Posts by Cassius

Yes it seems to me that Frances Wright's gravesite and/or other places associated with her would definitely be a good addition to this list. "A Few Days In Athens" is not only an excellent book, it probably qualifies as the most unabashedly pro-Epicurean and consistently-Epicurean piece of writing since the ancient world. So many others are sort or / kind of / approximately Epicurean, but I would put AFDIA is in a class of its own.

What locations in North America have greatest connection to or significance for Epicurean Philosophy?

Elli's recent post of herself at an Epicurean shrine spurs me to ask whether we could assemble a list of locations relevant to Epicurus for those of us in North American. Here are three possibilities for a list:

1. The Getty Museum in California - http://www.getty.edu/visit/villa/ (Obvious connection to Philodemus and his library, leaping pig, statues of the founders, etc.)

2. The Parthenon in Nashville - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenon_(Nashville) (A replica of a building that would have had great significance to Epicurus himself)

3. Monticello in Virginia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monticello (Where Jefferson wrote about Epicurus and met with Frances Wright and presumably talked about "A Few Days in Athens")

Others? If there are North American museums like those in Gottingen or Leipzig that have copies of statues of Epicurus or other Epicurean founders that would be good, but I am not sure there are any.

If this turns out to be an interesting topic we can do a separate list for other parts of the world.

There's an idea! We can have a competition: What locations in North America have greatest connection to / significance for Epicurean Philosophy? I have now split this out as a separate thread.

Let's call for nominations! Here are three:

1. The Getty Museum in California - http://www.getty.edu/visit/villa/

2. The Parthenon in Nashville - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenon_(Nashville)

3. Monticello (Where Jefferson wrote about Epicurus and met with Frances Wright and presumably talked about "A Few Days in Athens") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monticello

Others? (if there are museums like Gottingen or Leipzig that have copies of statues of Epicurus or Epicurean figures that would be good, but I am not sure there are any.)

I wonder if there is any site in the USA that is more directly tied to ancient Greece, and yet is so relatively unknown, as the Parthenon in Nashville. In fact, I wonder if there's any site in the world, even in Greece, that can match this! I doubt the reiigious nuts in most of the world would allow something like this, even in replica. Quite impressive in person:

Thanks Joshua! Since Autun appears to be in France, and I don't have another category on point, I think I will just change the name of this subforum so it's not limited to Italy.

Quote from Pompadour

If I may, I'm not sure the "cookbook" can answer the question "why do I eat?"

I think you're exactly right to make that distinction, and I know that many people (most people?) don't seem to have a problem going straight to the "let's eat" rather than asking first "why do I eat"?

And yet I think the basic question of "why do I eat" is best considered first - for example in trying to diet for overall health, it's pretty much imperative, is it not, to focus the mind on knowing that unless you control what you eat then ultimately you will lose your health and won't be able to eat after that.

We're discussing this in broad generalities but also:

Quote from Pompadour

philosophy can help people find meaning

But perhaps "meaning" is not what they should be looking for, and it's impossible to know unless that question of "what should I be looking for?" is answered.

Quote from Pompadour

From my own perspective, I want to explore Epicurus until I understand the tools well enough to know whether and how they will be useful to me.

The word "useful" or "utility" is always so ambiguous. Useful FOR WHAT?

I always think back to this statement by Torquatus in On Ends:

Quote

IX. I will start then in the manner approved by the author of the system himself, by settling what are the essence and qualities of the thing that is the object of our inquiry; not that I suppose you to be ignorant of it, but because this is the logical method of procedure. We are inquiring, then, what is the final and ultimate Good, which as all philosophers are agreed must be of such a nature as to be the End to which all other things are means, while it is not itself a means to anything else. This Epicurus finds in pleasure; pleasure he holds to be the Chief Good, pain the Chief Evil.

But I continue to have the nagging doubt that Epicurus himself might not have put the question the same way, or - if he did - he would have been quick to point out the limitations in dealing with this as a strictly logical question, just as he did in the comment about walking around endlessly talking about the meaning of the good.

I somehow seem to have missed Godfrey's post of May 6. I don't know that we really grappled with Eugenios' original point, but I am now gathering we are talking about how to describe the attributes of what we mean by "pleasure."

We have used or seen used words like "intensity" or "meaning" and "duration" and perhaps "purity" and potentially applicable adjectives. We also have the word "condensed" which as far as I am concerned in English is virtually devoid of meaning, or is so ambiguous that it's almost useless, so we need to discuss what that means.

We know that pleasure and pain apply to not only immediate bodily functions (eating, etc) but also to mental functions. However as we've recently seen in discussing comments from Konstan, it might be important to consider that "emotions" can be pleasurable and painful but are not themselves the same as pleasure and pain.

And of course the word "happiness" is floating out there with little consensus as to how it should be used in talking about a life of pleasure.

"Net" pleasure may be in the ballpark but seems hopelessly underpowered to bring all the factors together.

Maybe it would be helpful to come up with some diagrams or graphics that would help us identify what we are talking about?

Martin had trouble posting this so I am posting for him:

20 Euros for a white gypsum copy of a gypsum copy is correct. Cost for packaging and shipping will increase the total cost. About 8 inches tall is correct, too.

You can use the form at

https://antik.gko.uni-leipzig.de/index.php?id=105

or better send an e-mail to: klarch[at]rz.uni-leipzig.de

I guess that e-mal address should be:

klarch@rz.uni-leipzig.de

The collection of gypsum copies in Leipzig used to be one of the largest but war damage and subsequent damage from moving around and storage conditions has greatly reduced and damaged the copies.

The available copies of their copies are apparently all listed at:

https://antik.gko.uni-leipzig.de/index.php?id=82

The leaping pig is not among them.

In the remaining 4 weeks in Germany, I will not travel beyond the area around Cologne.

Next year, i might fit in trips to Goettingen and Wuerzburg

WOW that is a great find thank you!

Do i read that correctly as 20 Euros or 200 Euros?

Is that about 8 inches tall? that is a very respectable size!!

Do you see an online order page?

Martin do you see the best way to order? I do not have a hermarchus and would definitely like one of both.

I wonder if a place like this will be where we can eventually find a copy of the leaping pig!?

Also, i should mention that I had the opportunity to go to the museum at Gottingen several years ago and they have a similar or even more extensive collection, with large life-size copies of seated statues of Epicurus and Hermarchus, but I do not think they sold replicas.

I agree this is an area where we need a lot more discussion. I think Martin knows a lot more about this than I do; I just haven't had the time to track down the details. I do remember reading that essay by Marx several years ago and not getting a lot out of it, so i am sure there is a big picture that I am missing.

Yes I agree that that is an issue that should be introduced early and clearly. Of course the issue really isn't all types of reason but the relative place of dialectical logic, or any form of logical argument that is not tied tightly to the evidence of the senses, plus probably the main observation that ultimately reason/logic relies on the senses for its validity. Once explained I think that last point is relatively easy to understand and accept, and it really helps to get to the big issue -- which is that these other philosophers are alleging that logic/reason need NOT rest on evidence confirmable by the senses.

I don't think most people realize the extreme to which "logic" is deified in these other systems, so i think most people can get comfortable with Epicurus' perspective relatively quickly -- as for those who can't --- I guess we just have to acknowledge that not everyone is going to be open to accepting the Epicurean view of the universe. And in truth the majority of people, especially today with all the religious indoctrination that we have, probably are not good candidates.

One way of getting to that early too is to discuss the issue that mathematical modeling is not reality, any more than the map, no matter how detailed it is, is the same are the geography that is being mapped. Explaining this clearly ought to help deal with the common allegations that Epicurus is anti-science or anti-reason in the first place.

And that's necessary to explain why Epicurus said without contradiction that:

16. In but few things chance hinders a wise man, but the greatest and most important matters, reason has ordained, and throughout the whole period of life does and will ordain.

I found this part of a review of Konstan Tsouna - Konstan-AJPReviewbyVoulaTsouna.pdfby Voula Tsouna. I think i agree with Konstan, and disagree with her, particular in the part I underlined in red, where I think Tsouna is wrong (I agree with the blue and disagree with the red):

Maybe to be more precise, I don't have a dog in the fight about "rational or non-rational part of the soul" at least at this point, but I think that the part in blue (absence of rationalizing / opinion) is absolutely necessary for something to make sense to be part of the Epicurean "canon of truth." This is where I strongly disagree with the "other Epicureans" or "Epicureans generally" or whatever, who deviated from Epicurus and included more into the canon of truth, apparently because they did not understand why Epicurus was so adamant about this distinction, as DeWitt points out. (And by doing so they introduce a "feedback loop" which destroys the "neutrality" of the canon and allows "opinion" to take over).

It's not clear to me why Tsouna would want to advocate the position in the parts indicated in red unless she was taking the part of these "other Epicureans" against Epicurus, and she is trying to rescue "reason" to make it more of a component of the canon of truth than Epicurus saw it to be --- and that would be a motivation we would expect many "academics" to take, as a way to water down Epicurus' conclusion and perhaps be accommodating to Epicurus' Platonic/Aristotelian/Stoic enemies.

And I definitely think this part of "managing expectations"..... it's important that people realize that the "Canon of Truth' is not going to mean truth in the sense of "divine revelation" or "absolutely universal ethics" or things like that.

I see we touched on some of these issues before (four years ago), but not thoroughly: Passions / Emotions / Feelings - The Second Leg of the Canon of Truth

For example:

Haris Dimitriadis The word passions needs special care because its meaning has been influenced by the definition of the soul that Plato gave. He imagined the soul as a chariot in which, logic-wisdom was the driver, and the two horses were the feelings and the desires. The feelings were obedient to the driver's instructions, and they contributed to the driver's guides to take under control the second horse, which was expressing the desires=passions of the body. To Plato the material body was the source of unhappiness and this was referred by him as the tomb of the mind. So to Plato passions reflected the desires of the body, which by nature are difficult to get hold on to.As regards then Democritus saying is risky to interpret it according to the platonian terminology because they had different views. They both lived in the same time period but Democritus was about 30 years older. Plato by his influence managed to distort the initial meaning of the word passion and hence makes difficult for us to know what Deemocritus meant exactly by the saying.

December 31, 2016 at 11:52amCassius Amicus Those are exactly the kinds of concerns I had in mind. In order to even begin to dig further we would presumably need the greek version of the fragment, and then compare the word choice to the word choice in Diogenes Laertius, who is himself giving his own summary and apparently not a direct quote. But rather than the end of the question I still think we are at the beginning. In discussing Epicurus we really need a firm statement of the "name" of the third leg of the canon as Epicurus used the term. Other than the two statements in DL I quoted I am not sure there is a direct statement in the core texts we have of the name of this third leg.

I personally refer to it as "the faculty of pleasure and pain" but I am not at all sure that that is the best wording. "pleasure" or "pain" alone do not seem appropriate, and "feelings" and "passions" have all the limitations we are noting. It seems clear that this third leg is also a something we commonly think of as a "sensation" but that too is not a satisfactory word. As I think of final remarks to close out 2016 I think this issue is one that would really help to make progress on in 2017. Greater clarity on this central point would be critically helpful - and ought to be doable if we are going to represent that we have a good understanding of Epicurean doctrine.

Aside: Ok in the "there he goes again" department After finding the Konstan book, what do I look for and find, happily, to be a major indication of Konstan perhaps being on the same wavelength (as far as I remember I have not read any Konstan before)?

Unlike what appears to be the modern trend,Konstan includes several approving references to DEWITT!

You have quoted the critical part Eugenios and it immediately jumps out why the pathe are part of the canon of truth - they are analogous to sensations and function "automatically" such as not to be considered subject to error:

Rather than mapping pathē onto either the soul as a whole or the body, Konstan assigns pathē to the non-rational part of the soul, the seat of sensation. He locates the emotions, which “do not seem to have a special name in Epicurean theory,” in the rational part (11). Crucial to this schema is Konstan’s claim, based on Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura and Diogenes Laertius’s doxography of Epicurus, that Epicureans did not consider emotions such as fear and joy to be pathē at all, since emotions depend on memory and reasoning, whereas pathē do not. The upshot is that fear, as a rational emotion, involves belief and evaluation, and is therefore susceptible to error; whence the psychological roots of pernicious “empty beliefs ....

--and to emphasize the point that last sentence should say something to the effect "while the pathe do not involve evaluation, and thus, like the senses, are direct contacts with human reality to be considered as truly reported at all times."

In this analysis it is extremely useful to see that "emotions depend on memory and reasoning, whereas pathē do not."

VERY good direction I think!!

1 - Oh yes that IS extremely interesting and a promising path.

2 - I had forgotten about the word "passions" but yes - I like to use words that appear to derive from the same root so that is one to remember, even though the modern associations will need clarification.

3 - I want to read that article.....

(Aside: At the moment I think I am going to let this thread run without splitting off the detailed discussion of Feelings/Pathe since I do think this is directly related to the question at hand: the best way to manage expectations surely includes an accurate explanation of the role of pleasure/pain and the goal/guide of life.) However if at any point someone feels otherwise let me know and I can easily divide up the thread.)

If Bailey's "internal sensations" is referring to the same subject, then maybe what we're missing is a word or terminology that ties pleasure and pain more tightly to some kind of "internal natural guidance system" that does in fact stand shoulder to shoulder as an equivalent with "divine inspiration" or "logic" as a concept in the fight to determine what is the proper goal of life. As it is, when we talk of "pleasure" the connotation is so tightly tied to "chocolate cake" and the like that it is hard to see the forest for the trees. When we explain to people that "pleasure and pain" are the guides to life, it would be nice to have an articulate way to explain to them that Epicurus was not meaning to list PARTICULAR pleasures or pains, but was referring to the overall mechanism given to us by nature to fulfill that guidance role.

It seems hugely important to me to be able to start with the observation that Diogenes Laertius made that "the feelings are two - pleasure and pain" in order to explain the whole issue of absence of neutral states, limits of pleasure, and especially how the presence of one equals in quantity the absence of the other.

I bet that the ambiguity that we experience in the term "feeling" would almost without a doubt have been addressed and explained by Epicurus if we had more of the texts. On that same point, my bet is also that certain aspects of this, like with the issue of "preconceptions" are buried unrecognized in plain view in front of us in Lucretius - we just fail to recognize it.

Thank you Eugenios! I have been wanting to investigate this further for a while but not made much headway. It seems like a pretty important subject to me to clarify what is being discussed. Maybe we should split this off into a different thread or start one soon if we are able to find more on this.

I will paste the references here:

Others to consider:

Menoeceus:

Principal Doctrines: