Posts by Cassius

Oooh - Long and Sedley go in the Monadnock direction - interesting.

Given the apparent contrast that is being set up between the first and second parts of the sentence, seems to me that the direction stated by Bailey and the majority make the most sense.

Of course I readily admit that I am "expecting" to see Epicurus say something like that given his devotion to pleasure in what appears to be the ordinary sense of the word.

With all due respects to the ascetic viewpoint, it will never make sense to me that Epicurus would have held that the most important thing to do in the brief interlude between an eternity of nothingness before birth and an eternity of nothingness after death would be to emulate that same state by denying oneself pleasure in the ordinary sense of the word while alive.

I therefore don't think Epicurus did that, nor do I think he could possibly have taken the Greek and Roman worlds "by storm" if he had. Where texts appear on uncertain on the role of pleasure and asceticism, I would accept the more likely as the one that more clearly reflects the shortness of life and the central place of pleasure, given that we are looking at the statements of a man who claimed to value reasonableness and consistency and - above all - clarity of expression in his statements.

Elli's Response:

Nathan Bartman hello my dear friend. IMO Camus wrote a philosophical essay with the Myth of Sisyphus and not Sartre. Camus saw Sisyphus as an example of the universal struggle of human beings held with the responsibility of caring for their existence in an otherwise meaningless world.

The world would have no meaning if the FEELINGS of pleasure and pain did not exist. And these feelings along with the senses are the dowry given by Nature to us and all the beings. If feelings would not exist, yes indeed, we will act like the robot machines, and the world would be meaningless. And this is what epicureans answer to both Camus and Sartre - for whom, I hope, would had enjoy both their life - otherwise their essays on philosophy were in vain!

Moreover, IMO Lucretius does not give rightly the meaning with the myth of Sisyphus. The myth of Sisyphus is not connected entirely with political power, since it could be also connected with a struggle to gain much more wealth. For Epicurus power and wealth are not the goal, these are just means to the goal of pure pleasure. For Epicurus the power is the knowledge of thyself with your next others that is connected with freedom and security, as well as Metrodorus suggests that if you have wealth it is wise to share it with friends (sharing with friends any wealth i.e. feelings and goods, it is also connected with freedom and security that friendship give us) or wealth means also to create, as a free entrepreneur, in your society, jobs, service and goods OR for an artist wealth means to create art. So, for both Metrodorus and Philodemus, having a wealth is as much as for living a life without troubles and in harmony.

In conclusion: We epicureans always are measuring all the means if they bring to us pure pleasure, if they do not bring pleasure this also means that we have made any means and in our case: the power and wealth, as a covering blanket to cover what? The fear of death !

The remembrance of the existence of the fact of the death, and this is the meaning of the myth with Sisyphus, because death had punished Sisyphus to carry the huge rock all of his life. And as Metrodorus remarks in the following sayings, it’s not wise to forget that we are mortals and one day we will die. And even the fact to know that we are mortals, for epicureans, gives a big advantage to consider that our life is unique, and there is not a second time, so that we enjoy our life to the fullest and this also gives us the huge meaning to our existence in the Cosmos - that for Greeks the word Cosmos - has the meaning of a beautiful and sparkling JEWEL. And that's the whole point IMO.

The sayings by Metrodorus are:

ES 30. Some men throughout their lives spend their time gathering together the means of life, for they do not see that the draught swallowed by all of us at birth is a draught of death.

ES 31. Against all else it is possible to provide security, but as against death all of us mortals alike dwell in an unfortified city.

Wow great work Don!

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

This episode mentions the Tyndal address from Belfast (discussion here).

We also started talking about Ionian science, so I will link the Carl Sagan Cosmos episode here too: Carl Sagan's Cosmos Episode Seven "Backbone of the Night" - Good Summary of Problems with Plato

Thanks Kalosyni -- I added those to the Lexicon page for V63.

Pacatus thank you for finding that St. Andre issue!

I just added an edit to my post that now seems superfluous but I will leave it anyway

Quote from Pacatus

63. There is an elegance in simplicity, and one who is thoughtless resembles one whose feelings run to excess. (Trans. Peter Saint-Andre, Monadnock Valley Press; this one seems to be somewhat in contradiction to the others.)

Oh no, I hope you copied that wrong from St Andre - but I suspect you did not!

Unless someone comes up with an explanation for that I am going to have to add that to a new list of some of the worst examples of unjustified "projection" onto Epicurus I have seen.

Don - any thoughts?

Don, any hope for your commentary on the reference to Horace? Or on what Von Der Muehll was suggesting?

Today we switched the "hero" box on page one of the forum to VS63 -a tremendously important and very clear statement, and a very potent retort against those who advocate a "minimalist" or "ascetic" interpretation of Epicurean philosophy.

Despite its usefulness, I don't think we have done a "deep dive" into the Greek wording or anything else we know about it from the Vatican list. I hope we can remedy that in this thread. For the time being, we have at least the following:

Bailey translation -

Here is the Bailey version of the Greek -

And Bailey's footnote -

From Bailey's "Epicurus - The Extant Remains" available here - (page 115-116)

If we can develop alternate translations we will add them to the Lexicon here:

VS63 - Epicureanfriends.com

www.epicureanfriends.com

Started January 28, 2023:

VS63. Frugality too has a limit, and the man who disregards it is like him who errs through excess.

Simple, but so important. This one may need to stay at the top of the page for the whole of 2023 - or longer!

As we return to our regular podcasting schedule and get back to Chapter 7 (The Canon, Reason, and Nature) I am editing this episode 158 and find that I have to apologize for some rough recording quality for the first six minutes or so of this episode. It should be very listenable when complete, but we'll work to improve the sound quality in the future.

Yes, that's a lot more words, but all of them keyed directly to pleasure. The further we get from "pleasure" the more the danger lurks, I think.

Rather than edit let me restate something from the last post. Not "both" but -

ALL FOUR of the perspectives that I listed in the start of post 16 can be perfectly valid and useful, depending on the context of the discussion.

What I see as a big problem is that "normal people" want to be given a definition so they can know exactly what to do. If we tell them that the goal is "happiness" (or flourishing or eudaemonia or some esoteric or fancy-sounding type of pleasure) then they will inevitably ask: "What does 'happiness' mean? And that's the rub - there is no good way to exhaustively define what it means to be happy to all people all the time. It looks like the Epicureans thought that the best way to define happiness is "a life of pleasure" but that doesn't satisfy someone who is looking for an elaborate definition.

So people who ask that question have to come to understand that what they are looking for does not exist in a Platonic ideal conceptual form. There is no single definition that applies to everyone of what it means to be "happy" other than "a life of pleasure" -- and they themselves are the only judge of what pleasure feels like to them.

I have to think that a lot of the difficulty in discussions of Epicurus' views comes from failure to explain that "happiness" as a concept does not have a single precise definition. And if we try to skate around the issue by substituting other high-sounding words - if we don't make clear that "happiness" means nothing more conceptually than "a life of pleasure" - then we are back on the slippery slope to Platonic idealism.

Quote from Joshua

When I looked at the bibliographies of Hicks, Yonge, and Mensch, I noticed this; Yonge spent most of his translating time working on Latin texts, and he uses the word θεωρίαις in the Latin sense of contemplation. Hicks and Mensch, on the other hand, spent most of their time working on Greek texts, and they use festivals.

I am out of my league too but potentially a great observation Joshua. I haven't checked back on Dewitt's commentary on this but I am pretty sure that he uses festivals, and I gather that he too was probably more into Greek than Latin - because I've looked through most of his published articles and they are almost always on Greek subjects more than Latin. I seem also to recall that DeWitt often cited Bignone favorably. But it's hard to make firm comments on how much time these guys spent on each language.

Before I comment much more myself in this thread I would very much like to hear what others think. In the meantime, though, I have supplemented an earlier thread which may become relevant here.

I think i will add to this old thread to extend the conversation on the distinctions between:

1 - "Happiness" as a concept to be defined in words.

2 - "Happy" as a mental feeling.

3 - "Pleasure" as a concept to be defined in words

4 - "Pleasure" as a feeling

Someone called to my attention this illustration from Diogenes Laertius which might be useful as a means of illustration:

Quote

Even on the rack the wise man is happy. He alone will feel gratitude towards friends, present and absent alike, and show it by word and deed. When on the rack, however, he will give vent to cries and groans.

I would say that that is a use of "happy" as a concept. The wise man on the rack may be able to summon up a pleasurable feeling from a good memory of the past as a part of his overall experience, but the overwhelming immediate bodily and mental feelings are almost surely going to be mostly painful, so that he gives rise to cries and moans. This would be an instance in which (if the quote is accurate) Epicurus is using "happy" as a "concept" standing perhaps in the place of some abstract sum or description of the man's total life experiences, but not as a present-moment desirable and conscious state.

That's all well and good and highly useful in conceptual debate, However in more immediate and practical terms, we have many instances where "happiness" or "happy" does not seem to be the word of choice to describe the ultimate objective, but "pleasure":

- Diogenes of Oinoanda - "If, gentlemen, the point at issue between these people and us involved inquiry into «what is the means of happiness?» and they wanted to say «the virtues» (which would actually be true), it would be unnecessary to take any other step than to agree with them about this, without more ado. But since, as I say, the issue is not «what is the means of happiness?» but «what is happiness and what is the ultimate goal of our nature?», I say both now and always, shouting out loudly to all Greeks and non-Greeks, that pleasure is the end of the best mode of life, while the virtues, which are inopportunely messed about by these people (being transferred from the place of the means to that of the end), are in no way an end, but the means to the end."

- Torquatus: This being so, it is plain that all right and praiseworthy action has the life of pleasure for its aim. Now inasmuch as the climax or goal or limit of things good (which the Greeks term telos) is that object which is not a means to the attainment of any thing else, while all other things are a means to its attainment, we must allow that the climax of things good is to live agreeably.

- Torquatus - If then a life full of pain is the thing most to be avoided, it follows that to live in pain is the highest evil; and this position implies that a life of pleasure is the ultimate good.

- Torquatus - f then even the glory of the Virtues, on which all the other philosophers love to expatiate so eloquently, has in the last resort no meaning unless it be based on pleasure, whereas pleasure is the only thing that is intrinsically attractive and alluring, it cannot be doubted that pleasure is the one supreme and final Good and that a life of happiness is nothing else than a life of pleasure.

- Lucretius - "Dia voluptus, dux vitae"

This may be more relevant to another thread currently underway, but I also want to put this here as a means of crosslinking the discussions.

I am thinking the take-home point is that BOTH perspectives are valid, but that we must be careful and clear how we are using these words and in what context they are being used. Otherwise we easily make the mistake that Diogenes of Oinoanda is shouting against: that of putting some abstraction (in which "happiness" becomes like "virtue") in place of real-world practical experience by which to guide our lives.

I have just recently received an email from Christos Yapijakis indicating that he has read through this thread. His comments that I am pasting below were drafted as a private communication to me, rather than as an exhaustive commentary on the various points raised above, so please understand that they are written in that context. I asked him for permission (which he granted) to repost these so as to include them in the discussion.

It has been some time since this thread started and I have not read back through it with an eye toward adding additional commentary myself as I add Christos' notes into the thread. The main thing I want to restate is that I appreciate all the effort and scholarship Christos has put into his work, and also the effort involved by those who have commented here, all of whom I am sure have written in good faith and with constructive intent to help all of us in the pursuit of Epicurean philosophy. From here on in the thread is Christos' comment, minus his personal introductory and closing thoughts. Christos is very busy and may not check in with additional comments anytime soon, but I should make clear that I am posting this not to end the conversation but to encourage additional constructive commentary on these very important subjects.

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... I know all that discussion comes from a friendly perspective towards both Epicurus and myself, so let me clarify some points:

1. The paper "Philosophical Management of Stress based on Science and Epicurean Pragmatism: A Pilot Study" describes a program for the general public and is written for the general experts in philosophy, psychology etc. Therefore, it is written in an objective, emotionless, generalized manner so that people all over the world to be convinced that there are some significant scientific findings using the Epicurean approach. it is not about the Epicurean philosophy per se and that is why we speak about happiness (ataraxia/aponia) and not about pleasure (the paper on Epicurean eustatheia on the other hand describes more in depth the Epicurean philosophy).

2. The tripartite brain is still a sound model in neurobiology (I am an expert in neurogenetics and George Chrousos is an expert in stress neurobiology). Of course the brain is more interconnected and more complicated than that, but that simple model is useful philosophically for the lay people to grasp the main characteristics of human potential. This is the most Epicurean approach possible. Epicurus was not interested for the little details as much as the big picture of things. The details are for specialists, the big picture and the first principles are for everyone to grasp to avoid confusion and fear of the unknown.

3. Regarding pleasure and happiness, just see Epicurus' Letter to Menoeceus that explicitly says that:

-We aim to happiness (eustatheia of katastematic pleasure/pleasurable state)

-We do not need pleasure unless our body is in pain lacking it

"He who has a clear and certain understanding of these things will direct every preference and aversion toward securing health of body and tranquility of mind, seeing that this is the sum and end of a happy life. For the end of all our actions is to be free from pain and fear, and, when once we have attained all this, the tempest of the soul is laid; seeing that the living being has no need to go in search of something that is lacking, nor to look anything else by which the good of the soul and of the body will be fulfilled. When we are pained lacking pleasure, then, and then only, do we feel the need of pleasure".

4. Regarding useful and harmful pleasures, again see Epicurus' Letter to Menoeceus that explicitly says that:

-Although pleasure is naturally akin to us, some pleasures lead to greater annoyance than pleasure

-Useful pleasures=those that appease pain or vary our enjoyment of life (the second ones we don't need necessarily)

-Harmful pleasures=those that result in more pain than pleasure

"...we do not choose every pleasure whatever, but often pass over many pleasures when a greater annoyance ensues from them. And often we consider pains superior to pleasures when submission to the pains for a long time brings us as a consequence a greater pleasure. While therefore all pleasure because it is naturally akin to us is good, not all pleasure is worthy of choice, just as all pain is an evil and yet not all pain is to be shunned. It is, however, by measuring one against another, and by looking at the conveniences and inconveniences, that all these matters must be judged. ".

All three papers I authored in that special issue of Conatus-Journal of Philosophy on "Philosophical Management of Stress" (the first ever such issue of an international philosophical journal and I was invited to be the Editor) promote Epicurean philosophy, although they do that in a more subtle, "politically correct" and objective way discussing other philosophical approaches too, which by comparison are barely useful for a very short period of time until reality prevails.

I hope I have made my point to you. I rest my case, as you say in court.

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NOTE: In a subsequent followup, Christos included the following, which I think is relevant to the same discussion:

Always remember that the pursuit of pleasure is the path to eustatheia and happiness (katastematic pleasure or pleasurable state) for Epicurus and not a goal by itself as Aristippus or 'prodigals' think (see letter to Menoeceus DL 131-132).

All the best wishes.

Quote from Todd

I would say the presumption should be in favor of consistency with the other occurrences of the word in DL. Since he is drawing from disparate sources, that weakens the argument, but what else do we have?

Following up on this, which one do we expect is the most consistent not only with other uses of the word, but with what we expect Epicurus to have more likely said?

Seems like a lot of people want to link the "public festivals" to comments about Epicurus' piety and his affection for Greece. That seems reasonable, but he obviously also found his greatest pleasure in study of nature and in pursuing his philosophy.

I tend to think the most "likely" thing for him to have said is the latter, with the reference being to the study of nature rather than pure "rumination." (How's that for a reference to our current discussions? ). That wouldn't take away from his 'piety' or his affection for Greece, but it would make him less chargeable with patronizing religious ceremonies with which he pretty clearly would have disagreed.