Posts by Cassius

Probably a very important summary of the Epicurean position that our opinions should be based on observation and experience and not on "pure logic"

Yes I reall DeLacey talks a lot about inconceivability and this makes sense to me as an "empirical" rather than logical test:

In fact it also may hark back to our discussions elsewhere on the "feeling" of certainty.

Despite the terminology difference I find this to be pretty similar to what Delacey is saying.

Here's an interesting one:

I interpret that to mean "The Stoics are playing a word game."

Don't worry, Godfrey. Don is going to come to our assistance and figure all this out for us! In fact I think I'll take another nap and wait.

So Sedley rejects the "contrposition" term:

This seems sort of clear. The Epicurans followed analogy and induction. (I remember DeWitt saying they use deduction too.)

The Stoics follow "elimination" method, which I presume is what is referred to in "contraposition"?

Good grief. So according to Sedley there is a second edition of DeLacey's translation of Philodemus on Signs. I don't see that listed anywhere though --

Presumably that won't change his commentary much but I sure would like to see the updated text.

You're seeing exactly what I saw Godfrey. Even now I'm not sure what to make of the terminology. Maybe the Sedley article Don found above will help us all.

Is the reference above to "On Signs" the same as "On Methods of Inference"? It would seem likely but I haven't verified that, so it's interesting if DeLacy has already "translated" the title for us.

I just finished reading Remark O. Overall it is a very memorable slash and burn of Stoics, Priests, Government officials and others who claim virtue in public but do the opposite in private (and sometimes in public too).

It does seem to me that he has a good understanding of Epicurus, but it's hard to say whether he is going to extend it philosophically or just be content to cite him in support of his contention, which is something like that everyone in facts acts to pursue what they find pleasing so we should be honest about it.

No doubt it's easy to see why he is labeled an "egoist" but that just obscures the deeper issues in my view. I would say that Ayn Rand is faily labeled an "egoist" but I am also convinced that scratch the surface of her philosophy and she is throughout Platonist and even Stoic in her worship of reason. Labeling someone an egoist might be a decent indicator of Epicurean views (because the stoic majority views that negatively and labels most all Epicureans as egoists) but unless you drill down to the specifics you probably can't be sure what is going on in the original writings.

Here I would say there is a good chance that Mandeville combines his view of pursuit of pleasure with considerably more Epicurean philosophy. His ethics at least here do seem based on pleasure, but I don't see much if any recognition of the need for friends of the same viewpoint or much if the practical advice about evaluating the total balance of pleasure and pain.

Maybe since he is a doctor (I gather?) He is more of a materialist, but if so that's not in this section of this poem.

And I haven't seen any references to epistemology here though that's not unexpected given this subject.

So more reading would be necessary but I would rate based what I've read so far as someone who seems to be willing to go further than most in support of some of Epicurus' most controversial ethical positions.

1. I am interested to see if Martin has more to say about "maps" in reaction to the comment.

2. As to the first "no" I have never met a Californian without a good sense of humor. :-). (but I hear they do exist!)

I should also mention that that little clip of the poem seems promising to my very simple poetic tastes too, so therefore I need to be sure that the resident poet Laureate (probably Don would agree) Joshua will need to check this poem out too!

I hope others will have time to look at some of this material and comment further. Right now, after getting past that "egoism" accusation of the IEP article, I'd say that there's a good chance that Mandeville had a very well developed appreciation of Epicurus that surpasses most of what I've seen in other writers of the last several hundred years. But again that's a very preliminary assessment and while he appears to be a materialist, his views on epistemology aren't clear to me yet. But if indeed he was a medical doctor then perhaps there's a lot of promise here.

I wish Charles were still around to comment on this. Maybe he'll see this and drop by!

Remark O ends with a very nice attack on "Virtue"!

OK definitely "Remark O" beginning on page 170 appears to be worth reading

Maybe better link for desktop -- two up format -- https://archive.org/details/Mandev…e/n161/mode/2up

Also promising, from the same section:

This looks very promising. First is the part of the poem that references Footnote (O), then the long footnote itself:

Fable of the Bees resources:

The Fable of the Bees - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/mandeville1732_1.pdf

https://projectintegrity.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/bernard-mandeville-the-fable-of-the-bees-1712.pdf

Analysis: https://fee.org/articles/the-f…ory-of-society/

Flippable pdf version: https://archive.org/details/Mandev…age/n1/mode/2up

I read over the summary there and indeed it's hard to tell, but if we substituted "pleasure" for "egoism" in that article then there might be some merit to it, and since this is a summary and we don't know to what extent "egoism" is a label applied to him, rather than his own label, it would take some reading into the original material to see what's really going on. it would also be important to know whether in in fact cites Epicurus for any of his views.

But there's enough here in the "Fable of the Bees" references that this might well be worth reading. I'll tag EricR here to as he is much for familiar with some of the writers in that camp than I am. Maybe he's heard of Mandeville.

This reminds me that "priestcraft" is a great word!

Quote

Published in 1720, Free Thoughts on Religion, the Church and National Happiness was his final party political tract in which he endorses the advantages of Whig governance as well as advancing a skeptical view of the religious establishment and priestcraft.