Posts by Cassius

Happy new year to all EpicureanFriends. We're closing 2024 with one of our most detailed episodes on one of the most important Epicurean doctrines: "Death Is Nothing To Us." Thanks to all who tuned in this year, and we're looking forward to another strong year here at EpicureanFriends.com.

Would it make sense that Hermarchus was present and would not need a letter, while Idomeneus may have lived somewhere else?

Great catch!

The conversation has moved on somewhat from this point, but I just started another thread on a particular excerpt from Lucretius as to the logical possibilities as to how anything can be "eternal." I think that excerpt is relevant to this "gods" discussion as well, because if they are to be deathless they must somehow relate to one of those categories.

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The Logical Possibilities As To What Can Be Eternal (Applicable to Gods As Well)

In podcast 262 I was going through the ways that Lucretius was proving that the soul cannot be eternal, and came across this section in which Lucretius sets out the logical ways in which something could be eternal. In addition to the soul aspect I think this is helpful in the way it describes (1) the universe as a whole is eternal - by deduction from the fact that there is nothing "outside" the universe, and (2) that the atoms and void are eternal because they are able to "beat back assaults"…

Cassius

December 30, 2024 at 10:26 AM

Quote from Kalosyni

For me, I would take this to mean that god cannot be experienced apart from thought. ---> God exists only as a mental construct.

Just for clarity to lurkers, I think most everyone agrees with the first sentence, at least as having something to do with "images."

But as to the second sentence, that's the idealist position, and others take the realist position that they exist regardless of whether we think about them.

In podcast 262 I was going through the ways that Lucretius was proving that the soul cannot be eternal, and came across this section in which Lucretius sets out the logical ways in which something could be eternal. In addition to the soul aspect I think this is helpful in the way it describes (1) the universe as a whole is eternal - by deduction from the fact that there is nothing "outside" the universe, and (2) that the atoms and void are eternal because they are able to "beat back assaults" and suffer nothing from have anything come into contact with them.

In regard to Epicurean gods I find particular interesting the possibility that this section applies: "because it is fortified and protected from things fatal to life, or because things harmful to its life come not at all, or because such as come in some way depart defeated before we can feel what harm they do us..." Of course that's not the case for us as humans, but I would presume that the speculation about the location and makeup of the gods was intended to let them do exactly that.

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[800] Nay, indeed, to link the mortal with the everlasting, and to think that they can feel together and act one upon the other, is but foolishness. For what can be pictured more at variance, more estranged within itself and inharmonious, than that what is mortal should be linked in union with the immortal and everlasting to brave raging storms?

[806] Moreover, if ever things abide for everlasting, it must needs be either that, because they are of solid body, they beat back assaults, nor suffer anything to come within them which might unloose the close-locked parts within, such as are the bodies of matter whose nature we have declared before; or that they are able to continue throughout all time, because they are exempt from blows, as is the void, which abides untouched, nor suffers a whit from assault; or else because there is no supply of room all around, into which, as it were, things might part asunder and be broken up—even as the sum of sums is eternal—nor is there any room without into which they may scatter, nor are there bodies which might fall upon them and break them up with stout blow.

[819] But if by chance the soul is rather to be held immortal for this reason, because it is fortified and protected from things fatal to life, or because things harmful to its life come not at all, or because such as come in some way depart defeated before we can feel what harm they do us \[clear facts show us that this is not so\]. For besides that it falls sick along with the diseases of the body, there comes to it that which often torments it about things that are to be, and makes it ill at ease with fear, and wears it out with care; and when its evil deeds are past and gone, yet sin brings remorse. There is too the peculiar frenzy of the mind and forgetfulness of the past, yes, and it is plunged into the dark waters of lethargy.

I was looking for something today on my NewEpicurean page, and I came across this reference to a person who I don't think we have discussed here. Therefore I am adding the reference in case someone is interested in looking further into this:

Here is a reference to a work with strong Epicurean overtones by Aonius Palearius, who was executed for heresy in July, 1570. I hesitate to trust the accuracy of the following summary, especially as to the comment on ease and tranquility, but in order to be sure we will need to access the full original work. Anyone know where this can be found (preferably with English translation)? Here’s the summary:

“The end of man, says Palearius, is to live pleasantly; hence man must know that pleasure arises from the cooperation of the body and the mind. The fleshly pleasures are essential to contemplation and right living, and philosophers who deny this are not philosophers. The very fact that all sensual pleasures are readily available suggests that they have a purpose. We have health that we may think more vigorously, beauty that we may be loved, strength that we may fight, and wealth that we may know God, who is quite well-to-do Himself. It is difficult to define pleasure because people do not agree. Craftsmen will find the highest pleasure in work well done; scholars get so much pleasure out of research that they work during vacations. …. In one respect, Palaerius differs from the master; he does not think ease and tranquility true pleasures; for him pleasure is active, felt in the nerves and the heart.”

Source: The Rehabilitation of Epicurus and His Theory of Pleasure in the Early Renaissance, by Don Cameron Allen, Studies in Philology, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Jan., 1944), pp. 1-15

Good source for info on Palearius: A General Dictionary….

I just watched the miniseries adaptation (with which I was not particularly impressed) of "The Martian Chronicles" and so maybe my comment is colored by my reaction to that movie. I'm referring to the third installment of that show, where the Martians were portrayed as implicitly "ghosts," or at the very least time or dimension travelers without solid existence that the earth astronaut (Rock Hudson) could touch. If I recall correctly, the Martian seemed to be viewing Rock Hudson as similarly "ghostlike."

I know you're likely speaking figuratively in including the word "ghost," and that you take the ideas here very seriously. But when that term is used those opposed to Epicurus' views to disparage the theory (as if it is no more substantive than children making up ghosts for Halloween) I don't think it's giving Epicurus proper credit at all.

I think you're right that there's no necessary reason that such beings would have to live "between worlds." The only logical requirement is that they have as means of self-regenerating in whatever environment in which they might exist.

And I'll bet we'll eventually find what you are looking for in terms of additional text references, and my wager is that when we do we'll see them being treated like atoms or the swerve -- as things that we deduce "must" exist due to things that we do observe. But I would expect that the analysis will recognize that for the same reason that we think that atoms have a limit in size (the reason is at least in part that we have never observed one), the Epicureans thought that these gods live either (1) very far away in the "intermundia," or(2) in that "parallel dimension" you're talking about (again for the reason that ourfive senses give us no direct feedback of them).

I am adding this here as additional background both on Gyges and for Cicero's commentary on hypotheticals. Its from On Duties Book 3:

LacusCurtius • Cicero — De Officiis III.35‑95

37 Away, then, with questioners of this sort (for their whole tribe is wicked and ungodly), who stop to consider whether to pursue the course which they see is morally right or to stain their hands with what they know is crime. For there is guilt in their very deliberation, even though they never reach the performance of the deed itself. Those actions, therefore, should not be considered at all, the mere consideration of which is itself morally wrong. Furthermore, in any such consideration we must banish any vain hope and thought that our action may be covered up and kept secret. For if we have only made some real progress in the study of philosophy, we ought to be quite convinced that, even though we may escape the eyes of gods and men, we must still do nothing that savours of greed or of injustice, of lust or of intemperance.

9 38 By way of illustrating this truth Plato introduces the familiar story of Gyges: Once upon a time the earth opened in consequence of heavy rains; Gyges went down into the chasm and saw, so the story goes, a horse of bronze; in its side was a door. On opening this door he saw the body of a dead man of enormous size with a gold ring upon his finger. He removed this and put it on his own hand and then repaired to an assembly of the shepherds, for he was a shepherd of the king. As often as he turned the bezel of the ring inwards toward the palm of his hand, he became invisible to everyone, while he himself saw everything; but as often as he turned p307 it back to its proper position, he became visible again. And so, with the advantage which the ring gave him, he debauched the queen, and with her assistance he murdered his royal master and removed all those who he thought stood in his way, without anyone's being able to detect him in his crimes. Thus, by virtue of the ring, he shortly rose to be king of Lydia.

Now, suppose a wise man had just such a ring, he would not imagine that he was free to do wrongly any more than if he did not have it; for good men aim to secure not secrecy but the right.

39 And yet on this point certain philosophers, who are not at all vicious but who are not very discerning, declare that the story related by Plato is fictitious and imaginary. As if he affirmed that it was actually true or even possible! But the force of the illustration of the ring is this: if nobody were to know or even to suspect the truth, when you do anything to gain riches or power or sovereignty or sensual gratification — if your act should be hidden for ever from the knowledge of gods and men, would you do it? The condition, they say, is impossible. Of course it is. But my question is, if that were possible which they declare to be impossible, what, pray, would one do? They press their point with right boorish obstinacy, they assert that it is impossible and insist upon it; they refuse to see the meaning of my words, "if possible." For when we ask what they would do, if they could escape detection, we are not asking whether they can escape detection; but we put them as it were upon the rack: should they answer that, if impunity were assured, they would do what was most to their selfish interest, p309 that would be a confession that they are criminally minded; should they say that they would not do so they would be granting that all things in and of themselves immoral should be avoided.

But let us now return to our theme.

Welcome to Episode 262 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world.

Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts, and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes.

This week we are continuing our review of the key doctrines of Epicurus that are featured here at Epicureansfriends on the front page of our website.

This week we will address "He Who Says 'Nothing Can Be Known' Knows Nothing"

Discussion Outline (work in progress!) - "He Who Says 'Nothing Can Be Known' Knows Nothing"

FWIW here is a link to page 75 in the text where that appears:

Philodemus On Methods Of Inference De Lacey : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

On Methods of Inference or On Signs

archive.org

There's a lot more context but here is part of it:

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Thus we shall use successfully the inference from living beings, when we consider that nothing prevents god from being similar in body to man since man alone of living beings in our experience is capable of thought. For god cannot be conceived apart from thought; and even though god was not born, yet he is composed of soul and body and with this nature he is necessarily a living creature.

I personally don't have as negative a view of "convention" as I have of "illusion."

By convention we drive on the right-hand side of the road, and it is no offense to me if the Brits drive on the other side.

But by "illusion" i am told that it is impossible to know a "truth" about anything.

It's at the deepest level of confrontation where the stakes are the highest in these arguments with other viewpoints.

And for the old-timers' music club here's a Brit talking about "illusion," rather than "convention," as to color:

You know when I combine in my mind the assertions that motion is an illusion, that time is an illusion, that everything our senses show us is nothing more than the illusions caused by shadows flickering on the wall of Plato's cave, it's hard to shake the feeling that this is the real heart of Epicurean philosophy.

Yes you end up with some conclusions about pleasure and pain after you apply your conclusions to those issues, but you'd never reach the same opinions if you didn't start with the confidence that the world your senses allow you to perceive is real, and not an illusion.

I'm not sure most people today who read Epicurus have any inkling of this.

They jump right to the pleasure analysis as if none of the rest makes any difference, when the truth is that the pleasure analysis makes no sense at all without the initial grounding that pleasure and pain and the rest of the canonical faculties are the true measure of what's real and what's not real.

Many people in the last 100 years are awake to the idea that the supernatural religions push this fraudulent idea (that what the senses reveal is not real) because the religions are pushing supernatural gods who are completely unverifiable by the senses in this world. That's easy enough to understand, though even that I don't think they take fully to heart.

But very few people who read Epicurus are awake to how the "secular" philosophers (other than Epicurus) are doing much the same thing. In my view, the motivation of the secular class in pushing "skepticism" is ultimately "power." "Power" is the motivation of the religious class too, even though I grant to many of the religious class that they are sincere. But I think a good argument can be made that the secular skeptical philosophers are more to be condemned as "liars" than are the religionists (the accusation included in David Hume's Dialoges Concerning Natural Religion that"...the Sceptics are not a sect of philosophers: They are only a sect of liars.) So I can see why Epicurus would have concluded that giving in to physics-based determinism is even worse than giving in to supernatural religion.

If you don't have confidence in the senses (the canonical faculties) you don't have anything at all. And that's the place to start in understanding pleasure and everything else.

I also want to commend Joshua's second link for bring out the point I will underline in the quote here. This refers to Parmenides' argument that motion is impossible, but I point it out because this illustrates how these abstract logical assertions can have highly practical (in this case damaging) implications:

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Nevertheless the above arguments seem rationally compelling. We are thus faced with a dilemma:

Either the arguments, despite their persuasiveness, conceal a fallacy.

Rationale: Since valid arguments can never yield a false conclusion, an argument that yields a false conclusion must be invalid. But change is real, because it is so strongly attested by the evidence of our senses so that the conclusion led to by these arguments is false. Hence the argument must be invalid.

Project for the future suggested by this option: discover what this fallacy consists in, and display it to others. (This might mean making some progress in the philosophy of mathematics.)

Or our senses are constantly deceiving us when they register change and motion.

Rationale: There is no fallacy to be discovered in the above arguments, and the conclusion of any valid argument must be true.

Project for the future suggested by this option: practice those disciplines that help us progressively to detach us from the senses -- from our body in general. (This might mean practicing some form of asceticism.)

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With this conclusion:

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Parmenides is reported to have chosen the latter option. It was his view that the testimony of reason was stronger than the testimony of the senses (reasons tell us what can and cannot be the case). Accordingly, he is associated with the view that motion, change, time (all embraced under the term "Becoming") are illusions, and that reality ("Being") is One and Eternal.

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This position is congenial to those who are inclined to identify this Being with God, and to relegate all else (the many and the changing) -- hence, the material world testified to by the bodily senses, but also any individual personal identity, and hence the supposed experiences of all such entities -- to the category of unreal appearance. God, on this view, is the only reality.

Note that suffering of any sort, because it involves conflict, falls into the domain of the many and the changing. Hence the identification of God with the Parmenidean One can be made to serve the purposes of theodicy. If we classify theodicies by the different kinds of strategies they adopt for solving the problem of evil, then the "Parmenidean" varieties form a group within the larger family of theodicies that deny the reality of evil.

For what it is worth as to the origin of this thread, I think many of us are familiar with the philosophic dispute over whether motion is possible, or is an illusion.

The question of "time" came up in our discussion of 12/25/24 as to whether Epicurus was addressing time because it was controversial in the same way, and for much the same reason.

From Joshua's first link above:

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Parmenides = the past and future are illusions, the Universe is timeless and unchanging.

Heraclitus= endless process of creation, destruction and change.

Plato = time is a reflection of the rotation of the heavenly spheres.

Aristotle = time is rooted in motion and is meaningful only with respect to events embedded in its flow. Yet time is not motion, it is everywhere.

Hebrew/Christian theology = developed linear time versus Stoic time which is cyclical.

Also:

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There are basically three theories of time: 1) realist, 2) relational and 3) idealist.

The realist view of time believes that time is a physical characteristic of the Universe, independent of other physical properties. Time would exist even if the Universe were empty of matter and people (a de Sitter-Einstein Universe). The block Universe of relativity is an example of this view.

The relational view of time states that time depends on the succession of physical events in the Universe, such that time would not exist in an empty Universe. Where the realist states that the Universe has a clock, a relationalist states the Universe is a clock.

The idealist view is that time is a property of the human mind and therefore is an illusion. The passage of time is depends on human observers. In some sense, the block Universe is both realist and idealist as time is embedded in the Universe and that reality is a timeless, unchanging thing (Parmenidean).

Frequently, the discussion of time focuses on the passage of time where our views are divided into the Parmenidean versus Heraclitean view. Parmenides believed that stasis is fundamental and change is an illusion. Heraclitus emphasizes flux such that only change is real, permanence is an illusion. By Plato's era, time is associated with cosmic regularity (motion of the Sun and Moon), although Aristotle objects to this framework since motion is measured in time and time cannot be measured by motion.

Anyone want to suggest whether Epicurus is in one of these three categories, or that is view is distinguishable from all three?

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Lucretius Today Episode 260 is now available: "The Universe is Infinite And Eternal And Has No Gods Over It"

Perhaps this:

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Definitions

Definition 1.

A point is that which has no part.

Definition 2.

A line is breadthless length.

http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/elements/bookI/bookI.html

So the objection is that his definitions (a point with no part; a line with no breadth) is "inconceivable" - because we judge what is conceivable by what the senses tell us?) or otherwise not something that we can observe in reality, and thus not relevant to us (?)

Quote from Page 191 of the article

3. The Epicurean Position
For the Epicureans, both issues (1) and (2) in Section 2 were objectionable. Issue (1) was perhaps the reason why mathematics was not part of the Epicurean curriculum, as it did not accord with Epicurean empiricism.

At risk of getting drawn in too far when I should be doing other things (which I suspect is the real objection), what are "issues 1 and 2 in Section 2".....?

I am sure at some point that someone is going to make some insightful observations after reading that article.

That someone is unlikely to be me.

What I will say is that my gut tells me that people who go down the rabbit whole too far in mathematical theory are never going to accept that no matter how internally consistent their systems might be, Epicurus was going to reject any aspect of it that did not yield practical benefit, or that seemed to contradict the trustworthiness of the senses. I suspect that he was or would have been more than happy to accept any practical benefits that mathematical calculations produced, but to the extent those calculations couldn't be linked to practical benefit, he just wasn't interested in spending his time that way. Nor would he have recommended anyone else do so, unless they experienced pleasure in the chase of the calculations. I understand that's possible - mathematical puzzles can be fun. But i really get the sense that criticism of Epicurus' position is based more on wanting to make him look "anti-knowledge," or the result of the critic feeling hurt for having his or her pet interest disparaged. Just like the rest of the criticism that Epicurus was "anti-science" or "anti-knowledge," those criticisms to me seem vastly overblown.

EDIT - I do however think that it would be very helpful to pin down some of the comments in the article about exactly where Epicurus' first objection to the system started. The article points to one or more initial axioms that Epicurus rejected, and it would probably help to identify what those were. Identifying the initial dealbreaker would be good to keep in memory, while any additional objections would probably be superfluous because once the foundation was rejected the rest would go out the window too. Was it the "indivisibility" assertion or something else? I kind of suspect something else about the presumptions behind the initial setup leading to indivisibility.