Posts by Cassius

Welcome to Episode 173 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the only 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 you will find a discussion thread for each of our podcast episodes and many other topics.

We are now in the process of a series of podcasts intended to provide a general overview of Epicurean philosophy based on the organizational structure employed by Norman DeWitt in his book "Epicurus and His Philosophy."

This week we continue our discussion of Chapter 12, entitled "The New Hedonism."

• The “Summum Bonum” Fallacy
• Pleasure Identified As the Telos

Episode 172 of the podcast is now available!

OK ok I had to look it up: anyone who writes "quotidian" rather than "everyday" or "commonplace" has some interpretive issues of his own to sort out! It's almost as if that note were written by two separate people.

The part I struck out in red represents everything wrong in modern Epicurean commentary.

This illustrates my love-hate relationship with the Epicurus Wiki at Epicurism.info: Two excellent paragraphs followed by immediate schizophrenic retraction -- as if "Oh NO Epicurus can't be in favor of a full life -- that would contradict our orthodox view of him! "

And of course it includes the trope that those poor stupid ROMAN Epicureans just didn't understand what Epicurus was all about! Which of course fails to account for why the Romans would be so stupidly interpreting Epicurus when they had ALL his texts with a complete explanation and 200 years of examples of people applying it, while the writer of this note has access only to a small fraction of that information.

NUTS TO ALL OF THAT!

Vatican Saying 41 - Epicurus Wiki

Quote from Don

To my eye, Metrodorus looked younger - more youthful - than either Hermarchus or Epicurus.

Which is interesting too because Metrodorus died first, if I understand the will correctly.

I guess I was aware of it but I have not focused much on the apparent fact that we have bust of Colotes.

Maybe this book page that Onenski has posted above can be worked over with image enhancement and/or adjusting software to make better copies of all of them for future use. I gather there might be one or two other busts available too? Polyaneus maybe?

We probably have not spent nearly as much time as we should fleshing out what we know about the details of each of these. We at least know their book titles to indicate their areas of interest, plus there are other anecdotes, and we know something of Colotes from Plutarch's response to him.

Now that I see more clearly that many of these guys got together and essentially invaded Athens as a team, the "team" seems to me to be more worthy of highlighting.

Which is important to observe - that the Epicurean school was not at all a one-man project, but required teamwork, just as teamwork is required today.

Quote from Don

Hermarchus's eyes also seem more "sad" (droopy) while Epicurus seems to have a more intense gaze with his brow furrowed in the center.

Yes I can see the somewhat droopy eyes as a signature of Hermarchus, but for some reason I can't gt't a similar fix on something unique about Metrodorus.

Maybe my problem is that the sketch I posted earlier in the thread seems to not be as a close a match to the actual sculpture as is the sketch for Hermarchus and Epicurus (?)

Tonight in our Wednesday meeting Fernando brought this up, and I did not remember that we had discussed this one and had Don's commentary already.

Seems like this is one that bears on the question "What are we doing while we are tranqull / calm / serene?"

Don what about Metrodorus? Do you have good images of him and a good fix on his face?

Godfrey --

I relate this issue in my mind with a passage I read years ago in section of Wikipedia which criticized Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I had to go back into the old versions to find this as it seems to be no longer on the current page:

To be clear, I am not now talking about CBT in any substantive sense, I just want to echo a criticism of ANY approach that it should first define and present what healthy normal human action looks like, and THEN present diagnosis and recommendations on how to proceed from any existing current point to get to that goal.

Of course I think Epicurus does that - there are many passages remaining, and I feel sure there were many more, about how healthy normal people should spend their time while alive. I do not mean in the sense of recommendations as to careers or other specifics, but in the sense that the underlying presumption of the Greek experience to which Epicurus is in agreement is that one should live a normally active and healthy and full physical and mental life. I cannot imagine that they thought that any healthy normal person would take their statements as a prescription to go live in the proverbial cave on bread and water and stare at a candle.

Yet in the world we are in today it is my contention that the person who is normally educated and acclimated to prevailing cultural and educational advice is apt to take just that approach when hearing "the goal of life is the absence of pain." For two thousand years we've been subjected to religious absurdities that imply that our treasure is in heaven or somewhere else and that the best we can hope for is to shelter in place from pain while we wait for our Redeemer to come pick us up. In this context it's just not a good idea to expect someone who may be under the influence of such absurd views of the ideal state to take for granted that "living without pain" really means LIVING without pain in normal and healthy human ways, and not like a monk or a lama sitting cross-legged with palms up waiting to absorb the vibrations of the universe (or some such thing).

It is our lot as modern fans of Epicurus that Epicurus has been lumped in with those who preach quietism and pacifism and similar views, and that means that many people who come here, or who are alert to seeing Epicurean discussion on facebook or the internet, may think that we too here hold and promote such views.

And that presents an interesting environment in which we need to find ways to make very clear, from the beginning, that the point of Epicurean philosophy is how to LIVE, and not how to while away or time immobilized and fearing the next pin to drop while we wait for death to deliver us to some better world and away from this one which is alleged to be fated to be nasty, brutish and short.

If we aren't clear on why it is better that we have been born than that if we had not been born at all, we haven't even started to understand how to live.

And so in answer to that criticism of CBT I underlined above -- I agree with it -- we need to be sure we are being clear about the details of the goal that Epicurus was presuming - I would argue - that we would all understand. That doesn't mean that we have to get involved in every specific of life, but it means we need to find a way to be clear that living means enjoying life fully and not ascetically.

Quote from Godfrey

If we were to do nothing but seek serenity and avoid pain, then this category would be nonsensical.

And if we were to imply that this category is to be frowned upon or minimized, then we would truly have a prescription for minimalism and asceticism that would totally contradict what we know about the facts of life and endeavors of every authentic ancient Epicurean who ever existed. There are literally zero examples of Epicureans who lived that way, and it is only the speculations and rumors surrounding ascetic interpretations of lines like we "could" compete with zeus for happiness with only bread and water and similar anecdotes that allow people to make these arguments. And this isn't just a "Roman Epicureans weren't good Epicureans" thing either - the will of Epicurus and his property holdings at death are only part of the evidence that he lived a normal life.

Again - presuming "serenity" means what most people interpret it to m\be, as largely denoting mental and physical inactivity. No one generally says "I want to live a serene life" and expects the listener to understand a normal healthy active life.

For some reason I think I can picture Hermarchus in my mind based on the statue and picture how he looked, but there is something about the Metrodorus statue that makes it harder for me to get a grip on his features.

Quote from Godfrey

Where I get uncomfortable (in a good way ) is with his narrowing the goal to a single focus of serenity

This is something I wanted to expand on before I saw your last post. I have the same issue with "homeostatus" or any similar words which leaves open the possibility that a human being might decide that his or her best life is sitting crosslegged on a floor staring at a candle.

I think this is behind the ambiguity of Chrysippus' hand analogy too.

We have to start with an understanding of what the normal healthy living thing does with its time so that we can understand what is presumed to be the result when all pain is eliminated.

I know in my case (and I suspect I am far from alone) any construct of the ultimate good or goal must convey as essential a view of what it means for the organism to function at peak performance. While I reject the view that "man is the rational animal" and therefore the exercise of reason is the highest way to spend ones time, I do think we can derive from our nature that we have a full set of bodily and mental faculties to exercise as part of a normal and healthy life, so that any generalization of a life of total pleasure with zero pain is going to incorporate in it the exercise of those capacities.

I am out of time to continue but this is the direction I would carry this, and it is my main complaint about the whole issue of using "absence of pain" as if it were a full and complete statement of the goal. The positive side of the exercise of mental and bodily functions to experience pleasure is the issue that can no longer (if it ever could) be left to unstated implication.

Since we are talking about the founders of the school, I have to admit that I have trouble myself identifying between Hermarchus and Metrodorus. Does everyone agree with the labeling here? And in turn do we agree that the book about which Godfrey recently posted has Hermarchus on the cover?

Posted at Facebook:

I am hijacking Joshua's thread and changing the title to make it more generic and hopefully extend it. I have seen the first draft of Joshua's map video. It is excellent and it is a reminder of how effective and far-reaching that good video can be.

We need to encourage everyone who is even slightly interested in creative video production to try their hand at this. We can use this and other threads to share information about tools and methods and ask each other questions.

I entitled the thread with a reference to free and open source software, because I think it is highly desirable that we use tools that are available to others and with which we can better share our expertise. However I know that some of the most powerful options are not publicly offered, so don't let that stop you from posting about what you are using, especially if the cost is relatively low. But thinking ahead to what will be most effective in getting other people going, options which are totally open and low or no cost are probably going to find the widest adoption.

We have lots of creative people here and it would be great if we could encourage each other to produce work like this.

Yes I see where you are going Godfrey and I definitely want to read further into this.

At the moment I am thinking that the issue may be that in glass half full / half empty issue. In the face of an ambiguous construction (the end of pain) we project onto that ambiguity what we think we "should" project there given our cultural overlay.

Today we are taught either a sort of oppressive religious absolutism or a sort of nihilistic nothingness or other assorted oppressiveness as a default position that would occur when our personal needs and desires are reduced to zero, and so when I hear "absence of pain" I hear nothingness and immobility and nothing attractive whatsoever.

However if your starting presumption is that being alive in the absence of pain entails a fully effective organism that is able to accomplish everything it has the power to accomplish (and not just does nothing simply because it doesn't want to do anything) then maybe the picture you get of "absence of pain" immediately transforms into such a powerful image - and maybe that is Epicurus' frame of reference.

But to me it would all boil down to that initial set of presumptions and references that - like all the atoms in the universe - we too are in motion and doing things smoothly in a way that we find makes for pleasure and happiness, and that initial set of presumptions and references cannot be left to ambiguity.

I strongly doubt that Epicurus left it ambiguous in his own time - I feel sure his other writings explained this much more clearly than the letter to Menoeceus - and I feel certain that given our cultural mess today that it is essential that this not be left ambiguous.

So yes we can say absence of pain constitutes an interesting generalized way to express the best state of existence, but the "then what is the person doing after that?" cannot be left to abstract notions that sound like "nothing," The explanation demands that the context and premises of the generalization be explained with clarity.

Godfrey I missed your long excerpt in post 4 earlier. Just to repeat some of it:

Quote from Godfrey

"To summarize, the good according to Aristippus consists in moving, in changing oneself, running from pleasure to pleasure, enhancing past enjoyment with a new enjoyment. In contrast, to possess the good, Epicurus says, is to rest immobile in oneself. Instead of concerning oneself with gaining [new enjoyments] we need to make every effort not to lose anything. It is to restrain and restrict all the fugacious and superficial enjoyments to just one, an indestructible and profound one, which is an enjoyment of life itself. The good, then, is serenity."

Yeah I guess if this is reflective of his views then I doubt I can climb aboard. I will give him credit for looking for something positive in stillness and immobility, and in fact it seems clear that that is the best face that one can put on an ascetic interpretation.

But I don't buy it at all. Thank Zeus Diogenes Laertius preserved clearly that Epicurus embraced BOTH the pleasures of rest and of motion. That Epicurus did so is to me obvious from many other texts, but there is no doubt that one can read portions of the letter to Menoeceus in isolation and conclude that preservation and immobility are viable interpretations of some kind of ultimate goal. Even I can stretch those words to seem acceptable, but in the end we can't dance around it.

I think it's highly valuable to have these discussions so we can confront them. It's also essential that we make clear that someone whose number one priority in life is immobility and fear of pain has profoundly misinterpreted Epicurus.

There's no way to avoid this controversy. It exists and people will always be confronted by it. I think Epicurus would expect us to stand tall and point out the errors as clearly as possible.

Significant part available here.

The Ethics of Epicurus and its Relation to Contemporary Doctrines

books.google.com

Someone previously remarked that the put Hermarchus (or is that Metrodorus?) on the cover?