Posts by Cassius

Thanks Mike! Just as you were posting that comment I was pasting the same thing into an updated version. That is one of the most clear statements of the proposition that I am aware of.

Updated to incorporate your suggestion Charles - thank you.

Charles I am going to copy this into the FAQ thread on pleasure here: Glossary - What is the Epicurean Definition of "Pleasure?"

Note: Each entry will have its own thread so please make suggestions about the details here: FAQ Answers And Discussion

This is thread for discussion of this FAQ Question.

Yes excellent suggestion Mike.

That one is going to take more work. In the meantime I will point to Elayne 's article on this but coming up with a short summary would be desirable!

One thing that I think makes strong sense to include up front would be the issue of whether happiness is an abstraction vs pleasure being a feeling, or whether happiness is a particular type of pleasure (I do NOT think we can say that pleasure is a particular kind of happiness).

But I am not sure there is an authoritative text that distinguishes between the two (we can cite Diogenes of Oinoanda for the issue of "what is happiness? - life of pleasure...) but I think we need to be careful making claims on this without strong texts to point to.

Because in a glossary where we are defining happiness, the issue is not so much "the relationship between happiness and pleasure" as it is "What is happiness?"

Also, I doubt it will make sense to try to record these in full video for a while, but it would be very easy and helpful, before posting it to youtube, to make some "slides" to add as a video component to each episode. At the very least the text we are reading from ought to be visible as the video component, even if the podcast is mostly audio.

Yes, that is Lucretiustoday.com and I definitely want it to be a full podcast-type page with RSS feed and the ability for podcast apps on smartphones to subscribe to it.

I listen to podcasts on my telephone all the time so I definitely will make sure we have that feature.

Right now the wordpress site may have a subscribe function but I am not sure it is working to allow a podcast app to subscribe and get new episodes. I am going to have to decide whether to host the mp3 files on one of the dedicated podcast sites (like blogtalkradio.com or spreaker.com) or try to self-host. I think it probably makes sense to do a couple of episodes and then figure out the best way to host it.

I really want to be aggressive with technology and self-host, because I think we have enough talent in technology that we can do that. On related track I intend to take down "epicureanadio.com" from its current host and self-host that as well rather than paying a monthly fee. I feel sure right now it is essentially not being used, but if we can get an accumulation of podcasts to add into a rotation then it will make sense to gear that up again as a 24/7 stream.

I think in terms of the glossary that the basic point is to get people straight that we are not talking about supernatural gods that create universes, control things, etc., and then we can point them to the more detailed discussions that have all the details you are talking about.

I am thinking that the initial hurdle is getting people to hang around long enough to begin to understand Epicurus on his own terms, and so it's a delicate balance on how much to put in an initial FAQ and how much to leave out.

I'm thinking it makes sense for the FAQ to be manageably short, and then at some point in the future maybe put "I have read the FAQ" as a condition of posting here.

We already have lots and lots of discussion of this issue so I am thinking that accumulating the links here in these explanatory threads, with perhaps a short description of what is in each link, makes the most sense. But I agree that it does make sense too to incorporate some of the core texts in the FAQ.

Maybe the best theory of the FAQ would be something like: "Telling people enough about the basics to let them recognize that the term has a special meaning so they need to suspend judgment until they have had time to read more and absorb it."

Because we so frequently have misunderstandings due to basic Epicurean definitions of terms, such as "gods," "pleasure," and "knowledge." I am adding a subsection of the FAQ devoted to these words. We probably should also add "anticipations" as well. Are there other specific terms we should consider highlighting? <a href="https://www.epicureanfriends.com/wcf/index.php?faq/#category-208">https://www.epicureanfriends.com?faq/#category-208

Each entry will have its own thread so please make suggestions about the details here: FAQ Answers And Discussion

Thread for the discussion of the FAQ Answer here.

Thread for discussion of the FAQ Answer Located Here

Thread for discussion of the FAQ Answer located here.

The main discussion forum for this topic is here:

Nature Has No Gods Over Her - Epicurean Divinity, Piety, and the Question of "Religion"

I agree that you are probably correct Charles -- but for purposes of the thread (if you get a chance) on what do you base this statement? Are you thinking of a particular cite or comment about him?

The first episode of the LucretiusToday podcast is now available for download here. The home page of the podcast will be here, but discussion will take place here at Epicureanfriends.com in this thread. Lots of work went into preparing this episode, so please let us know your thoughts and suggestions.

If you have questions you would like us to cover in the next episode, please place them here, or if you like, submit an audio file and we will try to incorporate into a future show.

We've covered almost every topic we've ever thought of in the thread devoted to the SofE 20 Tenets, but the Volcano in the Philippines is probably distinct enough to branch it off into a new thread. I wish I could move this into the Welcome Mike Anyayahan thread, but i don't think I can. Let's use this thread instead.

Yes Mike, let us know how you are doing and if you are affected!

That's an interesting theory that I had not heard before - makes sense. I also don't doubt that at very high levels there is probably "public policy" pressure along the lines that is frequently theorized, but probably not proven, that the governments would hide evidence of UFO's even if they had it. I don't really believe that there is significant UFO evidence out there, but I don't doubt that governments worry about public reception of evidence if it came their way.

A former NASA scientist has written that he is convinced that the U.S. space agency “found evidence of life” on Mars in the 1970s, but the data was largely ignored.

The stunning admission by Gilbert Levin—the former principal investigator for the Labeled Release (LR) experiment on NASA’s Viking mission to Mars—came in an op-ed recently published in Scientific American. In the article, the engineer and inventor is clear that he believes he found convincing proof of the existence of living microorganisms on Mars in 1976, but the agency has since been unwilling to acknowledge what he sees as a clear fact.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/i…k&ICID=ref_fark

I very much agree with your post, with these comments;

Quote from Charles

Clearly those two examples are gross caricatures,

In the case of the Stoics I do not think that the example you gave is a caricature. The entire thrust of Stoicism seems to have been explicitly to undermine emotion and convince people of its unimportance. Much of the Stoic literature survives in relatively intact form, and when i read Epictetus there seems no alternative but to believe that the common meaning of "Stoic" is not a misunderstanding, but is exactly what they were seeking to accomplish.

Quote from Charles

, or taking things only at face value.

If we examine the surviving texts, its easy to see why someone could come to that conclusion of the minimalist perspective

On this i would suggest that the issue is not that Epicurean philosophy is being taken at face value, but that it is being selectively read, from among fragments that has survived in large part because of their ability to be reconciled with Stoicism by taking them outside the context of the full philosophy.

As you have stated or implied, the thrust of Epicurus' conclusion was that pleasure (a feeling) rather than gods or idealism or rationalism/reason, deserves to be considered the goal Nature has set for life. The Epicureans devoted huge amounts of time to explaining that, most of which no longer exists. in explaining that it is pleasure as a feeling, rather than particular types of pleasure that are individually found to be most pleasing, Epicurus logically included mental pleasures as very important, and also that an environment suitable to enjoying pleasure without distraction (pain) is desirable. Those are the passages on which commentators have focused because they find them compatible with their own views, rather than those which clearly state such things as that Epicurus would not recognize the good without the feelings of sex and other feelings which any ordinary uncorrupted living things feels to be pleasurable.

Your excerpt from Vaughn illustrates the process. Instead of explaining how Epicurus was providing logical arguments for use in refuting Platonism, which places the letter to Menoeceus in context, Vaughn immediately jumps to an unintuitive conclusion which effectively reverses the meaning of the philosophy, amounting to an assertion that when Epicurus used the word "pleasure'" he did not really mean pleasure as we know it. The result is that no one who has not been corrupted by anti--pleasure philosophy is going to find Epicurus appealing, and he is abandoned to that segment of philosophical commentators who have no interest other than making Epicurus sound like he agrees with them - as Stoics.