Posts by Cassius

Quick comment on desirable ways to manipulate an outline:

Oh that last comment reminds me of one of my favorite subjects - outlining software. There is even a website dedicated to the topic: http://www.outlinersoftware.com

Those two outlines above were produced with the software that I have sworn by for 20+ years:. Ecco Pro. If I make it to 90 years old and die at my computer I will probably be typing into my Ecco outlines at the moment I kick off. Unfortunately development of Ecco stopped long ago, and today probably the premier interactive outliners that feature easy expanding and collapsing include Logseq and Dynalist.

Of course the forum here itself has an outlining function, but no ability to expand and collapse ("fold"). Another example is the current outline for the LucretiusToday podcast we are using at the wiki page https://epicuruscollege.com/wiki/lucretius…l_series_-_eahp That outline is generated by Dokuwiki and it works ok for "folding," but it doesn't have the ability to zoom to different levels (for example, to show only all first and second level headings) like full featured outlining software can do.

Repeating Kalosyni's original comment I think it would be a great project for anyone (and many people) to organize their Epicurean research and produce public "live" outlines that can be viewed at varying levels.

If I were to attack such a project at the moment I would probably use Dynalist, but if anyone has better suggestions please post in the thread. I know a lot of us are familiar with WordPress - maybe WordPress has an outliner plugin? Numbers of us have done blogs in the past but if we could figure out a way to publish live outlines that can be interactively zoomed at varying levels, that format would probably be at least as useful as the standard blog format organized by date.

If anyone is interested in working on such a project they should of course feel free to copy and paste the text of my existing outlines above into their own new formats for further development and revision.

In fact, the existing two outlines above are simple HTML, and anyone who is proficient in HTML can simply download the existing page (it's all a single HTML page) and modify it to make it much more attractive. I never learned real CSS skills so I was only able to make minimal changes to the format generated by EccoPro. Should be easy for someone with HTML/CSS skills to modify it. For example I see that as you drill down through the bullets the font sizes don't seem to match. If anyone wants to spend time cleaning up the HTML in these versions I would gladly update the existing versions on this and the NewEpicurean websites. But I suspect it makes the most sense to take the text and rework it using an up-to-date static site generator.

I am told that not everyone can click on the pointer icons and expand/collapse the outlines in the "clickable versions" of the above two posts. If you're unable to do that please post here as I would like to investigate the cause. It works for me on both android and desktop.

(Note that the pictures in the post aren't clickable. I just posted those so you would see what you're going to get when you follow the link. Also note that you must click directly on the pointer icon and not the full text of each line. That's an example of why the content needs to be reworked using different technology.)

Great work!

Oops I forgot I actually produced two versions - this one entitled "Overview." Same caveats apply that this is just a prototype and needs dramatic revision.

Here's a picture:

Here's the clickable version:

Overview of Epicurean Philosophy

Description is here:

Overview of Epicurean Philosophy – A New Outline – NewEpicurean

As Kalosyni mentioned in the podcast today: a draft of a prototype of an expanding/collapsing outline of Epicurean philosophy. Needs to be drastically revised and update but might serve as a rough example for those who want to develop a better version using current web technologies:

Here's a picture:

Here's the clickable version:

Fundamentals of Epicurean Philosophy

Description is here:

Fundamentals of Epicurean Philosophy – An Outline – NewEpicurean

Quote from Don

So, yeah, I found book 1 both intriguing but frustrating in Aristotle's insistence on the subservience of the individual's "good", goal, telos being subservient to the state.

But is that my modern, Western bias or is that coming from a genuine Epicurean perspective

I could see Epicurus holding that for individuals who do in fact find their greatest happiness in being part of a particular group of people, then for those people they are pursuing pleasure by pursuing their collectively defined interests.

But I would also expect Epicurus to hold that for those individuals who do not find their greatest happiness in a particular group of people, or who find their greatest happiness in another or smaller or separate group of people than "the polis," then the interests of the polis would not be their primary concern.

To hold otherwise would be to allow for something else other than the feeling of the person perceiving the feeling to override the guidance of nature. I read Epicurus as being rigorously logical that there can be no possible exception to the general rule that Nature gives humans only feeling (pleasure and pain) for guidance. I do not think Epicurus would admit that polis / states are living brings which have feelings of their own.

States may be the most efficient method of organization of large groups of people for living happily, but they are not strictly necessary for human survival so I bet he would say that they don't count in the same way that "life" is a prerequisite to pleasure. Like "virtue"I would expect Epicurus to see states as a tool and not as an end in themselves.

Going a little further, I think the way we unwind *all sensations are true" gives us a good pattern. Sounds like Epicurus did say something like that, but if we take it at face value and unthinkingly, then we and he both look like fools. The statement has to be considered and understood at a deeper level - at the level in which we see "true" means "honest" in this context, rather than "fully consistent with the actual and verifiable facts."

Same goes with considering pleasure to be the highest or greatest good. If we pursue a particular pleasure recklessly and singlemindedly we can easily get ourselves killed and again look like - or be - a fool. Words have to be evaluated in context, and our human context requires us to be alive in order for pleasure to have any meaning to us. Getting ourselves killed is generally not the best way to maximize our future net pleasure. So considering these words ("pursue pleasure!") outside of our human context can get us into big trouble very fast. The penalty for misunderstanding this might not just be more pain than pleasure - the penalty might well be premature death. (And looked at in that way, this ultimate issue is outside the weighing of net pleasure vs pain. If you get yourself killed instantly driving 200 miles an hour you don't in fact experience more pain than pleasure from that choice, you die instantly. So this too is a point that the mind has to understand and isn't revealed purely through the senses.)

That's what I think Dewitt grasps and is on to, and this is an example of aggressive thinking which I think makes him one of the best interpreters of Epicurus for practical application of the philosophy. Yes pursue pleasure as the end (because virtue and holiness are illusions), but unless you are sure about your choice (dying for a friend might be an example) don't get yourself killed doing it. Life comes first in order that you may have pleasure.

Its kind of hard to accept it, but it may have taken Dewitt to bring down to earth something that should always have been obvious in the teachings of Epicurus. I don't know any other commentator who has raised this point as well as Dewitt or even thought it significant to talk about. Most commentators are content to let Epicurus sound superficially like a spoiled child without going to bat for a reasonable interpretation of what he was saying.

In contrast, I suspect this relationship was in fact obvious to Epicurus' followers in the ancient world before the Great Corruption took over.

Quote from Pacatus

Hmmm. I'll have to give DeWitt a more thorough scrutiny on this. Being alive certainly is an existential requirement for any telos -- albeit that is likely a trivial parsing ...

My take on this is that DeWitt is clearly onto something, but might not be framing it exactly as it should be. Not saying I can do better, but as you note, "being alive" *is* a requirement for any telos, or as I think DeWitt put it in a more memorable way, something like "pleasure has no meaning except to the living."

And I feel sure that Don would agree with that point -- that pleasure has meaning only to the living.

So the issue of clarity seems to me to come in unwinding what it means to use the phrase "the greatest good." The word "good" has multiple meanings or subtleties, just like the word "true" as Dewitt discusses, more successfully I think, in discussing "all sensations are true." And even "greatest" might be open to shades of meaning.

In the end my view of this is that DeWitt is making a very important point, but he's not explaining it as well as he does with "all sensations are true," The issue seems to me is to be that we need to attack the shades of meaning and ambiguities in the word "good" -- which we know that Epicurus was challenging given his other statement against walking around uselessly harping on the meaning of "good."

I give credit to DeWitt for highlighting the issue, even if he doesn't drive it home to an optimum conclusion.

Oh I meant to add this earlier:. One of the reasons this came to mind was probably inspired by the example of "A Few Days In Athens" - I can imagine a similar scenario being sort of a model for an immersion game.

But I doubt it would be a good idea to model the actual garden and thereby have to deal with putting words in Epicurus ' or other actual historical figures' mouths. Frances Wright probably did a reasonably accurate job but even there she probably crossed some lines.

I would think another time and place - such as Herculaneum before the eruption - would probably be more analogous to us - people living well after Epicurus' death trying to learn and apply the philosophy in an Epicurean-,friendly setting without any of the actual characters being hijacked by living people who don't have the authority to speak for them.

Yes that's the eventual goal, but in the meantime and probably always it's good to keep an open eye to all reasonable possibilities. So definitely I am not suggesting that it's time to put any effort into a virtual world model, just that if there are people would in fact peruse those things we should be aware of any opportunities.

I would never have suspected that Martin would be the one of us to have experience with this! My own perspective was pretty much like Don's - been hearing about this forever but not seeing it actually come into being. However I know as I get older that I lose touch with certain things so I wanted to check. I am actually a little surprised that something like it hasn't made more progress.

Don's also right that we have a great need for content creators and until I can find more time myself I am struggling to keep just the podcast and weekly zoom going.

Maybe that was part of why the idea came to mind - projects that attract interest in part through the effort of the participants themselves (second life) is probably a smart thing to keep open to adding.

If anyone is into a particular project like Second Life and wants to brainstorm for a while that's probably the first step.

Sometimes I think my own world is a virtual reality so I don't need another, but the general space probably bears watching. I have lost track over the last ten or more years of what these online games really do, but I presume that they are growing increasingly popular.

Maybe then the main use of the thread - to the extent it continues at all - should be to keep an open dialog on how new technologies and online gaming interactions (not purely discussions like here) might be adapted to community-building.

I probably should have tagged Charles here too as he might be in closest touch with the latest developments. And possibly Eikadistes for both his age and creativity. And I think Onenski is college or post graduate too.

This question comes to mind partly because of a comment Joshua made recently, and partly because I was wasting time on the internet today watching an interview with a professor who was singing the praises of the free internet multiplayer game "Zero AD."

In my own case probably the very last thing I need to do is to spend more time on the computer away from the outside world, but I gather that online gaming is extremely popular so it's probably worth the question:

Is it possible that setting up an online Epicurean community in one of these role-playing games would be a worthwhile project? I gather that these games are not wholly devoted to war games anymore, and I am wondering if it might be interesting, and attractive to younger people, if we were to set up an explicitly ancient-world Epicurean community (the Villa of the Papyri before Vesuvius) and then conduct learning / teaching events in such an online community. The major gap in my knowledge is whether these communities provide an environment where discussion/teaching/socializing is easy to do, or whether it is all blood and guts.

Joshua please confirm for me that this is the worst idea ever and I'll leave it alone. However it seems to me that the question is probably worth asking, so maybe some others here who have more experience with this kind of thing can suggest whethere there is any potential for a project in that direction or not.

All I have done is looked at the home page of http://play0ad.com and I don't have any idea whether this is feasible or a good idea or not.

Anyone?

Thank you for outlining that Kalosyni!

Maybe no need but I will anyway. I think you're on the track of what quite possibly is the very most important aspect of Epicurus which as always impressed me as not so much the conclusion ("pleasure" as the highest good) but the method of establishing confidence that the conclusion is correct.

We will never be omnipotent or omniscient and therefore to hold "confidence" to that standard or proof is nonsensical. But that's what 2000 years has told us to do.

Aristotle was apparently in the process of breaking free from Plato but did not go nearly far enough. Artificial rules and categories are just as misleading as platonic absolutes. (That's the critique of "essentialism" that Dawkins makes.) Epicurus finished the job, but that aspect has been buried.

There is a lot to be uncovered in the final step from Aristotle to Epicurus (some of it is in Philodemus on Signs) but I am convinced if we uncover and expose to a wider audience the insufficiency if Aristotle then we not only blow a hole in Objectivism (desirable in itself) but we show the way to a common sense method of thinking that also finally kicks the supports out from supernatural religion.

And going through Nichomachean ethics is a good place to start

Thanks for posting that Kalosyni!

I am sorry I am slow in reading the commentary but I will eventually get there. As to the Stoic assent issue, it seems to me that either in DeWitt or one of the commentaries I've read in the past, an analogy is made (by someone, can't remember who) between the "assent" issue and the Epicurean discussion of "phantastic" impressions. I know that DeWitt has a section on this but I don't think that's the only place I have read this.

I seem to also recall that the parallels or similarities are wrapped up in something else that we've not discussed very much, that the Stoics were in a way "materialists" too (perhaps in relation to sensation that is what I am remembering). There's a lot of confusing discussion in the commentaries about thought processes and how the mind "grasps" things, but I don't have any impression as to where Aristotle was on grasping /assent.

Course Correction: We have just learned that Onenski can't attend for the next several Thursdays, so let's stay with Wednesdays for the time being.