Posts by Cassius

Joshua - This is to help me remember to ask you about the source of that information that William Short saved someone (or was saved) from a flooding stream.

That is the first real evidence (speculative though it is to construe it that way) of "cross-pollination" of ideas among Frances Wright and her European friends. I suppose that the idea of dedicating the book to Jeremy Bentham might be another.

The reason this topic comes to mind again is that I read to the end of the book again today to assist in preparing the final chapters, and I was struck that the final chapter was a lot deeper than I remembered. I had our it down in my mind as mainly a broadside against religion, but upon rereading it is almost a "Torquatus-like" summary of many points of the philosophy.

One of the subjects I would like us to cover upon completing the book is this general question I have always had: what do we make of Wright, who has such a commanding understanding of Epicurean philosophy, seemingly devoting so little of the rest of her life to spreading it further?

Is her apparent example something we will all end up following ourselves? Having identified so clearly the details of a philosophy that was so relatively unknown, why not pursue it further?

Was the obstacle of religion so strong in her day that more reconstruction could not be practically attempted? Was she temperamentally more of an activist herself, and was she herself not convinced of the practicality of the approach? I am sure there are other possibilities I am not naming and I am very interested in hearing what others may think.

All of this can and should wait til we get to the end, but I hope those who are interested in the topic will be thinking about it.

Heres a good bio page which does not even mention AFDIA:

Wright, Frances - Freethought Trail - New York

We need to do some "textual criticism" and historical snooping of our own. Where was Wright and what was she doing during the years when AFDIA must have been written?

My standard disclaimer:. I have no intention or thought of taking any credit away from Wright. My exclusive interest is in unearthing more insightful writing on Epicurus. If others were in any way collaborating in any of the preparation of AFDIA, then we may have the ability to find more perceptive writing by others on Epicurus, and the more the better!

The AFDIA Zoom meeting recording for Chapter Ten

Posting of this session will occur very shortly. I have to continue to apologize however for the audio quality. Zoom is clipping some of the speakers (primarily the host!) for some reason that I cannot yet fix. Googling appears to indicate that it is the background noise suppression setting that is at fault, so I will fiddle with that for the next episode.

Yes lots of good information in that article - thank you!

One thing I did not realize is that the article says that there were two Pisos - father and son. The article includes a bust apparently of the son, so I wonder if we shouldn't add to our collection of busts of known Epicureans (we do have one somewhere, don't we? ) busts of the two Pisos (if both exist).

I meant to set up this thread earlier to highlight the potential use of AFDIA as an organizational theme for a local Book Review Club or even "Meetup Group." That's one reason that we are posting the audio highlights of our 2022 Spring Zoom Book Review on Youtube, so that people in the future can compare notes and use this as an example for their own "local" program (either locally live or via internet).

Here is a playlist of the sessions that have been recorded so far:

When we get to the end of the series - only a few weeks away as I write this - please help me to remember to include as a "summary" session a discussion of the topics that are included here: General Discussion of "A Few Days In Athens"

IN PARTICULAR it would be good to cover this article of criticism, which I think contains many good points:

Thread

Problems in Frances Wright's "A Few Days in Athens"

I have dragged my feet on reading Frances Wright’s fictionalized account of a student in Epicurus’ Garden, partly because the language is so flowery that the passages I’ve seen quoted put me off. I’ve finally tackled it, and I have some thoughts to share. My main conclusion is that there are too many serious flaws to recommend it as a representation of Epicurean Philosophy without any accompanying commentary.

Misleading Implications about Pleasure as Restraint

Frances Wright has Epicurus say…

Elayne

October 22, 2020 at 3:08 PM

Looking at those photos from Autun has me still thinking about this list and my continued frustration with what I see as England's attachment to Stoicism rather than Epicurus. I wonder if we have any evidence of ancient Epicureanism closer to England than Autun?

Welcome @Modecs ! Please Note: In order to minimize spam registrations, all new registrants must respond in this thread to this welcome message within 72 hours of its posting, or their accounts will be deleted. All that is required is a "Hello!" but of course we hope you will introduce yourselves further and join one or more of our conversations.

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!

Since it is Easter weekend, here is a video a friend sent to me today:

Thank you for these great photos Marco!

It would seem so! The "truth" about the nature of the universe isn't the property of any particular group

Cassius started a new event:

Event

Jefferson's Birthday

Thanks to Joshua for suggesting this. At first I labeled it "Thomas Jefferson's Birthday" but the shorter version is easier to read on the calendar and I doubt there is any real question as to who is being referenced. With Frances Wright and some others, however, we probably need first and last names.

Wed, Apr 13th 2022

Cassius

April 13, 2022 at 11:23 AM

Quote

Thanks to Joshua for suggesting this. At first I labeled it "Thomas Jefferson's Birthday" but the shorter version is easier to read on the calendar and I doubt there is any real question as to who is being referenced. With Frances Wright and some others, however, we probably need first and last names.

Good grief I have got to get his and Frances Wright's on the calendar. Thank you!

Yes interesting. For some reason I was getting in my mind that Catiius might have been eastern / Syrian like Philodemus. This expands the geography somewhat.

So for our cosmopolitanism list:

Epicurus et al - Greek

Lucretius et al - Roman

Philodemus - Syrian (?)

Catiius - Celtic

Another point of reference, from David Sedley's "Ethics of Brutus and Cassius"

Quote

If the aim of Brutus' question was to test Statilius' suitability as a conspirator against Caesar, it must have been one which Brutus knew an Epicurean could in principle answer either way. That is, if Statilius had been sympathetic to the conspiracy -like its instigator his fellow Epicurean Cassius -he might in principle have given the positive answer that the wise should be prepared to sacrifice tranquillity on account of non-philosophers: otherwise there would have been little point in Brutus' putting the question to him. Indeed, since Brutus had already discussed the conspiracy with Cassius, it is a reasonable guess that his test question about jeopardizing one's ataraxia for the public good somehow borrowed from Cassius' own moral reasoning with regard to the assassination.

This constitutes indirect but not negligible evidence that Cassius saw in the current political situation factors which might justify even Epicurean sages in sacrificing their own tranquil detachment. It was, as a matter of fact, an Epicurean tenet already familiar to Cicero (Rep. 1.10) that in exceptional crises the 'no politics' rule might have to be suspended.31 We have no direct evidence as to how such crises were specified or how the suspension was defended on Epicurean principles. One plausible guess might have been that it was simply a prudential matter of the wise accepting short-term worry for the sake of their own greater long-term tranquillity -for example, working for improved social or political conditions which will, once established, safeguard an Epicurean lifestyle. But Brutus' question implies a very different rationale: it implies that the wise were supposed by some contemporary Epicureans, perhaps including Cassius, to be on occasion driven by an overriding sense of obligation to their non-philosophical fellow-citizens.

3 1 cf. Sen., De Otio 3.2, where it is attributed to Epicurus himself. For further discussion of this and other Epicurean principles regarding political involvement, see Fowler, op. cit. (n. I).

NOTE: That last note appears to be a reference to D. Fowler, Lucretius and Politics', 120-50.

NOTE 2 -- Sedley seems to be concerned about a conflict between Cassius' Epicurean views and the "public good." I see no reason to focus on that - the issue was the good (the future pleasure and happy living) of Cassius and his friends - not some abstract "public good." Cassius need not have been concerned about the future of his Rome because he was concerned about the public good - it would be equally or more reasonable for him to be evaluating the future under Caesar for its impact on the happiness of himself and his friends (however wide a group he construed that to be).

As we previewed last week, this Chapter 11 is the long-awaited "Epicurus wades into the roaring stream as a man of action to save the day" Chapter.

This is going to be one of our best opportunities to marshal together all the citations and arguments we can muster (a good military analogy) to make the point that Epicureans are not pointy-headed intellectuals who live passively in their caves, so please be thinking about material we can talk about in addition to the Seneca reference to the lost letter to Idomeneus about taking action "seasonably"

Post

RE: AFDIA - Chapter Eight - Text and Discussion

And here's the graphic by Elli with her commentary:

epicureanfriends.com/wcf/attachment/2623/

Posts by Elli at Facebook:

Hi Cassius. this fragment is from Epicurus' epistle to Idomeneus "on the urgent need for action" (survived by Seneca). I remember that I've made this graphic long time ago as I connected this fragment with Odysseus, and how he escaped from the cave of Polyphemus.

This fragment by Epicurus is against "fatalism and apathy", so I made and this post. …

Cassius

April 3, 2022 at 5:04 AM

Post

RE: AFDIA - Chapter Eight - Text and Discussion

And here's the graphic by Elli with her commentary:

epicureanfriends.com/wcf/attachment/2623/

Posts by Elli at Facebook:

Hi Cassius. this fragment is from Epicurus' epistle to Idomeneus "on the urgent need for action" (survived by Seneca). I remember that I've made this graphic long time ago as I connected this fragment with Odysseus, and how he escaped from the cave of Polyphemus.

This fragment by Epicurus is against "fatalism and apathy", so I made and this post. …

Cassius

April 3, 2022 at 5:04 AM

I would dearly love to find some surviving Catius and - whose the other one - Rufinius?

And i need to fix in my mind what "insubrian" means

Insubria is a historical-geographical region which corresponds to the area inhabited in Classical antiquity by the Insubres; the name can also refer to the Duchy of Milan (1395–1810). For several centuries this name stood for an area stretching approximately between the Adda river in the east and the Sesia river in the west, and between the San Gottardo Pass in the north and the Po river in the south, thus it was a synonym of the Milan region and the countryside areas gravitating towards it.

Quote from Godfrey

I don't find anything in there about speaking Greek. Googling, I came across a reference to this Philodemus referring to the gods in this way, but I can't find a specific cite. Without the quotation in Philodemus, there's always the possibility that Cicero was up to his lawyerly trickery in this passage.

I do think it is in Philodemus, maybe in "On Piety" but I really thought it was in that Velleius section, because I thought it was stated as "a language like Greek," just as in the other psuedo references like psuedo-blood.

If and when I come up with it I will post back - I bet someone here knows more quickly though.

Quote from Don

Mental images" might be a better description.

Except that I think that term would imply that they originate or exist only in the mind, which would pretty clearly contradict what they Epicureans state- they originate outside the mind.

There are all sorts of pitfalls:

"invisible" images sort of implies woo

"imperceptible" images might work, but they are supposedly perceptible to the mind

"non-visible" is awkward, but might actually be better than Invisible.

there's also the issue as to whether to describe them as "films" or some other word that conveys that they leave the surface of each object in sequence so as to retain to at least some degree the shape of the object. The word "shed" is almost more appropriate from that perspective.

Maybe I am coming around to Catius' "spectres

Quote

Cassius had recently become a follower of the Epicurean school of philosophy.

[15.16] Cicero to Cassius [Rome, January, 45 B.C.] L I expect you must be just a little ashamed of yourself now that this is the third letter that has caught you before you have sent me a single leaf or even a line. But I am not pressing you, for I shall look forward to, or rather insist upon, a longer letter. As for myself, if I always had somebody to trust with them, I should send you as many as three an hour. For it somehow happens, that whenever I write anything to you, you seem to be at my very elbow; and that, not by way of visions of images, as your new friends term them, who believe that even mental visions are conjured up by what Catius calls spectres (for let me remind you that Catius the Insubrian, an Epicurean, who died lately, gives the name of spectres to what the famous Gargettian [Epicurus], and long before that Democritus, called images).

2 But, even supposing that the eye can be struck by these spectres because they run up against it quite of their own accord, how the mind can be so struck is more than I can see. It will be your duty to explain to me, when you arrive here safe and sound, whether the spectre of you is at my command to come up as soon as the whim has taken me to think about you - and not only about you, who always occupy my inmost heart, but suppose I begin thinking about the Isle of Britain, will the image of that wing its way to my consciousness?

3 But of this later on. I am only sounding you now to see in what spirit you take it. For if you are angry and annoyed, I shall have more to say, and shall insist upon your being reinstated in that school of philosophy, out of which you have been ousted "by violence and an armed force." In this formula the words "within this year" are not usually added; so even if it is now two or three years since, bewitched by the blandishments of Pleasure, you sent a notice of divorce to Virtue, I am free to act as I like. And yet to whom am I talking? To you, the most gallant gentleman in the world, who, ever since you set foot in the forum, have done nothing but what bears every mark of the most impressive distinction. Why, in that very school you have selected I apprehend there is more vitality than I should have supposed, if only because it has your approval. "How did the whole subject occur to you ?" you will say. Because I had nothing else to write. About politics I can write nothing, for I do not care to write what I feel.

[15.19] Cassius to Cicero [Brundisium, latter half of January, 45 B.C.] L

I hope that you are well. I assure you that on this tour of mine there is nothing that gives me more pleasure to do than to write to you; for I seem to be talking and joking with you face to face. And yet that does not come to pass because of those spectres; and, by way of retaliation for that, in my next letter I shall let loose upon you such a rabble of Stoic boors that you will proclaim Catius a true-born Athenian.

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Cicero: Letters to and from Cassius

Seems like the same confusion of issues and words was plaguing Cicero and Cassius.

Thanks for those pictures! Just as a general comment that applies to several different posts, I do agree that some of the "images" being discussed are coming from the statues, but I don't think that includes all of the images, some of which I think they though came directly from the intermundia.

Another general comment is that "images" so firmly conveys "vision" and "seeing" to us that I wonder if it would not be better to use another word (idols or even spectres) to make clear that we are not talking about sights visible to the eye.

When we use the word "images" it is hard for us in casual communication to know for sure which of us are rigorously making that visible/ not visible distinction and which of us are not.

Or maybe another way to make this clear is to always couple "images" with "invisible" so that we discuss "invisible images." That's an option that probably makes the issue clear, but also may sound a little weird - but perhaps not as weird as "spectres."

Quote from Don

See, that's my sticking point here in reference to the gods. No one has ever seen a god and yet Epicurus says we have an image of them?

Especially we should focus on the part of your question where we use the word "image." It seems pretty clear that "images" are specifically NOT things that we "see." They are "data" that enter our brain through means other than from the eyes -- this is the issue of the mind being a direct receiver of information. Birds presumably don't "see" magnetic waves either, but they still are able to use and be effected by them (if that analogy holds).