This thread will address the question asked by JK:

What is an Epicurean viewpoint on dealing with anxiety? Of losing the pleasures that one holds dearest, such as losing friendships or a pet being sick?

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Quote from Nate

I was thinking of doing the same thing, but I'm questioning how effective Reddit is, as a whole, in promoting genuine Epicurean discussion.

Given the nature of the way things are, my view is that there are lots of productive places to check in regularly, including Reddit, but with the goal of finding and moving good people to more productive places, not investing a lot of time and effort into too many platforms. But it's all a matter of time and resources, and Charles is a good example that if someone is into a particular venue, like Discord, it makes good sense to establish a beachhead there. But as long as a platform is ultimately under the control of people who would ultimately disapprove of Epicurean philosophy (and most of them are under the control of such people) it doesn't make sense to me to invest more effort than is appropriate to be sure that when new good people appear, we find them and re-channel them.

Martin I know that you had this problem. When you get a chance could you try again too and let me know if you now have more space in your profile? thanks.

Sounds good Charles. Also, did you add a new tag line to your profile / messages? Looks like you selected s light font which is unreadable in the default light theme of the forum. Would probably be best to use the "remove font color"command.

Obscure: if you can, please go ahead and respond as a reply to the welcome message and I will in the meantime adjust the setting on the profile to see if I can fix that problem. That has come up before and I thought it already was fixed. Thanks!

Edit; Obscure, I have now dramatically increased the space available in the profile to the maximum. Please try again as it should work this time. Thanks!

Elayne is right. I am sorry that the reddit guys were jerks. That's why we needed "a place of our own" and I am glad and proud that someone as talented as you is part of it!

Nate what happened? The Epicurean reddit deleted a post?

I hope I do not seem like I am not advancing the ball. I am thinking in terms of how even to begin the approach. Is "medicine" a possible approach, or is "surgery" necessary first or primarily?

No I had never heard of that "Dover Bitch" poem but it is really appropriate for this thread! i am not sure I appreciate the attitude of this second poem either, but to the extent that it is a "dismissal" of Matthew Arnold's attitude I completely agree with it!

Edit: On the other hand we aren't going to make a lot of progress if we "dismiss" it as much as if we "diagnose" it

Returning to the issue of the post:

Quote from JJElbert

. The Victorians were the first generation to grapple on a huge scale with the direct knowledge of a suddenly vast, cold, and empty universe; they turned the instruments of science on Nature, and it terrified them. Doubt crept in where there had been Faith, and they were haunted by it. So I thought that as an exercise we could take a representative text from the period and apply an Epicurean balm to the intellectual and emotional trauma that we find there.

I wanted to look again at the topic and yes I think this is a big issue: can we apply a "balm" (in the sense of a bandage) without attacking the underlying cause of the problem, which is not the new knowledge, but the pre-existing attitude?

Quote from JJElbert

What interests me about this despair is how it seems to be brought on by the same materialism that in our philosophy is the very foundation of "joy, love, light, certitude, and help for pain".

Yes - agreed! Does that not mean that it is not the information, but some pre-existing disposition, that leads to the different response? What is that pre-existing disposition?

Quote from JJElbert

Humanity was suddenly, comprehensively losing its sense of fair proportions. To a bacterium, he is a cosmos; to the cosmos, he is a mote of dust. This vision of nature as vast, impersonal, and indifferent was new and wholly unnerving.

Here, not "humanity," and not "new and wholly unnerving" to EVERYONE, but new and wholly unnerving to those in the circle we are currently considering: Victorian England?

Quote from JJElbert

What Arnold's cosmos is missing seems to be the unifying and generative figure of Venus

Is it "missing" something, or does it have something added to it that makes recognition of the obvious impossible?

(In these comments I do not mean to be arguing... I am thinking along with the questioning, because I am still entertaining the notion that some people with some existing dispositions just simply cannot appreciate what we think is obvious, and will never appreciate it (perhaps ever) but certainly not until certain pre-existing attitudes are removed. In other words the issue may not be so much that of persuading a person that he or she should appreciate pleasure within their current context, but to recognize that continuation of the current context makes recognition of pleasure impossible.)

Wow that is dark and depressing, because just to make one observation, this last stanza is certainly incorrect. This would be as if to say that because void exists, there is no matter, or because pain exists, there is no pleasure:

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

I would say that from attitudes like this Stoicism is born, but I doubt even the ancient Stoics would claim this.

But you suggested that we apply the remedy. Let me think about that. However -- there are some attitudes and positions that are beyond hope, when the mind is so sickened by disease that it reaches the point of shunning reality in favor of nursing its pain. As Epicurus said, not all types of people have the capacity to become wise. As part of the discussion we might ought to consider the limits of remedies too. If this attitude stems from temporary darkness brought by circumstances then remedy is possible, but if for some reason the sickness is beyond he point of reversal, then recognizing that is a part of the prescription.

Welcome Obscure ! 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.

Thanks for joining us and 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.

12 Chance and Natural Law in Epicurean Philosophy - AA Long -

13

14

15

Happy Twentieth of November! Thanks to all who have been participating in the forum here. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to make the website suit your purposes better, and remember that the best way you can get more out of the site for yourself, and help the site grow, is to post new threads of your own, and respond to existing ones.

Daily Lucretian - Tuesday November 19, 2019 (Continuation of Book Three, Daniel Brown 1743 Edition)

And since we see the mind can be made sound, and be affected by the powers of medicine, as well as a disordered body, this is a strong evidence that the mind is mortal; for whoever attempts to make any alteration in the mind, or offers to change the nature of any other thing, must either add some new parts to it, or take off some of the old, or else transpose the former order and situation; but what is immortal can have nothing added to it, or taken from it, nor will admit of any change in the order of its parts: for whatever is so altered as to leave the limits of its first nature, is no more what it was, but instantly dies. The mind, therefore, whether it be distempered, or relieved by medicine, shows (as I observed) strong symptoms of its mortality. So evidently does the true matter of fact overthrow all false reasoning, that there is no possibility to escape its force; and the contrary opinion is either way fully refuted.

Daily Lucretian - Monday November 18, 2019 (Continuation of Book Three, Daniel Brown 1743 Edition)

And again, why is it, when the quick force of wine strikes through a man, and the insinuating heat works in all his veins, why follows a heaviness of the limbs? The legs no longer support the reeling body, the tongue falters, the mind is drowned, the eyes swim; noise, hiccups, brawlings deafen your ears, and many other evils, the consequence of such debauches; how could this be, did not the impetuous force of the wine distract the soul as it lies diffused through the body? Now whatever can be thus disturbed, and hindered in its operations, would (were the force to grow more violent) be destroyed and utterly deprived of future being.

Besides, a person surprised with a sudden fit of a disease drops down before our eyes as if he were thunderstruck. He foams, he groans and trembles all over, he is distracted, stretches his nerves, is distorted; he pants, he tosses and tires his limbs with strange and unnatural postures. The reason is because the force of the disease, driven violently through the limbs, agitates and disturbs the mind, as the foaming waves of the sea are enraged by the strong blast of winds. And then groans are forced from the wretch, because the limbs are tormented with pain, and the seeds of the voice are thrown out from the bottom of the breast, and hurried in confusion, without any distinct accent through the mouth.

The man raves, because the powers of the mind and soul are distracted, and their principles, as I said, broken, disjoined, and divided by the violence of the distemper. But when the cause of the disease gives way, and the black humor of the corrupt body retires into some convenient vessel, then the patient begins to rise, feeble and staggering; and by degrees returns to all his senses, and recovers life. Since therefore this soul is so tossed about with such strange disorders, and labors with such agonies in so miserable a manner, as it is enclosed in the body, how do you think it can subsist without the body in the open air, and exposed forever to the raging fury of all the winds?

I was looking through the other entries in this thread to date, and surprisingly I don't see the quote that is probably THE most important quote relevant to the connection between Nietzsche and Epicurus - section 58 of AntiChrist:

Der Antichrist 58.

In point of fact, the end for which one lies makes a great difference: whether one preserves thereby or destroys. There is a perfect likeness between Christian and anarchist: their object, their instinct, points only toward destruction. One need only turn to history for a proof of this: there it appears with appalling distinctness. We have just studied a code of religious legislation whose object it was to convert the conditions which cause life to flourish into an "eternal" social organization,—Christianity found its mission in putting an end to such an organization, because life flourished under it. There the benefits that reason had produced during long ages of experiment and insecurity were applied to the most remote uses, and an effort was made to bring in a harvest that should be as large, as rich and as complete as possible; here, on the contrary, the harvest is blighted overnight… That which stood there aere perennis, the imperium Romanum, the most magnificent form of organization under difficult conditions that has ever been achieved, and compared to which everything before it and after it appears as patchwork, bungling, dilletantism—those holy anarchists made it a matter of "piety" to destroy "the world", which is to say, the imperium Romanum, so that in the end not a stone stood upon another—and even Germans and other such louts were able to become its masters… The Christian and the anarchist: both are decadents; both are incapable of any act that is not disintegrating, poisonous, degenerating, blood-sucking; both have an instinct of mortal hatred of everything that stands up, and is great, and has durability, and promises life a future… Christianity was the vampire of the imperium Romanum,—overnight it destroyed the vast achievement of the Romans: the conquest of the soil for a great culture that could await its time.

Can it be that this fact is not yet understood? The imperium Romanum that we know, and that the history of the Roman provinces teaches us to know better and better,—this most admirable of all works of art in the grand manner was merely the beginning, and the structure to follow was not to prove its worth for thousands of years. To this day, nothing on a like scale sub specie aeterni has been brought into being, or even dreamed of!—This organization was strong enough to withstand bad emperors: the accident of personality has nothing to do with such things—the first principle of all genuinely great architecture. But it was not strong enough to stand up against the corruptest of all forms of corruption—against Christians… These stealthy worms, which under the cover of night, mist and duplicity, crept upon every individual, sucking him dry of all earnest interest in real things, of all instinct for reality—this cowardly, effeminate and sugar-coated gang gradually alienated all "souls", step by step, from that colossal edifice, turning against it all the meritorious, manly and noble natures that had found in the cause of Rome their own cause, their own serious purpose, their own pride.

The sneakishness of hypocrisy, the secrecy of the conventicle, concepts as black as hell, such as the sacrifice of the innocent, the unio mystica in the drinking of blood, above all, the slowly rekindled fire of revenge, of Chandala revenge—all that sort of thing became master of Rome: the same kind of religion which, in a pre-existent form, Epicurus had combatted. One has but to read Lucretius to know what Epicurus made war upon—not paganism, but "Christianity", which is to say, the corruption of souls by means of the concepts of guilt, punishment and immortality.—He combatted the subterranean cults, the whole of latent Christianity—to deny immortality was already a form of genuine salvation.—Epicurus had triumphed, and every respectable intellect in Rome was Epicurean—when Paul appeared… Paul, the Chandala hatred of Rome, of "the world", in the flesh and inspired by genius—the Jew, the eternal Jew par excellence… What he saw was how, with the aid of the small sectarian Christian movement that stood apart from Judaism, a "world conflagration" might be kindled; how, with the symbol of "God on the cross", all secret seditions, all the fruits of anarchistic intrigues in the empire, might be amalgamated into one immense power. "Salvation is of the Jews."—Christianity is the formula for exceeding and summing up the subterranean cults of all varieties, that of Osiris, that of the GreatMother, that of Mithras, for instance: in his discernment of this fact the genius of Paul showed itself. His instinct was here so sure that, with reckless violence to the truth, he put the ideas which lent fascination to every sort of Chandala religion into the mouth of the "Saviour" as his own inventions, and not only into the mouth—he made out of him something that even a priest of Mithras could understand… This was his revelation at Damascus: he grasped the fact that he needed the belief in immortality in order to rob "the world" of its value, that the concept of "hell" would master Rome—that the notion of a "beyond" is the death of life. Nihilist and Christian: they rhyme in German, and they do more than rhyme.

Charles (and to others reading this thread): I have prepared a blank outline of the book for ease of use in making notes on each section: Outlining Catherin Wilson's "How To Be An Epicurean" - A Blank Form

You can just cut and paste that outline into a new post of your own and then add your notes as you go along.

Everyone should feel free to make your own thread, preferably in this same sub-form; I would propose titles such as "Charles' Outline of Wilson's How To Be An Epicurean" for each thread.

The following is a numbered outline of the chapters in Wilson's "How To Be An Epicurean." If you are going to make detailed notes on the book, you might want to cut and paste this outline into a thread of your own and then fill in your comments under each section. You should be able to simply use your browser's copy and paste feature to select the text below and copy it into a post of your own. I hope this is helpful!

1. Part 1 - How The Epicurean Sees the World
   
   1. Back To Basics
      1. The Epicurean Atom
      2. Atomism: Three Consequences
   2. How Did We Get Here?
      1. The Epicurean Theory of Natural Selection
      2. Darwin's Upgrade: How Natural Selecton Causes Evolution
   3. The Material Mind
      1. The Mystery of Consciousness
      2. The Evolution of Consciousness
   4. The Story of Humanity
      1. The State of Nature and the Rise of Civilization
      2. Authority and Inequality
      3. The Lessons of the Past
2. Part 2 - Living Well and Living Justly
   1. Ethics and the Care of the Self
      1. Pleasure and Pain
      2. Prudence and its Limits
      3. Hedonism and its Problems
      4. Don't Suffer in Silence!
      5. The Pleasure Merchants
   2. Morality and Other People
      1. Morality vs Prudence
      2. Moral Truth and Moral Progress
      3. Why Be Moral?
      4. What's Different About Epicurean Morality?
   3. Beware of Love!
      1. The Epicurean Exception
      2. The Pains and Pleasures of Love
      3. Sexual Morality: Minimizing Harm to Others
      4. Using Your Head
   4. Thinking About Death
      1. The Epicurean View of Death
      2. Death at the Right and Wrong Times
      3. Abortion vs Infanticide
      4. Suicide vs Euthanasia
      5. Resisting and Accepting Mortality
      6. Don't Count on the Afterlife
3. Part 3 - Seeking Knowledge and Avoiding Error
   1. What is Real?
      1. Nature and Convention
      2. Things In Between
      3. Human Rights: Natural or Conventional?
      4. The Imaginary: Unthings
      5. The Reality of the Past
   2. What Can We Know?
      1. The Importance of First-Person Experience
      2. Resolving Disagreement
      3. Is Empiricism True?
4. Part 4 - The Self In a Complex World
   1. Science And Skepticism
      1. Scientific Explanation
      2. Can We Trust The Scientists?
      3. Living With Uncertainty
   2. Social Justice For An Epicurean World
      1. Three Epicurean Philosophers On War, Inequality, and Work
      2. Epicurean Political Principles
      3. Justice for Women: Nature, History, and Convention
   3. Religion From An Epicurean Perspective
      1. Belief In the Imaginary
      2. Piety Without Superstition
      3. Can Religion Be Immoral?
      4. Can A Religious Person Be An Epicurean?
   4. The Meaningful Life
      1. Two Conceptions of the Meaningful Life
      2. Meaningfulness For the Individual
      3. The Problem of Affluence
      4. The Philosophical Perspective
   5. Should I Be A Stoic Instead?
      1. The Stoic System
      2. Too Much Fortitude?
      3. Wrapping Up