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  • Epicurus' Birthday 2023 - (The Most Comprehensive Picture Yet!)

    Here's an organizational note: I think the use of a FAQ is a very good idea given that lots of people probably look for a FAQ rather than trying to use search or otherwise pore thru the menu system or follow links all over the website. The forum menu system also provides a topic index, but both the FAQ and the Menu get complicated fast. Hopefully it helps that they can be opened and collapsed like outlines.

    For better or worse neither the FAQ nor the Menu system lend themselves to updating collaboratively. An admin has to go in and make each change, and that's probably too much trouble for them to be kept up to date easily.

    On the other hand as new threads get entered into the "When was Epicurus birthday?" forum then that list will just grow and grow too.

    So as a compromise what we can do at present for something like this is:

    1) The FAQ is prominently listed in the resource section.

    2) The FAQ contains a history section with the question "When Was Epicurus Born" with a quick answer but mainly a link to: (A) a "lexicon" entry that is editable by all the major participants in this thread which can hopefully be updated over time based on the most recent postings. I will expect to take care of that myself but others who have write access are welcome to update that as well. The FAQ entry will also link to (B) the discussion subforum which will continue to grow over time.

    As additional note this is probably the best way to organize the FAQ in general. First provide a concise answer to a question if possible, but then point to a collaborative document editable by some of our core people, and also to the discussion thread that can be participated in by all registered users.

  • Epicurus' Birthday 2023 - (The Most Comprehensive Picture Yet!)

    Gosh we just discussed this as recently as July? RE: Epicurus' Birthdate

    And here's the 2019 version: Epicurus' Birthday Calculations

    Your administrator is falling down on the job and we need to get his better organized. I will add this question to the FAQ and maybe designate one of these threads as a master thread and find a way to highlight it more prominently. I am sure this has been discussed probably at least once a year for the past five years or more and probably will continue to be asked, so it might even deserve a subforum of its own. Let me look into that.

    For now here is a FAQ entry and I will feature the FAQ more prominently on the home page: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/wcf/index.php?faq/#entry-35

    EDIT: Given that this question will keep getting asked, probably makes sense to open a subforum under the "Epicurus" section and try to move all the prior discussions from "General Discussion" into that thread.

  • Epicurus' Birthday 2023 - (The Most Comprehensive Picture Yet!)

    I guess part of the question is "What is 'it'?" Does 'it' mean "our best and most accurate calculation of the day of birth" or "the day we should schedule a group celebration?"

    Sometimes I even wonder what the "most accurate calculation" really means. Does it mean the day of the year in which the planets today are most closely configured around the sun in the same positions as they were at the time of Epicurus' birth?

  • Cultivation of Friendship within Epicureanism

    I skimmed back over the thread (almost a year at this point) to try to refresh my memory as to whether it had contained a "definition" (which I take as part of Root304's point). I am not sure that it does, and that might be something that needs to be discussed further to add to the clarity of the issue. I am not sure that there is an Epicurean text that really "defines" friendship is there? I seem to remember that there might be a definition in Aristotle (is it a "second self"?) but we shouldn't take for granted that Epicurus would agree with Aristotle.

    And of course given the absence of ideal forms or the like, how would the word best be used in the Epicurean context? What is the most accurate 'idea" to attach to the word "friendship" so that we may not go on explaining to infinity or use words devoid of meaning?

    Quote

    First of all, Herodotus, we must grasp the ideas attached to words, in order that we may be able to refer to them and so to judge the inferences of opinion or problems of investigation or reflection, so that we may not either leave everything uncertain and go on explaining to infinity or use words devoid of meaning. [38] For this purpose it is essential that the first mental image associated with each word should be regarded, and that there should be no need of explanation, if we are really to have a standard to which to refer a problem of investigation or reflection or a mental inference. And besides we must keep all our investigations in accord with our sensations, and in particular with the immediate apprehensions whether of the mind or of any one of the instruments of judgment, and likewise in accord with the feelings existing in us, in order that we may have indications whereby we may judge both the problem of sense perception and the unseen.

  • Epicurus' Birthday 2023 - (The Most Comprehensive Picture Yet!)

    Wow thank you for all that work Nate! A table like that showing the dates each year into the future is definitely something we need to add to a resource list somewhere.

    So the column labeled Hekatombaion 1 is the first day of the Greek New Year, and Gamelion 20 is what we believe is the actual birthday, or the 20th closest to his actual birthday? Maybe it would be a good idea to somehow annotate those column headings in case perhaps someone cuts and pastes the table and it gets separated from the text.

  • Thoughts On What Lucretius Might Have Considered For The Ending of Book Six - A Comparison Chart of Thucydides and Lucretius

    I'm not going to push anybody. (I would *never* do that would I Joshua or any of our other poets here?)

    However we have some very creative minds in this group who are very good with poetry and imagery and even if we came up with a hundred different versions, none of which would compare to Lucretius, the exercise I think would be very enjoyable and educational.

    So it ought to be possible to combine some of the flourishes that we have in the Vatican Sayings, and it strikes me the Torquatus narrative as well, to come up with something that would really put a point on how there is nothing like confronting our mortality to inspire us to live life to its fullest while we have it.

  • Thoughts On What Lucretius Might Have Considered For The Ending of Book Six - A Comparison Chart of Thucydides and Lucretius

    As has been mentioned several places, Emily Austin speculates in Chapter 22 of "Living For Pleasure" that Lucretius might have intended to track the full story of the Plague of Athens, which ends in the original version with an additional paragraph to which there is no parallel in Lucretius. What jumps out when we review the last paragraph which is not in Lucretius is that this is where it is relayed that the confrontation with death caused the Athenians to turn away from worries about gods and the afterlife and "virtue" and instead turn to enjoying the life that they have in hand. This is a perfect Epicurean lesson and there's no way that this paragraph would not be relevant to the poem. In fact, it probably would serve as the most perfect bookend that the poem could have.

    Don has supplied us with this link to the Thucydides version where the key extra paragraph is found.

    The full argument is best expressed in Austin's book, but we have brought this up in a prior thread and I think this is ought to be explored further. Not only would the extended parallel be a striking way to end the poem, but we know from several sources that Epicurus identified the feeling of escape from great danger, or calamity, as indicative of a meaningful definition of "the good."

    U423: Plutarch, That Epicurus actually makes a pleasant life impossible, 7, p. 1091A: Not only is the basis that they assume for the pleasurable life untrustworthy and insecure, it is quite trivial and paltry as well, inasmuch as their “thing delighted” – their good – is an escape from ills, and they say that they can conceive of no other, and indeed that our nature has no place at all in which to put its good except the place left when its evil is expelled. … Epicurus too makes a similar statement to the effect that the good is a thing that arises out of your very escape from evil and from your memory and reflection and gratitude that this has happened to you. His words are these: “That which produces a jubilation unsurpassed is the nature of good, if you apply your mind rightly and then stand firm and do not stroll about {a jibe at the Peripatetics}, prating meaninglessly about the good.”

    Ibid., 8, p. 1091E: Thus Epicurus, and Metrodorus too, suppose {that the middle is the summit and the end} when they take the position that escape from ill is the reality and upper limit of the good.

    Of course we also know that Lucretius makes a similar argument at the beginning of Book 2 (this from the Brown translation):

    'Tis pleasant, when a tempest drives the waves in the wide sea, to view the sad distress of others from the land; not that the pleasure is so sweet that others suffer, but the joy is this, to look upon the ills from which yourself are free. It likewise gives delight to view the bloody conflicts of a war, in battle ranged all over the plains, without a share of danger to yourself: But nothing is more sweet than to attain the serene 'tho lofty heights of true philosophy, well fortified by learning of the wise, and thence look down on others, and behold mankind wandering and roving every way, to find a path to happiness; they strive for wit, contend for nobility, labor nights and days with anxious care for heaps of wealth, and to be ministers of state.

    So it appears to me that one place to start would be to compare what we have from Thucydides to what we have in Lucretius and see if that might lead to clues on how to interpolate a more flourishing ending (the kind of ending that the enemies of Lucretius would have wanted to suppress even before the Judeo-Christian age). Here's an arrangement of the texts with a column for comments. Text from Thucydides comes from the Richard Crawley translation here. Text from Lucretius comes from the Brown edition here. This is just a first draft and I am sure this can be improved to break down the corresponding sections even more closely.

    ThucydidesLucretius
    47 Such was the funeral that took place during this winter, with which the first year of the war came to an end. In the first days of summer the Lacedaemonians and their allies, with two-thirds of their forces as before, invaded Attica, under the command of Archidamus, son of Zeuxidamus, King of Lacedaemon, and sat down and laid waste the country. Not many days after their arrival in Attica the plague first began to show itself among the Athenians. It was said that it had broken out in many places previously in the neighbourhood of Lemnos and elsewhere; but a pestilence of such extent and mortality was nowhere remembered. Neither were the physicians at first of any service, ignorant as they were of the proper way to treat it, but they died themselves the most thickly, as they visited the sick most often; nor did any human art succeed any better. Supplications in the temples, divinations, and so forth were found equally futile, till the overwhelming nature of the disaster at last put a stop to them altogether. 48 It first began, it is said, in the parts of Ethiopia above Egypt, and thence descended into Egypt and Libya and into most of the King's country. Suddenly falling upon Athens, it first attacked the population in Piraeus--which was the occasion of their saying that the Peloponnesians had poisoned the reservoirs, there being as yet no wells there--and afterwards appeared in the upper city, when the deaths became much more frequent. All speculation as to its origin and its causes, if causes can be found adequate to produce so great a disturbance, I leave to other writers, whether lay or professional; for myself, I shall simply set down its nature, and explain the symptoms by which perhaps it may be recognized by the student, if it should ever break out again. This I can the better do, as I had the disease myself, and watched its operation in the case of others.1138 Once such a plague as this, such deadly blasts, poisoned the coasts of Athens, founded by Cecrops. It raged through every street, unpeopled all the city, for coming from far (from Egypt, where it first began) and having passed through a long tract of air, and over the wide sea, it fixed at last upon the subjects of King Pandion. Men soon, by heaps, fell victim to the rage of death and the disease.
    49 That year then is admitted to have been otherwise unprecedentedly free from sickness; and such few cases as occurred all determined in this. As a rule, however, there was no ostensible cause; but people in good health were all of a sudden attacked by violent heats in the head, and redness and inflammation in the eyes, the inward parts, such as the throat or tongue, becoming bloody and emitting an unnatural and fetid breath. These symptoms were followed by sneezing and hoarseness, after which the pain soon reached the chest, and produced a hard cough. When it fixed in the stomach, it upset it; and discharges of bile of every kind named by physicians ensued, accompanied by very great distress. In most cases also an ineffectual retching followed, producing violent spasms, which in some cases ceased soon after, in others much later.
    		[1145] The head was first attacked with furious heats, and then the eyes turned bloodshot and inflamed; the jaws within sweated with black bloods; the throat (the passage of the voice) was stopped by ulcers; the tongue (the interpreter of the mind) overflowed with gore, and, faltered with the disease, felt rough, and scarce could move. And when the poison, through the jaws, had filled the breast, and flowed into the miserable stomach, then all the springs of life began to fail; the breath sent out a filthy smell abroad, like the rank stench of rotten carcasses, the powers of all the soul and all the body flag and grow faint, as in the gates of death. To these innumerable evils followed close a sad distress and sinking of the mind, loud sighs with bitter moans, and frequent sobbings, all the day and night, twitched and convulsed the nerves and every limb, and loosened every joint, and sorely racked the wretches, tired out with pains before.
    Externally the body was not very hot to the touch, nor pale in its appearance, but reddish, livid, and breaking out into small pustules and ulcers. But internally it burned so that the patient could not bear to have on him clothing or linen even of the very lightest description; or indeed to be otherwise than stark naked. What they would have liked best would have been to throw themselves into cold water; as indeed was done by some of the neglected sick, who plunged into the rain-tanks in their agonies of unquenchable thirst; though it made no difference whether they drank little or much.

    		[1163] Yet you could not perceive, by the touch, that the surface of the body was inflamed with any extraordinary heat; it felt only warm to the hand, and looked red all over with burning pustules, as when the sacred fire spreads over the limbs. But all within was in a flame that pierced the very bones; the heat raged in the stomach as in a furnace; no garment, ever so light or thin, could be endured upon their limbs; they rushed into the wind and cold, some plunging their bodies, scorched with the disease, in rivers, and naked threw themselves in chilling streams; some ran with open mouths and headlong leaped into deep wells; the parching thirst, insatiable, so burnt their bodies it made whole showers of water seem no more than a few drops.
    Besides this, the miserable feeling of not being able to rest or sleep never ceased to torment them. The body meanwhile did not waste away so long as the distemper was at its height, but held out to a marvel against its ravages; so that when they succumbed, as in most cases, on the seventh or eighth day to the internal inflammation, they had still some strength in them.
    		1178] The pain was without intermission, without end; the body lay quite spent, stretched out, the burning eyes wide open and, without sleep for many a restless night, rolled dreadfully about. The physician muttered to himself in silent fear, and leaves the patient in despair, 1182] for many signs of coming death appeared. The mind distracted with death and horror; a stern brow; a countenance fierce and furious; the ears tormented with a buzzing noise; the breath thick, or deep and seldom drawn; a frothy sweat, flowing in abundance over the neck; the spittle thin and dry, and yellow as saffron, and the salt matter could scarce be brought up through the jaws by coughing; a contraction of the nerves in the hands, and a trembling over all the limbs, and a coldness creeping up gradually from the feet; the nostrils pinched in, as at the point of death; the nose sharp, the eyes sunk, the temples hollow, the skin cold and hard, a frightful distortion of the mouth, and the skin of the forehead stretched and shining. Nor did the wretches lie long under the cold hands of death, for they expired commonly upon the eighth, or at the farthest upon the ninth day.
    But if they passed this stage, and the disease descended further into the bowels, inducing a violent ulceration there accompanied by severe diarrhoea, this brought on a weakness which was generally fatal. For the disorder first settled in the head, ran its course from thence through the whole of the body, and, even where it did not prove mortal, it still left its mark on the extremities; for it settled in the privy parts, the fingers and the toes, and many escaped with the loss of these, some too with that of their eyes. Others again were seized with an entire loss of memory on their first recovery, and did not know either themselves or their friends.[1199] But if any of the infected, as some did, escaped with life, either the filthy ulcers breaking, or by a most offensive looseness, they fell at last into a consumption, and then died; or streams of corrupted blood, with grievous headache, flowed from his stuffed nostrils, and thus his strength and life ran out, and the wretch bled to death. Such as escaped a sharp flux of filthy blood at the nose, the poison pierced into their nerves and limbs, and seized upon their very genitals; and some were so terrified at the approach of death that they suffered the virile member to be cut off to preserve life. Some remained alive without hands and feet, and some lost their eyes, so terrible was the fear of death to these miserable wretches. Some were seized with an entire forgetfulness of every thing; they did not so much as know themselves.
    50 But while the nature of the distemper was such as to baffle all description, and its attacks almost too grievous for human nature to endure, it was still in the following circumstance that its difference from all ordinary disorders was most clearly shown. All the birds and beasts that prey upon human bodies, either abstained from touching them (though there were many lying unburied), or died after tasting them. In proof of this, it was noticed that birds of this kind actually disappeared; they were not about the bodies, or indeed to be seen at all. But of course the effects which I have mentioned could best be studied in a domestic animal like the dog.1215 When heaps of bodies lay one upon another, unburied, upon the ground, yet the birds of prey, and the wild beasts, either kept at a distance to avoid the noisome stench, or if they tasted they soon died. At that time no birds appeared abroad in the day, nor did the wild beasts leave the woods by night; many of them were infected with the disease, and fell down dead; the faithful dogs especially lay gaping out their infected breath in every street, for the poison drove out life from every limb.
    51 Such then, if we pass over the varieties of particular cases which were many and peculiar, were the general features of the distemper. Meanwhile the town enjoyed an immunity from all the ordinary disorders; or if any case occurred, it ended in this. Some died in neglect, others in the midst of every attention. No remedy was found that could be used as a specific; for what did good in one case, did harm in another. Strong and weak constitutions proved equally incapable of resistance, all alike being swept away, although dieted with the utmost precaution.
    		[1225] The many funerals of the dead were hurried away without order, and unattended. Nor was their any certain remedy to be applied; for what was of service to some, and relieved the patient, and preserved life, was fatal and brought death to others.
    By far the most terrible feature in the malady was the dejection which ensued when any one felt himself sickening, for the despair into which they instantly fell took away their power of resistance, and left them a much easier prey to the disorder; besides which, there was the awful spectacle of men dying like sheep, through having caught the infection in nursing each other. This caused the greatest mortality. On the one hand, if they were afraid to visit each other, they perished from neglect; indeed many houses were emptied of their inmates for want of a nurse: on the other, if they ventured to do so, death was the consequence. This was especially the case with such as made any pretensions to goodness: honour made them unsparing of themselves in their attendance in their friends' houses, where even the members of the family were at last worn out by the moans of the dying, and succumbed to the force of the disaster. Yet it was with those who had recovered from the disease that the sick and the dying found most compassion. These knew what it was from experience, and had now no fear for themselves; for the same man was never attacked twice--never at least fatally. And such persons not only received the congratulations of others, but themselves also, in the elation of the moment, half entertained the vain hope that they were for the future safe from any disease whatsoever.

    		[1230] But the most wretched and deplorable thing of all, at this time, was that when once a person found himself infected with the disease, as if a sentence of death had passed upon him, his spirits failed him, he fell into melancholy and despair, thought of nothing but death, and so gave up the ghost. And funerals were heaped one upon another, because the fierce contagion of the disease incessantly raged, and carried on the infection. And if any one, too fond of life, and fearing to die, avoided to visit the miserable sick, the same want of help was soon his own punishment; he died in a filthy and deplorable manner, abandoned, and without assistance, and perished by neglect, like the wretched beasts of the field. And those who were compelled by shame, and by the moving cries and piteous moans of their friends, to attend them in their distress, were seized by the infection, and died by the disease and the fatigue. Indeed the most pious among them lost their lives in this manner:
    [1247] And when they had endeavored to bury the bodies of whole families of their friends, among those of the friends of others, they returned, wearied with grief and weeping, and most of them took to their beds for sorrow. And there was not one to be found who, in this calamitous time, had not grievously suffered, either by the disease, or by death, or by the most bitter pain and anguish of mind. [1252] Besides, the shepherds and the herdsmen, and the lusty ploughman pined away with the infection; their bodies lay miserably stretched out in their close narrow huts, and died of poverty and the disease. You might frequently see the dead parents lying over their dead children, and again, the children expiring upon the bodies of their wretched mothers and fathers.
    52 An aggravation of the existing calamity was the influx from the country into the city, and this was especially felt by the new arrivals. As there were no houses to receive them, they had to be lodged at the hot season of the year in stifling cabins, where the mortality raged without restraint. The bodies of dying men lay one upon another, and half-dead creatures reeled about the streets and gathered round all the fountains in their longing for water.

    		[1259] Nor was it a small addition to this plague that was brought from the country to the city; for the infected peasants flocked higher in multitudes from all parts, and carried the sickness along with them. They filled all the houses, and all places; and as they were pent up close together, death had the greater power to slay them in heaps. Many bodies lay along in the streets, gasping for thirst; and, rolling to the public conduits, they drank insatiably and were suffocated with water. Others you might see in the highways and common places, languishing, with their bodies half dead, horrible with filth, covered with rags, and rotting with the corruption of the limbs; there was nothing but skin upon the bones, and that putrefied with eating ulcers, and buried in nastiness.
    The sacred places also in which they had quartered themselves were full of corpses of persons that had died there, just as they were; for as the disaster passed all bounds, men, not knowing what was to become of them, became utterly careless of everything, whether sacred or profane. All the burial rites before in use were entirely upset, and they buried the bodies as best they could. Many from want of the proper appliances, through so many of their friends having died already, had recourse to the most shameless sepultures: sometimes getting the start of those who had raised a pile, they threw their own dead body upon the stranger's pyre and ignited it; sometimes they tossed the corpse which they were carrying on the top of another that was burning, and so went off.[1272] And lastly, death had filled all the temples of the gods with dead bodies, all the shrines of the celestial deities were loaded everywhere with carcasses. The priests furnished these places with such wretched guests. Nor was there any reverence paid to the gods; their divinities were no more regarded; for the present calamity overcame everything. Nor did the people any longer observe that custom of sepulture they had ever followed, which was to bury their dead in the city. They were all distracted and amazed, and every one buried his wretched friend as the exigency of things would permit. And sudden rage, and dreadful poverty, drove men into many outrageous actions: They would place their relations, with violent outcries, upon the funeral piles that were raised for others, and light the fire; and often quarrel, with much loss of blood, rather than forsake the bodies of their friends.
    53 Nor was this the only form of lawless extravagance which owed its origin to the plague. Men now coolly ventured on what they had formerly done in a corner, and not just as they pleased, seeing the rapid transitions produced by persons in prosperity suddenly dying and those who before had nothing succeeding to their property. So they resolved to spend quickly and enjoy themselves, regarding their lives and riches as alike things of a day. Perseverance in what men called honour was popular with none, it was so uncertain whether they would be spared to attain the object; but it was settled that present enjoyment, and all that contributed to it, was both honourable and useful. Fear of gods or law of man there was none to restrain them. As for the first, they judged it to be just the same whether they worshipped them or not, as they saw all alike perishing; and for the last, no one expected to live to be brought to trial for his offences, but each felt that a far severer sentence had been already passed upon them all and hung ever over their heads, and before this fell it was only reasonable to enjoy life a little.? ? ? ? ? ? ?

  • Epicurus' Birthday 2023 - (The Most Comprehensive Picture Yet!)

    Facebook post -

    Time to start our annual quest to answer the eternal question: "What's the correct date to celebrate Epicurus's upcoming birthday this time? I have seen two suggestions so far for 2023:

    (1) from sunset on Jan. 28 to sunset on Jan. 29, 2023 based on Gamelion 7 (which possibly comes from Gassendi).

    (2) January 14-15 per Epicurus pointing to Gamelion 10 in his will.

    We have started a thread to discuss this issue at the link below (linked to this thread), where the reasoning behind these two is explained. I know we have readers in this group from Greece who are all over this issue, so if anyone reading this has a suggestion to support one of these, or another calculation, please let us know!

  • Episode One Hundred Forty-Nine - "Epicurus And His Philosophy" Part 05 - The Early Years of Epicurus

    Hmmm -- OK Don has a timeline by major recognizable figures, even if they are not Epicurean. Nate's is a listing of known Epicureans to date.

    I scent a project that is needed -- a "pretty" (graphical form with colors) time line with several columns. One column I think would be major world people / events such as Don's listing. Maybe another would column be a listing of Epicureans only. Maybe another column for "events in Epicurean history" such as the best guess of publication dates of Epicurus' writings, Lucretius' Poem, Philodemus's works, Diogenes' Wall at Onoanda, and extending perhaps into major events such as "rediscovery" of Lucretius, Gassendi, etc? Would this be the best arrangement or would other columns make sense? We really don't need a "history of world philosophies" chart that incorporates the major other ones, unless maybe the column for world events lists things of relevance to the Epicureans that document the rise of Judeo/Christianity in the ancient world? Maybe that would be part of the "people/events" column, and a thord column might be "associated pictures."

    I suspect this will be a dream that won't soon happen but we have the raw material from the work Don and Nate have done already. Quite possibly a google spreadsheet like was used on the Stoicism chart would work and allow joint editing:

    The Stoic Spreadsheet:

    Epicurean Philosophy v. Stoicism - A Comparison Chart with Citations
    Epicurean vs. Stoic A Comparison Chart With Citations To Sources In The Ancient Texts (see also a Comparison Chart on The Goal of Life) Issue Epicurean…
    docs.google.com

    Consider this to be a Mock-up only

    TimeLine of Epicurean Philosophy
    Time Line of Epicurean Philosophy Notable People And World Events Events In The Epicurean School Associated Pictures? 1 Does “truth” exist? If so, how…
    docs.google.com


    I added this to the "To-Do" list: EpicureanFriends To-Do List

  • Episode 150 - "Epicurus And His Philosophy" Part 06 - Development of the School in Mytilene and Lampsacus

    Welcome to Episode One Hundred Fifty 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'll walk you through the ancient Epicurean texts, and we'll 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."

    This week we are going to speed through the early development of the school before we turn to detailed treatment of individual philosophical topics:

    Chapter IV - Mytilene And Lampsacus

    • The New Philosophy On Trial
    • The Sorites Syllogism
    • Homer A Hedonist
    • Rhetoric
    • Lampsacus
    • The Lampsacene Circle
    • The Regenerate Epicurus

  • Welcome Michal Handzel !

    This line of discussion - and the importance of knowing the details of the history of Greek philosophy in particular and philosophy in general- reminds me of my personal position on how much history is needed.

    As much as I want to know as many details as I can, there is no way I will ever be able to learn to read any Greek with any confidence, and I'm not much better at Latin. I'll never be able to backtrack and become an expert in the history of world philosophies, or to be able to even process, much less pass judgment on, the many complicated philosophical arguments. So if all I have to rely on is philosophy books I will never have any confidence in anything. But I can read enough from many different sources to see the outline of the argument that Epicurus was making, and it rings just as true to me today regardless of the passing of years, and without recourse to any arguments from "authority."

    I can use my own observations to validate that in every way that is significant to me, "nothing can be created from nothing at the will of the gods" and that is personally sufficient to me as a starting to point to take confidence in the rest of the core elements of the philosophy. I do not have the luxury of sitting back and contemplating possibilities for years on end - my life is short and I have to live it without all the information I would like to have, using the best judgment that I can come up with based on evidence. I see no reason to think the universe as a whole had a beginning, or that it has any supernatural ruler over it, or that there is an absolute set of "ideal forms" or "essences" or "right and wrong" commandments that I have to follow. That leaves me with what Epicurus pointed out - the faculty of pleasure and pain - as the only ultimate basis for what to do in life. That's where I have ended up after my years of study of Epicurus, and I don't see any reason to expect that any of those conclusions are likely to change.

    It's not quite the same as Thomas Jefferson's statement, but close, especially to the underlined part, and I am content with this reasoning be it 1820 or 300 BC:

    Jefferson to John Adams, August 15, 1820:    (Full version at Founders.gov)

    …. But enough of criticism: let me turn to your puzzling letter of May 12. on matter, spirit, motion etc. It’s crowd of scepticisms kept me from sleep. I read it, and laid it down: read it, and laid it down, again and again: and to give rest to my mind, I was obliged to recur ultimately to my habitual anodyne, ‘I feel: therefore I exist.’ I feel bodies which are not myself: there are other existencies then. I call them matter. I feel them changing place. This gives me motion. Where there is an absence of matter, I call it void, or nothing, or immaterial space. On the basis of sensation, of matter and motion, we may erect the fabric of all the certainties we can have or need. I can conceive thought to be an action of a particular organisation of matter, formed for that purpose by it’s creator, as well as that attraction is an action of matter, or magnetism of loadstone. When he who denies to the Creator the power of endowing matter with the mode of action called thinking shall shew how he could endow the Sun with the mode of action called attraction, which reins the planets in the tract of their orbits, or how an absence of matter can have a will, and, by that will, put matter into motion, then the materialist may be lawfully required to explain the process by which matter exercises the faculty of thinking. When once we quit the basis of sensation, all is in the wind. To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart.

    ------------------------

    So like Lucian's Alexander the Oracle Monger story I will happily entertain any claim to supernatural phenomena that anyone wants to show me really exists through evidence I can validate. And if and when I am able to validate that evidence I will certainly take it into account and change my worldview accordingly. But there is no reason whatsoever to entertain the possibility that any such evidence will ever be produced, and in turn there is massive reason to believe that any assertions of such evidence are purely fraudulent - just as with Alexander.

    And just as I will be happy to entertain any verifiable evidence, I am always happy to learn more about the arguments and the background that led Epicurus to the places where he ended up, and I am happy and appreciative to draw on the information that others in other careers have been able to learn.

  • Welcome Michal Handzel !

    Quote from Nate

    Your education as a historian of philosophy is very welcome here

    Yes it certainly is! Most of us here (excluding the lurkers about whom I know little) are most or entirely self-taught, and especially when trying to compare Epicurus to earlier philosophers to see what Epicurus might be replying to, the lack of extensive reading takes a considerable toll.

  • Happy Thanksgiving Thread

    Thank you Kalosyni! I posted that to my Twitter feed and Facebook and other accounts and would encourage others to do the same. And if others come up with graphics please post them here, or to the gallery (and please add a link to this thread so we can find them)

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