Posts by Cassius

Martin are you able to edit this page?

Martin's Bookcase Project

We also have a page dedicated to the book here:

DeWitt (Norman) - "Epicurus And His Philosophy" - Epicureanfriends.com

ADMIN EDIT: Norman DeWitt's "Epicurus and His Philosophy" is available in PDF and EPUB format at various places around the internet, and is also available in…

www.epicureanfriends.com

A full preview of the entirely of chapter one of Epicurus and His Philosophy is available at Google Books here:

Epicurus and His Philosophy

books.google.com

I fixed the extra attachment Martin.

Sounds like a great idea.

Possibly we ought to expand the list of exceptions so that it includes all books that are overtly modern politics so as to not violate our general forum rules, but in this case I would not consider it inappropriate to trade copies of books devoted to other philosophies or most amy other topic beyond what you listed.

Over the years I have had people send me books, and lent some from my library, and I think this is a great idea toward building community.

We can set up a table feature using the "lexicon" tool and allow all registered members of a certain level of participation to edit the list.

We can set that up and post a link here in the thread.

Welcome to Episode One Hundred Forty-Six 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 take a look at the three major divisions of Epicurean philosophy. Now let's join the discussion:

Epicurus employed teaching devices which are important in understanding his philosophy.

• Setting The 'Attitude' or (diathesis, Greek). This device stresses at the very beginning the attitude to take toward the subject. For example, the Principal doctrines set the attitude to take toward gods, death, pleasure, and pain.
• Start With An 'Outline' or the 'Synoptic View.' This means starting with the 'big picture' before proceeding to detailed discussion of the finer points, so that the fine points are kept in perspective. Epicurus' teachings were therefore presented in order from the general to the particular.
  • Physics:
    • The first principles of Physics were presented as the Twelve Elementary Principles
    • The First Epitome of Physics was the Letter to Herodotus
    • The Second Epitome of Physics is what we have today as the material adapted into poem form in Lucretius On The Nature of Things.
    • The Full presentation of Physics was the Thirty-Seven Books on Nature.
  • Ethics:
    • Ethical passages of 40 Doctrines
    • Letter to Menoeceus
    • Longer Works Now Lost.
  • Canonics:
    • Epistemological passages of 40 Doctrines
    • Epistemological passages in “On the Nature of Things”
    • The “Celestial Book” on Canonics now lost.
  • Warning: View The Literature On Epicurus With Great Care
    • Little remains of the trustworthy texts other than a small amount of original material from Epicurus, supplemented by the poem of Lucretius. The secondary literature is mostly hostile and cannot be received uncritically. Most modern scholars prefer to “hunt with the pack” and take the secondary literature at face value. This results in the greatly distorted picture of Epicurus dominant today.
    • In separating out the false material it is useful to employ another device used by Epicurus: that of contrasting and opposing “True Opinions” against “False Opinions.”

We're starting a new series in the "Lucretius Today" podcast. We'll be going through Norman DeWitt's Book "Epicurus and His Philosophy" and working to provide a basic overview of the philosophy from the ground up. Our first installment - Episode 145 - The Philosophy of Epicurus - Part 1 - Chapter 1 of "Epicurus And His Philosophy" is now available:

Thanks for that Link. I need to explore what an "OpenAthens" account entails.

In the meantime here is one of his most significant articles, that serves as sort of a precursor to the book itself:

File

Norman DeWitt - Philosophy For The Millions (1947)

Norman DeWitt's 1947 article summarizing he significance of Epicurus and his philosophy.

Cassius

July 11, 2022 at 12:04 PM

Norman DeWitt's bigraphy in the Rutger's Database of Classical Scholars:

DEWITT, Norman Wentworth

Quote from Don

Logistical question: If we get a 404 Error and can't access the site, how do we contact you to tell you we can't access the site?

Great question and this is a great time to update the home page with this information, mentioned in the past here: Backup Communications for EpicureanFriends.com

We'll add a box to the right sidebar that highlights this URL - CassiusAmicus.com. That URL was chosen as a name that's hopefully easy to remember in the event of an emergency. It's nothing but a "link tree" of other places where we should be able to communicate in the event of extended downtime, such as Facebook, Twitter, and other established accounts that should not be affected in the event of a problem with our main host.

As a practical matter it's likely that the best place to report outages and communicate when the forum is down will be the newly-established Telegram group which can be found by clicking here.

Most of us don't monitor Facebook regularly, but it's also likely that if something were to happen to the main site it would be discussed at the Facebook group here.

Last "tech support" post: I just identified the problem which i know affected at least two separate accounts. if you were logged in this morning when the site went off line, your browser may have continued to attempt to connect and thereby triggered the hosting provider to think that you were a hacker, which automatically added your IP address to a ban list. Therefore if you have any trouble logging in from any device, let us know and we can arrange to remove you from that list, and that should fix any problem anyone has. End of tech report!

Is anyone experiencing any weird connection issues that the site is working properly on some internet devices but not on others (probably with different internet connections)?

Episode 144 - The Inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda (Part Four) "Virtue Not the Highest Good" is now available!

Simple explanation in two words: "Administrator Incompetence"

I hope you didn't lose anything; I know you tend to write in the mornings first thing. I doubt that any loss of data happened because I don't think the database in which messages are stored was affected. But if anyone notices anything please let me know.

For reasons yet unknown we had a couple of hours of downtime this morning, with the forum reporting 404 errors. If anyone was affected by this and/or notices anything strange on the forum, please report in this thread. Thank you!

Kalosyni asked me about this forum feature recently and why we weren't making more use of it. I responded that I really didn't know how it might work for us, but today I saw an example of a website devoted to a certain topic (internet browsers) but which had cultivated a large community with people who wanted to share their "outside" interests with others in the community. Here's that example, at Vivaldi.net: https://blogs.vivaldi.net

So with that as background we have moved the blogs section into easier focus, and it can now be accessed at its own memorable URL as https://Blogs.EpicureanFriends.com

All users here with user level about 3 (which should include most all of our regulars - if not, please ask) can have their own blog section and post articles that will be categorized under their names. (You can post without having a category for your name, but if you would like all your posts gathered under your name, let an Adminstrator know and we will add your name to the category list.)

The main advantage of posting your blog posts here, rather than perhaps your own private blog a Wordpress.com or similar sites, is that (hopefully!) we have a little more traffic from known friendly acquaintances who will come across your posts more readily here than if they just had to find you with a general Google search. (Nevertheless, it's a good idea for you to have another location to preserve your work in case this site has technical issues.)

The top of the page has this posting guideline:

Quote

Here regular members of the EpicureanFriends community are invited to post personal articles about a wide range of topics, even those that aren't strictly philosophical, but which our members find relevant to happy living. Our topic rules are relaxed in this section, but please continue to follow the general guidelines of posting here at EpicureanFriends.com, which means primarily: Don't post about current politics or advocacy of positions that are clearly contrary to core Epicurean positions on supernatural religion, life after death, and the like.

There's a long tag/category list that includes the following - we can add more if needed.

CATEGORIES

1. Epicurean Ethics19
2. Epicurean Physics6
3. Epicurean Canonics8
4. Epicurean History8
5. General27
6. Family0
7. Food / Cooking0
8. Gaming0
9. Health & Fitness0
10. Literature & Poetry0
11. Movies & TV0
12. Music0
13. Pets0
14. Photography0
15. Security and Privacy0
16. Productivity0
17. Science0
18. Sports0
19. Technology0
20. Travel0
21. Miscellaneous

We probably already have many posts in the forums on the above topics, and this sectioning off is not meant to replace forum posting in any way. It's primarily aimed at topics (Pets, Food, Travel, etc) that are only tangentially related with the core Epicurean focus of the website, and it's intended to be a place were regulars here who want to communicate with other regulars can post about their interests without fear of being "off-topic."

We can make course adjustments if and when the section starts being used. Let us know your comments in the thread below.

Quote from Don

Epicurus embraced all pleasure in his philosophy.

Yes agreed. And if I were looking for a text to quote for a potential example of mental thoughts and attitudes and processes (through a sound philosophy) bringing pleasure in the midst of difficult circumstances, in addition to the example of the last days of Epicurus I think I would cite the opening of book two of Lucretius, the start of which is:

Quote from Lucretius Book Two

'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.

O wretched are the thoughts of men! How blind their souls! In what dark roads they grope their way, in what distress is this life spent, short as it is! Don't you see Nature requires no more than the body free from pain, that she may enjoy the mind easy and cheerful, removed from care and fear?

Quote from Don

This, to me, points to the "source" - "the sound state of the flesh" (to sarkos eustathes *katastema*) - being a more confident source -- according to Metrodorus himself -- of pleasure than "objects" (kinetic pleasure) outside of ourselves. It does NOT say the source "in ourselves" is "better (more value)" just that we can be more "sure" of its continuance because we have control over it

I completely agree with this paragraph. We need understanding through philosophy within ourselves to be confident of our situation and our happiness.

Quote from Don

It's not change vs "non-change".

Unfortunately that point is where the great majority of commentary and the connotations of these wordings in English seem to be focusing. I don't know if they are right or wrong in doing so, but the implications of change vs non-change as being the distinguishing factor are causing all sorts of problems. Personally I don't have any problem considering "resting" to be an activity in and of itself, just like sleeping is necessary. But sleeping can't well be thought of as the purpose of life, nor can any way of living life that is not moving or changing over time (in contrast we do assign an unmoving and unchanging description to a concept or an abstraction, such as "happiness").

I have been thinking recently about the map/territory and forest/trees examples lately. Only the territory and the trees have atomic structure (leaving aside the paper of a map) but we do consider that both forests and maps really exist. I don't have any problem with thinking that whatever is being described as pleasures of rest also exist for us, but perhaps in the same way as maps and forests, as mental sums or constructs, rather than in separate moment by moment experiences.

Quote from the article

But we may as well admit at once that the distinction is vague.

Very much agreed on that point!

That reasoning sounds about as a logical as any as an attempt to unravel things. But in my own view I can't get past he view that ......

Quote from article

If 'kinetic' refers to change, then 'katastematic' refers to non-change,

and it seems to me that in life there really is no such thing as "non-change." "Sustainability" is one thing, but if we are alive, then we are changing, and I have a hard time thinking that a characteristic ("non-change") which can't really apply to living things at all constitutes something that Epicurus would be seriously concerned about. It strikes me almost like a concept such as "omnipotence" or "omniscience" -- which are concepts that might arguably apply to divinities or something else that is non-human, but which doesn't ring true in discussing humans.

Even as the article discusses, a condition of "satisfaction" (such as being full after a meal) does not truly last very long, and relatively quickly recedes into the background and becomes hard to distinguish from working up a new appetite. And in that sense to me, being "satisfied" (full after a meal) is just another pleasure, not some special state that is separate in kind from the whole hunger-eating-satisfaction-hunger cycle. One might as well look at any other part of that cycle as being just as important as any other.

At any rate, I don't think there's a problem in Epicurus with all this -- the only problem is with living people today who try to turn the whole philosophy into a dissertation on "katastematism."

Epicureanism as "Katastematicism" is not the right direction and doesn't add anything except more syllables

Thanks again Nate!

Quote from Don

Aristotle has been this all-powerful bugaboo of Western Civilization, I expected to be in awe or something.

Which is exactly the message that is drummed into the minds of anyone who reads the work of Ayn Rand and her supporters. "Underwhelming" is the best way to describe my reaction to the Aristotle I have read. I presume (or hope) that in context and in the original he was better. And he seems to have pushed back against Plato and deserves a lot of credit for that. But is he worth being held up as the paragon of Western thought? I can't see that at all.

My opinion of Socrates is a ditto as well. Many of the other philosophers listed by Diogenes Laertius seem to have been just as sharp, and much more helpful, than this Socrates-Plato-Aristotle axis that we are supposed to worship as the best the west has to offer.