Posts by Cassius

Quote from Don

Some on this forum may beg to differ,

LOL he's probably referring mainly to me!

Quote from Philia

I should confess that I've done very little study of philosophy in general, let alone Epicurean philosophy.

I think the deeper you read into the philosophy the more you'll feel that this formulation (maybe or maybe not by Philodemus) is dramatically inadequate as a full statement of the philosophy, just as you find a statement like "pleasure is the greatest good" to be inadequate.

On the other hand, both the tetrapharmakon and the "greatest good" formulation are very useful as starting points for discussion and focusing on the issues involved, so they do have their uses even in my own perspective. They are partial statements useful in some contexts, and only by discussing the limitations and the contexts do you grow in understanding of when they are useful and when they are not and what else may be needed.

It's probably not lost on you that the rules of the forum are that we are here to promote Epicurean philosophy and not eclectic blends. At some point if you do decide to promote something that's your own blend then it becomes inappropriate to promote it here, and you'll want your own website and your own forum. However the purpose of this forum is for discussion and study of the issues of Epicurean philosophy, and all of us were at one point or another just grappling with these same issues. So it is totally appropriate for you to raise issues and discuss possibilities and generally proceed with as deep a good-faith discussion as you like, so I hope you will.

Raise each of the points you want to discuss in detail, and I think you'll find me and a number of other people are happy to respond and help you think through the issues, and in doing so that helps us all.

Thanks for your comments Philia. Each of those concerns have answers to them which (as you say) you apparently have not studied the philosophy long enough to understand.

At the level you are discussing what you are talking about is not Epicurean philosophy at all, so it probably does not make sense to call it that for the sake of avoiding misunderstanding all around.

Unfortunately there is really no way to avoid the "work" (pleasant though it may be) of studying the philosophy so as to understand the truths and dispell the errors.

It's a great goal for you to assemble a group of friends and to pursue pleasure in a general sense, but until you grapple with the philosophy issues and decide to take Epicurus' side as your own, you're not talking Epicurean philosophy and you'll probably do yourself and your friends more harm than good by disappointing yourself and then by inaccurately portraying half-formed thoughts as Epicurean.

One of Epicurus' distinctive attitudes as displayed in the Vatican Saying at the top of our home page and in other sayings is that it is important to proclaim TRUE philosophy, and that is not to be compromised even if those around you do not understand the truth. Hopefully you and they WILL come to understand the true philosophy over time, but keep that in mind as you proceed and if you decide to promote your own eclectic blend, you will very likely be better off being honest to everyone about that so that you all will be on the same page and avoid the bitter disputes that come when people feel they have been misled.

Welcome @surikay903 !

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!

Book three for Don and all Latin scholars!

TITI LVCRETI CARI DE RERVM NATVRA LIBER TERTIVS

E tenebris tantis tam clarum extollere lumen

qui primus potuisti inlustrans commoda vitae,

te sequor, o Graiae gentis decus, inque tuis nunc

ficta pedum pono pressis vestigia signis,

non ita certandi cupidus quam propter amorem

quod te imitari aveo; quid enim contendat hirundo

cycnis, aut quid nam tremulis facere artubus haedi

consimile in cursu possint et fortis equi vis?

tu, pater, es rerum inventor, tu patria nobis

suppeditas praecepta, tuisque ex, inclute, chartis,

floriferis ut apes in saltibus omnia libant,

omnia nos itidem depascimur aurea dicta,

aurea, perpetua semper dignissima vita.

nam simul ac ratio tua coepit vociferari

naturam rerum divina mente coorta

diffugiunt animi terrores, moenia mundi

discedunt. totum video per inane geri res.

apparet divum numen sedesque quietae,

quas neque concutiunt venti nec nubila nimbis

aspergunt neque nix acri concreta pruina

cana cadens violat semper[que] innubilus aether

integit et large diffuso lumine ridet:

Great - thank you!!!!

Please see this post too for the place to pursue the question of the "logic" of isonomia:

Post

RE: Anticipations - Justice & Divine Nature

I am going to try to make some comments and point us to the reading material in this post here. It's been a long while since I read this myself so I am going to put a priority on rereading it now. (Yes Don, even before I finish reading Sedley's work on Lucretius! There is too little time!!!)

If anyone gets started ahead of me please post in that thread (the link that follows) and let's try to prompt each other to deal with those issues soon:

RE: "On Methods of Inference" - Best Source for the…

Cassius

August 23, 2021 at 1:56 PM

I am going to try to make some comments and point us to the reading material in this post here. It's been a long while since I read this myself so I am going to put a priority on rereading it now. (Yes Don, even before I finish reading Sedley's work on Lucretius! There is too little time!!!)

If anyone gets started ahead of me please post in that thread (the link that follows) and let's try to prompt each other to deal with those issues soon:

Post

RE: "On Methods of Inference" - Best Source for the Text And Getting Started

The beginning sections of the text are not preserved, and therefore we don't have the opening explanation for what the work is about in order to serve as a guideline for what follows.

Perhaps even worse, the work includes lots of repetition of positions that Philodemus is arguing *against*, so it's necessary to know beforehand which side of the argument Philodemus is taking so that you know if he's talking about his side, or that of the (largely stoic) enemy.

And perhaps even worst of all, the…

Cassius

August 23, 2021 at 1:55 PM

The beginning sections of the text are not preserved, and therefore we don't have the opening explanation for what the work is about in order to serve as a guideline for what follows.

Perhaps even worse, the work includes lots of repetition of positions that Philodemus is arguing *against*, so it's necessary to know beforehand which side of the argument Philodemus is taking so that you know if he's talking about his side, or that of the (largely stoic) enemy.

And perhaps even worst of all, the Epicurean arguments are so unknown to us that it takes considerable explanation to understand the Epicurean side of things before getting started.

So for that reason I strongly recommend reading the introductory material, and the appendix, before reading the text itself. Of course that means we're relying on DeLacey, and we have to be careful about that too, but it's better than starting at the beginning and reading pages and pages of dense material and only finding out afterward that you've started in a section giving the Stoic argument and that Philodemus himself doesn't agree with anything that you've just read.

Here are some links to the sections to read first. Every one of these contains valuable information that will help tremendously if you read it before reading the text.

• Forward
• Chapter 1 - Life and Work of Philodemus
• Chapter 2 - Introduction to "On Methods of Inference"
  
• Appendix 1 - Sources of Epicurean Empiricism
• Appendix 2 - Development of Epicurean Logic and Methodology
• Appendix 3 - Logical Controversies of the Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics

Of course when we're referring to Cicero we're referring to "Cicero's reporting of the Epicurean view" because Cicero himself wasn't advocating any of this.

If we didn't have Cicero's reports we'd still have the letter to Menoeceus talking about anticipations of the gods, and Lucretius talking about the "images" we receive of thelr lives of blessedness, and Epicurus himself talking about life in the rest of the universe and (I think? the gods in the intermundia - isn't that in the letters too?).

In my view what the fragments on isonomia give is a linkage to how they apparently extended their methods of reasoning in order to speculate further about the life of the gods. But what's also not clear is which came first and which is primary -- the "anticipations/images" argument for the gods, or the "physics/isonomia/no single thing of a kind" argument for the gods.

My best guess is that they developed alongside each other and were seen as mutually reinforcing, rather than one relying on the other.

But again if we can find a way to do it, it will really help if we can pull out DeLacey's appendix and then get into "Methods of Inference" so we can see how they grappled with the issue of reaching conclusions about things about which we can never get direct sense-based evidence.

Maps may be one of the best analogies, in addition to the compass.

Maps can obviously be very useful, and maps can be useful at many levels of detail. Sometimes great detail helps, sometimes it is best to take to 30000 foot view, but they all need to be consistent with the facts.

On the other hand no matter how detailed the map never becomes the terrain itself.

I think DeWitt talks about this in terms of the telescoping levels of outline, with Epicurus' 40 doctrines perhaps the highest view, then the letters, then I think there was another summary level that Lucretius used or else he was using the full 38? Books of On. Nature.

Regardless the telescoping view analogy seems very valid, and explicitly what Epicurus referenced as outlining jn the letter to Herodotus.

Possibly the on / off switch, because that's a good analogy to stop and go, but I'm not sure that goes far enough.

The whole analogy of humans / living things to robots is probably both useful and dangerous at the same time, but then again that seems to be the whole situation with logic itself, so we've got to get used to that and be comfortable articulating the good and bad of it. I think that's pretty much "got to be" the approach Epicurus took.

We can't label "all abstractions are bad" - that would be ridiculous, but at the same time have to be just as firm that "the map isn't the territory itself."

Cliches can be tiring but I think assembling a list of them would probably help us talk about the subject and explain it more clearly.

I haven't had a chance to read this so I have no comment on the content yet but it certainly at the very least seems to bring together some worthwhile quotes.

Nietzsche's Epicurean Irritability

In The Gay Science, Nietzsche favourably compares the Epicureans’ “subtle irritability” to the impassivity of the Stoics. He claims that this irritability—a…

www.academia.edu

I think the senses leg of the canon well fits the "computer peripherals" analogy, and the anticipations leg fit the "operating system" analogy. It's less clear to me where the pleasure /pain fits, possibly as part of the operating system but perhaps more the "applications program" or the electricity or something analogous to the purpose for which the computer and operating system were constructed.

In real life all these three operate very closely together too so it's not like they are entirely separate from each other and this is another area I think DeWitt's ideas are good.

I think we're most all in agreement that we are not born with fully formed ideas. Aristotle and Locke assert that if we aren't born knowing ideas we are essentially s "blank slate" and that's going way too far.

I think the better analogy is that while we agree we aren't born with fully formed ideas, we aren't born as nothing more than a pure white piece of paper. We're actually built with a superior version of a computer operating system (think Windows or Linux or Mac) that when operated can process data in amazing ways, but only on the basis of the ultimate programming of the system (dogs and cats and humans and grasshoppers are programmed differently). We aren't born with a stored database of knowledge, but we are born with an operating system and a series of peripherals (the senses), using the data from which a database can be constructed after conception and early development.

Yes I think it's probably true that a faculty of anticipations is involved in the assembly of pretty much all thought, in the sense that we would not recognize the subject as significant to us at all if we didn't have such a wiring to recognize it. The continuing hazard is to think that a particular idea is preprogrammed rather than simply "wiring" that if we choose to use it and if it is functioning correctly (we're not sick or insane) will allow us to be conscious of something to think about and eventually firm ideas in. And that's why I still like preconceptions as a word to emphasize the PRE part.

When I think anticipation I can't help thinking of Carly Simon!

I am in agreement with some of the last several posts and not in agreement with some, but I think mainly the answer to concern that this is Platonic is that it appears to me we have ample justification for projecting higher and lower forms of life based on what we see here on earth, so I think that is fully sufficient ties the full theory to reality and observation. Based on observing worms and below all the way up to humans and elephants and so many others, it seems to me very empirically reasonable to extend the attributes we do see to a wider scope of varieties that would exist if there are an infinite number of Earth's in the universe.

I absolutely see that as rigorously empiriical and not Platonic, and I feel sure that they would have argued that NOT to take that position would be a Platonic rejection of the variety we see here.

I think that a lot of what is missing here is that we have never undertaken a study of the "epicurean reasoning" theory and the best place to focus on that is probably Philodemus' "Methods of Inference" material.

So we need to figure how to devote some time to that.

The entire philosophy is ultimately based on things we cannot see or touch or sense (atoms) so we have to get comfortable with "true reason" and I don't think we're there yet.

And that's not unexpected because so little attention is paid to it. DeWitt can maybe get carried away but I think many of his points are highly insightful and one of them is (to my reading) that DeWitt was both an "empiricist" *and* a master logician and that these are not necessarily in conflict if you understand and apply those correctly.

Well supernatural intervention is ruled out from the basic physics and is extrapolated by extension to the universe as a whole as a fundamental to which there can be no violation, so that's what rules out supernatural no matter how far out you get.

Now as to beings who have superior technology to us that is of course possible and even probable -- but it's never "supernatural."

This is the Dewitt section - I forgot this was so long!

You asked Joshua but if you'll pardon my making a comment:

Quote from camotero

Or other universes similar to our own?

That's why it's always necessary to be clear in terminology. As for me I refuse to depart from the traditional terminology, and for me "universe" will always mean "everything that exists." Others may way to talk about multiverses and multiple universes but I'm too old for that

Quote from camotero

Why is isonomia important to us? How is it useful? How does it helps us understand nature better?

And my answer to that, from what I believe was probably Epicurus' perspective, is that many people would conclude (if they believed that this earth was the only inhabited place in the universe) that that would mean there is something "special" about us, leading directly to a likely conclusion of divine action to explain that "specialness". Taking the position that life is naturally occurring means it's likely to naturally occur in an infinite number of places (given the view that the universe is infinite in size) so those views go hand in hand.

And to the extent we're talking about isonomia as a spectrum of complexity from extremely primitive to something we would call "godlike" that also provides a general overview to why humans should not be considered to be the highest form of life in the universe, and leads us to think about what is higher, which is something that seems to be an important part of Epicurean philosophy and helps explain why we should not, in fact, generally be satisfied with living in a cave on bread and water.

I don't keep track of that myself but I think we've talked about that in the past so some here very well might.