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Yikes. The main thing I get from that is that is going to pay to be cautious in taking positions on this topic.
This calls to mind how DeWitt comments that Lucretius seems to contain very little information on this subject, but that may be because Diogenes Laertius is the muddy one.
Maybe DeWitt is correct in pointing to the Velleius material as the best way to unwind the issues.
Very complicated and unclear subject.
In regard to what Kalosyni's comment on always looking for new restaurants being an indicator of marriage failure (kind of funny even to say that) here is what I remembered from Jefferson (Letter to Peter Carr - August 10 1787) Not the same thing, but probably related:
Traveling. This makes men wiser, but less happy. When men of sober age travel, they gather knowledge, which they may apply usefully for their country; but they are subject ever after to recollections mixed with regret; their affections are weakened by being extended over more objects; & they learn new habits which cannot be gratified when they return home. Young men, who travel, are exposed to all these inconveniences in a higher degree, to others still more serious, and do not acquire that wisdom for which a previous foundation is requisite, by repeated and just observations at home. The glare of pomp and pleasure is analogous to the motion of the blood; it absorbs all their affection and attention, they are torn from it as from the only good in this world, and return to their home as to a place of exile & condemnation. Their eyes are forever turned back to the object they have lost, & its recollection poisons the residue of their lives. Their first & most delicate passions are hackneyed on unworthy objects here, & they carry home the dregs, insufficient to make themselves or anybody else happy. Add to this, that a habit of idleness, an inability to apply themselves to business is acquired, & renders them useless to themselves & their country. These observations are founded in experience. There is no place where your pursuit of knowledge will be so little obstructed by foreign objects, as in your own country, nor any, wherein the virtues of the heart will be less exposed to be weakened. Be good, be learned, & be industrious, & you will not want the aid of traveling, to render you precious to your country, dear to your friends, happy within yourself. I repeat my advice, to take a great deal of exercise, & on foot. Health is the first requisite after morality. Write to me often, & be assured of the interest I take in your success, as well as the warmth of those sentiments of attachment with which I am, dear Peter, your affectionate friend.
"Well, thats exactly the point Aristotle makes- that there's no absolute virtue, because everything is dependent on..."
Did you mean Aristotle there, or Epicurus?
You'll be able to judge this trait in the way that people enjoy eating because they will be the ones who are continually seeking out new restuarants to try...so eventually they will lose interest in the "comfort sex" of marriage.
That sounds right to me, and it reminds me of something Thomas Jefferson is quoted to have said too (if I can remember it I will post it!)
I agree with Nate's application of the mean issue to pleasure.
However in addition to that I think there is something more, maybe though just because I have a superficial knowledge of how people talk about a "golden mean."
Superficially, I gather the golden mean is used as a rule of thumb (or logic) postulating that there are always two extremes, and that there is always a "best" that lies in an exact middle ground between the two.
I am sure that is oversimplifying the issue but I do gather that that is what a lot of people take the meaning to be.
And taken on that broad level, I don't think there is a way under the Epicuran view of nature that such a mechanism could function. As "golden mean" is frequently used, the result is a word game implying that it is generally possible to solve problems by looking for extremes, and (so to speak) adding them together and dividing by two. I don't think Epicurus would say that the world works that way in regard to pleasure or anything else either.
So I generally react negatively to "golden mean" analysis.
I've thought for some time about this topic. Aristotles argument, that virtue lies in the middle of two extremes, seems irrefutable to me... and actually applicable to almost every aspect in life.
Great question SmoothieKiwi and something we ought to discuss at length.
I has been my view in trying to compare Epicurus to Aristotle that Aristotle's "golden mean" argument is not helpful in the least, and is an extension of his belief in categories that are artificial and built on abstact logic not tied to reality.
How does one know where the 'Extremes" are in order to interpolate a middle? To me what is too much, too little, and just right seems to me to be totally dependent on circumstances, and to imply that there is a "middle" that is always "just right" is probably something that muddies rather than clarifies.
I think this is a good topic to develop because we do come across it a lot so I am very interested in hearing opinions. But my preliminary view has been and is so far that just like there are no "Absolutes" in a atomistic eternal infinite universe, there is also nothing particularly reliable about picking out arbitrary "extremes" or "middle."
We can all understand what is meant in general by too much, too little, and just right, but as far as being able to pin down extremes and a middle, it seems to me that those are also both matters that are totally dependent on circumstances and details, and not something that can be determined "as a rule" or "in general" or through any purely "logical" analysis.
Is it fair to say that compassion derives from something more closely akin to "with feeling"? That would be easier for me to understand as a word that is more uniformly to be endorsed than "piety"
so ok pity is related to PIETY - and that probably helps explain its mixed implications.
I think Don is coming from the perspective I assumed to be true, that pity and compassion mean pretty much exactly the same thing.
I need to read the etymology of pity
But after reading some of the Nietzsche material and hearing Scott and Kalosyni say that they consider them to be different as informed by their Buddhist reading, there seems to be more going on than I understood.
We're probably going to have a situation where our goal of articulating the proper view of compassion, or the role of compassion in Epicurus, requires some careful explanation.
Lest it sound like a word game, the reason for the discussion is making sure that suffering is understood as something to work to eliminate, not something to nurse along as a pet doe improper motives, such as excusing us from taking action to seek pleasure or eliminate the pain that can be eliminated.
I get the sense that in that direction is where the criticism of pity lies, and it is justified, but that there is an entirely different and proper role for compassion.
And on this score, as in several others we will definitely run into, we may need to be careful against reading too much into Frances Wrights interpretation.
Last comment would be that it seems to me that in modern usage pretty much everyone sees "compassion" as a virtue. However that does not seem to be the case with "pity" which seems to carry other and varying meaning.
We will have another audio/video summary posted soon. As Joshua points out during the episode, we need to avoid the mistake of thinking that Frances Wright has Leontium disagreeing with Epicurus as to how best to treat those who are vicious. It appears that this debate was between SOFRON and METRODORUS, so I will correct the slides which hint otherwise next week.
As to Pity. I suspect that what is going on here is that there are significant differences between "pity" and "compassion" even though we tend to use them interchangeably - or at least I do myself. After googling I see there are a lot of articles that allege a difference between the two, for example: https://www.chopra.com/articles/the-d…assion-and-pity
Again, this is all Nietzsche, but I seem to recall (or else this is my memory failing again) there are at least reflections of this in Aristotle:
“Pity preserves things that are ripe for decline, it defends things that have been disowned and condemned by life, and it gives a depressive and questionable character to life itself by keeping alive an abundance of failures of every type. People have dared to call pity a virtue… people have gone even further, making it into the virtue, the foundation and source of all virtues, - but of course you always have to keep in mind that this was the perspective of a nihilistic philosophy that inscribed the negation of life on its shield. Schopenhauer was right here: pity negates life, it makes life worthy of negation, - pity is the practice of nihilism. Once more: this depressive and contagious instinct runs counter to the instincts that preserve and enhance the value of life: by multiplying misery just as much as by conserving everything miserable, pity is one of the main tools used to increase decadence - pity wins people over to nothingness! … You do not say ‘nothingness’ : instead you say ‘the beyond’; or ‘God’; or ‘the true life’; or nirvana, salvation, blessedness … This innocent rhetoric from the realm of religious-moral idiosyncrasy suddenly appears much less innocent when you see precisely which tendencies are wrapped up inside these sublime words: tendencies hostile to life.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ
I see that Elli commented earlier on Pandora and Hope here: RE: Reverence and Awe In Epicurean Philosophy but it was only a passing comment:
When you would be able to live among gods, then we will talk about this again. Maybe there is a definite conclusion for living like gods among gods is an utopia. Utopia means that there is not any place in this planet Earth that you can live like gods among gods. Not still now. Hope so, but the Hope, as that myth says, it was the LAST THING in the Pandoras box.
Other references to hope:
Why Did Zeus Put Hope In Pandora's Box?
Hope and Pandora's Box:
Nietzsche - Human, All Too Human:
71
HOPE.—Pandora brought the box of ills and opened it. It was the gift of the gods to men, outwardly a beautiful and seductive gift, and called the Casket of Happiness. Out of it flew all the evils, living winged creatures, thence they now circulate and do men injury day and night. One single evil had not yet escaped from the box, and by the will of Zeus Pandora closed the lid and it remained within. Now for ever man has the casket of happiness in his house and thinks he holds a great treasure ; it is at his disposal, he stretches out his hand for it whenever he desires ; for he does not know the box which Pandora brought was the casket of evil, and he believes the ill which remains within to be the greatest blessing, —it is hope. Zeus did not wish man, however much he might be tormented by the other evils, to fling away his life, but to go on letting himself be tormented again and again. Therefore he gives man hope,—in reality it is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man.
Can you summarize the situation on "hope" and/or "pity" Don, as you understand it?
Those are great issues to discuss Smoothiekiwi. One of them is the question of "divorce" vs "til death to us part." I don't know if anyone here would advocate in favor of abolition of divorce, so we're probably talking in the context that "divorce" is at least a partial answer to your concerns.
Then there are the issues of
(1) children, which I think most people (apparently not including Plato!) would agree are best raised in a stable family.
(2) and protection and financial stability of women, who are apt to be put in extremely poor financial positions if the commitment that is made in raising a family or being married in general is not long term.
But by marrying, the person essentially gives up their ataraxia for an unknown future.
But that last is the formulation I would most push back against. As in some other current threads where we are discussing pain and pleasure, I don't think that Epicurus was unrealistic about pain: pain is required in order to live to any degree, and more pain is often required for more pleasure. So while "Absence of disturbance" and "absence of pain" are goals in the Epicurean system, they are not in themselves the ultimate goal or the highest goal. PLEASURE trumps both of those, and we can and do accept some degree of both disturbance and pain in order to achieve the pleasures we want in life.
Posing the question in this way really exhibits - in my view - how terrible a mistake it is to postulate ataraxia and aponia as the highest goods rather than pleasure. (And I will add that it makes it worse to leave them untranslated, because that makes it harder for newer people to understand what really is being discussed.) When you make it clear what is involved, it seems to me that it's easy to see that OF COURSE the avoidance of disturbance and the avoidance of pain do not trump all other considerations. Over and over Epicurus makes that clear, and in those situations where it can be argued that he seems to be saying something else, you override that interpretation by looking to the foundations and the full context of the philosophy, and adopt a construction that is consistent with both - not a construction that would blow the philosophy to smithereens if adopted (as some, regretfully, do).
So then I thought... Buddhism, which has been a long time influence in my life, has "suffering" as a seminal concept, as we all know. And would it be any surprise then that compassion is likewise a Buddhist primary motif, which it is, especially from the Dalai Lama and other Mahayana versions, but to greater or lesser extent it pops up in most of the strands of Buddhism. Suffering is also a big deal in Christianity. The passion of Christ, etc. Perhaps Epicureanism just didn't and doesn't have suffering as such a center piece. Although certainly aware of it and concerned to address what we generally find translated as "pain" in EP materials, is it not simply the case that Epicurus put the positive in front, not the negative? His focus was more on pleasure, not on escaping pain, right?
I agree with Don's "yes." I will also say that it is important to keep in mind that given the logical foundation of Epicurus, which characterizes the ONLY two guides given by Nature as pain and pleasure, the two terms at that "logical" level are largely interchangeable: Pursuing Pleasure IS Avoiding Pain, and vice versa. Those are the only two guides given by Nature, so if you are motivated by feeling, you are doing one or the other.
But having made that observation, I agree that it is critical to analyze which motivation is to be followed (1) at any particular moment, or for the long term, or for any span of time or (2) in terms of significance to the individual who is feeling the pleasure or pain.
Each person has the free will to decide which he is going to pursue, or whether to end his life and pursue neither.
I think it is clear from the shortness of life and many sayings that focus on pleasure and point away from suicide except in extreme circumstances that Epicurus held that Nature gave us Pleasure as the thing to pursue, and so while we are alive (and if we want to look at Nature as a mother) while we can follow Nature's guide and stay alive) our prime directive is to pursue pleasure, even at the cost of some amount of pain which we find to be worthwhile. If ANY amount of pain was deemed to be intolerable, the only way to implement that kind of philosophy would be suicide.
So whenever you're confronted with some basic unchallengeable observation like "some amount of pain is required to stay alive" then I think we have to assume that Epicurus understood that too and embraced it and worked with it, or else he would have explained why not. Instead, Epicurus was very clear that we sometimes in fact choose pain, so in my view that eliminates the possibility that Epicurus was saying to avoid all pain at all cost.
I don't see that I clipped another quote to comment on, but I also agree with the implication of some of the above posts that worldviews that focus on suffering and the elimination of suffering are in fact depending on the continuation of suffering for their existence, and they have extremely severe foundational problems. Yes Epicurus focuses a lot on alleviation of suffering, but he does so in the context that the purpose of life is pleasure, and the two go hand in hand toward the goal of living a completely pleasurable life, which is in fact largely achievable by most people in most circumstances, and by all people to at least some degree,.
I seem to remember reading somewhere (a while ago!) that the predominant ethos in ancient Greece was to do everything you could for your friends and associates and do everything you could to crush your enemies. The world was divided into friends/enemies.
"No better friend, no worse enemy" is the phrase that comes to my mind in this. I actually believe that Epicurus would and did endorse that, BUT with the caveat stated in PD39 and implied in other places (the reason for this thread) that we do all we can to treat people as friends, or at least not as aliens, before we regretfully conclude that they are in the category of those who we exclude from our lives, or who are "enemies of Hellas," or who we decide are only fit for restraint rather than reformation, or we decide pursuant to PD06 that there is essentially no limit to what we can and should do to protect ourselves from such people, or who according to Diogenes Laertius are "vile."
But to repeat for emphasis, I do think Epicurus held that there are essentially no "good" or "evil" people who are intrinsically evil, and that we can and should work to make everyone whom we can into a friend. All the while keeping a clear head that we are not always going to be successful, and that the safety and happiness of ourselves and our friends is sometimes going to require treating some people as enemies.
You put your finger exactly on something that felt fishy about this subject. Compassion seems to be self-defeating as a virtue since it requires that others are in and remain in pain, which is not a state of affairs I prefer.
Perhaps love or benevolence is a better word to capture the proselytising spirit in the above quoted?
It seems more Epicurean in spirit to state the goal positively: there are many reasons to prefer people even outside my circle of friends to live according to nature and be free of unnecessary suffering. Therefore adopting an attitude that helps bring this about is appropriate. This attitude is love (or benevolence).
Yes absolutely. The way this is worded reminds me of a topic I have always found interesting but not fully understood nearly as much as I would like. In my reading of Nietzsche I see that he took a strong position that "pity" (another word that we possibly ought to include in this analysis) is a very negative thing (it in fact "killed God" in his view). Further, Nietzsche or or others (I can't recall) took the position that Aristotle held much the same view. If Aristotle held it, this attitude toward pity may well have deep roots in the Greek viewpoint. I don't think we should dismiss this out of hand as inconsistent with compassion, I frankly don't have a good grip on exactly what the reasoning is, and I think we ought to understand it explicitly before we dismiss it.
And to add to the complexity, I have a feeling this view of pity is related to the Greek view of "hope," which we know was among the "evils" (or sins or whatever) that had been confined into Pandora's box before she opened it and let the rest of the sins escape. Why was "hope" classified as a bad thing and in the box? Presumably that was due to a close parsing of the issues involved in "hope" and we probably ought to perform the same exercise as to "pity."
I think we already have discussed and probably established to the satisfaction of most that even compassion has a limit, in that if we allow ourselves to be immobilized by sorrow over the condition of those who are suffering, we would never take any steps toward the alleviation of those problems. So probably there is something related to that in the analysis of pity and hope.
A good summary article on Philodemus from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Here is a video summary of our first A Few Days In Athens Book Review Session covering Frances Wright, the introduction, and chapter one.
Thanks to Alan Reyes for sending this - I have not watched it myself.
If the above points are made, EP and ATVs end up on level ground with respect to their final goals - EVERYONE is going after a good feeling, in the final analysis
Another initial comment:
I was reading / listening to some of the forthcoming chapters of "A Few Days In Athens" today, and I think Wright does a good job of setting out with emphasis how certain groups of people will never agree with this analysis, no matter how sweetly or clearly we state it. But I agree that this approach does and will appeal to a lot of people.
