Posts by Cassius

Quote from Mike Anyayahan

I just don't know how happy or sad was Cicero

I know I have seen one or more of the commentators suggest that Cicero really swung into anti-Epicurean mode after his daughter died, with the implication being that he just wasn't able to handle that.

Quote from Mike Anyayahan

That is something I should consider, too. On the other hand, I'm not used to Ad Hominem. I care less about the intention. Rather, I am more interested in the context and condition.

I think it is generally admirable to take that attitude, but unfortunately a deadly mistake, because many people (not all) do twist and turn and misrepresent the "truth" to suit their own purposes. Many people are honestly mistaken, but many are not, and those seem to be the ones who exert the most energy in manipulating other people. Even Epicurean philosophy, if you don't keep the fundamentals of the nature of the universe in mind, can be used to argue that ethics position X, Y, or Z is what "everyone" should adopt.

Personally, Mike, some years ago I came to the conclusion that virtually EVERYTHING I was ever taught from birth until graduating from college about religion, ethics, philosophy, economics, and much of the rest was somewhere between largely inaccurate and downright lie. But I am not a cynical or pessimistic person, and I don't think it had to be that way in the past, or has to be that way in the future. There HAVE BEEN people like Epicurus who seem truly benevolent and committed to being truthful. But such people have not written the history books, they haven't written the school textbooks, they haven't written most of the philosophy books, and they don't control the media or the government or any other institution of modern society.

The ultimate battleground so far is going to prove to be the internet, where the orthodox academic establishment does not currently have total control of the flow of information. But they are working on that, and it's important for "dissenters" to take advantage of this opportunity while it is available.

Quote from Mike Anyayahan

This is why I am also worried about which translation displays more fidelity to Epicurus' message. I don't know how to gauge it and which to trust.

Absolutely correct in my view Mike. It is impossible to place blanket trust in any of them, and I think the only way to do that is to follow what Lucretius (Epicurus) recommends in book one of the poem: start with the physics and basic epistemology principles, and never accept any interpretation / translation of Epicurus that conflicts with those basic principles. And since the universe and human nature have not changed in 2000 years in respect to fundamentals, we ought to be able ourselves to recreate both the methodology and the general conclusions -- just like the hunting dogs sniffing out prey under the leaves, in Lucretius' analogy, also with one step illuminating the next.

That is a huge reason why I think so many people go so far wrong, they do NOT start with the basics and hold to that standard for deciding how to understand the rest. If they would, most all of this confusion would be dissipated, even with the relatively small number of texts that we have left.

Norman DeWitt referencing Cicero:

"I do not believe he could have misrepresented the truth so successfully had he not understood it completely."

Quote from Mike Anyayahan

only because Torquatus describes the highest pleasure

Exactly! CICERO is the culprit (not Torquatus the real person, who was evidently a good Epicurean). [Edit: Or at least Cicero was one of the first culprits, or the most effective culprits, or the most relevant culprit, because it is HIS work which survived.]

I've always been very sympathetic to Cicero but when I consider his writings in this context my sympathy for his eventually "losing his head" is somewhat diminished.

Edit 2: There are also troublesome passages in the letter to Menoeceus, but those can be explained away by reference to context. Epicurus himself certainly was not intending to confuse. Cicero definitely WAS intending to confuse.

I think we are together you and I Mike, but I see a great potential for confusion on this issue, and indeed I think it is the main potential confusion that Cicero used to erect his main attack on Epicurus' theory. And it's the main "attack" used today to pigeonhole Epicurus into irrelevancy. Any normal healthy young person who comes to think that "pleasure" is the exact equivalent of "absence of pain" is going to close the book on Epicurus before reading any further. And indeed that's exactly what I think Cicero and most of the modern commentators who obsess on this point intend to happen.

Even setting up an elaborate explanation based on terminology is often going to be too late for most people who don't have the desire to become professional philosophers. It's my view that this issue needs to be hit, early, hard, and unrelentingly! Given that it is the focus of much modern discussion, it's already too late for 98% of the people who come here for them to postpone the issue and undertake a longer study of Epicurus over time -- they have already been persuaded by the academic phalanx of a deep error here, and they aren't going to make any progress beyond it until it is dealt with firmly and clearly. If they don't get past this immediately they are just going to join the "old crotchety men club" looking to Epicurus for another method of anesthesia to sooth the pain of their wasted time.

Gosling and Taylor are being academically polite in describing current interpretations of the kinetic / katastematic distinction as having some "oddities," and they are being tongue-in-cheek by suggesting that the confusion may have been on the part of Epicurus. That is because, in my own words, it is the modern commentators who are confused, and the prevailing kinetic / katastematic interpretation of Epicurus' views is nothing other than BS!

I will break here from posting clips and truthfully the details of this discussion from here below in another subforum set up two years ago. No doubt we'll bounce back and forth between subforums, but if someone wants to start a substantive detailed analysis of this please try to use the main location: Kinetic and Katastematic Pleasure

This and succeeding sections of the Gosling & Taylor book are what spurred Nikolsky to write "Epicurus On Pleasure."

Norman DeWitt comments on the K / K distinction (or lack thereof) in "Epicurus and His Philosophy" -- "It makes no difference that some pleasures are static and others kinetic."

Here is an early part of the Gosling and Taylor analysis that kinetic and katastematic pleasure were not fundementally different to Epicurus, and the reasoning relates to this "quenching" / replenishment discussion:

OK here Gosling and Taylor begin to discuss how Platon and other Greeks recognized the deficiency of the replenishment model (and with this I think Epicurus would have agreed). I may paste some more clips if I find some particularly good ones, but I'll probably have to drop and come back to this later. The point for now is the there are inherent problems with the "replenishment model of pleasure" which we need to keep in mind as we discuss it. (Gosling and Taylor's paragraphs are alls sequentially numbered so 6.7.3 is all the page cite we really need)

Here, stating that the replenishment argument is used in support of how pleasure cannot be the good:

Yes Mike I think that removal of pain is one description of producing pleasure, but not the only way, as illustrated by the smelling of the rose example. There was no real pain present with the rose was smelled, or that was relieved by smelling the rose.

This issue (pleasure obtained by filling a need / healing a pain) is closely related to the "replenishment" theory of pleasure discussed at length in the Gosling and Taylor book as one of the theories of pleasure, but I recall that the book discusses how the Greeks abandoned this as a complete discussion of the process. I will see if I can point to some excerpts but it may take me as while...

OK a few clips:

1 - Illustrating Plato using replenishment as the basis of his theory of pleasure, which allows him to categorize it as inferior to philosophic pursuit:

Quote from Elayne

I will go even further and say that our innate pattern knowledge is connected to pleasure and pain.

I agree with that too. The nature of pleasure is a highly interesting issue. Sometimes people talk about Epicurus being connected with the term "smooth motion" (although I forget what cite they are pointing to) and that may be related too.

As to pattern recognition, which I think is an excellent term, I am thinking that a similar distinction between ideas and principles probably applies --- In other words we have a FACULTY of being able to recognize patterns, which some people do better than others or animals do differently than humans etc, rather than that we are born with a particular set of patterns already inscribed in our minds.

Just as the eyes are born with the faculty of being able to see, but as yet have seen nothing at birth.

Would you agree with that?

Quote from elli

For Epicurus, as he observed the phenomena and our nature there is not, for him, in a duration of time, an absolute, objective, and perfect pleasure or an absolute, objective and perfect pain. As, there is not for him an absolute, objective and perfect justice/beauty/honesty etc.

I agree with this too, and think it is a very important point. "Perfect pleasure" is probably a useful term to indicate "pure pleasure" (a condition of pleasurable experience when you are conscious of no simultaneous pains) but not to indicate that there is a ranking in types of pleasure indicating a single type of experience that is better than all others (that is it would be incorrect to pick out a single experience "the taste of apple pie" and hold it to be the "best" or "perfect pleasure.")

Quote from Mike Anyayahan

something that is produced by the absence of pa Users Online in and that will exist as pleasure togetber with that absence of pain that has produced it.

OK not to pick nits again but i think the "produced by" can be taken too far. Ultimately I don't think I would agree that pleasure is produced by absence of pain any more than it would be correct to say that atoms are produced by absence of void, would it? Yes the only way to remove a feeling of pain is to replace it with pleasure, because of the nature of the beast - if we feel anything, it is either pleasure or pain in the Epicurean scheme. But to say "produced by" adds another dimension with implications that cannot be sustained.

When you derived pleasure from smelling a rose, what pain did you remove to achieve that pleasure? So I think it is important not to carry "produced by" too far.

Lee:

Not sure I can "explain" anything but I can certainly try to give me current understanding from my reading:

Quote from JLR

It reminds me of the amazing experience of watching my newborn son search out his mother’s breast and begin to nurse only minutes after being born. I remember thinking how astonishing it was that nature had clearly endowed him with knowledge before he had even seen the world beyond the womb!

I would be very interested in comments from Elayne on this, as she is a pediatrician. Is it a matter of smell or touch or some other sensation?

Quote from JLR

I was always a bit uncomfortable with the apparent circularity in Aristotle’s arguments that what appears good is that which we desire and that we naturally desire what is good. Pleasure and pain seem to be the essential natural guides (or telos) that provide the way to really determine the ultimate good.

I completely agree - it is embarrassingly circular, and to that I would add that I think the "golden mean" analysis is embarrassingly devoid of substance!

Quote from JLR

I find myself understanding these anticipatory “concepts” or “ideas” as having some sort of real existence- even if only in the mind.

1. If what we are talking about is a faculty of anticipations with which we are born, I definitely think you are correct to use scare quotes around those words, as I think it is probably bright line unacceptable to believe that we are born with fully-formed concepts of ideas in the way those words are generally used. I believe the "blank slate" is wrong to assert that we are born essentially with nothing, but I don't think it is tenable to assert that we are born with anything requiring words or definitions, which is probably a requirement of the words concepts or ideas. That's why I like the word "preconceptions" almost better than "Anticipations," since this emphasizes that what we are talking about is something that precedes a concept, not something that IS a concept or is some kind of application of a concept.

2. As for "real existence" that's a hard one too, since that term implies materiality, and everything that goes on the in the mind is ultimately traceable, or ultimately based on, things that are material "atoms." I think what we are probably talking about here are "qualities" of combinations of atoms, rather than "properties" of the atoms themselves, or as some people say "emergent properties" or "emergent qualities." This would be similar to the observation that the atoms themselves do not have color, but when combined into bodies, bodies have color and many other qualities that did not exist in the atoms standing alone.

Quote from JLR

. I continue to wonder if they are immaterial.

I think this is the issue of "emergent qualities" that I just mentioned. Emergent qualities are not any less "real" because they arise from combinations of atoms rather than being a property of individual atoms at the atomic level.

Quote from JLR

Can you explain this existence any further?

How much of Lucretius have you read? There are some really interesting sections that bear on these issues, one of which that comes to mind is the reference to Helen of Troy around line 420. Here Lucretius/Epicurus is saying that "Bondage, Liberty, Riches, Poverty, War, Concord, or the like," are "events" of atoms (a word I think is much more accurate than "accidents") rather than "essential conjuncts" (properties) of atoms. The point that I think is important to realize is that "Bondage, Liberty, Riches, Poverty, War, Concord, or the like," are not any less real to us because they are not properties of the atoms themselves. It's at the "body/combination" level that we experience life, which is what us ultimately important to us, and it should not be a problem for us to understand how the two levels interrelate. The reason I think it IS a problem for most of us is our corruption through religion that we have become acclimated to believe that nothing is really important unless it has some kind of stamp of "divine eternal god-given existence" which is a totally false and nonsensical frame of analysis:

[420] All nature therefore, in itself considered, is one of these, is body or is space, in which all things are placed, and from which the various motions of all beings spring. That there is body common sense will show, this as a fundamental truth must be allowed, or there is nothing we can fix as certain in our pursuit of hidden things, by which to find the Truth, or prove it when 'tis found. Then if there were no place or space, we call it void, bodies would have no where to be, nor could they move at all, as we have fully proved to you before.

[431] Besides, there is nothing you can strictly say, “It is neither body nor void,” which you may call a third degree of things distinct from these. For every being must in quantity be more or less; and if it can be touched, though ne'er so small or light, it must be body, and so esteemed; but if it can't be touched, and has not in itself a power to stop the course of other bodies as they pass, this is the void we call an empty space.

[439] Again, whatever is must either act itself, or be by other agents acted on; or must be something in which other bodies must have a place and move; but nothing without body can act, or be acted on; and where can this be done, but in a vacuum or empty space? Therefore, beside what body is or space, no third degree in nature can be found, nothing that ever can affect our sense, or by the power of thought can be conceived. All other things you'll find essential conjuncts, or else the events or accidents of these. I call essential conjunct what's so joined to a thing that it cannot, without fatal violence, be forced or parted from it; is weight to stones, to fire heat, moisture to the Sea, touch to all bodies, and not to be touched essential is to void. But, on the contrary, Bondage, Liberty, Riches, Poverty, War, Concord, or the like, which not affect the nature of the thing, but when they come or go, the thing remains entire; these, as it is fit we should, we call Events.

[460] Time likewise of itself is nothing; our sense collects from things themselves what has been done long since, the thing that present is, and what's to come. For no one, we must own, ever thought of Time distinct from things in motion or at rest.

[465] For when the poets sing of Helen's rape, or of the Trojan State subdued by war, we must not say that these things do exist now in themselves, since Time, irrevocably past, has long since swept away that race of men that were the cause of those events; for every act is either properly the event of things, or of the places where those things are done.

[472] Further, if things were not of matter formed, were there no place or space where things might act, the fire that burned in Paris' heart, blown up by love of Helen's beauty, had never raised the famous contests of a cruel war; nor had the wooden horse set Troy on fire, discharging from his belly in the night the armed Greeks: from whence you plainly see that actions do not of themselves subsist, as bodies do, nor are in nature such as is a void, but rather are more justly called the events of body, and of space, where things are carried on.

I stumbled over this section for a long time as something that made little sense to me, and of course I am sure that my understanding of this now is still far from complete. But I think that the point of arguing that the rape of Helen / Trojan war "do not exist now in themselves" is essentially to point out that they are no longer "real" in the sense of existing in some eternal plane of existence like you (Lee) are talking about.

I used to wonder if this was related to our modern Idea that the Trojan War might have been "myth" and didn't really happen, but now I think the OPPOSITE. I think Lucretius was citing this founding story of Rome as something that was immensely important to the Romans, as something essential to their understanding of themselves, that was nevertheless not "real" in the sense of existing currently as atoms or bodies that could be touched. I think that Lucretius was pointing out to a Roman / to the Romans that the story of the Trojan War, which was of immense "real" importance to them, was important without being something that was "real" in another (Platonic? Religious Heavenly?) dimension. He was pointing out that despite its importance the Trojan war did not possess eternal bodily existence, a fact that we should not be disillusioned by, in the way we are trained by religion to feel disappointed, or to feel nihilisticly defeated, when we realize that this "eternal existence" is not really so.)

Quote from Godfrey

As I understand it, life is the greatest good. Pleasure is the guide to and goal of life.

That is DeWitt's formulation, of which the second sentence seems completely accurate as what Epicurus taught. As for the first sentence, I largely agree with it, but my current view/understanding of the issue leads me to focus on it being true only in the same way that DeWitt analyses the phrase "all sensations are true" -- as a statement where you have to be very careful with the definitions of the key words.

Here I think the main issue is that term "the greatest good." "Greatest" is probably clear enough, but "greatest good" has some major ambiguities, and i am not sure that Epicurus really endorsed a concept of a "greatest good" in the way that the term was used by the other Greeks. What is "good" other than pleasure? It is pretty clear that Epicurus held nothing to be intrinsically good - worthy of choice in and of itself - other than pleasure. And there are an innumerable number of ways to experience pleasure, none of which are intrinsically "better" than others in and of themselves.

I think in part DeWitt is focusing on his observation that "pleasure has meaning only to the living" and to the resulting observation that unless we have life, no pleasure is possible, which makes life that without which there is no possibility of experiencing pleasure. But life as a condition of pleasure is different from saying that something is a guide, or even a goal.

My current viewpoint is that a "greatest good" analysis (the framework with which Torquatus starts off) is probably not an approach that Epicurus himself thought well of, and probably arises from the Epicureans feeling obligated to respond to the Stoics and Platonists. Trying to define "greatest good" too precisely probably smacks more of a Stoic / Platonic tendency to want to come up with a precise definition in words of something that is inherently impossible to express completely in words. I think that is the feel we get from what Epicurus said that Plutarch summarizes as :

Plutarch, That Epicurus actually makes a pleasant life impossible, 7, p. 1091A: Not only is the basis that they assume for the pleasurable life untrustworthy and insecure, it is quite trivial and paltry as well, inasmuch as their “thing delighted” – their good – is an escape from ills, and they say that they can conceive of no other, and indeed that our nature has no place at all in which to put its good except the place left when its evil is expelled. … Epicurus too makes a similar statement to the effect that the good is a thing that arises out of your very escape from evil and from your memory and reflection and gratitude that this has happened to you. His words are these: “That which produces a jubilation unsurpassed is the nature of good, if you apply your mind rightly and then stand firm and do not stroll about {a jibe at the Peripatetics}, prating meaninglessly about the good.”

Welcome A_Gardener! I have heard Charles speak of you and I am glad that you decided to open an account here. None of us were born knowing about Epicurus so it is natural that we all go through a process of learning details that we were never taught when we were young, so it is only to be expected that people go through a process of weighing and judging. If we welcomed only people who were already fully "Epicurean" then we'd rarely if ever have any new people.

The rest below is the standard info that I post on every new user's welcome message, so I apologize for it being "boilerplate." However I think most of us here would agree that the sooner people read some of the material in the list, the sooner they will realize how deep their level of interest in Epicurus truly is.

Charles has probably already mentioned to you the DeWitt book, and I'll repeat that not out of slavish devotion to Dewitt, but because I really think that whether you end of agreeing with it or not, you'll find that DeWitt explains Epicurus in a way that is very different from standard modern presentations. DeWitt's qualifications were deep and he write's well, but the benefit of his approach is that he doesn't obsess on any detail (like absence of pain or atomism) but instead gives a very general overview of the wider scope of the philosophy and how it all fits together and compares with the other Greek alternatives. So if you have not read DeWitt's book you'll probably save yourself a lot of time in your formation of your opinions about Epicurus if you can read his book as soon as you have time.

Here's the boilerplate but again thanks for opening an account here!

Welcome A_Gardener! Thanks for joining us! 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.

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.

These are excellent examples of citations to eudaimonia, Elli. It is interesting to think about how it is we might be able to rival Zeus in eudaimonia, which is based on pleasure, rather than saying that we might rival Zeus in pleasure itself.

What do you think about that - was Epicurus intending to make that distinction?

Quote from elli

What are the mental images that are connected with concepts of words that the newborn baby has accumulated already in mind for the feeling of contentment as "eudaemonia" ? In neonates of some weeks, there are no words yet, not mental images with sheep and cows. Just senses and emotions/feelings that were born with them and are in the procedure of development and enrichment through experiences as their first social contact is within their family.

Right -- these babies are "happy" even though they do not know a single word, or a single point of logic, which shows that neither words nor logic are necessary for happiness at the earliest stages of life, to which we look as examples of those who are uncorrupted.

Quote from JJElbert

I've been somewhat scarce myself,

Far too scarce. If we'd had more of your poetry Oscar might not be taking a break

And whereever possible, it seems to me that Epicureans and the leading Epicureans gave examples in the form of "pictures" - such as referencing sheep on the side of the hill blending into a white spot, floating dusk for atoms, the shades at the Colosseum giving color to the Senators beneath them, etc. The point being that Epicurus necessarily had to use words, but his words were tied as closely as possible to "pictures" of things in everyday experience. And I think that is what he was referring to in the letter to Herodotus referring to following the first picture that a word evokes in order to not get lost in word games.

Quote

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. (Letter to Herodotus)

So probably another example might be that we learn much more about happiness by observing (observing, actual or pictures) examples of smiling people, tail-wagging dogs, purring cats, playing children, etc. than we ever learn about happiness by listing out 50 different words in different languages that allegedly mean the same thing, or looking up synonyms in a thesaurus, or reading about the etymology of any word for "happiness" in a dictionary.

Clarity of expression in dealing with happiness or pleasure ultimately comes back to those personal experiences in examples, not stinging together a series of symbols that, but for our definitions, are absolutely meaningless in Nature.