Happy Twentieth to everyone! Over the last several weeks we've had some of our most active and best discussions in the history of the forum here. Thanks to everyone who participates - we are creating an Epicurean resource that will help many in the future while enhancing our happiness today.
The Thomas Jefferson passage you shared was delightful!
If you found that interesting, then i would add Jefferson's "Head and Heart" letter to your reading list too for a comparison of reason vs emotion that most people with a casual understanding of Jefferson will find very surprising, Although it does not reference Epicurus directly, I think it helps illustrate how deeply Jefferson understood the Epicurean viewpoint on the role of reason, which probably one of its positions that Academia / the Platonic establishment hates the most.
Welcome @Glamb54 ! Thanks for joining us! When you get a chance, please tell us about yourself and your background in Epicurean philosophy.
It would be particularly helpful if you could tell us (1) how you found this forum, and (2) how much background reading you have done in Epicurus. As an aid in the latter, we have prepared the following list of core reading.
We look forward to talking with you!
----------------------- Epicurean Works I Have Read ---------------------------------
1 The Biography of Epicurus By Diogenes Laertius (Chapter 10). This includes all Epicurus' letters and the Authorized Doctrines. Supplement with the Vatican list of Sayings.
2 "Epicurus And His Philosophy" - Norman DeWitt
3 "On The Nature of Things"- Lucretius
4 Cicero's "On Ends" - Torquatus Section
5 Cicero's "On The Nature of the Gods" - Velleius Section
6 The Inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda - Martin Ferguson Smith translation
7 "A Few Days In Athens" - Frances Wright
8 Lucian Core Texts on Epicurus: (1) Alexander the Oracle-Monger, (2) Hermotimus (3) Others?
9 Plato's Philebus
10 Philodemus "On Methods of Inference" (De Lacy version, including his appendix on relationship of Epicurean canon to Aristotle and other Greeks)
11 "The Greeks on Pleasure" -Gosling & Taylor Sections on Epicurus, especially on katastematic and kinetic pleasure.
Oh that sounds excellent - an anti-Seneca book should be very interesting in almost every aspect. So you have an untranslated French version?
Welcome treyh32 ! Thanks for joining us! When you get a chance, please tell us about yourself and your background in Epicurean philosophy.
It would be particularly helpful if you could tell us (1) how you found this forum, and (2) how much background reading you have done in Epicurus. As an aid in the latter, we have prepared the following list of core reading.
We look forward to talking with you!
----------------------- Epicurean Works I Have Read ---------------------------------
1 The Biography of Epicurus By Diogenes Laertius (Chapter 10). This includes all Epicurus' letters and the Authorized Doctrines. Supplement with the Vatican list of Sayings.
2 "Epicurus And His Philosophy" - Norman DeWitt
3 "On The Nature of Things"- Lucretius
4 Cicero's "On Ends" - Torquatus Section
5 Cicero's "On The Nature of the Gods" - Velleius Section
6 The Inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda - Martin Ferguson Smith translation
7 "A Few Days In Athens" - Frances Wright
8 Lucian Core Texts on Epicurus: (1) Alexander the Oracle-Monger, (2) Hermotimus (3) Others?
9 Plato's Philebus
10 Philodemus "On Methods of Inference" (De Lacy version, including his appendix on relationship of Epicurean canon to Aristotle and other Greeks)
11 "The Greeks on Pleasure" -Gosling & Taylor Sections on Epicurus, especially on katastematic and kinetic pleasure.
That's another name I've never heard of - thanks Charles!
I'm going to email the author when I'm done and ask if he is interested in how the science agrees with Epicurean Philosophy!
Excellent idea!
I don't think Epicurus' literal description of the swerve has turned out accurate,
Since I am not sure that he really gave a "literal description of the swerve" then I might not go that far. As far as I know there is very little left about it except a couple of passages in Lucretius, all of which are high level descriptions on the order of "we see this effect, and so it 'must' be...." But clearly yes, Epicurus' theories about atoms have to be considered more 'high level analysis" than exact clinical science.
Socrates. Pleasure is the last and lowest of goods, and not first, even if asserted to be so by all the animals in the world. And, according to the judgment which has now been given, pleasure will rank fifth.
Protarchus. True.
Socrates But not first; no, not even if all the oxen and horses and animals in the world by their pursuit of enjoyment proclaim her to be so;—although the many trusting in them, as diviners trust in birds, determine that pleasures make up the good of life, and deem the lusts of animals to be better witnesses than the inspirations of divine philosophy.
People who are new to the study and haven't read Philebus may be tempted to skip over the Torquatus statement where Epicurus grounded his proof that pleasure is good by observation of the animals. But if you skip over the background you'll never understand why Epicurus says what he says in places like the letter to Menoeceus, where he repeats the conclusion that pleasure is the goal, but omits this fundamental proof that allowed him to reach the conclusion. The letter to Menoeceus is necessarily truncated so that it can be a summary, but if you take it out of context you can easily misunderstand key aspects of Epicurean philosophy.
, but why ? Because he was "anerastos" (keep in mind this tiny greek word) which means he was never capable to love anyone and to be loved by anyone in the reality of life.
Elli are you referring to Plato or to Protarchus? And is this statement your suspicion, or are you referring to facts in the record that attest to this being the case (that he was loveless)?
Here’s another question that has been nagging me: how can The Swerve account for our volition? If all of reality is atoms and void it is difficult to understand how I seem to be able to change my mind at will? If my thinking is subject to the swerve of the atoms, how is it that I seem to be controlling my choices? Is this an illusion of choice? Am I somehow controlling the movement of atoms when I choose?
I agree with Josh and will try to add a little more, but this is such a huge subject that there is a separate subforum for it here: "Free Will" - Freedom of Choice Within Limits And Bounds vs. Determinism
The first think I would focus on is the part of the question "how can the swerve account...." I don't think that the swerve "accounts" for free will as much as it "allows" for free will. There is no explanation offered for the mechanism of the swerve in Lucretius, and it is strictly a logical deduction of the "it must be" variety in order to explain how atoms began bouncing rather than continuing in straight lines in the first place, plus as you say accounting for the fact that we observe that we do have some degree of agency / control over our actions.
There really is no attempt to explain a precise mechanism other than to relate speculations about atoms of "soul" or "spirit" being particularly smooth and light and relating atomic aspects like that to particular dispositions of particular animals.
Two things that come to mind to suggest for further reading would be AA Long's "Chance and Natural Law in Epicureanism" article, which I think is significantly insightful to observe that we need to be careful about how much impact to give to the swerve. The part that has stuck with me is that we need to remember that most things DO in fact operate "mechanically" and that the swerve is so slight that it only "breaks through" in rare occasions (such as allowing for free will and getting the universe started). Long observes I think correctly that the swerve cannot be operating to make everything indeterminate, or else it would destroy the rest of the Epicurean system, which is based on observing that regularity in nature arises from regular movements of atoms rather than from gods or ideal forms.
Another thing that is deep is I think best summarized in Frances Wright's A Few Days in Athens Chapter 15 where she observes that the implication of Epicurean philosophy is that we much reach and base conclusions on observations WITHOUT attempting to resolve every link in the chain back an infinite distance. Check out the argument here - it is probably best to read the full chapter, but especially the part that begins "“I apprehend the difficulties,” observed Leontium, “which embarrass the mind of our young friend."
So that's the most i can offer at the moment, other than this argument from Thomas Jefferson, which I think is consistent:
Jefferson to John Adams, August 15, 1820: (Full version at Founders.gov)
…. But enough of criticism: let me turn to your puzzling letter of May 12. on matter, spirit, motion etc. It’s crowd of scepticisms kept me from sleep. I read it, and laid it down: read it, and laid it down, again and again: and to give rest to my mind, I was obliged to recur ultimately to my habitual anodyne, ‘I feel: therefore I exist.’ I feel bodies which are not myself: there are other existencies then. I call them matter. I feel them changing place. This gives me motion. Where there is an absence of matter, I call it void, or nothing, or immaterial space. On the basis of sensation, of matter and motion, we may erect the fabric of all the certainties we can have or need. I can conceive thought to be an action of a particular organisation of matter, formed for that purpose by it’s creator, as well as that attraction in an action of matter, or magnetism of loadstone. When he who denies to the Creator the power of endowing matter with the mode of action called thinking shall shew how he could endow the Sun with the mode of action called attraction, which reins the planets in the tract of their orbits, or how an absence of matter can have a will, and, by that will, put matter into motion, then the materialist may be lawfully required to explain the process by which matter exercises the faculty of thinking. When once we quit the basis of sensation, all is in the wind. To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart.
At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But a heresy it certainly is. Jesus taught nothing of it. He told us indeed that `God is a spirit,’ but he has not defined what a spirit is, nor said that it is not matter. And the ancient fathers generally, if not universally, held it to be matter: light and thin indeed, an etherial gas; but still matter. Origen says `Deus reapse corporalis est; sed graviorum tantum corporum ratione, incorporeus.’ Tertullian `quid enim deus nisi corpus?’ and again `quis negabit deumesse corpus? Etsi deus spiritus, spiritus etiam corpus est, sui generis, in sua effigie.’ St. Justin Martyr `{to Theion phamen einai asomaton oyk oti asomaton—epeide de to me krateisthai ypo tinos, toy krateisthai timioteron esti, dia toyto kaloymen ayton asomaton.}’ And St. Macarius, speaking of angels says `quamvis enim subtilia sint, tamen in substantia, forma et figura, secundum tenuitatem naturae eorum, corpora sunt tenuia.’ And St. Austin, St. Basil, Lactantius, Tatian, Athenagoras and others, with whose writings I pretend not a familiarity, are said by those who are, to deliver the same doctrine. Turn to your Ocellus d’Argens 97. 105. and to his Timaeus 17. for these quotations. In England these Immaterialists might have been burnt until the 29. Car. 2. when the writ de haeretico comburendo was abolished: and here until the revolution, that statute not having extended to us. All heresies being now done away with us, these schismatists are merely atheists, differing from the material Atheist only in their belief that `nothing made something,’ and from the material deist who believes that matter alone can operate on matter.
Rejecting all organs of information therefore but my senses, I rid myself of the Pyrrhonisms with which an indulgence in speculations hyperphysical and antiphysical so uselessly occupy and disquiet the mind. A single sense may indeed be sometimes deceived, but rarely: and never all our senses together, with their faculty of reasoning. They evidence realities; and there are enough of these for all the purposes of life, without plunging into the fathomless abyss of dreams and phantasms. I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence. I am sure that I really know many, many, things, and none more surely than that I love you with all my heart, and pray for the continuance of your life until you shall be tired of it yourself.
Edit: Also, if someone were going to devote themselves to fleshing out arguments in favor of how human consciousness and free will arise from atoms, I would study the arguments collected and made by Jefferson's friend Thomas Cooper. I have found Cooper's "The Scripture Doctrine of Materialism" to be particularly interesting in dealing with my Christian upbringing. But again, this is philosophy, not an explanation of the workings of the brain.
Can this topic get confusing, or what? 
Nevertheless, in the end I am convinced that the basic issue is no more complicated than that pleasure is the ultimate guide that nature gave all living things to live by, rather than gods, or abstract logic creating its own goals, or idealism giving us goals set in another dimension. As for the debate on reaching that conclusion, yes it can get confusing, but in the end it's really not a matter to be proved by "debate" or logic anyway - it is a matte of observation and feeling:
This Epicurus finds in pleasure; pleasure he holds to be the Chief Good, pain the Chief Evil. This he sets out to prove as follows: Every animal, as soon as it is born, seeks for pleasure, and delights in it as the Chief Good, while it recoils from pain as the Chief Evil, and so far as possible avoids it. This it does as long as it remains unperverted, at the prompting of Nature's own unbiased and honest verdict.
Hence Epicurus refuses to admit any necessity for argument or discussion to prove that pleasure is desirable and pain to be avoided. These facts, be thinks, are perceived by the senses, as that fire is hot, snow white, honey sweet, none of which things need be proved by elaborate argument: it is enough merely to draw attention to them. (For there is a difference, he holds, between formal syllogistic proof of a thing and a mere notice or reminder: the former is the method for discovering abstruse and recondite truths, the latter for indicating facts that are obvious and evident.) Strip mankind of sensation, and nothing remains; it follows that Nature herself is the judge of that which is in accordance with or contrary to nature.
I just don't know how happy or sad was Cicero
I know I have seen one or more of the commentators suggest that Cicero really swung into anti-Epicurean mode after his daughter died, with the implication being that he just wasn't able to handle that.
That is something I should consider, too. On the other hand, I'm not used to Ad Hominem. I care less about the intention. Rather, I am more interested in the context and condition.
I think it is generally admirable to take that attitude, but unfortunately a deadly mistake, because many people (not all) do twist and turn and misrepresent the "truth" to suit their own purposes. Many people are honestly mistaken, but many are not, and those seem to be the ones who exert the most energy in manipulating other people. Even Epicurean philosophy, if you don't keep the fundamentals of the nature of the universe in mind, can be used to argue that ethics position X, Y, or Z is what "everyone" should adopt.
Personally, Mike, some years ago I came to the conclusion that virtually EVERYTHING I was ever taught from birth until graduating from college about religion, ethics, philosophy, economics, and much of the rest was somewhere between largely inaccurate and downright lie. But I am not a cynical or pessimistic person, and I don't think it had to be that way in the past, or has to be that way in the future. There HAVE BEEN people like Epicurus who seem truly benevolent and committed to being truthful. But such people have not written the history books, they haven't written the school textbooks, they haven't written most of the philosophy books, and they don't control the media or the government or any other institution of modern society.
The ultimate battleground so far is going to prove to be the internet, where the orthodox academic establishment does not currently have total control of the flow of information. But they are working on that, and it's important for "dissenters" to take advantage of this opportunity while it is available.
This is why I am also worried about which translation displays more fidelity to Epicurus' message. I don't know how to gauge it and which to trust.
Absolutely correct in my view Mike. It is impossible to place blanket trust in any of them, and I think the only way to do that is to follow what Lucretius (Epicurus) recommends in book one of the poem: start with the physics and basic epistemology principles, and never accept any interpretation / translation of Epicurus that conflicts with those basic principles. And since the universe and human nature have not changed in 2000 years in respect to fundamentals, we ought to be able ourselves to recreate both the methodology and the general conclusions -- just like the hunting dogs sniffing out prey under the leaves, in Lucretius' analogy, also with one step illuminating the next.
That is a huge reason why I think so many people go so far wrong, they do NOT start with the basics and hold to that standard for deciding how to understand the rest. If they would, most all of this confusion would be dissipated, even with the relatively small number of texts that we have left.
Norman DeWitt referencing Cicero:
"I do not believe he could have misrepresented the truth so successfully had he not understood it completely."
only because Torquatus describes the highest pleasure
Exactly! CICERO is the culprit (not Torquatus the real person, who was evidently a good Epicurean). [Edit: Or at least Cicero was one of the first culprits, or the most effective culprits, or the most relevant culprit, because it is HIS work which survived.]
I've always been very sympathetic to Cicero but when I consider his writings in this context my sympathy for his eventually "losing his head" is somewhat diminished.
Edit 2: There are also troublesome passages in the letter to Menoeceus, but those can be explained away by reference to context. Epicurus himself certainly was not intending to confuse. Cicero definitely WAS intending to confuse.
I think we are together you and I Mike, but I see a great potential for confusion on this issue, and indeed I think it is the main potential confusion that Cicero used to erect his main attack on Epicurus' theory. And it's the main "attack" used today to pigeonhole Epicurus into irrelevancy. Any normal healthy young person who comes to think that "pleasure" is the exact equivalent of "absence of pain" is going to close the book on Epicurus before reading any further. And indeed that's exactly what I think Cicero and most of the modern commentators who obsess on this point intend to happen.
Even setting up an elaborate explanation based on terminology is often going to be too late for most people who don't have the desire to become professional philosophers. It's my view that this issue needs to be hit, early, hard, and unrelentingly! Given that it is the focus of much modern discussion, it's already too late for 98% of the people who come here for them to postpone the issue and undertake a longer study of Epicurus over time -- they have already been persuaded by the academic phalanx of a deep error here, and they aren't going to make any progress beyond it until it is dealt with firmly and clearly. If they don't get past this immediately they are just going to join the "old crotchety men club" looking to Epicurus for another method of anesthesia to sooth the pain of their wasted time. 
Gosling and Taylor are being academically polite in describing current interpretations of the kinetic / katastematic distinction as having some "oddities," and they are being tongue-in-cheek by suggesting that the confusion may have been on the part of Epicurus. That is because, in my own words, it is the modern commentators who are confused, and the prevailing kinetic / katastematic interpretation of Epicurus' views is nothing other than BS!
I will break here from posting clips and truthfully the details of this discussion from here below in another subforum set up two years ago. No doubt we'll bounce back and forth between subforums, but if someone wants to start a substantive detailed analysis of this please try to use the main location: Kinetic and Katastematic Pleasure
This and succeeding sections of the Gosling & Taylor book are what spurred Nikolsky to write "Epicurus On Pleasure."
Norman DeWitt comments on the K / K distinction (or lack thereof) in "Epicurus and His Philosophy" -- "It makes no difference that some pleasures are static and others kinetic."
Here is an early part of the Gosling and Taylor analysis that kinetic and katastematic pleasure were not fundementally different to Epicurus, and the reasoning relates to this "quenching" / replenishment discussion:
OK here Gosling and Taylor begin to discuss how Platon and other Greeks recognized the deficiency of the replenishment model (and with this I think Epicurus would have agreed). I may paste some more clips if I find some particularly good ones, but I'll probably have to drop and come back to this later. The point for now is the there are inherent problems with the "replenishment model of pleasure" which we need to keep in mind as we discuss it. (Gosling and Taylor's paragraphs are alls sequentially numbered so 6.7.3 is all the page cite we really need)
Here, stating that the replenishment argument is used in support of how pleasure cannot be the good:
Yes Mike I think that removal of pain is one description of producing pleasure, but not the only way, as illustrated by the smelling of the rose example. There was no real pain present with the rose was smelled, or that was relieved by smelling the rose.
This issue (pleasure obtained by filling a need / healing a pain) is closely related to the "replenishment" theory of pleasure discussed at length in the Gosling and Taylor book as one of the theories of pleasure, but I recall that the book discusses how the Greeks abandoned this as a complete discussion of the process. I will see if I can point to some excerpts but it may take me as while...
OK a few clips:
1 - Illustrating Plato using replenishment as the basis of his theory of pleasure, which allows him to categorize it as inferior to philosophic pursuit:
