Posts by Cassius

Epicurean Divinity is a huge topic, especially because it differs in so many interesting ways from the theologies of mainstream organized religion, or the state-sponsored religion of Epicurus’ own time. Unfortunately, very little of the original writings on the subject have survived; however, from secondary period sources referring directly to the original teachings, we can still glean a great deal about the original doctrines of the Epicurean School of Philosophy. For those to whom these teachings prove personally appealing, we can even examine ways in which Epicurean views of divinity may be applied today.

This forum includes several main sections. The first, “Relevant Texts”, gathers together the textual source material pertaining to Epicurean theology, while the second consists of the sub-topics. Areas for exploration and discussion. include Epicurean Piety, Images of the Gods, Anticipations of the Gods, The Material Nature of the Gods, The Origin, Life, and Potential Death of the Gods, The Relationship of Non-Intervention Between Gods and Humans, and The Appearance of the Gods.

Threads on these topics or similar can be created by users as their pleasure prompts them. Links can be created referring to the source material to support ideas expressed.

As we proceed here we need to go forward with some procedural standards to apply when evaluating the texts on statements about the gods. These should be:

1) Epicurus' own words take precedence over all other source material. Anywhere Epicurus leaves room for different interpretations is not narrowed down by commentary from other sources, such as Philodemus or DeWitt. Neither will individual quotes be taken out of context with his whole body of work.

2) The process of determining what is real takes precedence over details of prior or current conclusions. When new data is available that Epicurus didn't have, we agree to present both what he concluded based on information available to him _and_ revisions which are necessary to continue adhering to his process of observing nature and trusting the senses. We agree that such revisions are an embedded expectation in a philosophy based on observations of nature, and that to ignore new data is to distort Epicurus' intentions beyond recognition.

3) Prolepses are subject to the same verification process as any other sense data and are not to be given special status when the combined sense evidence contradicts them, no matter how compelling they are. We will not say prolepses are infallible when the content is in the form of a conclusion about reality. This is the same as we do not say a straw in a glass of water is bent because it looks to be so from one view. Instead, we examine it from different positions and touch it. We combine our senses to test any conclusion. A sensation about gods from an intuition or dream is not a mistake in the same way seeing an optical illusion is not a mistake, but assumptions about the _cause_ of those intuitions and dreams is a matter up for verification by the other senses. We must especially beware of making assertions of material fact on grounds that we received special knowledge due to a prepared mind, because this closes off the importance of examination by the senses.

(Note: The above "standards of interpretation" was added here October 28, 2020. It is subject to revision as we proceed, and will likely be added to the forum as a whole along with the "Not Neo-Epicurean But Epicurean" statement as we have more experience with it.)

Since it's not strictly "Apollo" I gather, maybe your "Lord and Healer" makes better sense.

so Susan do you prefer Glory Be! Or O Lord Apollo?

This thread has reached all time third most commented post on the forum - I definitely want it to make it into the top two, and maybe number one, before we consider splitting off in too many pieces!

1) Is "theology" a good word, or should we stick with "divinity"?

2) Pending further discussion on "theology" and "spirituality," and other suggestions, my current minor rewrite would be:

Epicurean Divinity is a huge topic, especially because it differs in so many interesting ways from the theologies of mainstream organized religion, or the state-sponsored religion of Epicurus’ own time. Unfortunately, very little of the original writings on the subject have survived; however, from secondary period sources referring directly to the original teachings, we can still glean a great deal about the original doctrines of the Epicurean School of Philosophy.

For those to whom these teachings prove personally appealing, we can even examine ways in which Epicurean views of divinity may be applied today.

This forum includes two main sections. The first, “Relevant Texts”, gathers together the textual source material pertaining to Epicurean theology, while the second consists of the sub-topics. Areas for exploration and discussion. include Epicurean Piety, Images of the Gods, Anticipations of the Gods, The Material Nature of the Gods, The Origin, Life, and Potential Death of the Gods, The Relationship of Non-Intervention Between Gods and Humans, and The Appearance of the Gods.

Threads on these topics or similar can be created by users as their pleasure prompts them. Links can be created referring to the source material to support ideas expressed.

Quote from Don

However, if we're using spirituality in the sense of "spiritual practice" that seems to be a big tent.

Not by any means exactly the same word, but a lot of the text that we've covered recently in the podcast has referred to "spirit" and "soul" -- I think based on anima and animus.

All this needs to be dissected and we come up with a glossary to match Elayne's rules of construction, or some such thing, or else we go on explaining ad infinitum.

I should have figured Don would like PAIAN ANAX

Ok so what does that mean?

Yes I agree Elayne, and in this case I think "prolepsis" can be particularly suitable for those who want to use it, because I don't think we have a clear understanding of what the word means, so we might as well call it XYZ or "prolepsis"until we are ready to take a position to what it means to a common everyday english-speaker.

I think "anticipations" and "preconceptions" hint at the right direction, but only hint.

I realize in writing that last comment this which I think is important:

We all have a pretty good idea of how "a particular sight" is an example of the faculty of vision; how a particular sound is an example of the faculty of hearing. Same goes for pleasures and pains. We understand instances of pleasure and pain and we therefore understand how we are putting those in categories called "pleasures" and "pains."

I do NOT however, think that we have a consensus or even much articulation at all of what "an anticipation" is and how that differs from "the faculty of anticipations."

Almost by definition, "an anticipation" is not the same thing as a concept or a word or an opinion, nor would the "faculty of anticipations" constitute a "set of concepts or opinions."

We really need to find a way to articulate the meaning of these two categories. What is "an anticipation" and how does a single anticipation fit into our definition of "the faculty of anticipations"?

FWIW I am equally good with the word "preconception" because that stresses the distinction between preconceptions and conceptions, but I personally tend to shy away from "prolepsis" as that smacks to me of an untranslated Greek word for which we haven't settled on an understandable English term. I know not everyone agrees with me on that and I don't assert this as a rule of the forum (at least at this point without a lot more work on rules) but in general it does not seem to me to be a good idea to use untranslated Greek terms in our normal english discussions. The only way to really be clear when you do that is to give the greek accompanied by the translations, as Don generally does, but that gets to by unwieldy very quickly, and I don't think we want to compose most of our writing in ways that only experts can understand.

As Don and Dewitt would say, "Philosophy for the Millions!"

That sounds like a good start to a document that would apply across the board to all our discussions. We need to develop such an approach because it probably would serve as a good supplement to the "Not NeoEpicurean" list and the rules for posting everywhere on this forum.

Here's an example:

Quote from Elayne

We will not say prolepses are infallible when the content is in the form of a conclusion about reality.

That's the kind of observation that is a foundational premise from the very beginning. NONE of the three legs of the canon are "infallible" in the sense of providing us fully-formed true opinions. Every item of data has to be considered and evaluated in full context of all the data.

It's really inconvenient to repeat these points over and over so it would be good to develop a list of rules like this so we can point people to them easily.

We can discuss and refine this list over time.

I will either PIN it to the top of the "Nature of Epicurean Divinity" subforum, or I might even be able to make it a "description" of the forum itself.

Yes please make a suggestion for writing it, that would be great. I can then set something up and we can change it as needed.

Susan and others --

Creating subforums is something that I have do do myself under the software rules, but creating threads is easy for anyone to do anywhere, and it is easy for me to move threads to different forums once the threads and forums are created.

Here is an example of how three levels of forums look:

I think most people are generally using telephones to access the site, so we need to see how that looks on a telephone.

I am thinking that regardless of the direction we go, that it will eventually be useful to formulate an opening paragraph that describes the topics and their relationships to each other.

Here is an example, but I think this needs much work and expansion:

The topic of Epicurean Divinity is very complex. The place to start is by looking at what is left to us from what the Epicureans actually wrote, here in “Relevant Texts.” The issues involved in this subject include Epicurean Piety, Images of the Gods, Anticipations of the Gods, The Material Nature of the Gods, The Origin, Life, and Potential Death of the Gods, The Relationship of Non-Intervention Between Gods and Humans, and The Appearance of the Gods,

See where I am going with that? It could be in outline format, but I am thinking that a narrative paragraph might make more sense.

Let me know thoughts and suggestions.

In the meantime Susan I am fine with what you wrote in that last post.

EDIT: Also to be clear, once we do a paragraph with links, I can "pin" that to the top of the forum, or maybe even include it in the forum description.

Susan - also - In order to help organization I have moved this thread out of "General Discussion" and into the forum which I renamed as The Nature of Epicurean Divinity

In turn I have that forum as a subsection of "Physics" as I gather that if we consider there to be three major branches of the philosophy, and physics is where the nature of the universe is discussed, and our topic is part of the nature of the universe, that's the place for it.

I see that there are some related threads there - it's possible that you might want to organize some of the topics as new threads there, or I can create "subforums" if appropriate. As we proceed we'll organize however makes sense, so if anyone wants to make suggestions on that, feel free.

In fact there are already enough threads there that we might want to pay attention fairly soon to breaking it down, or perhaps pinning a post that contains a discussion paragraph describing the issues and then linking within that discussion to where the subtopics can be found.

Susan, no, no need to go to through the images material first. I posted that just as my latest thought to add to the pot. From the point of view of how I have observed the forum to function best, I think it is always best if someone who is interested in pursuing a topic "strikes while the iron is hot" and proceeds at whatever pace is comfortable to them. It is much much easier to edit or comment on a discussion after material is collected, rather than collect material after time or energy to post it has waned.

So this would be a valuable contribution: 'I would be willing to continue to admass and categorically organize the quotes we can collect from the literature so that individual topics could be examined (e.g. piety, spiritual practice, images from the gods, religious festivals, adoration, etc.), if that would be of value at some point."

I will mention that one problem that has occurred in the distant past, primarily on Facebook and other locations, is that some people have posted a lot of material from "other traditions" (primarily eastern) probably from the point of view presuming that they are parallel and therefore helpful to studying the Epicureans. At some point down the road that is probably acceptable here too, but I strongly thing it is a good idea for us to focus on the Epicurean material and analyze it first before going beyond occasional observations on other areas that don't mention or concern Epicurus.

I don't raise this because you have shown any tendency to do that yourself - you haven't - but it's come up in the past [not anyone participating in this thread] and caused complaints from some quarters when there's too much emphasis on details from other viewpoints. Now having said that, it occurs to me to say that there are probably details in Stoicism, Pythagoreanism, Platonism, and others that the Epicureans came into contact with themselves that are relevant to the discussion. But the basic point here is that it has always seemed to me that there is a lot of raw material from the specifically Epicurean texts that ought to be given priority here first.

After we get a body of content here in the forum about our own Epicurean texts there will be plenty of time and space to comment on other viewpoints. But it's just kind of weird to have next to nothing in the forum on the Epicurean texts on divinty, but tons of material on Tibetan Buddhism or the like

So far we've primarily been referring to anticipations, but of course there is a great deal of text material on idols / images / spectres or whatever term you prefer. It is going to be several weeks before we reach this point in the podcasts, so we have no had occasion to review the details of this as a group, but of course this discussion can hardly even begin before we review the material on images in book four of Lucretius, starting here:

https://archive.org/details/lucretiusepicureanfriendsreferenceeditionversion01/page/n1026/mode/1up (That's page 1027 of the PDF if the link doesn't go to the right place.)

I don't myself rule out at all the possibility that some form of this theory has some validity, but I wouldn't even want to start speculating on what parts or how that validity could occur without going through the details of what was being asserted, how it relates to light and all the issues of waves and energy and particles and gravity and action-at-a-distance that science discusses today, how our sense organs work,, how the brain works, and all sorts of other things.

However, such a review is exactly what a thorough consideration of this part of Epicurean theory would require. I've rarely seen much of this treated in modern commentary at all - it's always dismissed out of hand, but I definitely do not think it should be.

Especially since the discussion of images leads right into the discussion of epistemology about dismissing those who say that no knowledge is possible, we must rely on the senses, etc.

Thanks for assembling that Don!

Ha - even after I finished that last post I have one more thing to add.

It is not lost on me at all that in my opinion the force that destroyed Epicurean philosophy and the rest of the ancient world was "organized religion." Organized religion is clearly a potent and destructive force in the world, and it can't be just ignored, because apparently it does address a deep-seated aspect of human psychology that raises questions in this area in which most people will not accept "I don't know" as an answer. I don't think "agnosticism" can ever be self-sustaining for that reason. I suspect Epicurus thought that probably the majority of people will always require some kind of position to be taken in this department, and no matter how much we might wish otherwise that is likely always to be the case. As a result some kind of organized response is probably required lest Epicurean communities get steamrolled by the opposition. That may sound like another "pragmatic" argument, but if it seems that there's some kind of innate programming that disposes us to address these questions, then it would be irresponsible or foolhardy to fail to address that if you're working toward setting up a cultural reform movement like the Epicureans were in many ways doing.

This is a trite example, but I remember when I was growing up and trying to learn to play tennis that people would constantly make the suggestion that i should get a much practice as possible playing with older and better players, because that's how you learn to improve yourself.

Many of the suggestions of Epicurus about contemplating eternality and infinity and the gods seem to me sort of the same kind of thing - that we make our lives better by regularly visualizing "better" examples of what we would like to be ourselves.

But remember, I am the one who holds open the door to the possibility of ancient astronauts and the whole "Star Trek" kind of universe as possibilities, and in fact probabilities in some form or fashion, but always only of speculative / aspirational value without some direct reason to consider them of personal relevance to me in a particular situation.

Even saying that, I don't discount that what we are discussing can have a very important role in life. I am with Nietzsche in thinking that nihilism and similar kinds of radical "nothing makes any difference" attitudes requires a strong antidote. I don't follow his view that "eternal return" is particularly helpful with that, but if the cultivation of feelings of reverence and awe toward "life" or whatever we conclude makes the most sense, then that would be an important tool to keep in the quiver.

Seems to me that there are several references (for example better to believe in the myths of religion than in hard determinism) that would support the probability that everybody doesn't have the constitution of a Socrates or a Plato to want to go around sparring with words every day, and that type of personality is going to be attracted to different parts of the Epicurean philosophy than are others. I don't think it would ever be permissible to stoop to out and out "noble myths" that are patently false, but there is enough logical foundation (isonomia, eternality, infinity) plus enough raw direct "sensation" (the feelings we are talking about) to provide an important part of an Epicurean culture.

And I do think they were headed toward an Epicurean "culture," or at least that would have been a natural evolution of the school. Honor the founders on the 20th and regular occasions, look upon Epicurus as a father figure who we can almost think of as "godlike," and surround yourself with a community of friends who regularly talk about unanswerable questions about an infinite and eternal universe with no life after death, and you've got a formula for a day-to-day culture in which contemplation of "divinity" would be a natural part.

Edit: I don't want to stop on that note. I never want to underestimate the intelligence of the ancient Epicureans. I really have no clue where the "limit" is of what is possible in terms of what goes on in the universe, so I don't want to sound like every aspect of what I am saying amounts to a pragmatic argument that "it's useful even if it isn't true." I really don't know what "it" is in this context, and I think a close reading of the texts will lead in some very interesting directions.

Quote from Elayne

As to whether a pig could be a god-- IMO we can't say that isn't possible. We would have to establish a standard for rationality and virtue for another species whose minds we can only guess at. We do not propose any absolute virtues, so how would we know how to recognize them in another species?

Here I agree and would say that we still need to be more accurate as to our standard for what is a "god." Did Epicurus himself qualify? If so, how? I don't think we are sure whether that assertion was intended to be figurative or "literal" or what, so there's a lot of room for discussion of what we mean by these words. Where is the dividing line, if there is a dividing line?