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

Thanks Martin! As usual my typing is atrocious. Fixed - changed to "pursuing."

Welcome @peterfulmer ! 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.

----------------------- Core Reading ---------------------------------

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 -

--------------------- Other Books On Epicurus You Have Read --------------------

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It applies to EVERY area!

This is getting to be very elaborate!

That makes good sense to me.

Part of what we always dance around in coming up with formulas is the issue of whether the goal of avoiding pain is somehow entirely separate or more important than that of pursuing pleasure.

That's where I think the perspective has to focus on that there really is not a conflict here. Yes there are times when a train is coming at you and your immediate attention is focused on getting out of the way, but in reality since the feelings are only two, then every choice, and not only when you are standing in the path of the train, but always, is basically that of avoiding a pain by choosing a pleasure, or choosing a temporary/smaller pain in order to experience a longer/larger pleasure.

Once your perspective opens up to including EVERYTHING that you experience/feel as either a pain or a pleasure, then there really is no issue of worrying that you are at any point "shifting into neutral" and doing something that is neither a pain nor a pleasure. Each and every action is geared toward the same ultimate result.

And that's why I also think that Epicurus seems to have tended to collapse the wording into saying that PLEASURE is the guide of life. Each time he could have said "pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain" but I think when the overall goal is seen as pleasure, which is really the same thing as avoiding pain, then it makes sense to talk in terms of the one word "pleasure" (even using the "accursed" term "hedonism") rather than always saying "pursue pleasure and avoid pain."

Because it seems to me that really both terms are encompassed in "feeling" and so ultimately what we are discussing is the competition between ultimate goals: Are the ultimate goals set by "feeling" or by "gods" or by "Ideal forms / virtue." And of course Epicurus comes down for "feeling."

i almost never use the word "hedonism" myself exactly for the reason you state.

Garden Dweller I agree your concern about hedonism, and i agree with Godfrey's comment re "rational". I think we are seeing the implications of Epicurus' deemphasis of " logic" . there is indeed a limit to which logic and reason can take us. We are really in the realm of "feeling" although even that word is surrounded with negative stereotypes.

except that "mindfulness" is almost trademarked by the Stoics

Yes those would be categories, but just as we can list specific aspects of bodily pains being replaced by pleasures, we ought also to be able to do the same with mental -- and since mental pains and pleasures are specifically mentioned by Torquatus as being capable of being more intense than physical/bodily ones, they are probably from many perspectives as important or more important than bodily.

I hedge by saying "from many perspectives" mainly because I know that sustaining bodily life is a requirement for any other kind of pleasures, but for most of us, sustaining bodily life really doesn't require all that much effort nowadays - or, at least, we generally have a lot of time to devote to mental issues in addition to bodily ones.

Is there a companion "Present Moment Mental Comfort Enhancement" to go with this one? I scanned back but apologize if I missed it.

One more thing I would add in addition to this is that it is useful, when thinking about quantity, to think about the analogy of a filling a vessel, as stated in the opening of Lucretius book 6 in the quote below. The point being made is that it is desirable to fill the vessel with pleasure, but in order to do so you must plug the holes that prevent it (the vessel / your mind / your life) from being filled to the top with pleasure. Primary among those holes in Epicurean doctrine are fear of the gods, fear of death, fear of pain, and confusion caused by the allegation that something besides pleasure has value in itself. An important corollary to all this is that once you have filled the vessel to the top, then adding more pleasure simply causes the vessel to overflow, which means it cannot be handled/experienced and therefore does not produce a situation that is any better than the vessel sitting calmly while filled to the brim with pleasures:

"For when he [Epicurus] saw how little would suffice for necessary use, and by what small provisions life might be preserved; that Nature had prepared every thing ready to support mankind; that men abounded with wealth, and were loaded with honor and applause, and happy in their private concerns, in the good character of their children, and yet their minds were restless at home, complaining and lamenting the misery of their condition; ***he perceived the vessel itself (the mind) was the cause of the calamity, and by the corruption of that, every thing, though ever so good, that was poured into it was tainted: it was full of holes, and run out, and so could never by any means by filled; and whatever it received within, it infected with a stinking smell.***"

https://archive.org/stream/tlucret…e/n577/mode/2up

Post by Elayne , answering this question:

This morning we have had a question about "how much pleasure is ideal for a happy life"-- instead of posting the question as is, I am posting it along with the answer for the ease of casual readers who may not go through the comments.

The good news is that Epicurus certainly did address this, but to answer it we need to look at the wording of the question itself, because there are false assumptions built in. Once those false assumptions are removed, I think you will all know the answer Epicurus gave, even before you see it-- because it is the only possible answer!

I am writing it in my own words, because these are things I have found to be true about my own life. In the comments I will link to a document that has his writing cited.

First, the word "ideal" is a key that Platonism has become a habit, possibly unconscious. There is no such thing. Ideals, ideal outcomes, ideal conditions-- these are all imaginary concepts. The universe is material, and there are no absolute standards/ways to measure or select for what would be considered the best, the good, the perfect, the ideal. So you never have to answer any question for yourself that contains ideals. Those questions lead you on wild goose chases, away from your pleasure.

Our guide for life is the same one all living creatures have-- choosing pleasure instead of pain. Humans will have many pleasures in common but some individual differences. So let's reword the question-- "how much pleasure will I find pleasurable, for a happy life?"

Now let's address "happy"-- since there are no external/ideal standards, that word also has no meaning outside of pleasure. Most ordinary people mean pleasure when they say happy, joyful, etc.

Now the question is "how much pleasure will I find pleasurable, for a pleasurable life?" And the answer is obvious now-- as much as possible! Because if there is a quantity of pleasure that isn't pleasurable-- it's not pleasure! That wouldn't make sense. Whatever is not pleasurable is pain.

All pleasures are "good" in themselves because we have no other standard to rate them by. But if a specific _activity_ causes us more pain than pleasure, we will have more pleasure if we choose a different action instead. And sometimes you will see that some pain stands between you and greater pleasure, so you will decide to go through the pain for your reward.

It really is that simple.

For every action, consider the full effect of what will happen in terms of pleasure and pain, and keep choosing for pleasure. Do not make up reasons to limit your pleasures-- there are none. If you have chosen so much pleasure that all pain is pushed out, that is the limit of the pleasure you can possibly feel at any given moment-- you won't want more, because you will be entirely blissfully pleasure-filled. In normal life pain will happen, but if you keep persistently choosing wisely, you can indeed have a very pleasurable (happy) life! This is our hope for you. ❤️

Here is a link to the same poll and responses on FB - https://www.facebook.com/groups/Epicure…83562795025999/

Cassius started a new event:

Event

Skype - Part 4 of DeWitt's "Epicurus and His Philosophy" Chapter 14- The New Virtues

Starting with HOPE - Discussion Plan For Chapter 14 "The New Virtues" (Norman DeWitt's "Epicurus And His Philosophy")

Sun, Dec 1st 2019, 10:00 am – 11:00 am

Cassius

November 10, 2019 at 11:56 AM

Quote

Starting with HOPE - Discussion Plan For Chapter 14 "The New Virtues" (Norman DeWitt's "Epicurus And His Philosophy")

Garden Dweller that opens up an interesting discussion from a lot of directions but you do seem to be able to fit each of those more details word descriptions into one or the other category (pain or pleasure).

That's why I think that the real issue is not that there should be a more precise definition of pleasure and pain, but that in the end we are really talking about "feeling" in the sense of "feeling" vs divine revelation or ideal forms or abstract logic. Feelings are essentially "sensations" that we don't need words to describe, and it's only when we have to start communicating with others and putting things into more complication constructions that the issues begin.

But in the end, despite whatever difficulties there may be in talking about feelings, we have a firm point of reference because we FEEL them rather than having to have them explained to us by someone or something outside ourselves.