Posts by Cassius

Major Philosophical Points Of Chapter Four:

1. Pride need not always lead a man to cut mount Athos in two, like Xerxes; nor ambition, to conquer a world, and weep that there is yet not another to conquer, like Alexander; nor vanity, to look in a stream at his own face till he fall in love with it, like Narcissus. When we cannot cut an Athos, we may leave uncut our beard; when we cannot mount a throne, we may crawl into a tub; and when we have no beauty, we may increase our ugliness. If a man of small, or even of moderate talents, be smitten with a great desire of distinction, there is nothing too absurd, perhaps nothing too mischievous, for him too commit. Our friend, the cynic, happily for himself and his neighbors, seems disposed to rest with the absurd. Erostratus took to the mischievous — to eternize his name destroying that temple, by the building of which Etesiphon immortalized his. Be it our care to keep equally clear of the one as the other."
2. "The desire of distinction, though often a dangerous, and often an unhappy desire, is likewise often, though I believe here sometimes were a better word, a fortunate one. It is dangerous in the head of a fool; unhappy, in that of a man of moderate abilities, or unfavorable situation, who can conceive a noble aim, but lacks the talent or the means necessary for its attainment. It is fortunate only in the head of a genius, the heart of a sage, and in a situation convenient for its development and gratification. These three things you will allow do not often meet in one person."
3. " The fate of greatness will always be enviable, even when the darkest storms trouble its course. Well-merited fame has in itself a pleasure so much above all pleasures, that it may weigh in the balance against all the accumulated evils of mortality. Grant, then, our great men to have been fortunate; are they, as you say, so many? Alas! my son, we may count them on our fingers. A generation, the most brilliant in genius, leaves out of its thousands and millions but three or four, or a dozen, to the worship, even to the knowledge of futurity.""
4. "No," said Leontium, playfully tapping his shoulder, "the master will make a distinction between what is beyond the reach of our capacity, and what beyond the reach of our practice. Erostratus might never have planned the edifice he destroyed; Ctesiphon could not always have planned it."
5. "I see you have a good memory," returned the master. "I did say so, and I think it still. Many might have been heroes, and many philosophers, had they had a desire to be either; had accident or ambition made them look into themselves, and inquire into their powers; but though jewels be hid in a sack of oats, they will never be found, unless the oats be shaken. Remember, however, we are now speaking of one class of men only —the ambitious; and the ambitious will never have any seeds in them, bad or good, that will not generate and produce their proper fruit. Ambition is the spur, and the necessary spur of a great mind to great action; when acting upon a weak mind it impels it to absurdity, or sours it with discontent."

Oh you know one more thing that I think points up the benefit of the forum method of study.

When we had the prior discussion of the Tetrapharmakon mentioned above, I don't remember being focused on the issue of how closely we should follow the "Greatest Good" formulation in Torquatus.

Now that we've been through that, and discussed issues like Scott raised in the last AFDIA book review, I think my issues with the Tetrapharmakon are very similar to those which I have with the "greatest good" formulation:

It's possible to summarize or to abstract too strongly to the point where essential details get left out, and that's what I think is defective in both of these two formulations.

I am a big fan of outlining and I love to do it, but part of the trick of doing it right is to distill the elements down to the essentials without cutting too much, or without cutting too little.

We've discussed my issues with the Tetrapharmakon above, but those are pretty exactly my issues with the "Greatest good" --- those two words themselves are full of ambiguities and questions, and the statement "the greatest good is pleasure" can be handy but is dangerously thin on specifics. Taken out of context of Epicurean philosophy as a whole the slogan "the greatest good is pleasure" is dangerously incomplete and would lead to a very incorrect interpretation of the philosophy.

While we have formulations that are somewhat similar from Epicurus and Lucretius, we don't have those exact formulations, and probably for good reason. Neither the Tetrapharmakon or the "greatest good is pleasure" seems to have been written directly by either one of them, and i think this current discussion points out reasons why that might be the case.

But at any rate, the point of this post is that it is an essential point in "summaries" to include all the important aspects.

Quote

But those also who have made considerable progress in the survey of the main principles ought to bear in mind the scheme of the whole system set forth in its essentials. For we have frequent need of the general view, but not so often of the detailed exposition. [36] Indeed it is necessary to go back on the main principles, and constantly to fix in one’s memory enough to give one the most essential comprehension of the truth. And in fact the accurate knowledge of details will be fully discovered, if the general principles in the various departments are thoroughly grasped and borne in mind; for even in the case of one fully initiated the most essential feature in all accurate knowledge is the capacity to make a rapid use of observation and mental apprehension, and this can be done if everything is summed up in elementary principles and formulae. For it is not possible for anyone to abbreviate the complete course through the whole system, if he cannot embrace in his own mind by means of short formulae all that might be set out with accuracy in detail.

Debates like this are good because they bring out things to think about even when we can't reach final agreement.

Unfortunately the version I am citing is all over the Internet - it's the Epicurus reader version: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrapharmakos.

But when I want someone to defend it I know where to go! I hope one day Don's version will be the accepted one, but I like my summaries to be accurate, and I don't find these to be accurate enough to be relied on - so I stick to the full vereions which stand alone.

But again - having added this as if a footnote - we can proceed having our positions more clear than before. No one who reads Don's interpretation is going to have any problem.

Crossing to more on this issue: RE: Tetrapharmakos in Philodemus's On Choices and Rejections

Thanks Don!

The way you say that makes me want to be clear that I have never had any issue whatsoever with the first four Doctrines in full. My issue has always been that their "abbreviated" form is deceptively brief and ends up being misleading, and that it is generally better to refer to them in their full original form. The abbreviated form ends up to me suggesting compromises and ambiguities that I doubt Epicurus himself would have wanted to create.

So long as those ambiguities are cleared up quickly no harm is done, but I bet in the ancient would there were some Epicureans who viewed them with a similar negative light.

Don has seen this before, but for those who haven't read the discussion in the past, it boils down to:

1 it's not OK to Don't fear the gods because you think they like you;

2 It's not OK to Don't fear death because you think you are going to heaven;

3 It's not OK to think the good is easy to get if you think the good is salvation:

4 It's not OK to think the bad is easy to endure if you think the way to do so is stoicism.

None of those errors are possible with the full form of Doctrines 1 through 4, but they are not ruled out by the abbreviated version.

In abbreviated form they aren't just generic forms of the original medicines, they are more like a placebo when what you need is the full original strength dose. The original versions contain the observations that make them work; the abbreviated versions are simple assertions without any evidence or reasoning. Worse, their form ("Don't.......") implies that one should accept them "on authority," which is a terrible way to approach these issues. They sound more like something that has been influenced by the Abrahamic Ten Commandments than something Epicurus would say.

Or if i were being an alarmist, i might say that rather than being a full strength vaccine, they can tend to rewire ones thinking in a way (overbroad generalizing) that could actually produce more harm than good.

I don't think anyone here would have that problem, because we go to great lengths to avoid it. But I would wager a good number of casual readers who come across the abbreviated version on the internet think that it is sufficient for their understanding of Epicurean teachings, when that is far from the case. Even here, when people are new, I worry that they encourage stopping too early in deciding what is important in Epicurus and what is not. It would be a big mistake to think that all you need to accept is these four abbreviations and then you're a "full Epicurean."

So it is good to bring out all the discussion we can find on this in Philodemus and elsewhere. Even the quote above indicates that the abbreviation was controversial in the ancient world. Personally, I strongly doubt Epicurus himself would have used the abbreviation as a summary of his views, and I can easily imagine that if a word like "rustic" was in play then the criticism was that they amount to an unwarranted "dumbing down" of the original forms.

Sorry for the tangent; I look forward to reading more of what you get from the book!

Session Four, which combines our commemoration of the Twentieth with our concluding discussion on Chapter Three.

Quote from Don

[And] we say what we have just said about the four maxims (τῶ[ν] τεττάρω[ν]), because the important contribution made to effective choices and rejections by understanding and remembering the most important points of doctrine, it is considered that it amounts not as some have wanted to understand in their rusticity - to relate some of the choices and rejections to the absence of trouble on these questions, but to operate these latter in a correct way, on the condition of measuring them by nature's ends, and number of [missing about 20 lines].

Are you talking about this section? Are we clear that the "four maxims" referenced are the tetrapharmakon? Are they quoted nearby in that text?

Also this topic is pretty much parallel with what we have discussed in the past as an "Epicurus College" or other formats (meetup groups).

We can do much of the organizing for that online, but Kalosyni is right that we need to move as quickly as possible to "in person" frameworks.

What we do here on line will set the stage for that.

Yes I think it is inevitable that any basic presentation of Epicurean philosophy needs to cut right to the heart of the differences. I think in fact that that is exactly the approach Epicurus chose in the way the principal doctrines are organized. You can say that "Well he's just giving his position on the important things of life (gods, life after death, what is the true goal?) but he did so in a way that didn't feature his own conclusion as much as it gives the "vaccine" which makes the other viewpoints impossible. So to me he's starting out with controversy right at the beginning of his list , and that's consistent with the way all of his letters and much of the remaining texts are almost always seemingly engaged in combating errors.

Don thank you for all that work!

I have read through it once without finding much that would seem to be controversial from the point of view that we generally discuss here at the forum.

Do you see anything in it that stands out as remarkable and that needs more scrutiny?

Session Four of our book review stayed with Chapter Three, and so when we have the Youtube version of the discussion from last week posted - hopefully later today - it will be in this thread.

As I review and edit it, I want to comment that Scott raised some very challenging questions about pleasure at about the 18 minute mark. I think the discussion addressed most of it very well, but what Scott has done for us here is to articulately raise many issues that an intelligent person is going to raise about "pleasure" being at the center of the philosophy. That's one of the reasons we are doing this in a "book review" format, and these type questions can be expected to be raised by many people reading Chapter Three.

Next week we move on to another major point, but anyone who gets a chance to listen to this episode and think about Scott's questions, please be sure to add to this thread with your thoughts.

In the most general terms, we're grappling with the meaning and alternate definitions of what "pleasure" really means, and my own focus in responding to these questions is that the term "pleasure" must be construed to be extremely broad -- everything we find pleasurable in life (and I would assert that finding something "meaningful" is a subset of the category of pleasure. Given that broadness, there is no reason to back away from the word "pleasure" as the north star of life.

For example: Did Wright really have Epicurus say that virtue is pleasure? If that is what she meant, is that position correct according to Epicurus? One thing I have developed over the years is a healthy respect for Wright's opinion, and when she intends to deviate from Epicurus it's pretty clear what she is doing. Here she seems to be asserting that this is Epicurus' exact position.

If the article is really bad maybe I ought to add more of a warning in the original post. If someone thinks so let me know.

Quote from Charles

Love and I have had a reconsideration.

I hope you and Love come to terms soon!

I post this link not so much for the article itself, which I have not read, but due to the website at which it appears, which is not something I have seen before. This was posted in the EP Facebook group and may or may not be useful if you are looking for other research papers. Caveat emptor.

ALSO ANOTHER WARNING: As the thread has proceeded most of the comments about this article are negative. We do keep adverse articles up sometimes as a means of knowing what to react against, so I won't remove this at least at this point, but do be sure not to take it as unquestioned Epicurean material. Many academic articles are hostile to Epicurus and this one may be too.

Sci-Hub: removing barriers in the way of science

Here's a version by a rank beginner, twelve years ago:

An eight year old computer voice version, which is surprisingly clear:

We will definitely hark back to that version, and we can add any others that are newly generated. Thanks to youtube we can cue right to that point (48:30):

As I suggested at the end of Episode One Hundred Nine, I'm looking for some way to deliver some special zip to the reading of this week's text, since it is Torquatus' final shout-out to Epicurus and is particularly memorable. I promise that if anyone can produce a musical or singing or special spoken word edition of this text and can send us a media file that we will include it in the episode!

Note that the post above includes both the Reid and the Rackham translation, and either version works fine. In this case I don't see any major issues that make Reid superior, and the smoothness of Rackham's version may make it more memorable. We'll probably have Martin read one and Joshua the other, but there is room for more.

As for Rackham: "Philistines" -for example - may not have been the word that Torquatus used, but it carries a special weight in English today.

As for both: I never get tired of hearing how we should be embarrassed that we did not learn these things as children!

Welcome to Episode One Hundred Eleven 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.

I am your host Cassius, and together with our panelists from the EpicureanFriends.com forum, we'll walk you through the six books of Lucretius' poem, and we'll discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. We encourage you to study Epicurus for yourself, and we suggest the best place to start is the book "Epicurus and His Philosophy" by Canadian professor Norman DeWitt.

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.

At this point in our podcast we have completed our first line-by-line review of the poem, and we have turned to the presentation of Epicurean ethics found in Cicero's On Ends. Today we complete the section on Friendship.

Now let's join Martin reading today's text:

[71] XXI. Wherefore, if the doctrines I have stated are more dazzling and luminous than the sun itself, if they are draughts drawn from nature’s spring, if our whole argument establishes its credit entirely by an appeal to our senses, that is to say, to witnesses who are untainted and unblemished, if speechless babes and even dumb beasts almost cry out that with nature for our governor and guide there is no good fortune but pleasure, no adverse fortune but pain, and their verdict upon these matters is neither perverted nor tainted, are we not bound to entertain the greatest gratitude for the man who, lending his ear to this voice of nature, as I may call it, grasped it in so strong and serious a spirit that he guided all thoroughly sober-minded men into the track of a peaceful, quiet, restful, happy life? And though you think him ill-educated, the reason is that he held no education of any worth, but such as promoted the ordered life of happiness.

[72] Was he the man to spend his time in conning poets as I and Triarius do on your advice, when they afford no substantial benefit, and all the enjoyment they give is childish in kind, or was he the man to waste himself, like Plato, upon music, geometry, mathematics and astronomy, which not only start from false assumptions and so cannot be true, but if they were true would not aid us one whit towards living a more agreeable, that is a better life? Was he, I ask, the man to pursue those arts and thrust behind him the art of living, an art of such moment, so laborious too, and correspondingly rich in fruit? Epicurus then is not uneducated, but those persons are uninstructed who think that subjects which it is disgraceful to a boy not to have learned, are to be learned through life into old age!

Rackham Translation:

XXI. If then the doctrine I have set forth is clearer and more luminous than daylight itself; if it is derived entirely from Nature's source; if my whole discourse relies throughout for confirmation on the unbiased and unimpeachable evidence of the senses; if lisping infants, nay even dumb animals, prompted by Nature's teaching, almost find voice to proclaim that there is no welfare but pleasure, no hardship but pain—and their judgment in these matters is neither sophisticated nor biased—ought we not to feel the greatest gratitude to him who caught this utterance of Nature's voice, and grasped its import so firmly and so fully that he has guided all sane-minded men into the paths of peace and happiness, calmness and repose?

You are pleased to think him uneducated. The reason is that he refused to consider any education worth the name that did not help to school us in happiness. Was he to spend his time, as you encourage Triarius and me to do, in perusing poets, who give us nothing solid and useful, but merely childish amusement? Was he to occupy himself like Plato with music and geometry, arithmetic and astronomy, which starting from false premises cannot be true, and which moreover if they were true would contribute nothing to make our lives pleasanter and therefore better? Was he, I say, to study arts like these, and neglect the master art, so difficult and correspondingly so fruitful, the art of living?

No! Epicurus was not uneducated: the real philistines are those who ask us to go on studying till old age the subjects that we ought to be ashamed not to have learnt in boyhood.