Posts by Cassius

I don't have an elaborate comment on Mike's suggestions at this moment but i suspect that a large part of the answer relates to DeWitt's discussion of "anticipations" in Chapter 13 of his book, along with the opening of the letter to Herodotus:

For those who are unable, Herodotus, to work in detail through all that I have written about nature, or to peruse the larger books which I have composed, I have already prepared at sufficient length an epitome of the whole system, that they may keep adequately in mind at least the most general principles in each department, in order that as occasion arises they may be able to assist themselves on the most important points, in so far as they undertake the study of nature.

But those also who have made considerable progress in the survey of the main principles ought to bear in mind the scheme of the whole system set forth in its essentials.

For we have frequent need of the general view, but not so often of the detailed exposition. Indeed it is necessary to go back on the main principles, and constantly to fix in one’s memory enough to give one the most essential comprehension of the truth.

And in fact the accurate knowledge of details will be fully discovered, if the general principles in the various departments are thoroughly grasped and borne in mind; for even in the case of one fully initiated the most essential feature in all accurate knowledge is the capacity to make a rapid use of observation and mental apprehension, and this can be done if everything is summed up in elementary principles and formulae.

For it is not possible for anyone to abbreviate the complete course through the whole system, if he cannot embrace in his own mind by means of short formulae all that might be set out with accuracy in detail.

Wherefore since the method I have described is valuable to all those who are accustomed to the investigation of nature, I who urge upon others the constant occupation in the investigation of nature, and find my own peace chiefly in a life so occupied, have composed for you another epitome on these lines, summing up the first principles of the whole doctrine.

First of all, Herodotus, we must grasp the ideas attached to words, in order that we may be able to refer to them and so to judge the inferences of opinion or problems of investigation or reflection, so that we may not either leave everything uncertain and go on explaining to infinity or use words devoid of meaning.

For this purpose it is essential that the first mental image associated with each word should be regarded, and that there should be no need of explanation, if we are really to have a standard to which to refer a problem of investigation or reflection or a mental inference.

And besides we must keep all our investigations in accord with our sensations, and in particular with the immediate apprehensions whether of the mind or of any one of the instruments of judgment, and likewise in accord with the feelings existing in us, in order that we may have indications whereby we may judge both the problem of sense perception and the unseen.

Quote from Godfrey

What may be intended as humor instead becomes a redefinition or repudiation.

I very much agree with that. I feel sure that the Epicurean texts could not have been totally straight and humorless - that would contradict everything we should expect. No doubt they would be earnest, but also incorporate humor and joking.

Thanks Trey. Episode two in a couple of days, certainly by the weekend.

Quote from Lee

True, said I. But do you, then, deny that pain is evil, and pleasure is good, in an abstracted sense?

Further, I would probably agree with Barwis that the answer to this question is "No" if we are talking "pain = evil" and "pleasure = good." Just as Barwis said, "that must depend upon the signification we give to the word good" and issues of terminology are important to honor, just as we have to deal with terminology issues in "absence of pain" not being equal to "pleasure" in every respect.

If Barwis were wanting to replace John Locke's blank slate by a strong call to return to "religion" or to "virtue in the Platonic/Stoic sense" in a way that Epicurus would have strongly objected to, this passage, here at the end of the book, is where Barwis would have hammered home the point.

And ONE MORE THING! You did not quote the FINAL WORDS OF THE DIALOGUE! ---->

Here we were interrupted by the presence of the ladies who came out to meet us; when our conversation turning upon more agreeable things, our discourses on these subjects ended, and were not renewed during my stay in the country.

FINIS

No hammering home of the virtues of religion and devotion to god and religion - instead they turn to the ladies, and to more agreeable (pleasing!) discussions, and the conversations "were not renewed during my stay in the country."

I do think that ending speaks legions as to what Barwis really thought!

Boy that reminds me of how much I like that Dialogue, and consider it almost to be a work of art in itself!

Excellent question Lee. No, certainly not fully consistent, but I think if you re-read from the beginning of the dialog, and especially if you were to read the "Three Dialogues on Liberty" that are similar in form, you would conclude as I do that Barwis' is at best a Deist and maybe not even that, and that his religious references are more superficial than fundamental. In fact in Three Dialogues on Liberty he makes lots of references to how religion is a foe to liberty.

Further, on this precise question, he also seems to be dealing with the definitions of "good" and "evil" which need to be dealt with. It seems to me that while he is admitting that pleasure and pain are the fundamental drivers, he is trying to carve out a caveat for the words "good" and "evil" as more broad terms, maybe in the way that we can describe physical exercise as good (in being productive of ultimate pleasure) while being painful while we do it. It seems to me that he wants to use good and evil to describe "actions" to account for the fact that the same action as we know can sometime be pleasurable and sometimes be pleasurable.

So in the end I think to answer the question by asking Barwis whether, if he is not referring good to pleasure, what IS he referring it to? And in reading the text he does not give a clear answer, other than maybe some lofty words. Now lofty words are trademarks of Stoicism / Platonism / Religion, so I would not argue with someone who wants to fault him for that. But my guess after reading this many times is that the kind of fault that he deserves is the kind that belongs to someone who knows the truth, but doesn't want to express it straightforwardly for reasons of his own. (Afraid?)

So yes taking this passage out of context it definitely rings with problems. But when you look at the rest of the text, and see that the purpose of the work is to undercut the "blank slate" theory by focusing on feeling, without giving any real credit to standard religion or standard idealism, I think the final result is something that I do think is very helpful for someone who is thinking about how to apply the Epicurean insight that "feeling" is the real standard of Nature.

Thanks Godfrey, I have not heard of that. Is that a phone OS program? I think the key is getting the podcast listed in the main central providers, and that is what I need to investigate next.

In the meantime I am pleased to say that we have Episode 2 of the Lucretius podcast recorded and it should be ready in a couple of days.

Yes I am thinking there is a root concept of will/wish/desire that probably is at the core, which is why "desire" and "pleasure" seem so interchangeable even today in many contexts

Amen! Anesthesia is not "therapy" at all. It is dumbing and numbing yourself down to destruction.

And all for what? For "VIRTUE"!

i think it would be interesting to dive into the latin etymology of "voluptas." The core seems to be related to "desire" of some kind, does it not, rather that strictly "pleasure"? I need a better online reference for the Latin because most of the discussions don't go into the roots of the Latin itself - they site the latin final forms which mean pleasure, but don't discuss the latin root forms from which it is composed.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/voluptas#Latin

JLR I just saw your comments about changing your user name - i have changed it for you to Lee. i hope this does not cause you any issues in signing in. if it does please email me - Cassius@epicureanfriends.com

i am perfectly prepared to grant that words can be used in special ways and that we shouldn't rush to judgment. Epicurus clearly used special meanings for words like "gods" which have to be taken into account.

But the accumulated thrust of stoicism is also very clear - words like "Indiffference' - "apathy" - "stoic" all have taken on generic meanings which cannot all be so far from the truth. The stoics were pretty clear about what they clearly were getting at, and what they were getting at was pretty repulsive, even in the form that it is used today covered over as "Therapy."

Quote from Charles

They are all soul, ignoring their bodies; let’s be all body, ignoring our souls. They act like they don’t care about pleasure and pain; we’ll stride ourselves on feeling anything whatsoever

Wow there is a lot of good stuff already Charles. However i hope he did not go too far in the direction quoted here because "let's be all body, ignoring our souls" sounds to me to be further than Epicurus would have stated it. It will be very interesting to see how this develops.

Thank you Trey I had forgotten about that one! As soon as I get a couple of "Lucretius Today" podcasts put together i am going to revamp the delivery system and make sure that it is findable by podcast apps like you are talking about. Thanks for reminding me.

Tonight (Tuesday night) several of us recorded another session which I will edit into Episode 2 of the Lucretius podcast. I think we can go in parallel and start a second set of calls in the very near future, and maybe Tuesday nights will work as well as any other night. Let's continue to think about this, give me this week to edit Episode 2 of the Lucretius podcast, and we ought to be ready to try a session with more people very soon.

Also as we post episode 2 we can ask for questions and see if anyone wants to hear us discuss questions.

Starting slowly but steadily.

Yes I think Joshua is correct. I think there was a reference in Cicero directed at Cicero's brother about Lucretius, but it escapes me at the moment -- a comment about the quality of the poem, I think (?)

there was a single reference that supposedly Cicero "emended" the poem before publication, but to my knowledge that is all there is. I think this reference was by Cicero himself, but no one knows what it really means.

Thanks to Charles for this research on Iphianassa:

It is clear that Lucretius treats the name Iphianassa as a synonym for Iphigenia. Homer (Il. 9.145, 9.287) and Sophocles (El. 157) mention a daughter of Agamemnon called Iphianassa, but in neither author is she the daughter who was sacrificed at Aulis (and in several versions rescued at the last moment by Artemis). The first known mention of this myth was in the Cypria, where, according to the summary of Proclus, the daughter was called Iphigenia (Kinkel, EGF 19; Bernabé, PEG 1.41). Hesiod refers to it in the Catalogue of Women, where he calls the daughter Iphimede (Cat. fr. 23a.15–26 + b M-W). From the fifth century b.c.e., the extant sources, beginning with Pindar (Pyth. 11.22) and Aeschylus (Ag. 1526, 1555), call her Iphigenia. Why did Lucretius choose Iphianassa?

Correction - Thanks Elayne!

Some people look at the pain of life, think that escaping pain is all that matters, develop a "gloomy" disposition, and even regularly question whether they would have been better off if they had never been born. It is probably fair to say that this typical of a personality that strongly embraces Stoicism, while the Epicurean personality affirms that the joy in life is well worth the pain.

You can find this division discussed in Thomas Jefferson's Head and Heart letter (in which Jefferson sides with the heart):

"Heart. And what more sublime delight than to mingle tears with one whom the hand of heaven hath smitten! To watch over the bed of sickness, & to beguile its redious & its painful moments! To share our bread with one to whom misfortune has left none! This world abounds indeed with misery: to lighten its burthen we must divide it with one another. But let us now try the virtues of your mathematical balance, & as you have put into one scale the burthen of friendship, let me put its comforts into the other. When languishing then under disease, how grateful is the solace of our friends! How are we penetrated with their assiduities & attentions! How much are we supported by their encouragements & kind offices! When heaven has taken from us some object of our love, how sweet is it to have a bosom whereon to recline our heads, & into which we may pour the torrent of our tears! Grief, with such a comfort, is almost a luxury! In a life where we are perpetually exposed to want & accident, yours is a wonderful proposition, to insulate ourselves, to retire from all aid, & to wrap ourselves in the mantle of self-sufficiency! For assuredly nobody will care for him who care for nobody. But friendship is precious, not only in the shade but in the sunshine of life; & thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine."

And you can also find in in Chapter Ten of A Few Days in Athens, where Frances Wright suggests that Epicurus would say:

"Should we, then, to avoid the evil, forego the good? Shall we shut love from our hearts, that we may not feel the pain of his departure? No; happiness forbids it. Experience forbids it. Let him who hath laid on the pyre the dearest of his soul, who hath washed the urn with the bitterest tears of grief — let him say if his heart hath ever formed the wish that it had never shrined within it him whom he now deplores. Let him say if the pleasures of the sweet communion of his former days doth not still live in his remembrance. If he love not to recall the image of the departed, the tones of his voice, the words of his discourse, the deeds of his kindness, the amiable virtues of his life. If, while he weeps the loss of his friend, he smiles not to think that he once possessed him. He who knows not friendship, knows not the purest pleasure of earth. Yet if fate deprive us of it, though we grieve, we do not sink; Philosophy is still at hand, and she upholds us with fortitude. And think, my sons, perhaps in the very evil we dread, there is a good; perhaps the very uncertainty of the tenure gives it value in our eyes; perhaps all our pleasures take their zest from the known possibility of their interruption. What were the glories of the sun, if we knew not the gloom of darkness? What the refreshing breezes of morning and evening, if we felt not the fervors of noon?

Should we value the lovely-flower, if it bloomed eternally; or the luscious fruit, if it hung always on the bough? Are not the smiles of the heavens more beautiful in contrast with their frowns, and the delights of the seasons more grateful from their vicissitudes? Let us then be slow to blame nature, for perhaps in her apparent errors there is hidden a wisdom. Let us not quarrel with fate, for perhaps in our evils lie the seeds of our good. Were our body never subject to sickness, we might be insensible to the joy of health. Were our life eternal, our tranquillity might sink into inaction. Were our friendship not threatened with interruption, it might want much of its tenderness. This, then, my sons, is our duty, for this is our interest and our happiness; to seek our pleasures from the hands of the virtues, and for the pain which may befall us, to submit to it with patience, or bear up against it with fortitude. To walk, in short, through life innocently and tranquilly; and to look on death as its gentle termination, which it becomes us to meet with ready minds, neither regretting the past, nor anxious for the future.”

Thank you Godfrey. I am pretty flexible myself so I can rearrange my schedule as needed, although I am presuming that what's going to make the most sense is perhaps 8 or 9 pm eastern so that it's a reasonable hour into the central and western time zones. Let's see if we can't get a couple more firmed up and then we'll see what we can do. I am thinking that it probably makes sense to pick a certain day of the week to repeat each week as we will no doubt have individuals come and go from week to week as they are available, so ultimately we need to just pick a day / time and try to get started.

Here below is the structure I am thinking makes the most sense as a goal. Overall, the structure breaks down into scheduling regular online sessions which can be recorded and then released as podcasts. It is probably a reasonable goal to target a group of moderators / key panelists / core participants getting together online at least once every two weeks to read through Lucretius, which can then be edited and released as the Lucretius Today podcast.

Lucretius can be difficult to follow and will take more preparation than probably makes sense for an "open group" format, so at the same time we can do a regular review of the Principal Doctrines (and Vatican Sayings) from start to finish, and open that discussion to a wider group of participants. This discussion would also be recorded and then edited for release into an Epicurus Today podcast.

We will also want to schedule at some point in the future a new round of the Norman DeWitt "Epicurus and His Philosophy" book review which we held last year.

Some of this is underway, some has been done already and is just waiting for a new cycle, and then some has not yet been implemented. All of it is waiting mostly on sufficient people to indicate interest in proceeding. If you are interested, please indicate your interest and availability in the particular forum. It would be most helpful if you could indicate days of the week / hours of the day when you are most available to participate.

Major Projects