Posts by Cassius

Also, before we take the analogies too far, this post is not to suggest that I think that no one at Cambridge understands Epicurus. I particularly like to recommend the work of David Sedley, for just one example. The point is a more general one, that the more specialized the person becomes as a professional philosopher, the more it seems they tend to find Epicurus mystifying or objectionable. When in fact "regular people" who are not academically trained (not "eggheads" in other words ) often embrace Epicurus and find that he makes perfectly good sense. That seems to have been Cicero's observation in ancient Rome, and I don't think times have changed much.

There is always Google Translate to Italian too

I guess I am also interested in your own reactions to the book, because I presume you've already read it through for your personal satisfaction.

Are you pretty much in agreement with Frances Wright's "take" on Epicurus?

Yep that is the point! And Cicero himself is a perfect example.

Also to be fair to Academia, promoting a particular philosophy is not their chosen role - they are theoreticians (at best) and they aren't paid to worry about what people do with their information.

To add to Hiram's point, we know that Epicurus also had slaves, so that would obviously not be a lifestyle that we can or should duplicate. That's a pretty dramatic example of the dangers of thinking that Epicurus himself lived a particularly ascetic / minimal existence, which I don't think the facts would support. In addition, I am not aware that any of the other examples of specific Epicureans we know about from history were noted for gardening or raising their own sustenance or really were in any way associated with an ascetic or minimalist lifestyle.

I think Hiram's leads on the Property Management material are probably more practical examples, with the goal being more "intelligent" and/or "sustainable" lifestyle choices, suitable to the level of means we are confident we can support and sustain, rather than geared toward minimalist or ascetic, but other than the links Hiram provides I don't have good online links to the direct reference material. That would be particularly interesting to look back at, because I don't recall every reading that Philodemus' material advises anything that is particularly ascetic, nor did he himself live that way if in fact he lived or taught in the area of what Julius Caesar's father-in-law's library at Herculaneum.

Right they aren't mutually contradictory at all, but that's the point: it would be wrong to always think that long-term is better.

DAILY LUCRETIAN FRIDAY OCTOBER 18, 2019

This nature therefore of the soul is contained by the whole body; it is the keeper of the body, and the cause of its safety: for they are both united closely together by mutual bonds, nor can they be torn asunder but by the destruction of both. As it is impossible to separate the odor from a lump of Frankincense, but the nature of both must perish, so it is equally difficult to part the mind and soul from the whole body, but they must all be dissolved. Of such interwoven principles are they formed, from their very beginning, that they enjoy a common life, nor have either of them, either the mind or the body in a separate state, the power of sense without the assistance of each other, but sense is incited in us by the nerves, from the common motions of both, and by their joint operations.

Besides, the body is never born alone, nor does it grow or continue after the soul is fled, for the water throws off of vapor when it is made hot, yet it is not by that means destroyed, but remains entire. The limbs I say, cannot with the same safety bear the separation of the soul when it retires from them, but thus divided, they must all perish and rot together. For the mutual conjunction of the soul and body from the very beginning, even as they lie in the womb of the mother, does so jointly promote the vital motions, that no separation can be made without death and dissolution; from hence you learn that, since their preservation so much depends upon each other, their Natures also are inseparably joined and united together.

But further, if anyone denies that the body has sense, and believes that the soul diffused through the whole body is only capable of that motion we call sense, he opposes the plainest evidence, and the truth of all experience; for who would ever pretend to say that the body has sense if the thing itself did not fully prove, and convince us of it? But it is plain, you'll say, that the body is void of all sense when the soul is gone: True, for this faculty is not peculiar to the body alone, but to the soul and body united; and we know the sense becomes weaker, and decays, as the body and soul grow old together.

And that we need to look for it and build it where Cicero saw it flourishing:

All of that is Good! I do not think I realized that you had read A few Days In Athens, or that you were translating it.

I would be very interested in your comments on the Francis Wright book.... Maybe your review of it, or something you plan for the intro to the Italian edition?

Lately I have been trying to discipline myself to transcribe at least a couple of paragraphs of Lucretius every morning before work, and that has been a help to make sure I get it done and prevent it from being pushed aside. These are pretty ordinary observations and there's nothing magic in them, but routine and habit can be very helpful.

Yes Godfrey I think this is in the general discussion forum so eventually I will move it to the one on Epicurean gods, and we can start related threads there.

Also: i am out on my phone so this is clipped but notice also how the limited way we see here that Epicurus viewed gods seems inconsistent with the "why call him god" "riddle" that is attributed to Epicurus by Lactantius? The premises of that "riddle" are so different from what Epicurus himself wrote that there must be major garbling in attributing that to him.

To clarify: The "riddle" sounds much more like it was written against a Judeo-Christian view of an all-powerful god, and is effective because it takes their presumptions of omnipotence, omniscence, etc and points out that their god doesn't use those powers. It seems to me that Epicurus would never have agreed to presume those attributes in his own definition of "god."

So my conclusion in making this comment that one of the most well-known statements of Epicurus about gods probably should be viewed with suspicion as coming from him at all. From later Epicureans maybe yes, but probably not Epicurus himself.

DAILY LUCRETIAN WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 17, 2019

Godfrey we may be trying to fit too much into a single thread - this thread is yours so you should steer it. We can open other threads on any of these issues.

But another aspect of this subject (to the extent it is the role of "the gods" in Epicurean philosophy) which we have not exactly touched on is the issue of "explaining how religion came to be and get control of so many people."

There are many passages in Lucretius, plus the reference in "on the nature of the gods" that talk about both how "anticipations" and "images" (which Dewitt thinks is different from the anticipations part) played a part in the rise of the viewpoint that there are such things as divinities in almost(?) every cultural/national group that developed over time.

It seems pretty clear that while some of the rise of religion was the result of corruption, the Epicureans were also pointing to natural reasons for its development, and that too is an area of interest for a lot of people that helps bring the big picture of "the role of religion in humanity" into focus. The issue of "images" floating through the air is to us today one of the least-discussed aspects of the Epicurean texts, but as with everything else I would not dismiss any of it without looking closely at it, especially since DeWitt argues that Epicurus seems to have been talking about the brain having the ability to sense certain kinds of "images" directly, and not through the eyes or other senses.

It's total speculation to try to make too much of that part of the images issue without more texts, but it seems to me that the best way to understand something is to try to reconstruct it as best possible. Then if we think something went off the rails somewhere we can separate out what we don't believe while still profiting from the part that seems to be well grounded.

I just realized we had not heard much from michelepinto since the festival. How are things Michelle? Any new activism plans?

Wow thank you Elli!

So just to be clear, you are agreeing with DeWitt that the surviving texts of Epicurus himself do NOT call the gods deathless / immortal?

This is a huge point that no one other than DeWitt seems to have brought out.

And so the possibility is that if later Epicureans spoke more loosely, then they were deviating from Epicurus in an important way (although I would first presume that we may translation issues there too, plus the standard issues of fragmentary speculation on those texts that come from Herculaneum.)

And if this is true that would go a long ways toward removing another objection to the Epicurean gods being "unrealistic."

Unfortunately we end up placing a lot of burden on Elli because she is the only one in command of the ancient (or modern) Greek, as far as I know, of those here.

As to the Mormon theology, you might find this "Godmakers" cartoon interesting :

It is certainly not intended to place the Mormons in a favorable light, but it is my understanding that the basic thrust of what they are saying about the theology is pretty accurate.

Back several years ago I was reading into this and was particularly fascinated with the words of "If You Could Hie To Kolob" - some of it seems right of Lucretius in terms of the infinite universe, gods infinitely existing, etc:

If You Could Hie to Kolob, 284 – William W. Phelps

1. If you could hie to Kolob In the twinkling of an eye,

And then continue onward With that same speed to fly,

Do you think that you could ever, Through all eternity,

Find out the generation Where Gods began to be?

2. Or see the grand beginning, Where space did not extend?

Or view the last creation, Where Gods and matter end?

Me thinks the Spirit whispers, “No man has found ‘pure space,’

Nor seen the outside curtains, Where nothing has a place.”

3. The works of God continue, And worlds and lives abound;

Improvement and progression Have one eternal round.

There is no end to matter; There is no end to space;

There is no end to spirit; There is no end to race.

4. There is no end to virtue; There is no end to might;

There is no end to wisdom; There is no end to light.

There is no end to union; There is no end to youth;

There is no end to priesthood; There is no end to truth.

5. There is no end to glory; There is no end to love;

There is no end to being; There is no death above.

There is no end to glory; There is no end to love;

There is no end to being; There is no death above.

I apologize to Godfrey for going off topic with mormonism.... The more interesting issue is set of questions posed by eternality / infinity, which I think implies that since life appears capable today of evolving from non-life, then presumably it has also done so for an eternity in the past, which means that certain life forms have had an innumerable time within which to evolve to deathlessness.... all of which poses questions that ... very difficult ... but presumably no more so than the alternative - that a god work up one morning and created everything, or that spontaneously one morning everything flashed into existence from nothing.

Which is presumably why Epicurus advised spending time talking and thinking about infinity and related issues.

Ending of Letter to Pythocles:

And most of all give yourself up to the study of the beginnings and of infinity and of the things akin to them, and also of the criteria of truth and of the feelings, and of the purpose for which we reason out these things. For these points when they are thoroughly studied will most easily enable you to understand the causes of the details. But those who have not thoroughly taken these things to heart could not rightly study them in themselves, nor have they made their own the reason for observing them.

Quote from Godfrey

According to DeWitt, Epicurus never described the gods as "immortal" but as "incorruptible". He goes on to say:

I agree this is murky, but this is one of those areas where I think DeWitt's training as a classical language expert, rather than primarily a philosopher, may give him the edge over other expert/translators. But this ambiguity is definitely in the category of unclear, and as even DeWitt admits later Epicureans apparently did call them "immortal."

i would really like to ask Epicurus, "So you are saying they are deathless. Does that mean on the other end that they were never "born" either, or are you saying that over time they developed the ability to maintain their deathlessness?

Which would be more consistent with the rest of the theory? I suspect that since eternity stretches backward infinitely without beginning, Epicurus would have been reluctant to say "there were never any deathless gods until point XX" which might mean that Epicurus would take the position that "deathless" gods have "always" existed as a class, if not individually.

Now we are talking angels dancing on pins, but i do think it helps understand a theory to consider how it might be taken to logical conclusions. I am pretty confident that Epicurus was saying that "life" as a "class" (not individual living things) have "always" existed somewhere in the universe (and probably a boundless number of places).

In an eternal and uncreated universe in which atoms combine over and over in accord with their properties, I am doubting that Epicurus would have seen a "first life" at any one single place in the universe. And so if life is evolving and "perfecting itself an infinite number of times and places, then that process of beings learning to become deathless would have also repeated itself and endless number of times.

Note: i am aware that in general, but not in detail) that the mormons take a similar position to their "gods." Which is why I gather current Mormons like Mitt Romney think that they can become gods of their own planets, I gather. Someone can correct my mormon theology if I am grossly wrong, and of course that has little relevance here, expect maybe to the extent that whoever the creative theologists of early mormonism were (Joseph Smith himself?) it seems logical to be suspicious that they might have been reading some Lucretius.

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I think Joshua's summary is a very good description of where most of "US" are - and it helps provide background to why this is not really an issue for those of us who have found our way to a forum like this.

But we are a very small minority of the human race, and it is my view at least (not sure if anyone wants to argue this or not) that the great majority of human beings in the world ARE concerned with the issues of "whether there are higher beings" and if so "what is their nature and power" and "what is humanity's relationship to them."

The Epicurean system provides rational answers to the questions for people who are concerned about those issues. And also, again speaking only for myself, of course, I have no desire to limit discussion of Epicurean philosophy to people who see no need (for themselves) to consider the "divinity" issue. That may offend the professional atheists who see "atheism" as the center of their philosophical universe, and want to shut down all discussion other that ethics in the here and now, but I have never felt much affinity for that crowd myself, and I see it as a major error to approach philosophy in that way. If there was ever a use for the term "ivory tower" that is it, because I observe these issues to concern every "normal" person in my own experience - and the closer we get to death the more it concerns us.

For all we know, Epicurus himself might well have personally gotten to the point that the issue was not of paramount importance to him. Regardless of that, doubtless he knew how important it was to the many who where his friends, and to many who would be relevant to his life, whether or not they were his friends.

Quote from Hiram

But No species has ever been observed to be immortal.

"Never before seen" was never a sufficient argument against atoms, and is itself not a sufficient argument against anything that can be conceived to potentially exist through deductive reasoning. Just as observing that "no one had ever seen an iphone" before this century was not a good reason to believe that they were impossible.

Quote from Hiram

All the stars are suns that, like ours, will eventually explode as supernovas.

And yes this is good current physics which I accept too (and Epicurus did too, since he said all that comes together eventually comes apart!), which is logically the probable reason that the Epicureans placed the gods in the "intermundia" between the cosmos, and not as residents of any single one.

The point here is that we can all come up with objections to why we personally may be skeptical about something, but to start and stop the discussion with our personal conclusion without even stating it in detail does no justice to the Epicurean argument.

The dismissal of the Epicurean argument as obsolete and unworthy of discussion not only hints at an "unseemly" disrespect to Epicurus' general approach, but it advances no one's thinking in understanding the Epicurean thought processes.

The thought processes applied to the gods touch on many other issues separate and apart from "the nature of the gods," not the least of which is the entire issue of reasoning based on analogy vs reasoning based on dialectical logic / ideal forms, which is in the same league of importance. Philodemus devoted his book to it and no doubt there was much other discussion about it, as this goes to the heart of Epicurean philosophy vs the Stoics and those who based their conclusions on "logic."