Posts by Cassius

Thanks Joshua. Over the years I have been impressed with virtually everything I have ever read by Sedley. I think he's probably the foremost living scholar on Epicurus, though Martin Ferguson Smith and Voula Tsouna and probably several other names would be in the pack. I am thinking that it would be good to have a thread on most every book / article that Sedley and several others have written. For now I would put the articles in a new thread here in this subforum, and if it gets large enough we can break up the forum by name.

https://www.academia.edu/10175217/Epicu…essional_rivals

I googled for "Philosopher / Jew / Christian " but didn't find a good free text. Please post a link if you find one Charles - thanks.

Presuming that is not part of a book or larger context, the inscription almost looks as if it was intended to be a quotation, but the translation doesn't really make much sense. Maybe" traces" is "limits" (?) but the "do not discover" doesn't seem appropriate.

different style but very nice too! Very similar subject.

Hmmm not quite as interesting as I had hoped....I wonder what that note [3] references?

Not sure I follow his reasoning why he thought that Lucretius seems more motivated by the physics than the stated purpose of freeing from religious oppression, or why the practical minded Roman would not appreciate that. From a "practical" point of view very little would be more efficient toward happiness than overthrowing religious oppression. Maybe he's saying the Roman would be looking for information to use for better farming or the like, but if there is one thing the poem is devoid of it's "practical" application like mechanics or hydraulics.

Yes that is working now - thanks! And Don I went to your profile to look at that one but it looks like all one can see is a part of it on the profile, so maybe post a full copy somewhere(?)

Thanks Don - not very long! Maybe Martin can let us know whether the full document is interesting enough to pursue further.

Clip of the English notes:

Looks like the picture is not showing up in Joshua's post. Joshua do you know what's wrong?

Great find! We need that full intro, eventually in English, but I guess the German is the place to start

Thank you for your positive response to my last post If I recall correctly I woke up in the middle of the night and wrote that and I knew at the time I needed to be concerned about sounding too harsh It's a big world and I like every point of view to have a place in the sun --- unfortunately I find that not everyone shares that view. Maybe this forum is a version of "isonomia" -- not really striving for an equal number of people who focus on the "joy and delight" approach vs those who focus on "minimizing pain" --- but at least this forum is a step toward an "equitable distribution" so that there is a place for those in the J&D camp to have a place where their viewpoints prevail.

I generally don't purchase antique / antiquarian books, but several years ago on ebay I saw listed a copy of Lucretius translated by John Mason Goode and published in 1810. The binding and format looked impressive and I had not heard of this edition, so I bought it. It has forever soured me on "poetic" translations of Lucretius, because I took an immediate dislike to it and have got very little benefit from it over the years. Goode takes what seem to me to be extreme liberties in converting the text into English poetry, and as if to one-up his questionable translation, Goode tended to add the most incredibly tangential footnotes I have ever read in a Lucretius translation. They seem much more oriented toward making Mr. Goode look like a man of the world rather than a classical poetry scholar.

At any rate, I decided to check Goode's notes on this topic and what do you know he actually wrote a fairly lucid note that is probably helpful enough to include here. In the end his point seems to be "Epicurus' theory may be nonsense but those that came afterwards have been just as bad" but I do think the part that is his comparison to Plato and Aristotle on the theory of ideas is actually pretty insightful. I don't know that this puts him in either Munro's camp or Bailey's camp -- possibly slightly closer to Bailey than Munro, but in the end, it seems to me Goode is focused on the images more in the respect that they end up being a component of "analysis" or "truth" than their being the main mechanism of general "thought."

A perfect example of my frustration with Goode is that he starts his note off by referencing the exchange between Cassius and Cicero, which as noted above i think is right on point, but he manages to cut out Cassius' reply and thereby omits to say that Cassius *denied* what Cicero was alleging about the images. Seems to me a rather surprising omission.

Anyway, maybe someone will find a scan of this to be a little thought-provoking. (Attached)

I feel like the comment below underlined in red is HIGHLY justified, if Goode's note-writing is any indication:

Quote from Titus

because in my understanding this is a key part of Epicurean philosophy.

I don't doubt that that is your understanding at all, as that is the prevailing view in the academic world at large. That's why we're very clear in our terms of service and our welcome post and in the "Not Neo Epicurean Graphic" and the "Our Posting Policy" graphic that that is not the prevailing view here, and at some point we limit the continued argument for that position.

Now of course in saying all that I'm not intending to say that you have approached the line or in danger of that in any way, but just to acknowledge the truth that the academic world is hugely hostile to the view of Epicurus taken by Norman Dewitt and the writers listed in the "Don't be a Stoic in Disguise" Post in the right sidebar on the front page.

Basically the main reason this forum was founded and has sustained itself to date is in opposition to that view and to provide a place for those who think differently to compare notes and arguments against that viewpoint.

Note: I realize in this post and in what I am quoting from yours there is a danger in losing the focus on what "this" is. To summarize once again, possibly the best way of stating what I am arguing for is a "common sense" definition of the word pleasure, as ordinary people understand that word, which includes BOTH pleasures of "rest" and also "joy and delight" from the point of view that "all pleasures are desirable" and the only reason that one might choose not to pursue certain pleasures is that in the context of that person the pursuit would bring more pain than pleasure. This is the opposite of the "minimalism for the sake of minimalism" approach or any approach that embraces asceticism as the true end, rather than pleasure. But of course that's just a brief summary of the viewpoint you can find (hopefully!) permeating the great majority of posts on this forum.

Here's another example of my ongoing dispute with Bailey, from the next page after what is quoted in the last post:

Why, Mr Bailey, are you so certain that Lucretius / Epicurus chose to "go off into side issues" rather than "the main theory of thought?" Maybe it is you, Mr. Bailey, who misunderstands what the main issue is, and that that main issue is not "thought" at all, but the issues which Lucretius chooses to discuss?

Following what I always think should be one of the most important rules of construction, maybe we should give Lucretius the benefit of the doubt and presume that he knows a little more about Epicurus than we do, and that if Lucretius chooses to say something and go off in a particular direction, that he has good reason for it?

Here is side by side comparison of the commentary of Bailey (white, left) vs Munro (colored, right) on this same section. Compare how Bailey categorizes the entire discussion in terms of "thought" while Munro does not mention the words "thought" or any variation of "thinking," but deals with the subject as if it is just another variation of sensation, not something different in kind.

I also added underlines in Bailey which emphasize where Bailey is presuming his conclusion in his description. In passages marked 2 and 3 I also question the presumption that it is necessary for sensation and thought BOTH to be "set in action" and "stirred" by emations from outside. Yes as to sensations, but why does the action of the mind have to be in reaction to something OUTSIDE. I see no reason whatsoever in the rest of Epicurus to think that the mind cannot generate its own actions, and I would presume as devoted as Epicurus was to "agency" that the mind DOES initiate its own thoughts, in addition to responding to things that it perceives, just as we in this thread are both initiating our own comments and responding to the comments of each other.

Bailey is insisting that in all cases the the receipt of images in the mind and the receipt of vision by the eyes are linked together in result, and I certainly see the passage that he is referring to it, but by no means does it follow (in my view) that this process is going on in *everything* that our minds think.

On the issue of whether this process of working with images is the same or similar to that of preconceptions, it would be good to review Voula Tsouna's article. In posting this today I scanned through it to look for whether it equated image processing with preconceptions. It doesn't jump out at me that she does, but I may have missed it. I do note, however, that in her table of keywords I do not see "images" or its equivalent.

Norman DeWitt: Epicurus On Appearances

Article on Epicurus' views on logic / reasoning by Phillip de Lacy:

Diskin Clay on "An Epicurean Interpretation of Dreams. My comment on this one is that Diskin Clay impresses me a lot but I sense a pattern in his writing that he takes a very winding path to get to the important parts of an article. You probably need to skim over the first sections before you get to what is of interest here. As indicated on the first page, he starts off talking about Sigmund Freud and takes his time getting to the good stuff.

Elisabeth Asmis on "Lucretius' Explanation of Moving Dream Figures"