Posts by Cassius

This last issue of relative estimations of pleasure deserves a lot more articulation. Elayne, when you get a chance, I want to be sure to hear your view...

Because in my view this is one of the key issues. I am ready to say that each of us is totally proper in considering OUR version of pleasure (meaning, each person's pleasure, for that person) to be exactly what each person is called by nature to pursue, under all the Epicurean rules.

At the same time, that does not lead me to the total relativism / nihilism of saying that "nothing matters" and that any choice is equally valid, because that does not follow at all.

I am thinking the logical conclusion is that we just have to get acclimated to understanding that (for example) how we spend our own lives are and should be of ultimate value to US, while at the same time acknowledging that others' lives hold that same status to them, and that we just have to come to terms that there is no Natural "single right answer" that allows us to say which of the choices is "best." Other than, of course, that the only guide that NATURE has given to us is in fact the feeling of pleasure and pain, very broadly and widely considered.

I think "pigs" were an intentional "in your face" argument to take things to the logical extreme, which is, in fact, following our "word game" that "pleasure" is the ultimate good, and that there is no universal sanction for contending that one person's pleasure is "better" than another's. We all have our private views about that, and we think our own feeling of pleasure is superior, but ultimately there is no "universal" justification for that view.

Quote from Cassius

Awe is something we find agreeable, anything we find agreeable is a pleasure, so awe still fits within the context of "pleasure as the ultimate good."

I can imagine that someone might object and saying we're playing a word game with "pleasure" here, and that we are being inconsistent because we aren't supposed to like or approve of word games.

I think Epicurus's response would be to say that ultimately this particular observation is not an endless serious of word reductionism, but in this case "pleasure" reduces to a "feeling" which is primary and which cannot be second-guessed and must be accepted as a foundational premise for which no proof is needed.

To the extent there is any accuracy in the accusation that this is a word game, part of the response would be that "they started it" when the opposition first suggested that "logos" or words in themselves were the foundation of how we should live. Epicurus in pointing to "pleasure" as the ultimate good was just showing people the way to unwind that false contention of the Platonists and so many others, and to get back to the ultimate reality of everything that matters to us, which is not "words" but "feeling."

Quote from Elayne

Although I find awe to be one of the pleasures

YES I think that is a very key point! Awe is something we find agreeable, anything we find agreeable is a pleasure, so awe still fits within the context of "pleasure as the ultimate good."

At least that's the way I think we're all using the word "awe."

Along the lines of noting that "supremely good" may be circular and unhelpful, let me observe this:

Quote from Susan Hill

there must be something bigger or more profound than the human mind in the universe

For the same reason "supremely good" doesn't advance the ball much, the words "bigger" and "more profound" also need further definition / articulation.

Quote from Susan Hill

I know this is the form we are used to seeing in paganism and Abrahamic religions, but for me, “divine“ in no way equals supernatural, and does not need to.

I agree with you, but this is one of apparently many situations where Epicurean definitions may depart from common usage. In this case, if "divine" does not equal supernatural, we probably need to be aggressive in articulating what it does mean. But does this definition really help anything or is it just circular?

That's a new word for me!

Ok yes that was what I was thinking was probably the case. I guess this is sponsored by a university or some institution that is concerned about publication rights, so that's understandable. In addition to that kind of program, I hope over time we can develop programs that are truly "free" to everyone.

Quote from Susan Hill

for learning and for feeling affiliated with a group

Yes I have always thought that "feeling affiliated with a group" is an important enjoyable experience that we're lacking in, and need to work to cultivate.

Quote from Susan Hill

because they can’t shake the feeling that there must be something bigger or more profound than the human mind in the universe.

Ok that's the profound issue with lots of ramifications. It can easily lead to a "supernatural creator" argument that would be irreconcilable with Epicurean physics on the nature of the universe, and yet it is clear the Epicureans saw a feeling of "reverence" to be a very legitimate part of their philosophy. There's of course all the discussion in Lucretius about the gods, in the opening of Book 1 and in the rest of the book two, and there's that saying to the effect of "Thanks be to blessed Nature that she has made what is necessary easy to obtain, and ... what is necessary easy to obtain, and what is not easy unnecessary."

Combined in that last saying you've got an attitude that is either reverence or close to reverence, combined with a word "blessed" that describes something similar, even if all of it is completely natural and absolutely not part of a divine creator of the universe.

We have not tended to talk about this much - I kind of associate it in my mind with the category of "images," which we also don't talk about much but which I think has great potential for being explored. With images, however, the issue is more plainly non-supernatural, in that everyone understands implicitly that the senses of sight and hearing and other things imply a movement of "atoms" across space (presumably from object to our eyes) that supernatural gods aren't necessarily involved in.

With the topic of divinity though (and eternality and infinity, which have some of the same issues) it's more important to keep the lines of distinction clear. I know not everyone thinks the same way about these issues or considers them to be important, but I personally consider the category something that I hope anyone interested in it will explore and post about. I think it's related to the "sense of being affiliated" feeling that is important to a lot of people to have, and important to cultivate if we expect to develop anything more than just a small group of isolated period in a small corner of the internet.

And all this is also related to the creationism arguments about "design" and how those should be evaluated logically. The issue of how organization can arise from non-organization is closely related to whether life can emerge from non-life. Even as I type this I have several tracks of mind about it. Living beings are surely made from non-living components. But that not the same issue as whether that process of life from non-life is ongoing and continuous (I think it probably is, but I'm not 100% sure how to express that). There's also the "infinity / eternality" issue, which presumably means that there's no way to go behind the issue that the universe (as a whole) is eternal and so living things have always existed somewhere just as has the non-living. Similarly, under Epicurean theory, were the individual gods at one point "born," or has there eternally been a "race of gods" that has always existed somewhere, just like there has been a spectrum of living beings existing somewhere eternally?

I personally don't think these issues are answered or made irrelevant by "big bang" or other physics theories indicating that "the universe" had a beginning point in time. That's because personally I think Epicurus took the "logical position" that the universe cannot possibly have an end point, so whatever "big bang" we are observing is "local" rather than "universal." The interplay between "logical position" and "local experiments and their interpretations" is very hard to sort out.

Going back to the recently quoted excerpt from the letter to Velleius, it seems clear that Epicurus did in fact seem more willing to accept a logical position in an area we today might find to be overreaching:

“Moreover there is the supremely potent principle of infinity, which claims the closest and most careful study; we must understand that it has in the sum of things everything has its exact match and counterpart. This property is termed by Epicurus isonomia, or the principle of uniform distribution. From this principle it follows that if the whole number of mortals be so many, there must exist no less a number of immortals, and if the causes of destruction are beyond count, the causes of conservation also are bound to be infinite.

All these are issues that i do not know the answer to, but I think that those who are interested in should pursue, and I would tell anyone interested in them to let's set up a subforum to post our thoughts and explorations over time.

Ok - thanks Michele. Just curious - is there a reason for that? I don't really travel in academic circles -- is there some reason that a professional who gives a public lecture, or an entity that sponsors a public lecture, would not want that available publicly afterwards? Some kind of concern for intellectual property or something?

Michele I am very interested in several of those presentations but I am worried that my schedule is not going to allow me to view this live. I am going to try to make at least part of it, but I would appreciate it if you could help me be alert to see if they are going to post anywhere links so people can view the presentations afterward. Thanks very much for alerting us about this! I know that I definitely am interested in most anything Voula Tsouna has to say about Epicurus, and I am looking forward to finding out more about these other lecturers.

Looks like THESE are the presentations:

Thank you Michele!

Yes there was some good teamwork there. That was back when we had Elli actively with us. Hopefully she will be back with us soon - she is a dynamo, and of course you know Elayne is too. Elli was reluctant to be on podcasts because of course her first language is Greek, but she's an incredible resource and a "hoot" to deal with

I will re-read it. I remember it ending on sort of a cliffhanging note, but I don't remember the rest.

Quote from Elayne

To me, virtue is any deliberate behavior that leads to more pleasure than pain, for the individual. The actual behavior may not always be pleasurable at the time, but the overall results are, or we would not label it virtue. It's because of the pleasure that we have come up with this whole conceptual category "virtue"-- but there isn't any freestanding thing such as virtue.

I agree with you, but I think this is where we have a huge road ahead to articulate this in a firm way. I don't think people really even hear us when we contend that "virtue" is relative to pleasure rather than absolute. Possibly the best text material we have is the discussion in "On Ends" where the virtues are discussed as desirable because they produce pleasure, but that probably doesn't make it clear enough that it isn't virtue at all unless it produces pleasure. That's the next step in the chain reasoning that's essential to take and needs a lot more articulation.

Quote from Elayne

This is the kind of talk that leads people to imagine Epicureans as vacuously grinning Moonies, handing out flowers to each other in the airport.

That's a great line, and exactly accurate I think!

Quote from Elayne

In the last section, about the morality of the "involved" model of gods, her failure to clearly incorporate the nature of the "good" as subjective (not universal) pleasure has again led to a big muddle. That is probably worth a separate post.

Yes I would definitely like to see you expand that. Are you talking about the last chapter where he gives a speech denouncing religion? I really don't remember the details of that too well, and maybe the reason is because it is more a muddle than I remember. I remember it being a strong denunciation of religion, but I don't remember much more than that.

Please be sure to see Elayne's thread here: Problems in Frances Wright's "A Few Days in Athens"

I will have lots more to say about this but immediately wanted to say "thank you!" Elayne, this is excellent commentary.

It's been years now since I first read AFDIA and yes I remember having several reservations with it, but your comments are more detailed than I ever wrote down then or since then.

I remember I definitely thought that she was embracing determinism, and that her view of the Epicurean gods was misstating what Epicurus said (which is worse than disagreeing, to put different words in his mouth), but these points you are raising are at least as important as those.

I remember that my primary reaction has always been in "relative" terms -- that Wright was contrasting Epicurus with the Stoics and showing the inferiority of Zeno's approach, and that to an extent she was at least defining pleasure most of the time in a somewhat normal way.

I was so relieved to find someone who even seemed to "approximately" get him right that I was happy to find her.

But I agree with you that these limitations you are pointing out are major issues with the book in absolute terms, and they need to be pointed out so that any good parts are taken in this context and the bad parts are warned about..

I will go through and have more detailed comments asap.

Michele can anyone join that link, or can we distribute it to everyone who might be interested?

There is no doubt that there has been a lot of connection between people who are loosely defined as small-s skeptics and those who are Epicureans. The issue I think is that the Pyrrhonists are guilty of trying to have their cake and eat it too - they are willing to accept that they are able to gain sufficient data to act, but they deny (or imply) that the data sufficient to act constitutes "knowledge." This is one of the many areas where it is essential to be clear about the meaning of the words. The Pyyrhonists seem to want to assert that unless one has omniscience and effective omnipotence, then their opinion about what is "known" cannot ever reach a level where it should be considered as truly "known" under their view of the meaning of that word.

I interpret Epicurus as considering that to be a word game worthy of dismissal out of hand, and worse than that, as an affirmative obstacle to ever having the kind of confidence that is required to live life as happily as is possible for someone who understands the realities of the world. The reality of the world is that supernatural gods and omniscience do not exist, and it is foolhardy and a lie to assert that only such a being with those qualities is entitled to consider their opinions to be "known." Epicurus' epistemology is geared toward identifying a standard of certainty that is appropriate for reality, and for our reality as human beings.

There is a lot of this material in DeWitt, A_Gardner, that would be worth reading, because DeWitt asserts (I think correctly) that Epicurus put his finger on this as one of the worst possible philosophies to have., along with hard determinism, as they both guarantee that a person will be plagued with unnecessary doubts as to whether it is even possible to have confidence that happy living is ever possible. There are plenty of obstacles in the world that truly stand in the way of happiness without inventing word games by which confidence in being happy is by definition impossible.