Posts by Cassius

Social engagement and personal friendships in "real life" are the first and most desirable goals, because all of us need that in real life.

Secondarily, it is in my case something I get great enjoyment out of to hope to be making a small contribution to the continuance of Epicurean philosophy as a real world presence. And as part of that it is my firm conviction that Epicureanism's continuance as more than a shell of it's former self will never happen until and unless there is such real world engagement. As long as Epicureanism is perceived mainly as a self-help treatment for anxiety issues, no one will ever consider it worthy of being opposed or suppressed as it was in the past. But what that means in reality is "as long as it seems to apologize for pleasure and remain a shell of its former self...". The intensity of a Lucretius or a Diogenes of Oinoanda or even a Lucian will never be "allowed" to break through as a mainstream position on religion, life after death, or even epistemology, and will always be considered to be the ravings of cantankerous cranks, in polite society in our major nations of the world.

Most of us are old enough that we have lived in a time and in a country (the USA) where "free speech" has been considered the norm, but as I see it that period is fast drawing to a close. Even if we maintain our current ability to talk about Epicurus in terms of "happiness" for a while longer, the kind of rebelliousness send in Lucian and the others is likely going to get harder to secure. Hopefully we won't have another "fall of Rome" where religion (or it's humanist variants) makes it impossible to promote the core Epicurean worldview positions, but it doesn't make sense to take that chance. Because if something like that does begin to happen, technology will allow suppression of dissenting minority views in ways never thought possible. And it would be unrealistic to expect that Epicurean views will ever be more than a small minority in our lifetimes.

I doubt there can or should be a "centralized" Epicurean organization, but setting up ways for people "locally" to find and support each other would be highly desirable.

1. Can you post a link to where you posted it?

2. All of the points you raise are very valid questions and I do not believe there is a single right answer to any of them. Just like the goal here is relatively well defined, any "organization" also need well defined goals, and we are far from seeing such a set of goals come together.

3. I agree that more summaries are needed. I tend to think that rather than someone having the credibility to write new summaries, the starting part is probably more of an organization "table of contents" by topic to the existing sources, letting them speak for themselves. Whether that is good enough is debatable, but I do think efforts like that make the most sense as a starting point. Even at this point we don't really have a good reference outline like that.

I do agree that "Lucretian" is useful and that is one reason I did not rush to change the name of the podcast even when we finished the poem and went on to other texts. Lucretius personally is the prime example of what probably needs to be the next phase of the "movement" - people who adapt and restate Epicurean philosophy to their own contexts to bring the story to new people and explain it in new ways. The name also has that sort of "Luciferian" or "light-bringing" ring to it that spurs the imagination.

And it is interesting how Lucretius himself in his poem kept the focus on the philosophy without even naming Epicurus very often. So no need to run from Epicurus' name, but Lucetius' name does have its own benefits.

To add to the last post, one lesson that seems to me to be obvious is this:

There will always be subtleties and difficult issues that we don't have enough texts to be sure about. But I firmly believe that those issues aren't central to the "big picture." Once you're clear that there is no life after death and no supernatural gods and no absolute basis for ethics - that everything ultimately rests on the feelings of pleasure and pain -- that is a very clearly-denominated world view in itself that is more than sufficient to be a basis for "organization" in a world that is very hostile to those ideas.

First thanks to Don for those research links.

And thanks to Kalosyni for starting the topic.

Also:

Quote from Kalosyni

Thank you Don for sharing those links, which brings up an important point: the word "Epicurean" is associated with food, and culinary arts/culinary professionals.

So what do you think that means for us moving forward? Does it seem that the word "Epicurean" in some sense is already taken to mean something different. Even if we say "Epicurean Philosophy" the common person will think "Food Philosophy"?

I think that word issues are part of life for any Epicurean in the modern world. From gods to pleasure to tranquility to absence of pain and many more examples, the modern world thinks in different ways than they did 2000 years ago and we have to deal with that. While simply using new words is one alternative (and we already do that to some extent by speaking English rather than Greek and Latin) I don't think that at least for me personally giving up the words that are most closely equivalent to the ancient versions is the right path. The whole issue of explaining the philosophy involves education as to subtleties and meaning of concepts, so I think we just have to get used to explaining the differences in viewpoints from the very beginning, and try to be as clear about them as we can. And a large part of that involves explaining philosophic issues that aren't current or widely known anymore. But the MAIN/BIG issues are not really that complex.

Quote from Kalosyni

It's not that we are trying to convert the whole world, but rather just add a few new friends that most likely already think the way that we do.

You're definitely right that we (even me) are not trying to convert the whole world. That's an unreasonable expectation and probably a good example for discussion of "vain" and "empty" desires.

But I definitely don't think we can or should limit ourselves to people who already think the way that we do. I suspect each and every one of us here (I know that applies to me) used to think very differently than we do today. I think the main thrust isn't really that different from the situation 2000 years ago. We're surrounded by people who don't even know what Epicurus taught, much less understand the subtleties, so like Lucretius we need to come up with new and persuasive ways to reach out to other people. Yes they need to be "well constituted" or "well disposed" toward the ideas as Diogenes of Oinoanda and Diogenes Laertius reference, but we can't let the work involved in "educating" people constitute a "pain" that we decide is enough to stop us from making the effort.

It would be particularly interesting to follow their word order to see if they try to recreate the "wait til the very end of the super-long sentence to give us the main verb so we know what you are talking about" syntax (since "word order makes no difference!") that they try to teach in Latin classes. I suspect they don't nor do I think the Romans talked that way.

Unfortunately after Mariana said Ego Sum Mariana I lost it too.

The entire excerpt here is good, but especially the part that starts with second paragraph below ("Let the gloomy monk....) has special relevance to many of our ongoing discussions, including friendship, pleasure, and "absence of pain." It contains lots of good ideas for putting all these issues into perspective. Remember, this is part of a longer dialogue between feeling, in the form of the fictional "Heart," arguing against the abstractions of "the Head." It hits home mainly against the Stoics, but also against any perspective that elevates anything above "feeling":

From his letter to Maria Cosway, October 12, 1786:

Heart. And what more sublime delight than to mingle tears with one whom the hand of heaven hath smitten! To watch over the bed of sickness, and to beguile it’s tedious and it’s painful moments! To share our bread with one to whom misfortune has left none! This world abounds indeed with misery: to lighten it’s burthen we must divide it with one another. But let us now try the virtues of your mathematical balance, and as you have put into one scale the burthens of friendship, let me put it’s comforts into the other. When languishing then under disease, how grateful is the solace of our friends! How are we penetrated with their assiduities and attentions! How much are we supported by their encouragements and kind offices! When Heaven has taken from us some object of our love, how sweet is it to have a bosom whereon to recline our heads, and into which we may pour the torrent of our tears! Grief, with such a comfort, is almost a luxury! In a life where we are perpetually exposed to want and accident, yours is a wonderful proposition, to insulate ourselves, to retire from all aid, and to wrap ourselves in the mantle of self-sufficiency! For assuredly nobody will care for him who cares for nobody. But friendship is precious not only in the shade but in the sunshine of life: and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine. I will recur for proof to the days we have lately passed. On these indeed the sun shone brightly! How gay did the face of nature appear! Hills, vallies, chateaux, gardens, rivers, every object wore it’s liveliest hue! Whence did they borrow it? From the presence of our charming companion. They were pleasing, because she seemed pleased. Alone, the scene would have been dull and insipid: the participation of it with her gave it relish.

Let the gloomy Monk, sequestered from the world, seek unsocial pleasures in the bottom of his cell! Let the sublimated philosopher grasp visionary happiness while pursuing phantoms dressed in the garb of truth! Their supreme wisdom is supreme folly: and they mistake for happiness the mere absence of pain. Had they ever felt the solid pleasure of one generous spasm of the heart, they would exchange for it all the frigid speculations of their lives, which you have been vaunting in such elevated terms. Believe me then, my friend, that that is a miserable arithmetic which would estimate friendship at nothing, or at less than nothing. Respect for you has induced me to enter into this discussion, and to hear principles uttered which I detest and abjure. Respect for myself now obliges me to recall you into the proper limits of your office. When nature assigned us the same habitation, she gave us over it a divided empire. To you she allotted the field of science, to me that of morals. When the circle is to be squared, or the orbit of a comet to be traced; when the arch of greatest strength, or the solid of least resistance is to be investigated, take you the problem: it is yours: nature has given me no cognisance of it. In like manner in denying to you the feelings of sympathy, of benevolence, of gratitude, of justice, of love, of friendship, she has excluded you from their controul. To these she has adapted the mechanism of the heart. Morals were too essential to the happiness of man to be risked on the incertain combinations of the head. She laid their foundation therefore in sentiment, not in science.

That she gave to all, as necessary to all: this to a few only, as sufficing with a few. I know indeed that you pretend authority to the sovereign controul of our conduct in all it’s parts: and a respect for your grave saws and maxims, a desire to do what is right, has sometimes induced me to conform to your counsels. A few facts however which I can readily recall to your memory, will suffice to prove to you that nature has not organised you for our moral direction. When the poor wearied souldier, whom we overtook at Chickahominy with his pack on his back, begged us to let him get up behind our chariot, you began to calculate that the road was full of souldiers, and that if all should be taken up our horses would fail in their journey. We drove on therefore. But soon becoming sensible you had made me do wrong, that tho we cannot relieve all the distressed we should relieve as many as we can, I turned about to take up the souldier; but he had entered a bye path, and was no more to be found: and from that moment to this I could never find him out to ask his forgiveness. Again, when the poor woman came to ask a charity in Philadelphia, you whispered that she looked like a drunkard, and that half a dollar was enough to give her for the ale-house. Those who want the dispositions to give, easily find reasons why they ought not to give.

When I sought her out afterwards, and did what I should have done at first, you know that she employed the money immediately towards placing her child at school. If our country, when pressed with wrongs at the point of the bayonet, had been governed by it’s heads instead of it’s hearts, where should we have been now? hanging on a gallows as high as Haman’s. You began to calculate and to compare wealth and numbers: we threw up a few pulsations of our warmest blood: we supplied enthusiasm against wealth and numbers: we put our existence to the hazard, when the hazard seemed against us, and we saved our country: justifying at the same time the ways of Providence, whose precept is to do always what is right, and leave the issue to him. In short, my friend, as far as my recollection serves me, I do not know that I ever did a good thing on your suggestion, or a dirty one without it. I do for ever then disclaim your interference in my province. Fill paper as you please with triangles and squares: try how many ways you can hang and combine them together. I shall never envy nor controul your sublime delights. But leave me to decide when and where friendships are to be contracted. You say I contract them at random, so you said the woman at Philadelphia was a drunkard. I receive no one into my esteem till I know they are worthy of it. Wealth, title, office, are no recommendations to my friendship.

On the contrary great good qualities are requisite to make amends for their having wealth, title and office. You confess that in the present case I could not have made a worthier choice. You only object that I was so soon to lose them. We are not immortal ourselves, my friend; how can we expect our enjoiments to be so? We have no rose without it’s thorn; no pleasure without alloy. It is the law of our existence; and we must acquiesce. It is the condition annexed to all our pleasures, not by us who receive, but by him who gives them. True, this condition is pressing cruelly on me at this moment. I feel more fit for death than life. But when I look back on the pleasures of which it is the consequence, I am conscious they were worth the price I am paying. Notwithstanding your endeavors too to damp my hopes, I comfort myself with expectations of their promised return. Hope is sweeter than despair, and they were too good to mean to deceive me. In the summer, said the gentleman; but in the spring, said the lady: and I should love her forever, were it only for that! Know then, my friend, that I have taken these good people into my bosom: that I have lodged them in the warmest cell I could find: that I love them, and will continue to love them thro life: that if fortune should dispose them on one side the globe, and me on the other, my affections shall pervade it’s whole mass to reach them. Knowing then my determination, attempt not to disturb it. If you can at any time furnish matter for their amusement, it will be the office of a good neighbor to do it. I will in like manner seize any occasion which may offer to do the like good turn for you with Condorcet, Rittenhouse, Madison, La Cretelle, or any other of those worthy sons of science whom you so justly prize.’

I thought this a favorable proposition whereon to rest the issue of the dialogue. So I put an end to it by calling for my nightcap.

Now see you have been holding back! Are we allowed to know more?

Quote from reneliza

make it into an upcoming episode of my

THIS is the part that I really want to know about! My ________?

Just a reminder - if you can, please join us tonight to talk about PD26 on "desire!"

Joshua there were lots of good but short statements in these last two episodes and one that comes to mind is your "Epicurus in Romeo and Juliet" comment.

We need at least one thread on that - maybe "Epicurus in Shakespeare" but maybe several by particular play. Please think about that - we may have some already but I don't think it is organized.

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This is the place for students of Epicurus to coordinate their studies and work together to promote the philosophy of Epicurus. Please remember that all posting here is subject to our Community Standards / Rules of the Forum our Not Neo-Epicurean, But Epicurean and our Posting Policy statements and associated posts.

Please understand that the leaders of this forum are well aware that many fans of Epicurus may have sincerely-held views of what Epicurus taught that are incompatible with the purposes and standards of this forum. This forum is dedicated exclusively to the study and support of people who are committed to classical Epicurean views. As a result, this forum is not for people who seek to mix and match some Epicurean views with positions that are inherently inconsistent with the core teachings of Epicurus.

All of us who are here have arrived at our respect for Epicurus after long journeys through other philosophies, and we do not demand of others what we were not able to do ourselves. Epicurean philosophy is very different from other viewpoints, and it takes time to understand how deep those differences really are. That's why we have membership levels here at the forum which allow for new participants to discuss and develop their own learning, but it's also why we have standards that will lead in some cases to arguments being limited, and even participants being removed, when the purposes of the community require it. Epicurean philosophy is not inherently democratic, or committed to unlimited free speech, or devoted to any other form of organization other than the pursuit by our community of happy living through the principles of Epicurean philosophy.

One way you can be most assured of your time here being productive is to tell us a little about yourself and personal your background in reading Epicurean texts. It would also be helpful if you could tell us how you found this forum, and any particular areas of interest that you have which would help us make sure that your questions and thoughts are addressed.

In that regard we have found over the years that there are a number of key texts and references which most all serious students of Epicurus will want to read and evaluate for themselves. Those include the following.

1. "Epicurus and His Philosophy" by Norman DeWitt
2. The Biography of Epicurus by Diogenes Laertius. This includes the surviving letters of Epicurus, including those to Herodotus, Pythocles, and Menoeceus.
3. "On The Nature of Things" - by Lucretius (a poetic abridgement of Epicurus' "On Nature"
4. "Epicurus on Pleasure" - By Boris Nikolsky
5. The chapters on Epicurus in Gosling and Taylor's "The Greeks On Pleasure."
6. Cicero's "On Ends" - Torquatus Section
7. Cicero's "On The Nature of the Gods" - Velleius Section
8. The Inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda - Martin Ferguson Smith translation
9. A Few Days In Athens" - Frances Wright
10. Lucian Core Texts on Epicurus: (1) Alexander the Oracle-Monger, (2) Hermotimus
11. Philodemus "On Methods of Inference" (De Lacy version, including his appendix on relationship of Epicurean canon to Aristotle and other Greeks)
12. "The Greeks on Pleasure" -Gosling & Taylor Sections on Epicurus, especially the section on katastematic and kinetic pleasure which explains why ultimately this distinction was not of great significance to Epicurus.

It is by no means essential or required that you have read these texts before participating in the forum, but your understanding of Epicurus will be much enhanced the more of these you have read.

And time has also indicated to us that if you can find the time to read one book which will best explain classical Epicurean philosophy, as opposed to most modern "eclectic" interpretations of Epicurus, that book is Norman DeWitt's Epicurus And His Philosophy.

Welcome to the forum!

Unwinding the katestematic/kinetic issue, and these issues that we are talking about in this section, could and would consume our entire attention if we let it. Here's another article that came through my email today on the same topic asking the same questions:

We can and will continue to discuss this issue because it is like a veil over the whole of Epicurean philosophy, and unless we lift it we never get to actually living and applying the Epicurean worldview. That's one of the reasons I think I will always see Lucretius as the real starting point to Epicurus. Lucretius explains the nature of the world and our place in it in practical terms and he never gets lost in "absence of pain" or seems to consider this issue important at all. I don't really think that Epicurus or the founding Greek Epicureans did either, thus we don't see this issue obsessed over in the texts we have left, and there's no hint that it was a major topic in other texts that are lost.

Our challenge, I think, is to articulate an understandable and coherent big picture overview of Epicurean philosophy and then get back to the original task: living life as happily as possible. That means spending as much time as possible with friends who also share the same perspective, and (given the nature of things) that in itself means that we have to train ourselves like Lucretius to be able to present the big picture in a persuasive way without being sidetracked by our philosophic enemies.

In fact, it is tempting to trace the decline and fall of the Epicurean period to the time of Cicero and his elevation of these word-game arguments to the heart of the discussion. Very little confident forward-thinking successful Epicurean writing has emerged in the 2000 years since this the time of Lucretius and the philosophy got hijacked into this sidetrack of a discussion. Most of the ink spilled on this topic has been an absolute waste - which again I think was Cicero's intention, picked up by many others along the way.

I know several of us have talked about this essay before, but I am not sure Kalosyni has and it relates to her points in the way I am raising so she may want to check it -

File

Mathew Wenham - On Cicero's Interpretation of Katastematic Pleasure In Epicurus

The standard interpretation of the concept of katastematic pleasure in Epicurus .... leads to fundamental contradictions in his theory. I claim that it is not Epicurus, but the standard interpretation that generates these errors...

Cassius

June 30, 2022 at 8:34 AM

Thanks - color hopefully fixed now

The reason for the question is to harl back to the debate on "katastematic pleasure", which may may not be related to tranquility, and to ask whether indeed either or both of those terms is in fact a "sensual pleasure" at all. (This question is the theme of the Wentham essay in our files section.)

There is a question as to whether it is indeed "sensual pleasure" which establishes how Epicurus recognizes the good, and whether "absence of pain" describes an identifiable sensual pleasure itself, or whether it describes instead a condition in which other / sensual pleasures are experienced without any mixture of pain or disruption.

Thank you for the detailed report!

Thank you Martin! I read so far the first half of Chapter 2 from your link. There is a lot to like in it but I am taken aback by this following section. It is not entirely clear to me how to read this. Maybe in the end it does acknowledge that the ranking is individually subjective. But it sure looks like he is saying we can add up the opinions of the greater number of people and from that "majority vote" attain (he even uses the word "suffrage") what amounts to an objective decision - at least one that is considered as such. Hopefully there is more that makes clear that this is not his conclusion, but the attribution to the utilitarians the term " greatest good of the greatest number" sounds like it may apply here too.

Maybe he explains somewhere why (social concerns?) he reaches such a conclusion. Or better yet, maybe he backs away from this later.... I understand that Aristotle suggested that we look to the majority of leading citizens for our standard of ethics, but I know nothing in Epicurus which indicates that rankings of pleasure and pain could or should be decided by the greatest number of people. Maybe this is the kind of "practical" thing that one is "forced" to do when someone tries to develop a system of government among people of widely varying natures, but it sure does not strike me as philosophically defensible or accurate to "the truth" of the way real people actually feel.

From this verdict of the only competent judges, I apprehend there can be no appeal. On a question which is the best worth having of two pleasures, or which of two modes of existence is the most grateful to the feelings, apart from its moral attributes and from its consequences, the judgment of those who are qualified by knowledge of both, or, if they differ, that of the majority among them, must be admitted as final. And there needs be the less hesitation to accept this judgment respecting the quality of pleasures, since there is no other tribunal to be referred to even on the question of quantity. What means are there of determining which is the acutest of two pains, or the intensest of two pleasurable sensations, except the general suffrage of those who are familiar with both? Neither pains nor pleasures are homogeneous, and pain is always heterogeneous with pleasure. What is there to decide whether a particular pleasure is worth purchasing at the cost of a particular pain, except the feelings and judgment of the experienced? When, therefore, those feelings and judgment declare the pleasures derived from the higher faculties to be preferable in kind, apart from the question of intensity, to those of which the animal nature, disjoined from the higher faculties, is susceptible, they are entitled on this subject to the same regard.

Quote from Kalosyni

Cassius --It does seem to be listed, and maybe this is the only location

Is it listed in the same way such that it appears to be parallel or could have been included in the original listing?

Quote from Kalosyni

In other words the highest form of sensual pleasure (at it's height) will also be free from mental pain (we will be free from worry and fear).

Let me ask a question about this for Kalosyni or anyone:

We have from three separate sources this well-attested statement of Epicurus about knowing "the good":

Quote

Athenaeus, Deipnosophists, XII p. 546E: Not only Aristippus and his followers, but also Epicurus and his welcomed kinetic pleasure; I will mention what follows, to avoid speaking of the “storms” {of passion} and the “delicacies” which Epicurus often cites, and the “stimuli” which he mentions in his On the End-Goal. For he says “For I at least do not even know what I should conceive the good to be, if I eliminate the pleasures of taste, and eliminate the pleasures of sex, and eliminate the pleasures of listening, and eliminate the pleasant motions caused in our vision by a visible form.”

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers, X.6: It is observed too that in his treatise On the End-Goal, he writes in these terms: “I know not how to conceive the good, apart from the pleasures of taste, sexual pleasures, the pleasures of sound, and the pleasures of beautiful form.”

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, III.18.41: Why do we shirk the question, Epicurus, and why do we not confess that we mean by pleasure what you habitually say it is, when you have thrown off all sense of shame? Are these your words or not? For instance, in that book which embraces all your teaching (for I shall now play the part of translator, so no one may think I am inventing) you say this: “For my part I find no meaning which I can attach to what is termed good, if I take away from it the pleasures obtained by taste, if I take away the pleasures which come from listening to music, if I take away too the charm derived by the eyes from the sight of figures in movement, or other pleasures by any of the senses in the whole man. Nor indeed is it possible to make such a statement as this – that it is joy of the mind which is alone to be reckoned as a good; for I understand by a mind in a state of joy, that it is so, when it has the hope of all the pleasures I have named – that is to say the hope that nature will be free to enjoy them without any blending of pain.” And this much he says in the words I have quoted, so that anyone you please may realize what Epicurus understands by pleasure.

If "freedom from pain" amounts to the highest sensual pleasure, would you expect that "freedom from pain" or "freedom from disturbance" could just as easily have been listed among these (taste / sex / sound / dance) that Epicurus chose to list? If so, why? If not, why not?