Posts by Cassius

This is not to say that you should rely on me for the time of day, much less anything else, but I can say this:

I started studying up on Epicurean philosophy intensely in 2009, and have made the study of Epicurus my number one "hobby" since then. I have some personal differences with a few of DeWitt's interpretations, but I have not over that time found any single work that comes anywhere close to "Epicurus and His Philosophy" in presenting an understandable, well documented, and perceptive presentation of the big picture of Epicurean philosophy.

I don't want to oversell it because a lot more work needs to be done to expand on what DeWitt has started, but there's really nothing like EAHP in terms of an overall understandable introduction to and presentation of every major branch of the philosophy.

I give "A Few Days In Athens" high marks as well in the "sympathetic to Epicurus" department, but that is a much more narrowly-targeted work. Other than EAHP I am not aware of any book that I can wholeheartedly recommend to the average reader who says "I want to know what Epicurus was all about."

For professional philosophers and people who have a lot of background, there are many other good books with many other details, but not of a general nature like EAHP. And I would not dare send someone new to a collection of Epicurean works, even "The Epiurus Reader" or Bailey's "Epicurus The Extant Remains," until they have the general introduction that DeWitt provides.

Even starting with the Principal Doctrines, or the Vatican Sayings, or any of Epicurus' letters, is in my experience going to lead to too much confusion to start off with reading those.

So Polyaenus had at least one child as well!

Thanks for the clarification. I have tremendous respect for DeWitt's scholarship and have found no reason to doubt him on fundamental issues even after many years of additional reading. On the issues where doubt is warranted DeWitt makes very clear that he is reconstructing or challenging the consensus so you can easily know when to hold an issue in your mind as something to pay special attention to. The reason he is cited so little today is mostly because he disagrees with the consensus on things like anticipations and "all senses are true" but you'll have no trouble sorting out those issues and deciding who has the most persuasive argument.

I think part of the reason DeWitt is so good is that he not only clearly has a lot of affection and respect for Epicurus, but he was also primarily a classical languages expert rather than primarily a philosopher. To me that helped him stay focused on the main issues of how Epicurus differed from Plato and the others without getting too bogged down in the philosophical minutiae and unanswerable questions that seem to bog down so many writers into paralysis.

Gee WIZ this is such an obvious point and I don't know that I have seen it made very often - thanks to Charles for making it:

So Metrodorus had at least one son and a daughter!

"And let Amynomachus and Timocrates take care of Epicurus, the son of Metrodorus, and of the son of Polyaenus, so long as they study and live with Hermarchus. Let them likewise provide for he maintenance of Metrodorus's daughters so long as she is well-ordered and obedient to Hermarchus; and, when she comes of age, give her in marriage to a husband selected by Hermarchus from among the members of the School; and out of the revenues accruing to me let Amynomachus and Timocrates in consultation with Hermarchus give to them as much as they think proper for their maintenance year by year.

Why would we not presume that Metrodorus was following Epicurus' opinion even on this, as he did so much else? And unless Metrodorus was just sleeping around, and there is no real reason to think that other than slanders against the Epicureans, he presumably had at least one marriage to go with the children.

Mike as far as I can tell DeWitt did his own personal review of the texts since he was a classical language expert. Bailey was also an expert and did his own translation with extensive notes. I have his full set of detailed notes on his Lucretius translation. Munro also did his own full translation with extensive notes. There are significant differences too in the 1743 edition that I quote from, which differ from the others too.

Therefore when you say -

Quote from Mike Anyayahan

since I am still unaware which translation is authoritative.

I would say that there IS no single authoritative translation because no one in a position to know for sure has been alive for close to 2000 years. In every case we are going to have to compare the editions with notes and do our own analysis based on all the evidence we have to determine which one we agree with most.

Truly, however, in most cases, the basic position taken in most translations is essentially the same, and even in the case of this marriage issue the texts can be largely reconciled by pointing to the circumstances clause.

Unfortunately this is something we just have to deal with, but I think it's very manageable, especially since we have Lucretius in very good form, and Lucretius' latin is something that is much more accessible to many more of us than is even the Greek.

Does that address your question because I am not quite sure what part you think calls into question DeWitt's credibility.

If you are commenting on DeWitt's quotes on Bailey, there are many references in Bailey's texts as to how much he disagrees with Epicurean positions, so that in itself is a warning flag about Bailey, but when you know his viewpoint you can factor that in. Here, on the marriage issue, he might even think that he was setting Epicurus to look contradictory, but in doing so he simply followed the text and that helps us expose those who would change it.

Well then if that is the case Hiram (that the soul is physical) is that not additional reason why Mettrie should not have said " let's ... ignore our souls..." but instead something like "let's pay attention to the messages from both body and soul because they are both physical?

At this point it's probably not fair to focus too much on this passage in isolation, as we'll probably see from other material how Mettrie develops this. It's just that in the meantime it sounds like ".... ignore our souls" probably was intended to mean something like ".... let's ignore the idea of immortal or supernatural souls..."

Quote from JJElbert

Of course, an alternative consideration is that the translations are correct and that Diogenes Laertius got something wrong.

Yes definitely, it's always a possibility that Laertius got something wrong, and in fact DeWitt argues that that's exactly what happened on why Laertius' comments on preconceptions do not seem to match what Cicero recorded Velleius as saying in "On the Nature of the Gods." And it's kind of confusing but true that even though Laertius captured much more detail than Cicero did, Cicero is actually much closer in time to Epicurus than was Laertius, so it's probably necessary not to take either one as absolutely right on all issues, but to consider each issues separately.

So in my view while Chilton's conclusion is wrong, his info on what the text really says is helpful, and it is easy to explain why he is so eager to follow Gassendi and emend the text. Why? Here it is! Chilton is a devotee of the "freedom from pain" through a life lived as a minimalist school!!!

Mike this is the never-ending theme. if you think Epicurus was a coward leading the charge to escape all pain, then you will interpret him one way. If you think he was a courageous conqueror leading the charge against false religion in the pursuit of pleasure as nature teaches it, then you interpret him totally differently.

Scratch the surface of any negative portrayal of Epicurus and you'll find this 'absence of pain' / ataraxia analysis. Of course in the eyes of the people making this argument, they think this is a Positive! How do we take sides? How can we logically decide which course of life is correct? The answer isn't found in logic - the answer is found in feeling!

But here is Chilton taking the same old minimalist perspective calculated to appeal to the stoic-minded disposition:

I am aware of another article on this point by Tad Brennan, of King's college, London (he is a Brit so you know where this is going - toward the Stoic view). Brennan follows Gassendi and says the text should be changed to suit his disposition toward Epicurus, but here is the final paragraph, where he admits that even though he agrees that the first sentence should be changed so as to have Epicurus advise against marriage and children generally, he (Brennan) also admits that "nothing in the structure of Epicurean hedonism could justify the blanket prohibition." Too bad he didn't follow that observation in the rest of his article!

So he ends up realizing that nothing in the structure of Epicurean hedonism could justify a blanket prohibition on marriage and children, yet he is willing to change the text to put virtually exactly those words in the mouth of Epicurus!

THIS, Mike, is what we are facing, and why we have to dig into the text background ourselves.

Let me see if I can post the full article, but in the meantime here is the opening page of one well-researched one, and Mike you'll find the section in red of particular interest -- if Chilton is correct this IS an example of the reworking of the text to fit pre-conceived (negative) stereotypes! Unfortunately, Chilton follows the stereotype himself, and tosses out what the manuscript clearly says!

I agree with Joshua, although as to his point 2 I think that we have to decide whether Epicurus is talking in this entire section about wise men in general (ordinary people who want to be wise) or figures like himself who are primarily devoted to philosophical revolution. As far as I can tell we don't think that Epicurus was married, but we really have no information that I am aware of about any of the other Epicurean founding leaders, or about self-styled Epicureans later. Probably we'll never know the answer to that but my own expectation would be that most of them were probably married at least at times in their lives, and choosing to remain unmarried on principle was probably the exception. That's just my opinion and expectation of course, but I see no reason to presume that any other Epicurean other than Epicurus himself remained unmarried, and as to Epicurus I admit that only because we have a stronger historical record, while at the same time he was apparently accused of relationships with one or more women of the garden, and of course famously stated that he would not know the good but for the pleasures of sex, etc. But of course what we are really talking about here is not sex, but marriage and children, with the pleasures of sex being universally obvious, while the pleasures of marriage and children are much more contextual.

I would add that even in regard to Lucretius and his section on the perils of romance, there are passages where he refers to "our wives" (at least in some translations) and at the end of book four he talks about the benefits of things that we pursue by habit, which has a pretty clear analogy with long term relationships.

"They are all soul, ignoring their bodies; let’s be all body, ignoring our souls."

I think I noted this earlier but in rereading this post I think it bears emphasis that it seems doubtful that Epicurus would pit it this way, rather he would likely have tended to the pleasures of both body and soul, even recognizing that at times the pleasures of the soul are greater than those of the body.

It will be interesting to see if Mettrie walks this statement of his back or carries it further because the rest does look very promising.

Probably if we can find a source that digs into the Greek we can find the source of the ambiguity, but in either case they are saying that circumstances may allow for marriage, plus we can easily feel the pleasures of marriage, so I would think the bottom line even for the Mensch version would be that if you can find a compatible mate and have children, do it --- or else Epicurus was cursing Metrodorus Daughter and a male member of the school - which he certainly was not.

My personal conclusion is that this is a great example about how ones attitude toward Epicurus colors the way one tends to understand his meaning.

If you see Epicurus as a brave liberator who embraces the joys of nature and life then you interpret him one way, but if you see him as a timid hermit fleeing from all pain, you interpret him in quite another.

I think there are other threads here on this topic that ought to be linked to this discusssion (or we should point to them here in this one) but I know that one of the best arguments for Epicurean marriage is the Will of Epicurus, where he provided for Metrodorus' daughter to be married to a member of the school. This would be inconceivable if Epicurus had been flatly against marriage.

This is probably another time to remember the opening advice from DeWitt's book - to always remember that Epicurus was at the same time one of the most revered and REVILED of the Greek philosophers. And it is the REVILERS who won the culture wars, and who wrote almost all the books and commentaries that are left to us.

Here is my longest series of notes on this topic: https://newepicurean.com/love-marriage-…e-modern-world/

This reliability issue is a huge issue for me too Mike. I firmly believe that in a case like this, Bailey is the preferred translation. I'm not going to go so far as to say that I respect scholarship in classical matters 100 years ago across-the-board more than i do today, but I get the strong idea that standards in the academy in social sciences have fallen dramatically.

Now sometimes there will be more recent discoveries that can justify a change, but so far as I know there is absolutely no claim whatsoever that anything new was discovered to make the older versions untrustworthy.

This is why I defer to Bailey and even more so to Munro whenever possible - I believe that especially Munro to be much more "in tune" with Lucretius than modern scholars.

Now as to this version, I know I have seen notes saying that this text appears to be corrupted, but at the very least the translators ought to say so rather than leave it unnoted.

Yonge said the opposite of Bailey, here: https://archive.org/stream/TheLive…e/n477/mode/2up

Hicks agreed with Yonge, here: https://archive.org/stream/livesof…ge/644/mode/2up

Now which is correct? To me the answer has to come from putting yourself in the place of Epicurus and rigourously applying his views from the ground up, with a view of pleasure uncorrupted by Stoicism. I will go on record saying that even though I have no children myself, and even though I am fully aware that raising children can go awfully wrong, from a general perspective the raising of children is something that can be one of the most rewarding things (in terms of pleasure, the only real meaning of "reward") in life, and therefore it is something that Epicurus would never flatly rule out.

Even if we read these "wise man" passages narrowly as if he intended them to apply only to dedicated teachers like himself (which I don't think is likely to be what he intended) it's inconceivable to me that he would lay down a flat rule against marriage.

Much more likely is that marriage, like any other human activity, is something that he would judge entirely by its practical results, as even the Yonge and Hicks versions appear to admit when you read the passage in its entirety and consider the reference to circumstances.

I am being called away so can't write longer right now, but my view is that in general whenever a translator or commentator is pushing the idea that Epicurus held a "bright line" rule against any type of pleasure, that commentator is letting their Stoicism show, because Epicurus has clearly stated that all pleasure is good and therefore desirable, and the choice of whether to engage in any activity is always going to come down to individual circumstances.

So while I do doubt Bailey's support of Epicurus in a significant number of instances - he was very clear that he thought Epicurean ethics were deficient - I think that this is one passage that Bailey's version is to be preferred.

Quote from Hiram

t's an elaboration of PD 15, VS 33 and Epicurean Fragment 207:

http://societyofepicurus.com/porphyrys-epistle-to-marcella/

Yes I was thinking that it probably was something fairly mild about mild pleasure and reconciling ourselves to little, since that is what so many people seem to be interested in reading. And I see he was a NeoPlatonist so his interpretations are suspect ---- does he even cite Epicurus as his source? Looks to me like this is perhaps just another Seneca- like or Marcus-Aurelius-like mashup of totally untrustworthy conclusions, but I haven't had time to read back into the detail, just scanned your page.

GEEZ why can't people just focus and cite Epicureans rather than going for Neo-Platonists, especially for "foundational texts for an audiobook"? But I know the answer - they aren't targeting Epicurean views, they are targeting their views of what they would LIKE Epicurus to have stood for, which is pretty much Stoicism lite --

On the other hand he can't be all bad in my book even if he was a neoPlatonist if this is true:

Against the Christians (Adversus Christianos)

See also: Celsus

Porphyry, a detail of the Tree of Jesse, 1535, Sucevița Monastery.

During his retirement in Sicily, Porphyry wrote Against the Christians (Κατὰ Χριστιανῶν; Adversus Christianos) which consisted of fifteen books. Some thirty Christian apologists, such as Methodius, Eusebius, Apollinaris, Augustine, Jerome, etc., responded to his challenge. In fact, everything known about Porphyry's arguments is found in these refutations, largely because Theodosius II ordered every copy burned in A.D. 435 and again in 448.^{[10][11][12][13]}

Porphyry became one of the most able pagan adversaries of Christianity of his day. His aim was not to disprove the substance of Christianity's teachings but rather the records within which the teachings are communicated.^[14]

This, from the description, strikes me as more than a little slanderous of the Epicureans, if not of the statue

"By the late first century BC, the Epicurean attainment of pleasure applied mostly to eating and drinking, and the principle of moderation was less significant, as is evident in the proudly displayed fat belly and uninhibited self-satisfied demeanor of this portrait"

EDIT: OK I was at lunch when I typed that and I was far too mild. It's not "more than a little slanderous" it's absolute BS!

So "the Epiurean attainment of pleasure applied mostly to eating and drinking, did it??????? I guess that's why Epicurus churned out all those books on natural philosophy!

Well it/he/she is probably right about "the principle of moderation" being "less significant" because "moderation" is largely BS too! Epicurus teaches focusing on a goal and seeking to attain it, not "moderating" either in goal or in method. Leave the moderation to Aristotle and his "golden mean" BS!

OK as to "fat belly" so maybe that is consistent with Horace after the civil war was over. I will not presume that Horace had a fat belly when he was fighting on the side of Cassius and Brutus, but if he did then he quickly saw how disadvantageous a fat belly can be at times, and he wasn't devoted to it in every situation.

As to his"self-satisfied demeanor" -- NO ONE can hold a candle to the arrogance of a Platonist or a Stoic! If that would be the test and this image is "self-satisfied" then this must be a spitting image Socrates or Plato or Zeno the Stoic!

Charles I hope I haven't botched this new thread. Let me know if so

i will combine them!

velleius would have some spicy language about religion.

I was about to ask you because I cannot recall what is the point of the letter to Marcella?

There is so much good in the primary sources that it would be a shame to include too much secondary material.

And I wouldn't dream of putting the letter to Marcella or any plutarch ahead of the Torquatus or even Vellius material that Cicero has preserved.

The Torquatus material in particular is very hard to match, and probably a direct copy from an Epicurean work anyway even though it has Cicero's name on it.