Posts by Cassius

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.

Ok so yes there is a list of Metrodorus' works in DL and that's not in it, right? Is It clear that Clement is talking about the same Metrodorus?

I don't really doubt the sentiment, given the statement in Torquatus that mental feelings can be stronger than bodily ones, but I don't know that we have more to work with than that, and I would expect the emphasis to be on "can" rather than "are always."

Being burned in phalaris' bull might not be able to extinguish every scintilla of pleasurable memory until the person is dead, but for much of the time I would think the pain of the experience would be much stronger than those good memories. And during that time calling the victim "happy" would be more of a very broad abstraction rather than a common sense summary of total feelings (or even a specific feeling of wellbeing) as we normally attach to the word.

It's good to go number by number. When I reread the list I found I had completely slipped over the ox analogy item.

And for example the reference to the book by Metrodorus being cited by Clement of Alexandria... Is that title also cited by Diogenes Laertius? I thought DL cites the titles of Metrodorus" book too?

Lots of good things to talk about in this thread.

I thought of another perspective:

What about the pleasure of remembering past pleasures?

Is that not always available to us too?

That is something that we all I think acknowledge to be a great pleasure, and always available, just like confidence or whatever we are designating as "katastematic."

But none of us would suggest that " remembering past pleasures" is somehow the highest pleasure or the goal of all other pleasures, would we?

Thinking about why "katastematic pleasure" is an obsession of some people and why "remembering past pleasures" is not such an obsession is something to consider. The answer, I think, is that a word like "katastematic" is so obscure that it is easy to bend to one's own prior Stoic or Buddhist or Christian or Platonic disposition, while other and more clear words describing specific pleasures are not.

Again, not talking about Don, but about a cultural force that catapulted "Katastematic Pleasure" into what is alleged to be the full meaning of the philosophy.

Over and over I repeat that my words are not meant to be disagreeable to Don. Were he not exploring these issues we would not have such a good opportunity to examine it.

On looking up examples of damage that comes from loose construction, (which Don is surely avoiding, I know) I happened to look again at this from Wikipedia on the T. Take a look at the last sentence in this paragraph:

What is terrible is easy to endure

The Epicureans understood that, in nature, illness and pain is not suffered for very long, for pain and suffering is either "brief or chronic ... either mild or intense, but discomfort that is both chronic and intense is very unusual; so there is no need to be concerned about the prospect of suffering." Like "What is good is easy to get," recognizing one's physical and mental limit and one's threshold of pain — understanding how much pain the body or mind can endure — and maintaining confidence that pleasure only follows pain (and the avoidance of anxiety about the length of pain), is the remedy against prolonged suffering.^[13

The "REMEDY"? Or as people are fond of saying "the CURE"? I think Epicurus would say "No"! The remedy or the cure of a disease is to root it out and destroy it. What is being described here in 3 and 4 are "coping mechanisms" which are certainly desirable but in no way a "cure." I am surely in favor of aspirin, but aspirin does not really cure the source of the pain at least in most cases. The "cure" of these pains is not in thinking about them as short or mild, the cure comes in "curing" them, and to the extent that the phrasing of 3 and 4 suggests that Epicurus would suggest "coping" rather than "curing" this is extremely damaging to Epicurean theory.

I am not so down on 1 and 2 as I am on 3 and 4, but in sum the total effect of these is to more aptly deserve the name the "Four-Part Coping Mechanism" than the Four-Part "cure."

This is just the kind of diversion from proper focus that undue emphasis on the word "katastematic" creates in the minds of those who do not understand that "katastematic" (to the extent it has a clear definition stated by Epicurus at all) is simply one among many pleasures - and one that does not rate even the clear emphasis Epicurus gave to friendship and prudence as of special importance.

I am together with all of this with the probable exception of post 3. That is not what Diogenes Laertius says about the two categories, is it?

And of course I also want the record to reflect that I agree with Boris Nikolsky that the whole "katastematic" question is an overlay of non-Epicurean analysis adopted from other schools, well apart from Epicurus, which is an artifact of Diogenes Laertius' well meaning but imprecise attempt to categorize Epicurus according to theories well known at DL's time.

As for mental pleasures being more significant than bodily ones at times I agree that makes sense as stated by Torquatus in his discussion with Cicero, so Metrodorus' book title would fit that well.

I also think it is useful to highlight the confidence of maintaining ones pleasures and the ability to experience pleasures mentally (including the memory of pleasures of the past) which is also well documented.

The only real problem that I have is that framing all this in terms of "katastematic pleasure" seems to me to be bound to be interpreted by those who are not so subtle as Don to be justification for their continuing focus on this term for their implication that katastematic pleasure is something higher than any other kind of pleasure, which I believe is not justified and is very harmful.

Of the points raised by Don, points 4 and 5 are lost on the "katastematic pleasure above all" crowd, and the difficulty is that the view of "Confidence in Katastematic Pleasure" will continue to crowd out and undermine the proper focus, which was as summarized by Torquatus more accurately as

"pleasures great, numerous and constant, both mental and bodily, with no pain to thwart or threaten them" (Reid)

Nothing there about "katastematic pleasure" being the primary goal," and to elevate it loosely as many do is to implicitly derogate all the rest.

So to me the task is to flesh out the benefits of the subject without confounding errors (which are in many cases intentional under the influence of Buddhism and Stoicism) even worse than before.

I have no doubt Don can do that here, but in general conversation about Epicurus elsewhere using this terminology is like hobbling oneself at the beginning by explaining "what's good is easy to get" and "what's terrible is easy to endure" to starving children. That's not a challenge that any Epicurean has any need to undertake voluntarily, because those contentions phrased that way are not well founded in the core texts of Epicurus himself. To me, those phrasings are best considered to be innocent but harmful diversions from the main core and stream of Epicurean thought. "Easy" and "katastematic" are similarly troublesome, and I don't advise people to look for unnecessary trouble!

Welcome to Episode 161 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're 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."

Sensations

Epicurus Not An Empiricist

Anticipations

The Account of Laertius

The Element of Anticipation

Evidences From Specific Context

Later Evidences

Feelings

This week we continue in Chapter 8 and move to the subsections "Sensations" and "Epicurus Not An Empiricist"

The more literal Munro of the same passage from book 6:

[68] Now unless you drive from your mind with loathing all these things, and banish far from you all belief in things degrading to the gods and inconsistent with their peace, then often will the holy deities of the gods, having their majesty lessened by you, do you hurt; not that the supreme power of the gods can be so outraged that in their wrath they shall resolve to exact sharp vengeance, but because you will fancy to yourself that they, though they enjoy quiet and calm peace, do roll great billows of wrath; nor will you approach the sanctuaries of the gods with a calm breast, nor will you be able with tranquil peace of mind to take in those idols which are carried from their holy body into the minds of men as heralds of their divine form. And what kind of life follows after this, may be conceived.

Don what source is that?

[41] Ad ea cum accedit, ut neque divinum numen horrea

Here's the text from Lucretius 6 (Which i remember in Humphries form):

And so they wander, borne along in blind

Unreason. Spit out all such stuff, I tell you,

Stop having thoughts unworthy of the gods,

Alien to their serenity. Affront

To their high holiness can do you harm -

Not that their lofty power can be so hurt

That it would thirst for vengeance in a rage

For retribution - but that you yourself

Will feel convinced that mighty tidal waves,

Huge seas of anger, roll, and flood, and break

Against your littleness, while all the while

They have not even noticed, and their calm

Is quite unbroken. But you cannot go

Serenely toward their altars; you are blind

To the benignant holy images

They send as heralds of divinity;

And what your life may be in consequence

Perhaps you realize.

We have received a request for zoom meetings which are more accessible to European time zones. Currently all our zooms have been in the evening Eastern time, and that places it in the middle of the night in Europe.

We definitely plan to do at least one such session soon, and if we have enough interest we will do it regularly. Of course nothing stops our current European participants from organizing their own zooms, but for the maximum benefit of all I am sure our "American hemisphere" friends would like to meet and interact with the Europeans.

The first obvious choice for us to open this up to the widest audience would be for us to set something on a Saturday in the morning or early afternoon Eastern time. Possibly 1:00 or 2:00 pm Eastern would make it an evening session for Europe and still not too early for California (?)

If you are interested in participating in a Saturday zoom at around 1:30 Eastern USA time please respond to this thread and we will get something set up as soon as the next couple of weeks. At least at the first one focus would be to spend time just getting to know our European friends better.

Very good point. Reid has it that way, so the Latin may support it, i was about to go further and say it's so far off as to be unusable, but really as I think twice this may actually be accurate. Maybe this is affirming what is apparently the true Epicurean position, analogous to reverencing the wise man, that we benefit from reverencing even though the wise man man may not be directing his activities toward us at all.

There's a passage in Lucretius about not being able to approach the temples of the gods without fear unless you have a proper understanding of them (but I can't find it right now).

This definitely calls for parsing the Latin

I am afraid that listing the "being steadfast" part as a separate item just is not really supported by the Latin. Especially when looking at the Reid translation, seems to me that there are really only five major things going on. This version follows Reid most literally:

1. Set as your goal to live among pleasures great, numerous and constant, both mental and bodily, with no pain to thwart or threaten them, while at the same time:
2. Be confident that death is apart from sensation,
3. Be confident that pain when lasting is usually slight, when oppressive is of short duration, so that its temporariness reconciles us to its intensity, and its slightness to its continuance.
4. Be free of awe of the influence of the gods;
5. Be never forgetful of the pleasures of the past, but constantly renew their enjoyment in recollection.

Varying translation choices between Rackham and Reid:

When we reviewed this material in the podcast, we chose the REID translation because it seemed more literal than Rackham. Here is Reid's version of this same passage:

[40] XII. Again, the truth that pleasure is the supreme good can be most easily apprehended from the following consideration. Let us imagine an individual in the enjoyment of pleasures great, numerous and constant, both mental and bodily, with no pain to thwart or threaten them; I ask what circumstances can we describe as more excellent than these or more desirable? A man whose circumstances are such must needs possess, as well as other things, a robust mind subject to no fear of death or pain, because death is apart from sensation, and pain when lasting is usually slight, when oppressive is of short duration, so that its temporariness reconciles us to its intensity, and its slightness to its continuance. [41] When in addition we suppose that such a man is in no awe of the influence of the gods, and does not allow his past pleasures to slip away, but takes delight in constantly recalling them, what circumstance is it possible to add to these, to make his condition better?

So going by this one the description of the best life is "the enjoyment of pleasures great, numerous and constant, both mental and bodily, with no pain to thwart or threaten them. "

Comparing that to Rackham (The truth of the position that pleasure is the ultimate good will most readily appear from the following illustration. Let us imagine a man living in the continuous enjoyment of numerous and vivid pleasures alike of body and of mind, undisturbed either by the presence or by the prospect of pain: ) and looking back at the Latin, it appears that the "undisturbed" has crept into Rackham without good justification. I think we can all speculate as to why he would be tempted to use that term even though it is not in the text.

It's pretty easy to read "impede" in the sense of delay (or thward) for as Reid does, plus the "impending" rings of "threaten" also per Reid, which agrees with my Cassell's Latin dictionary for Impendeo. That rings well with the reference at the beginning of book 1 as Epicurus standing up against the threats of the gods and breaking the bars of the gates of nature.