons that probably need a psychologist to drill down to find.

Very similar to the refusal to accept Epicurus' position that healthy functioning life in its normal state - without pain - is itself pleasurable.

This isn't just a dispute over dictionary definitions, there is an agenda behind it to fight against pleasure itself as being given by Nature as the guide of life.

And I would bet that same agenda is behind Buddhism and Stoicism too.

That would be great to have. There is a version of the Latin on the internet from that site that contains many Latin texts - the Latin Library - but I have never been sure how high quality it is.

Lucretius

Thanks for posting this separately Don as I agree it deserves a thread of its own. Going to probably be until the weekend before I can listen but I am really looking forward to this one.

Yes I can definitely be harsh on the Stoics on occasion, but in reading a little more into Emily Austin's book tonight I came across a couple of relevant paragraphs from Chapter 15 that remind me to keep the pressure on due to the different approaches to dealing with what is and what is not in our control:

• "Epicurus, unlike the Stoics, suggests strategies for coping with and counteracting grief rather than encouraging its elimination. The Stoics seek to eliminate grief because they think it arises from a false judgment that something bad has happened. Epicureans, by contrast, manage grief, and they recommend distracting ourselves by replaying pleasant memories, expressing gratitude for past and present pleasures, and engaging with close and caring friends. Taken together, we have three Epicurean points about misfortune: some losses are genuine misfortunes that merit grief, we should cope with our grief rather than seek to eliminate it, and the most effective strategies involve cultivating gratitude and caring friendships.
• The Stoics generally advocated a providential account of the universe, according to which the gods structure the cosmos for the best and to the benefit of human beings. As such, most of the Stoics thought that everything under the control of the gods happens for a good reason, even things which might at first appear to be serious misfortunes. In contemporary religious discourse, endorsement of complete providence secured by an all-powerful and beneficent God might'' express itself in phrases like “the Lord works in mysterious ways.
• Seneca captures this Stoic attitude toward loss with the story of Stilbo, cast as a model of Stoic virtue. Stilbo survived the destruction of his country and the death of his wife and children. When the man responsible for Stilbo’s misfortunes asked how he was holding up, Stilbo responded, “I have lost nothing!”3 While Stilbo’s response does seem admittedly badass, it depends on the underlying assumption that none of the things he lost contributed to his happiness, so their loss cannot diminish his happiness. His children were “nothing.” Whether by a providential or non-providential account, Stoic doctrine leads to the conclusion that grief is irrational because nothing bad or harmful has happened."

I agree with all your comments.

I looked quickly enough at jupyter to see that it does use markdown, so I am not really sure what advantages it offers over a wiki-like or other solution that maybe tracks revisions, but really the git does that i think. so I really am not sure what even are the selling points of Jupyter.

And like you I have enough general knowledge of git to be dangerous, but I've never really understood how it works or all the master and branching and cloning and updating options. I've tried looking into some GUIs to help with that, but they haven't proved educational enough to get me using it -- yet. The idea and method seems to be very popular though so it will probably be worth keeping at it to figure it out one day.

Quote from Titus

seems to be rather aiming to attract people who might think this world is out of control and Stoicism shows the methods how to get back in control.

Yes - but what they will find in Stoicism is not a prescription to reach out and embrace the world and change those things that can be changed so as to create more pleasure, but an invitation to reject all pleasure and emotion in favor of retreating into mind games about "virtue" as ultimately that is all they care about as under their control.

And that's a vastly different approach to which many who come looking for help in "gaining control" to be worse than their current situation.

Thank Titus I had not heard of that. Interesting how it starts with a quote from Seneca Hope it gets better but I can't view a table of contents on Amazon:

As for the one you did, posting a translation might be very helpful for those working to make something similar.

"Do you know how the Epicuean attitude is for a general Philantropy/compassion /sympathy or let´s say "social feelings""

Yes the word that creates the real issue there is "general." Presumably everyone agrees that philanthropy / compassion / sympathy /social feelings are appropriate in certain situation, and the real issue is whether there is a categorical imperative that such feelings must be pursued in "all" situations --- i e a general and generic attempt to embrace every living human being.

And even then, why stop there? Why not extend equal concern to the dead, or to the unborn, or to very living animal or insect, etc. etc.

The harder question is where to draw the lines, and from that perspective that's where Epicurus' test of practical results becomes more clear.

I split off my comments (which were predominantly about the technology used for the comparison, and placed it HERE, along with the recent Linux discussion:

Thread

Jupyter Notebook (Used in Lucretius Comparison_

It looks like the full PDF of the paper is here:

https://github.com/haraldsDev/luc…-Comparison.pdf

Boy this guy is good -- writing it and uploading it to github for revisions. This is a great way to take advantage of technology to do things! @TauPhi and @Cleveland Okie It looks like he isn't really taking advantage of github for revisions, but this is the start of the way to publish a paper and then work on it collaboratively with extremely fine grained control over what revisions…

Cassius

May 17, 2023 at 9:04 AM

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