Episode 309 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is now available. This week our episode is entitled: "The Error of Basing Happiness On The Alleged Divinity of The Human Mind"
Another note: In the first half of this episode, we take up Cicero's gross contradiction - which he calls out himself (!) between what he wrote in "On Ends' and what he is advocating here in "Tusculoan Disputations."
The basic point is this:
- In On Ends, Cicero had taken the position that while the Stoics might say that only virtue is good and vice is evil, they also admitted that there were other things to be preferred (health) and not preferred (sickness). Here in On Ends Cicero defends Aristotle's school for saying that health is a good other than virtue, and sickness is an evil, because in the end their disagreement is only a matter of words, and they ultimately agree as to substance.
- Here in Tusculan Disputations Cicero is for some reason taking the *opposite* position, and he is siding with the Stoics that the Artistotelians are making a fatal error by admitting that anything is good other than virtue and anything evil other than vice.
Cicero makes no real effort to explain his inconsistency other than to say that he himself (Cicero) is a skeptic, and he can change his position from day to day according to whatever he thinks is probable.
CIcero doesn't see any problem with his change in positions, and in one thing he does remain absolutely consistent:- No matter what you think of the word-game dispute between Aristotle and Zeno, everyone agrees that Epicurus is a reprobate.
This episode will be out later today or at the latest tomorrow. Editing is almost complete and i want to particularly commend Joshua's windup on the main topic of this episode, starting around the 38 minute mark.
If we accept "direct" quotes from Cicero, should we not probably accept "direct" quotes from Plutarch?
This is an interesting topic in itself, but depending on the context I would definitely trust Cicero before I trusted Plutarch, depending on two factors that stand out to me:
- If Cicero is letting an Epicurean speaker go on at length, I'd give it more deference. Plutarch seems to rarely if ever do that. Plutarch's always on the attack and does not profess any degree of neutrality.
- We know Cicero was living at a time when he was talking to strong and dedicated Epicureans and he was in fact depending on Cassius Longinus for all his political hopes, so he had strong motivations to stay in line. I'm not aware that there's any reason to think Plutarch had any motivation to be fair to Epicureans at all.
- But the main issue would be whether the alleged statement has analogs in the core texts, and I just don't see that in this case. In fact, when Epicurus speaks so strongly of a simple diet and also the pleasures of philosophy and study of nature as to his primary sources of happiness, it appears to me that those contradict any assertion that the physical pleasures of the stomach outweigh all others. If he had been going down the road of looking to essentials, you're going to die a lot sooner if you miss water or air than missing "food" (which seems more at issue in referring to the "stomach," though I can see water being included in the stomach).
I see that that specific phrase "Their god is the belly" is from Philippians and not directly tied to Epicureans, though it wouldn't be surprising if they were the intended target
Philippians 3:19
King James Bible
Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.)
I'm totally good with the pleasures of the stomach, but the thrust of many of these quotes makes the belly appear to be more important than any other part of the body, and I don't see that in any authentic core letter of Epicurus or Lucretius or Diogenes of Oinoanda, do you?
It rings to me more of a reduction to the absurd ..... the other statements that are more challenging or confrontational seem to me to be much better attested and appear in similar versions in the core documents.
Happy Birthday to MellrehTheHermit! Learn more about MellrehTheHermit and say happy birthday on MellrehTheHermit's timeline: MellrehTheHermit
What say you guys as to possible relation between this and 3 and 4 of Tetrapharmakon?
Check the three that are on the side by side version here
I agree with what I think is your point Eikadistes -- as to the existence of life elsewhere than Earth, I am awaiting further evidence.
But for the sake of conversation I'll say that I already personally consider the existence of life on other worlds as already having sufficient evidence to be confident of it, given the observation that nature does not make a single thing of a kind as stated in Lucretius.
To me, that's the same level of evidence on which we should have been confident for the last 2000 years that atoms exist, even though we've never seen them with the human eye. I think it was important to Epicurus to take the position that we can affirm that certain things exist with confidence even though we've never observed them directly with the senses.
These specific UFO allegations, of course, could be entirely bogus. I wouldn't treat them with the same level of deference as I would the general proposition that life exists elsewhere.
"For since they are at home with what is best about themselves, they accept that which is similar and consider alien that which is different."
You seem to be using a translation I don't normally see but is it not clear that this statement refers to the false opinions of the masses, not to the gods themselves?
The main surviving text which would give much basis at all to speculate about this would be the Velleius section of "On the Nature of the Gods" and I'd put that question in the category of things that would not be essential to the central conclusions to be drawn from anticipations -- and therefore hazardous to conjecture about. So I'd put all this in the section that starts and not put a lot of significance on the the answer to that question:
“If we sought to attain nothing else beside piety in worshipping the gods and freedom from superstition, what has been said had sufficed; since the exalted nature of the gods, being both eternal and supremely blessed, would receive man's pious worship (for what is highest commands the reverence that is its due); and furthermore all fear of the divine Power or divine anger would have been banished (since it is understood that anger and favor alike are excluded from the nature of a being at once blessed and immortal, and that these being eliminated we are menaced by no fears in regard to the powers above). But the mind strives to strengthen this belief by trying to discover the form of god, the mode of his activity, and the operation of his intelligence.
This weekend in our Sunday zoom which was devoted substantially to food issues we tangentially discussed the statements that I gather are traditionally attributed to Metrodorus to the effect that the stomach or belly is of particular significance.
I thought I'd paste the following here as what appears to be the major source of this, and repeat my belief that general statements of this type should be viewed with caution. These sources (particularly Plutarch) are substantially hostile, and I am not aware of there being a direct and reliable statement of this position in a friendly source (Diogenes Laertius, Lucretius, Diogenes of Oinoanda).
At the very least I would personally put this in the category of "the size of the sun is as it appears to be" or "all sensations are true" or "the good is easy to get" or "what's terrible is easy to avoid" which require explanation by reference to other positions before the true meaning becomes clear. Without such context and explanation I personally would not cite statements to the effect that "the root of all good is the pleasure of the stomach" as an authentic statement of correct Epicurean doctrine.
I'd put all this in the context of what Torquatus says when he explains that everything is related to the body, but that the pleasures and pains of the mind can greatly surpass those of the body:
[55] XVII. I will concisely explain what are the corollaries of these sure and well grounded opinions. People make no mistake about the standards of good and evil themselves, that is about pleasure or pain, but err in these matters through ignorance of the means by which these results are to be brought about. Now we admit that mental pleasures and pains spring from bodily pleasures and pains; so I allow what you alleged just now, that any of our school who differ from this opinion are out of court; and indeed I see there are many such, but unskilled thinkers. I grant that although mental pleasure brings us joy and mental pain brings us trouble, yet each feeling takes its rise in the body and is dependent on the body, though it does not follow that the pleasures and pains of the mind do not greatly surpass those of the body. With the body indeed we can perceive only what is present to us at the moment, but with the mind the past and future also. For granting that we feel just as great pain when our body is in pain, still mental pain may be very greatly intensified if we imagine some everlasting and unbounded evil to be menacing us. And we may apply the same argument to pleasure, so that it is increased by the absence of such fears.
If someone has other cites or arguments that should be considered in this context please post.
Right and I see that your thread title is "bad habits and urges." But it seems clear that Stoicism and other aspects of Greek thought deemed all emotion as bad, and I wanted to get that point out front in the discussion. Once it's clear that emotion itself is not a bad thing, I would think the next question would be why the emotion has arisen and whether it is justified. I think it's well documented that Epicurus held that there are times when anger are both well justified, and I don't see how you can proceed without first evaluating the facts that led to them. As for "fear" in general, there's nothing terrible in life for those who understand that there is nothing terrible in not living, but that doesn't mean that particular situations aren't going to generate natural reactions of fear that should be heeded (e.g. standing at the end of a canyon looking down).
So I'm still thinking that the first thing to do is examine whether the feeling is justified. If it is justified, the first step is to take appropriate action. If it's not justified, then there's a problem in how the person is processing reality, and often there you've got the false framework that is at the root of stoicism and much religion, that of thinking that there is some other or higher reality that is more important than this one.
My first thought would be that since there is nothing divine or non-natural about the human mind, this is probably going to happen in the future and is definitely something to think about.
I would see it is as the expected way forward and that we should bring to bear on the opportunities and issues all our standard methods of analysis to try to get it right.
I've never thought that Epicurus has anything bad to say about variety or the desirabilty of life extension. Yes it's true that life doesn't get "better" simply by being longer, and we need not regret that at least for our present technology death at no more than about 100 years is the natural result of the way things currently are.
But Epicurus clearly says that "life is desirable" in the letter to Menoeceus so I would not hesitate to take the opportunity to live longer where it appeared to me that the pleasure would outweigh the pain.
and avoiding unnecessary emotions.
My first response would be that Epicurus would never look at life from this perspective. Life is all about feeling and Diogenes Laertius says that Epicurus held that the wise man will feel his emotions more deeply than will others, and this will not be a hindrance to his wisdom.
I would start by listening to the emotions and making sure you know what they are telling you, and being glad that you have them.
CNN seems to take this seriously. It will be interesting to see if there is anything new here.
Thank you! Much of this, especially TYPST, is totally new to me:
Here's the link in the files section:
Bernier - Gassendi's Three Discourses on Happiness, Virtue, and Liberty
And I have added this to main the "Reading Recommendations" page here:
This is outstanding Tau Phi. I will post in the files section and think about ways to publicize this. We have to keep in mind the compromises Gassendi made on religion and death and perhaps other things, but even with that I think his treatment of happiness, virtue, and determinism are extremely helpful. His broad overview of these issues probably places this in the category of DeWitt or Emily Austin or even Diogenes Laertius as a broad overview of important topics, with comparison to other philosophers.
The formatting looks excellent as well. Do you mind sharing what intermediate programs you used to produce the final PDF? did you use some kind of Latex generation or something else that is accessible to others. I can imagine that others here might tackle similar projects in the future and it would be good to know if you've got a particularly useful methodology that others can duplicate.
Whenever we have this discussion I for one always need to remember U469 from the Strobeus anthology (which I gather is not citable back to where the fragment itself comes (?):
[ U469 ]
Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology, XVII.23: "Thanks be to blessed Nature because she has made what is necessary easy to supply, and what is not easy unnecessary."
it seems highly likely that this is related if not the very same thought differently expressed.
Finding Things At EpicureanFriends.com
Here is a list of suggested search strategies:
- Website Overview page - clickable links arrranged by cards.
- Forum Main Page - list of forums and subforums arranged by topic. Threads are posted according to relevant topics. The "Uncategorized subforum" contains threads which do not fall into any existing topic (also contains older "unfiled" threads which will soon be moved).
- Search Tool - icon is located on the top right of every page. Note that the search box asks you what section of the forum you'd like to search. If you don't know, select "Everywhere."
- Search By Key Tags - curated to show frequently-searched topics.
- Full Tag List - an alphabetical list of all tags.