Posts by Cassius

There is some well known characterization I which readinf Aristotle is like eating straw, right? Excellent dramatization Godfrey ... and now to read what Don wrote!

Welcome to Episode One Hundred Forty-Five 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.

This week we will start a series of podcasts intended to provide a general introductory overview to Epicurean philosophy. For organization purposes we will use the topic structure employed by Norman DeWitt in his "Epicurus and His Philosophy," but we will not bind ourselves to the text.

For the first episode we will begin in Chapter One.

• The Historical Background of Epicurean Philosophy
  • It is important to emphasize that at one and the same time Epicurus was both the most revered and most reviled of all founders of Greco-Roman philosophical schools.
  • For seven hundred years Epicurus was very popular throughout the Greco-Roman world. His images were displayed, his handbooks memorized and carried by students, and on the twentieth of every month his followers assembled in his name.
  • Throughout the same period Epicurus' enemies ceaselessly reviled him, and he was attacked by Platonists, Stoics, and Christians, and his name was an abomination to the Jews.
  • Therefore much of what has been written about Epicurus in both the ancient and modern world is wrong.

Quote

That is, the confirming or 'witnessing' evidence adduced by Epicurus is unable to turn belief into true belief that is not merely accidentally true because there is nothing added to the original presentation that entails the truth of the belief. There is no belief that o, which added to the belief that p, entails q. [...]

Pardon me for being obvious if this is already clear from the context (I haven't had time to study the links) but this phrasing is strikingly similar to that which I remember from DeLacey's appendix to "On Methods of Inference" and his discussion of the difference between Epicurus and the Platonic /Aristotelian line.

This goes to the heart of the issue of Epicurus' criticism of certain types of logic divorced from sensory evidence and seems to be of major importance in understanding Epicurean reasoning, even if we find the subject dry today.

I surely hope that someone someday will have the time and the talent to really dive into this and bring out Epicurus' viewpoint into full view.

Right now we're left with this vague concern that someone Epicurus was anti scientific in being critical of any variation of the term "logic," and it would be a huge advance if we could bring his position out from the shadows.

IMHO we have a huge issue today and we are overbroad if we treat all calls to "science" and "logic" as being unchallengeable, if we don't recognize that true science and true logic have to be validated by the senses in order to be worth following.

Even writing that sentence can cause eyebrows to raise but I am convinced this issue is one of Epicurus' most important points. How else did he see the wisdom in challenging and overturning Plato and Aristotle if he didn't see limitations of their claims in these areas?

Fascinating stuff Nate thank you!!!

It would be good to use this as a thread for references on this issue. Here are some of the main cites that I recall:

1 - Vatican Sayings of Epicurus:

Quote from Vatican Sayings

VS38. He is a little man in all respects who has many good reasons for quitting life.

2 - Letter to Menoeceus:

Quote from Letter to Menoeceus

125] For there is nothing terrible in life for the man who has truly comprehended that there is nothing terrible in not living. So that the man speaks but idly who says that he fears death not because it will be painful when it comes, but because it is painful in anticipation. For that which gives no trouble when it comes is but an empty pain in anticipation. So death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist. It does not then concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more. [126] But the many at one moment shun death as the greatest of evils, at another (yearn for it) as a respite from the (evils) in life. (But the wise man neither seeks to escape life) nor fears the cessation of life, for neither does life offend him nor does the absence of life seem to be any evil. And just as with food he does not seek simply the larger share and nothing else, but rather the most pleasant, so he seeks to enjoy not the longest period of time, but the most pleasant. And he who counsels the young man to live well, but the old man to make a good end, is foolish, not merely because of the desirability of life, but also because it is the same training which teaches to live well and to die well. Yet much worse still is the man who says it is good not to be born but ‘once born make haste to pass the gates of Death’. [127] For if he says this from conviction why does he not pass away out of life? For it is open to him to do so, if he had firmly made up his mind to this. But if he speaks in jest, his words are idle among men who cannot receive them.

We must then bear in mind that the future is neither ours, nor yet wholly not ours, so that we may not altogether expect it as sure to come, nor abandon hope of it, as if it will certainly not come.

3 - Diogenes Laertius:

Quote from Diogenes Laertius

And he will gather together a school, but never so as to become a popular leader. He will give lectures in public, but never unless asked; he will give definite teaching and not profess doubt. In his sleep he will be as he is awake, and on occasion he will even die for a friend.

4 - Torquatus In "On Ends":

Quote from Torquatus in "On Ends"

So on the other hand a strong and lofty spirit is entirely free from anxiety and sorrow. It makes light of death, for the dead are only as they were before they were born. It is schooled to encounter pain by recollecting that pains of great severity are ended by death, and slight ones have frequent intervals of respite; while those of medium intensity lie within our own control: we can bear them if they are endurable, or if they are not, we may serenely quit life's theater, when the play has ceased to please us. These considerations prove that timidity and cowardice are not blamed, nor courage and endurance praised, on their own account; the former are rejected because they beget pain, the latter coveted because they beget pleasure.

5 - Lucretius:

There's a lot in Lucretius about death and there may be more about suicide but this is the first that comes to mind:

Lucretius Book 3 (Humphries):

Quote

It goes so far, sometimes, that fear of death

Induces hate of life and light, and men

Are so depressed that they destroy themselves

Having forgotten that this very fear

Was the first source and cause of all their woe.

As children tremble and fear everything

In the dark shadows, we, in the full light,

Fear things that really are not one bit more awful

That what poor babies shudder at in darkness,

The horrors they imagine to be coming.

Our terrors and our darknesses of mind

Must be dispelled then, not by sunshine's rays, -

Not by those shining arrows of the light,

But by insight into nature, and a scheme

of systematic contemplation.

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Quote from Kalosyni

Could we correctly say that Epicureanism actually combines:

a) a life of enjoyment/pleasure

-AND-

c) the contemplative life (contemplating the nature of things)

I would say that the way to express that would have to be that Epicureanism teaches the pursuit of a life of enjoyment/pleasure, of which the pleasures of contemplation are pleasures and therefore are included in the goal of enjoyment/pleasure.

The word "and" is pretty easy to read as "separate goals" in that context and I would think that implication would need to be avoided.

Quote from Don

The thought that comes to mind is: is it our responsibility to convert or to simply evangelize. I don't think those are the same thing. Epicurus seemed to hold a dim view in some regards of the hoi polloi. He made his philosophy available but he wasn't handing out leaflets and screaming on the street corner.

Absolutely right. I am not sure that the Epicureans thought we have a "responsibility" to do either one. My reading of Lucretius and Diogenes both is that they had a benevolent general interest in "getting the word out" for those who were inclined to listen, so that might be akin to "evangelizing." But I definitely don't think they saw a responsibility to "convert" and they specifically seemed to acknowledged that not everyone was "well constituted" (seems I remember that in both Oinoanda and in Diogenes Laertius) so I bet they were clear-eyed about not converting everyone.

However it enhances our happiness to have more friends, and helps make us more secure if we at least don't have enemies (unnecessarily have enemies I guess I should say), so I see that as the primary way to describe the motivation to talk about the philosophy with others.

So definitely I would not scream on a street corner. Would I hand out leaflets (which appears to be exactly what the Roman Epicureans were doing)? Probably so, but I would be sure i did it unobtrusively and just mainly made them available.

Yes, I agree with your observation. But for purposes of persuading those of them who may be "well-constituted" or "well-disposed" towards us, I think we probably have different paths of argument for the different groups.

Most every Judeo-Christian I have ever run into, if you push them hard enough, admits that they are following the religion because they want eternal happiness for themselves and their friends, not just because they feel a general duty to be religious.

But for those viewpoints (and I think true Stoicism fits into this, if their ultimate viewpoint is the merging of individual consciousness into divine fire) that seem to contemplate the eventual loss of individuality, I would say they are in a much worse place and would require a different approach for any hope of success in opening their eyes. Lots of them are superficial, but to the extent they really understand their viewpoints and buy into it, they are much worse lost.

So I guess I am saying I see the root of our attachment to life as being our love of it and our desire not to lose it. For this purpose I'm abstracting this life and any other life and giving them the benefit of the doubt that if someone loves "life" then they are open to seeing how short it is and how best to live it.

But for those who wish they had never been born or wish to cease to exist, and buy deeply into that argument, seems to me that's a much harder nut to crack.

Very good point!

Even Christianity ultimately grounds itself in the desirability of eternal life, and that surely means finding pleasure in the reward. I grant that religions or viewpoints (Buddhism, etc?) that seem to call for the extinguishment of individuality or personality do appear to be elevating something other than the experience of pleasure as the goal, but those seem to me to fit in the "better to never have been born" category which I would argue most sane people would reject out of hand (and surely Epicurus rejected that too).

Once we make clear that "pleasure" is a sweeping term that embraces every form of desirable experience (and I think Epicurus is very clear about this) then it seems to me that setting "pleasure" as the goal of life is a compelling argument that is hard to reject by anyone except by rejecting life itself.

Started 10/13/22:

"And since pleasure is the first good and natural to us, for this very reason we do not choose every pleasure, but sometimes we pass over many pleasures, when greater discomfort accrues to us as the result of them: and similarly we think many pains better than pleasures, since a greater pleasure comes to us when we have endured pains for a long time. Every pleasure then because of its natural kinship to us is good, yet not every pleasure is to be chosen: even as every pain also is an evil, yet not all are always of a nature to be avoided." Epicurus - Letter to Menoeceus

I am familiar with the term minimalism, but "hygge"?

For reference as to our discussion last night, and next week as well, please refer to this material from Cicero for an example of the "opposite" of the Epicurean view of justice:

Thread

Cicero's "Republic" Book III, line XXII - "True Law Is Right Reason In Agreement With Nature"

I refer to his passage from Cicero's "Republic" very often to contrast it as essentially the opposite of Epicurus' view of justice, but I always have a hard time finding it when I need it. This post is just to provide some links and clips to the key passage:

Attalus: {22.} [33] L . . . True law is right reason in agreement with nature , it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions. And it…

Cassius

January 16, 2022 at 12:29 PM

I also really like the implications of this sentence;

"The inseparability of virtue from pleasure, on which Epicurus insisted, lies rather in the fact that the virtues, properly understood, are the skills of pleasure management, both short term and long term."

That "properly understood" hints that he is going in the same direction of seeing Epicurean virtue as tied tightly to practical success in achieving pleasure / avoiding pain, rather than in an absolutist definition. What some allege to be courage may in fact in the Epicurean view be foolhardiness if the action is not properly calculated to lead to happy living.

Also FWIW It gives me great pleasure to watch David Sedley dive into these Epicurean ideas and come up with rational and sympathetic understandings of them. Seems to me that Sedley richly deserves to be considered one of the greatest living positive forces for Epicurean understanding, along with MFS, and it's fascinating to watch when Sedley can exceed even MFS in sympathetic interpretation.

Please join us tonight if you can for the beginning of our review of the very challenging doctrines on "justice."

This is probably a gross oversimplification, but what we have generally understood about the Cyreniacs was that they were focused on immediate pleasures (probably more bodily than mental, but possibly both) and they rejected the idea of calculating out over time the expected benefit from activities that in the short term are painful(??)

This seems to be an articulation of the Epicurean response in which Diogenes was emphasizing that current actions can bring important current pleasure even when the physical results of those actions happen far in the future. Sort of a "time preference" analysis in which the emphasis remains on the total expected resulting pain vs pleasure, but which emphasizes that great pleasure can come from current thinking about actions that will produce results that may be greatly delayed in time (and that might not even come until after our death, but that we get great pleasure in thinking forward about them).

By rejecting this idea the Cyreniacs were locking themselves into "the pleasure of the moment" while the Epicureans were working toward a much more expansive definition and analysis of total pleasures.

Anyone have a thought on whether that is the direction?

What did you think about what I gather is Sedleys major point, that this is targeted at the cyreniacs and is meant to emphasize the point that virtue brings pleasure as it is engaged in and is not necessarily painful (as the cyreniacs argued)?

To make sense of this I think we have to consider that the Epicureans we're using a more flexible / relativistic definition of "virtue.". (And if that is so then this ends up being good support for the argument that the virtue of the Epicureans is different from the absolute virtue of the other Greeks.)

Sigh. I see I downloaded this article two years ago. Maybe we have already discussed this and I have forgotten. Maybe I should be thinking about old age being the cause that precedes forgetfulness!

OK so the writer of the article is suggesting that the target is not the Stoics but the Cyreniacs:

As we have seen, we are looking for a school which shares the Epicurean doctrinethat virtue has instrumental value as a cause of pleasure, but which differs in making virtue an antecedent cause of pleasure, itself not intrinsically pleasant but instead related to pleasure more in the way that surgery is (VI 4—11). As far as I can see, the only possible candidates are the Cyrenaics. Apart from the Epicureans, they are the only ancient hedonist school, and, more specifically, the only school to recommend virtue on the grounds that it produces pleasure. But given that the Cyrenaics share the Epicurean view that arete is of instrumental rather than intrinsic value, is there enough of a gap between the two schools to permit the present disagreement?

Yes, and a crucial one.

Epicurus insists strongly on the simultaneity and inseparability of virtue and pleasure. As the Epicurean doxography at DL10.138 puts it, 'Epicurus also says that virtue alone is inseparable from pleasure, while other things, such as food, do get separated from it.'

Partly answering my own question here is one article and of course (I should have expected) it is by David Sedley:

Diogenes of Oenoanda on Cyrenaic ethics

Diogenes of Oenoanda on Cyrenaic ethics

www.academia.edu

Smith s general idea about the passage is as follows. It is in its entirety an anti-Stoic polemic, and focuses on the Stoic concept of oikeiosis our natural affinity for ourselves and others.

The Stoics, he thinks, are first accused of offering oikeiosis or perhaps more specifically self-love, as a bait to lure people into virtue. Then, after a gap at IV which Smith leaves unreconstructed, they are accused of self-contradiction, in that they reject pleasure, yet at the same time agree with the Epicureans about the reliability of the senses, with Diogenes joking that they do this in order to ensure their own right to take the safest route when climbing crags. The alleged self-contradiction, Smith suggests, lies in the fact that the Stoics deny that pleasure is the end, yet endorse the senses, which in fact (according to the Epicureans, at least) provide the evidence that pleasure is the end. Then starting from V 2 Diogenes, after referring at lines 4-5 to a Stoic doctrine of self-love, adds a new charge: the Stoics think that all causes are antecedent, not realising that some are contemporaneous with their effects and some later than them. Why should this complaint be apposite to the Stoics? Smith s answer is that the Stoics are being accused of failing to grasp the Epicurean insight that virtue is the simultaneous cause of pleasure, and failing to grasp it because they mistakenly think all causes must precede their effects. He accepts the objection that this, if so, is a mistaken interpretation of Stoicism, which certainly held many causes to be contemporaneous with their effects; but he argues that Diogenes is quite capable of misrepresenting his opponents, and that there are Stoic doctrines - such as the doctrine that every event has an antecedent cause - which do lend themselves to the misinterpretation. (Of course, from the authentic Stoic premise that every event has an antecedent cause it does not follow that each event has exclusively antecedent causes. But perhaps Diogenes thought it did, Smith suggests.