Posts by Cassius

I would hate to be an advocate of a philosophy that constantly needs fundamental "expanding" -

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Expanding the Ancient View

But this is a place where the modern Stoic might reasonably seek to modify the ancient position. In the last chapter of Stoicism and Emotion, I make the case that a view of the emotions that develops on Stoic lines should give some thought to ordinary people’s feelings about virtue and vice. Even if the original Stoics didn’t go in this direction, we today can expand our notion of dispassionate living to include non-wise versions of the sage’s eupathic responses.

More inhumanity:

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Could we not recoil from vice and long for virtue, like the young Alcibiades touched by Socrates’ teachings? In the ancient texts, the answer to this question seems to be no. In the few passages I’ve been able to find where that interesting door is opened a crack, it’s immediately shut again. The Stoics reasoned, perhaps, that morally imperfect people don’t really have access to the attitudes and feelings of wisdom. Even our best ideas and efforts are still susceptible to error. The joys and sorrows of our present state must be quite different from what a perfect mind would experience.

So yep, the article defends what Crantor and I would both say is inhuman lack of emotion:

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And for Stoics, that is exactly the problem with the emotions as we know them. Emotions are a way of registering value, but the values they express are mistaken values. They react to external objects as if they were the things that really matter in life, when in fact only features of our own character or conduct are truly good or bad for a person. For that reason, the wise human being of Stoic theory does not ever experience emotions in relation to external objects. He or she is impassive, apathēs, toward them.

I disagree with this:

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Rather than confronting painful thoughts in an attempt to desensitize oneself, Epicurus favors turning the mind away from them and focusing on the pleasurable elements of our experience.

Yes Epicurus does not advocate desensitization, but No Epicurus does not advocate "turning the mind away from" painful thoughts as if he advocates running from them. He first advocates fixing the problem wherever possible (the purpose of the physics and epistemology) and only where fixing is not possible does he point to the balance of pleasure still being worth the pain that is being endured (as on his last days).

More good material:. This Crantor was a smart guy:

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philosopher by the name of Crantor, put the case against the dispassionate life in terms we can all recognize. Crantor was writing around 300 B.C., in a consolatory essay—that is, a kind of open letter addressed to someone recently bereaved, offering them the comforts of philosophy. Crantor’s consolation must have said, as most of these pieces do, “it’s OK to cry for a while, anyone would”—but then he turns philosopher and adds,

I cannot by any means agree with those who extol some kind of impassivity (apatheia). Such a thing is neither possible nor beneficial. I do not wish to be ill, but if I am, and if some part of my body is to be cut open or even amputated, let me feel it. This absence of pain comes at a high price: it means being numb in body, and in mind scarcely human. — Crantor, quoted by Cicero, Tusc. Disp. 3.10

As I have time to read it, I see some good material:

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As an initial exercise, here is another set of words to think about. Where are we on these words?

• unmoved apathetic calm
• impassive serene unflappable
• tranquil unfeeling placid
• unsentimental unemotional unruffled

If you are like me and like my students, you can easily identify several of these words as negative words that you would not want to hear applied to yourself. Others are more complimentary; some might even be neutral. But the point of interest here is that if you make the effort to strip away the positive or negative valence of these words, all of them mean pretty much the same thing: they describe a person who doesn’t respond emotionally in situations where many people would.

He is right - those terms DO evoke the same meaning, and that is why I am convinced that "tranquility" or especially the untranslated "ataraxia* and "aponia" are NOT the ultimate descriptions of the Epicurean goal and must be used with great caution: the correct word is "Pleasure."

You are saying a lot there of which I think I will defer for moment to others to comment on, and I have not read the article, but:

The idea of "detachment" is about as negative and destructive idea toward human life as any I can imagine. Sort of life what was said in the ancient world about the Christians - if you hate this life so much why don't you end yours?

This is where Nietzsche's ""fraud of words"' passage is so directly on point. The Stoics do not want to "follow" Nature - they want to assert their own superiority over nature and tell nature what to do - what to value. And that is indeed well described as "fraud."

Beyond Good And Evil, (Gutenberg edition, translated by Helen Zimmern) Chapter 1, section 9

You desire to LIVE “according to Nature”? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power—how COULD you live in accordance with such indifference? To live—is not that just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, “living according to Nature,” means actually the same as “living according to life”—how could you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature “according to the Stoa,” and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise—and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves—Stoicism is self-tyranny—Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a PART of Nature?… But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to “creation of the world,” the will to the causa prima.

Episode 136 - The Letter to Menoeceus 03 - On Death (Part One) - is now available!

Sorry I did not achieve one day turnaround but I am about half way there and I will get this one up ASAP - surely by midweek.

Quote from Kalosyni

because modern life is really at odds with being "pain free or untroubled".

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Also, it came to me early this morning, that life requires a certain amount of "striving" or work.

I think both of those observations are true now and to a large extent have always been true - even in Epicurus' time - and we have to understand him on the presumption that he understood that too, and he was not putting forth something that is unrealistic.

Meaning NOT that we can attain those goals by ruthlessly diminishing desires and living in a cave on bread and water, but that Epicurus too understood the necessary stress and striving of life, and that he incorporated that into his advice. Epicurus himself never reached full absence of pain in body, and I bet he didn't in mind either. But he formulated a **goal** which helped him and us by providing something to shoot for, and that helps us calculate each step along the way.

That's why in addition to word structures for the goal, we need music and art and even poetry to help get emotionally attached to and focused on the goal to see that it is worthwhile.

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My take is that the situation was disturbing to him in many respects. He wasn't (necessarily) looking for "crowns and the erection of statues in one's honour." I think there are parallels with Torquatus's Epicurean justifications for his ancestor's actions.

I think you are right. I have never personally been able to unpack the situation at the time of the Roman civil war to get a good picture of what was really going on. What does seem clear is that it was a time of great change within the Roman social structure, and those who wished the older structure to continue considered themselves so personally threatened by the changes that they were willing to go to war. I think you're absolutely right to separate "crowns and statues" from more real-world issues. It's hard to think of things that are more unnecessary to a happy life than "crowns and statues." I presume to a large degree those represent recognition "by the crowd" which Epicurus was notably on record as not holding in high regard.

And while Cassius is best known for his part in the assassination, this part is equally interesting:

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Cicero associates Cassius's new Epicureanism with a willingness to seek peace in the aftermath of the civil war between Caesar and Pompeius.^[26] Miriam Griffin dates his conversion to as early as 48 BC, after he had fought on the side of Pompeius at the Battle of Pharsalus but decided to come home instead of joining the last holdouts of the civil war in Africa.^[27] Momigliano placed it in 46 BC, based on a letter by Cicero to Cassius dated January 45.^[28] Shackleton Bailey points to a date of two or three years earlier.^[29]

Quote from Don

We may be taking the "full glass" metaphor further than is useful

I dunno, I think a good metaphor is going to be extensible to cover the closely related issue of "What about variation?" And if not, then that may reveal a flaw in the metaphor. (But in this case I don't think there's a problem that prevents its extension.)

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Because of the glass is full and you die tomorrow or you die 100 years from now, it's the same limit of pleasure.

Making clear the context and perspective makes all the difference. The life of one year or a hundred years is the same in respect to "limit of pleasure." But on the other hand those two lives are not at all the same in many other respects.

Staying with that full glass analogy for the moment, I would think that the glass "spilling" some because it is overfilled would have to be interpreted carefully.

If the glass is spilling because more is being poured into it, and the liquid simply overflows because new liquid is being added, I would see that as "variation" and not a bad thing (just not something that increases the total experience of pleasure.

On the other hand if the glass spills because it is jostled, and the liquid spills over the edge and thus the total liquid declines, that would be a bad thing from just about every perspective, I would think.

(I realize that my very old graphic with the various stages of filling might need to be more precise on that point. Simply adding more and causing it to overflow would not be the best example of disturbance.)

Quote from Don

Basically, once the glass is full, it's full. Whether the glass stays full a day or an infinite time, it's the same volume. That's the "limit" of pleasure: the full glass.

.... Which is a far superior and more clear way to state the proposition rather than saying "Once the glass is totally empty, it's totally empty. Whether the glass stays empty for a day or for an infinite time, it's the same volume."

The latter formula may also be true, but it conveys a totally different attitude. Those "absence of" descriptions work ONLY if you vigorously keep in the front of your mind that since there are only two feelings, then when you are not feeling pains you are feeling pleasures. If you don't have that Epicurean premise front and center, then it looks like you are investing mystical qualities in "emptiness" or even "nothingness". It seems that was possible for the ancient Epicureans, but very hard for us to day, given our lack of full explanations from the texts and our overall more negative attitude toward pleasure.

Those latter formulas (emptiness and nothingness) are of great appeal to Buddhists and Nihilists and others who are unhappy with what they think they see in life, but not at all representative of what a philosophy of pleasure would look like.

It is impossible for me to believe that the Romans who enthusiastically adopted Epicurus interpreted him through the "emptiness" / "nothingness" metaphor.

The Romans - who had the texts and the teachers - understood it as Cicero described it from the positive perspective: "A life of tranquility crammed full of pleasures."

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XII. 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: what possible state of existence could we describe as being more excellent or more desirable? One so situated must possess in the first place a strength of mind that is proof against all fear of death or of pain; he will know that death means complete unconsciousness, and that pain is generally light if long and short if strong, so that its intensity is compensated by brief duration and its continuance by diminishing severity. Let such a man moreover have no dread of any supernatural power; let him never suffer the pleasures of the past to fade away, but constantly renew their enjoyment in recollection, and his lot will be one which will not admit of further improvement.

And that last thought leads me back to this:

Why are we ever even talking about "the greatest pleasure" in the first place?

It's not because we are connoisseurs of pleasure like we are looking for the finest wine.

I think virtually the entire reason we are having this discussion is because it is necessary in order to debate philosophically with Plato and the gang that Pleasure can qualify as the highest good. Outside of that abstract discussion the whole issue of "the greatest pleasure" is really nothing more than personal circumstance and preference.

But if we conflate the entire discussion into a wine-tasting test, we end up totally confused, and worse -- concluding that the best wine is the one with the least taste!

Quote from reneliza

In other words, I think that for an Epicurean, the greatest pleasure can be found in either limited OR infinite time.

i think I agree with that. And I think no matter how much time we have, the "greatest pleasure" can be *missed* in that degree of time as well, since pleasures may have duration, but their value to us is not a direct function of how long they last.

Of course saying it that way too leads us back into the discussion of what is meant by "the greatest pleasure." Is that a particular type of activity or feeling of pleasure, or is it a description of the observation that whatever that person is experiencing as pleasure, that experience cannot be increased? (the latter is correct, i think.)

So long as the term "greatest pleasure" is read to imply some **particular** activity or feeling (including those mysterious words "ataraxia" or "aponia" - which I think is incorrect), the discussion goes round and round and round.

Before I go further down that road however an extra hour sleep causes me to want to restate this issue this way:

If we measure pleasure in terms of discrete numbers of experiences of pleasure (say x number of candy bars) then an infinite time surely gives the opportunity for more discrete instances (candy bars).

But if we rather realize through the mind that pleasure is not best measured as discrete instances (candy bars), but in terms of "purity" (the pink circle analogy or any other analogy of 'fulness'), then the number of discrete instances is seen as secondary, and length of time is no longer important because length of time does not improve it.

Which is pretty much exactly what is said in the letter to Menoeceus about not wanting the longest, but the most pleasant.

This framing leaves the issue stated in a fairly abstract way, and doesn't tell us individually how to spend our time day to day. But considering it "abstractly" like that is what we should expect: that perspective is necessary to defeat the anti-pleasure-abstractions of virtue and supernaturalism. Further, viewing it abstractly is probably pretty much what is generally meant by referring to "the mind" and "through reason."

That's a great question Don. Seems we often come back to boredom and or the issue of "nothing new under the sun" in these discussions.

And yet does it not seem that this was not an issue for the Epicureans discussing their view of deathless divinity?

I haven't watch the show so I can't validate your precise statement of what it is saying, but I bet your description is correct, and I have a dep suspicion that there is something wrong with the people who think that infinite duration of pleasure would be boring.

I am not sure it is exactly the same question but it sure is related.

I also seem to think that this same issue (boredom with pleasure) is involved in Wagner's Tannhauser (in which the lead player apparently gets bored of Venus and returns to the "real world" in frustration).

I am tempted to think that boredom with pleasure is an artifact of a "religious" perspective.

Reading these last several posts I agree that substituting other forms of pleasure, or simply other things besides pleasure, is helpful.

But on the more basic point I would still ask this:

Is not the fundamental point as this is being translated in English amount to a plain meaning of:

"IF YOU COULD LIVE FOREVER...you would still be able to gather together no more XXXX than if you only live 60 years???"

That's why I still lean toward an explanation that focuses on the multiple meanings of "greater" than I do toward explanations that would se to be playing fast and loose with the time component.

Because when I read Godfrey's example of "dark chocolate eaten" I have to say heck yes if I live forever I could eat a lot more quantity of dark chocolate than if I live only 60 years.

Seems to me a punch line of "but you can't live forever" is unlikely to have been the ultimate point, if the point has something to do with reconciling you with your mortality. If drumming home "Remember you are a mortal" (like a Roman General in a triumph) is the point, then why not simply say: "You can't and won't live forever, Bozo, so stop dreaming otherwise."

Is Epicurus really just playing the role of the slave in the chariot whispering in the ear of the General?

In Ancient Rome, a slave would continuously whisper 'Remember you are mortal' in the ears of victorious generals as they were paraded through the streets after coming home, triumphant, from battle

After every major military victory in ancient Rome, a "triumph," as it was called, was celebrated in Rome. It was a ceremonial procession granted to

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