Posts by Cassius

One aspect of that which I think is important Waterholic is that Epicurean philosophy isn't magic, and you can't just repeat an incantation and automatically be healed or changed in the blink of an eye. Successful results in any procedure can't be guaranteed because the universe is not deterministic or fated, and there are no gods or mechanisms that prevent unexpected events from happening or which can necessarily overturn motions already in place. Many of the people who are shown the benefits of an approach are simply not willing, or sometimes not capable, of following it.

So when discussing whether something is "oversold" it seems to me that a lot of the issue is in the expectations of the person hearing the advice, in that they are looking for things which are not possible to deliver.

Do we also think that the Vatican sayings numberings were added later?

Titus could you elaborate on what you mean?

Quote from Don

My reservation on that would be the latter part of PD01 where neither anger not favor/gratitude affects the one who is blessed and incorruptible. Epicurus is clear that gratitude is important for humans to live a pleasurable life.

That's a very good point, Don. That would mean that the subtlety would have to extend to the observation that because men are not gods, they are subject to anger and favor, both of which are necessary to sustain their lives at times given that we do not live in the intermundia.

Perhaps related to this is that I have always found it interesting that Diskin Clay, in his article on Epicurus' last will and testament, suggested that this PDO1 was really one of the Twelve Fundamentals (in which he agreed with many of DeWitt's suggestions but not all). I can definitely see an analogy to atoms in that an atom has no possibility of being "weak" and breaking apart, and there therefore selfsufficient, but on the other hand atoms are not gods - there's just that analogy that they are not weak.

So in pointing out correctly that gratitude (and I would say anger/ability to use force against at least some types of enemies too as per PD06) is in fact a necessary part of human life, this is perhaps the offsetting balance against the first assertion that a perfect being knows no trouble and give no trouble (why "trouble" and not "pain"?), like many of the other doctrines seem to start with an assertion and then finish with a second "offsetting" assertion.

PD08. No pleasure is a bad thing in itself; but the means which produce some pleasures bring with them disturbances many times greater than the pleasures.

PD09. If every pleasure could be intensified so that it lasted, and influenced the whole organism or the most essential parts of our nature, pleasures would never differ from one another.

And as Kalosyni mentioned in terms of "getting back to the original question" there is something odd about the way the list is written. Epicurus obviously could string together a narrative such as in his letters. How did this document end up being so disjointed? And as per the original question too, it would have been so easy to lift from the letter the Meneouceus or presumably many other places as statement like: "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."

Even if PD01 is dual purpose as per this recent exchange, why is that ethical point not stated more explicitly? Would Epicurus himself likely have left it out?

It's almost like Kalosyni said that the document has been lifted from some other context without an introduction (such as Torquatus gave when he started talking about the best life) .

Surely there are articles out there that make this comparison so I will see what I can find.

I would certainly not suggest that PDO1 is not of relevance to the gods, but if it in fact has wider application, then the aspect that relates to the gods would be only a part of the intended meaning, and maybe not the most important part.

Do not in fact every one of the other principal doctrines refer to human affairs? Maybe the primary Epicurean contentions about the gods are as stated in Herodotus and Pythocles as a matter of physics, the important aspect of which is that the gods are not supernatural and did not create the universe. If one sees PDO1 as only a statement about the nature of the gods alone, that would make it an exception to the subject of all the rest. Epicurus shows in the letter to Menoeceus that he very capable of being clear about the nature of the gods being different from what we think of them.

And I would relate this to another opinion that I think a lot of people here would share, especially when we consider Lucian's "True Story."

Can anyone here see Epicurus as being the kind of person who would say: "Humans do not have wings so they will never fly?" Lucian thought of humans going to the moon, so why would Epicurus lock himself into a position of declaring that it is "impossible" for beings elsewhere in the universe, even in other "worlds" to travel between them? We know that he accepting the idea that we receive images of the gods, apparently from the intermundia. I would say that the central important theme of Epicurean philosophy is that the gods are not supernatural and did not create the universe, and that Epicurus would not lock himself into stating flatly that beings on other planets/worlds, like Lucian envisioned as to the moon, might not be capable of traveling around between them.

So there are numerous ways of coming at this, but the bottom line is I see no reason not to interpret PD01 as applicable to all life everywhere, of which both we and the gods are but natural parts, and not just a reference for not "fearing" the gods -- especially since the reverse - benefiting from their images - seems to be an important part of Epicurean philosophy but is not mentioned in PD01.

And from the letter to Menoeceus passage translated as Please is the alpha and Omega of the blessed life...". Same word?

And if so that would mean that each of the descriptors if the beings referenced in PD01, which commentators seem to consider as referencing only gods, are also terms that Epicurus uses when discussing humans?

Combine these comments with those we have repeatedly made that the numbering is later addition and induces an artificial sense of separation between the lines and the possibilities for deeper interpretation of PD01 are intriguing.

We don't talk about it often, maybe in part because it seems "over the top," but that "live as a god among men" reference surely could be related to this too.

So what about the word translated as "blessed?". Does it have connotations so strong that it cannot be applied to humans? If "immortal" can be applied to human activities, then can "blessed" be less flexible?

Quote from Don

121] Two sorts of happiness (eudaimonia) can be conceived, the one the highest possible, such as the gods enjoy, which cannot be augmented, the other admitting addition and subtraction of pleasures.

I wonder if that means that the happiness that the gods enjoy is necessarily greater that the top level that can be enjoyed by non-gods. Meaning, just because the happiness of the gods never increases or decreases, does that mean that the top level enjoyable by non gods is less than that when it is at its top level?

Further and rephrased: I wonder if that passage about competing with the gods for happiness indicates that the changing level available to non-gods, when it is at its highest level, can be equal the unchanging level of the gods, with the only difference being the limitation in time available to the non-gods?

Don, as our resident Greek expert, what is your assessment of the possibility that PD01 is not a reference to the gods alone, but is intended to be a reference to the best life for humans as well as gods, and thus serves as a reference to pleasure (the opposite of pain as stated in PDO3) being the goal?

Also as to the possibility that PDO1 is intended to refer to more than just the Epicurean gods even though the term "immortal" is used, there is this:

VS78. The noble soul occupies itself with wisdom and friendship; of these, the one is a mortal good, the other immortal.

Quote from Kalosyni

It is observed too that in his treatise On the Ethical End he writes in these

terms11 : "I know not how to conceive the good, apart from the pleasures of taste, sexual pleasures, the pleasures of sound and the pleasures of beautiful form."

Very good observation!

I don't know that we have discussed this before, but I think the long title of the thread states an interesting question worthy of exploration:

"What Are The Possible Reasons (And Of These, The Most Likely) Why The List of 40 Principal Doctrines Does Not Feature A Statement Explicitly Stating Pleasure To Be The Goal of Life?"

Before we settle on one or more as the most likely, it would be very helpful to see if we can come up with a list of reasonable possibilities. I doubt it makes sense to try to separate "goal" from "greatest good" in this discussion, in part because it's also interesting to note that neither "ataraxia" or "katastematic pleasure" or any other term which some might promote are explicitly stated to be the goal or greatest good either.

1. Was the list not prepared by Epicurus himself? (Was it prepared by later followers as a compilation, much as we think is the origin of the Vatican Sayings?)
2. Was it originally in the form of a letter to which we no longer have the introduction?
3. Was Epicurus opposed to identifying a "greatest good"?
4. Was Epicurus opposed to defining "good" in terms that would imply that the number of goods are limited?
5. Was the view that pleasure is the good so clearly a part of every Epicurean discussion that it became a habit to omit the statement as repetitive and taken for granted?
6. Is PD01 not supposed to refer only to "gods," but to the conception of the goal / greatest good for humans or any other form of life? In other words, was "immortal" not meant to apply only to the gods but to the best life to which we should all aspire, and the "knows no trouble" meant to be a synonym for experiencing nothing but pleasure (since there are only two feelings and the absence of one is the presence of the others, as stated in the second sentence of PD03)? One reason that might support the backhanded way of emphasizing pleasure in this way might be the desire not to identify any single type of pleasure as the most important type. I think this occurs to me because I woke up from sleep thinking about this, and it now strikes me for the first time as a possibility due to comments DeWitt makes about "immortal" sometimes being a term of high praise rather than just a reference to deathlessness - similar to "gods among men" and such.
7. Is PD08 (no pleasure is a bad thing in itself) supposed to be read as an explicit statement that pleasure is the good?

Of these, I have traditionally considered (5) to be among the most likely, but I am not at all sure that I don't favor many of the others in this preliminary list as equally or more possible, and I am sure I have not exhausted the good possibilities.

This is only a very preliminary list intended to spur discussion. We may not have talked about this all that much, but it is certainly a question that a newcomer to Epicurus would ask, and it deserves the best answer we can give to it.

Happy Birthday to SimonC! Learn more about SimonC and say happy birthday on SimonC's timeline: SimonC

Two more notes on this;

1 - From the same Wikipedia article, we see that empiricism is closely related to Pyrhhonic skepticism, which was something Epicurus was firmly against (or at least modified considerably):

The earliest Western proto-empiricists were the empiric school of ancient Greek medical practitioners, founded in 330 BCE.^[15] Its members rejected the doctrines of the dogmatic school, preferring to rely on the observation of phantasiai (i.e., phenomena, the appearances).^[16] The Empiric school was closely allied with the Pyrrhonist school of philosophy, which made the philosophical case for their proto-empiricism.

2 - It is interesting to note that the Wikipedia article discusses Aristotle at length, as well as the Stoics, but makes no mention of Epicurus.

It will be a couple of days before this is ready for release, but one point worth noting on what is discussed in our look at Sensations and "Epicurus not an Empiricist" comes from the Wikipedia entry on Empiricism:

Empiricism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

That page features discussion of Bacon, Locke, and Hume.....

Quote

Empiricism in the philosophy of science emphasizes evidence, especially as discovered in experiments. It is a fundamental part of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world rather than resting solely on a priori reasoning, intuition, or revelation.

Empiricism, often used by natural scientists, says that "knowledge is based on experience" and that "knowledge is tentative and probabilistic, subject to continued revision and falsification".^[5] Empirical research, including experiments and validated measurement tools, guides the scientific method.

Etymology[edit]

The English term empirical derives from the Ancient Greek word ἐμπειρία, empeiria, which is cognate with and translates to the Latin experientia, from which the words experience and experiment are derived.^[6]

But this sentence especially catches my eye:

Quote

Philosophical empiricists hold no knowledge to be properly inferred or deduced unless it is derived from one's sense-based experience.^[7] This view is commonly contrasted with rationalism, which states that knowledge may be derived from reason independently of the senses. For example, John Locke held that some knowledge (e.g. knowledge of God's existence) could be arrived at through intuition and reasoning alone. Similarly Robert Boyle, a prominent advocate of the experimental method, held that we have innate ideas.^[8][9] The main continental rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz) were also advocates of the empirical "scientific method".^[10][11]

A large part of the importance of the issue we are discussing this week is that Epicurus is definitely willing to use deductive reasoning to make conclusions about issues that he has not experienced directly - notable examples being the condition of life after death, or the age of the universe, or the size of the universe --- none of which Epicurus himself personally was able to test through his own sensory experience.

I wonder if the development of this school through Lock and others did not find its way through Bentham and his friends to France Wright, which would explain what I think are her deviations from Epicurus in "A Few Days In Athens" to stress that "observation is everything" and theories are often damaging. I recall in reading her work outside of "A Few Days In Athens" that this position seems to have been especially important to her, and at least in part explains her lack of interest in many of the "physics" issues which interested the ancient Epicureans.

I would tentatively have to say than an "excess of empiricism" was damaging to Frances Wright's confidence in Epicurean philosophy, that in turn probably illustrates why this seemingly boring issue many important ramifications that justify our taking the time to slog through it.

The recent rash of shooting at "UFO"s makes this article bubble to the top of the heap again:

Vatican Considers Possibility of Aliens

Pope Orders Astronomers to Look into Life on Other Planets; Wants to Bridge Gap Between Religion and Science

www.cbsnews.com

I don't know what they eventually decided; maybe time for them to convene a new meeting!

This is where I wish we had more detailed info on the Vatican sayings:

VS08. The wealth required by Nature is limited and is easy to procure; but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity

"Required?"

Is this one of the sayings that comes from Epicurus himself or one that certainly does not?

Questions questions questions.....

Being an advocate for Epicurus in the modern world, like in his time, is not for the faint of heart or for those who can't stand controversy.

Quote from Don

Easy is due to the eu- prefix on the verbs in lines 3 & 4 of the Tetrapharmakos

Don are you aware of any other reference stating "easy" other than the tetrapharmokos ?

The external analysis seems reasonable to me, and the "'zenia" might indeed be relevant if less attractive to us today, but - as to:

[4] [Epicurus teaches us that good is easy for us to procure] and that evil is [not] only limited precisely because it is useless to have defined the good (τἀγαθόν), if it is difficult, if not impossible, for us to attain,

Do those brackets mean that this is partly or totally reconstructed? If so by how much? Is this bootstrapped off the later "Tetrapharmakon"?

Also is this Voula Tsouna? Do you have the more specific cite?

As you know I would myself never read "EASY" unless the text demands it. (Which reminds me to follow up at some point and determine if in fact a particular text does demand the "EASY" as if so I am not aware of it outside apparently the T)

thanks!

Now I am unfortunately inserting something random but I will be short: Here I feel in sympathy with Cicero. English, like Latin, is a rich language. There is something fundamentally wrong going on when we have a supposedly critical concept for which people insist on using an untranslated foreign word, as if English were insufficient to explain the concept. Like Lucretius, we should use our own language to explain what we mean by "katastematic pleasure," and if we can't or don't then that in itself indicates a major issue. And that's exactly what the great majority of commentators are doing in perpetuating the kinetic / katastematic discussion rather than engaging with people who come to Epicurean Philosophy for real answers.