Posts by Cassius

Quote from JJElbert

It remains difficult to imagine the seminal nature of atoms and void over eternity. For that matter, it is difficult to imagine eternity!

I think that difficulty to which you refer has got to be part of the reason that Epicurus ended the letter to Pythocles with this:

All these things, Pythocles, you must bear in mind; for thus you will escape in most things from superstition and will be enabled to understand what is akin to them. 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.

And I presume part of the thought process there is that the only way to get comfortable with thinking about the issues involved with infinity is to think about them on a regular basis, and so by doing acclimate ourselves to the issues, just like with mortality / death.

If we wait til we approach death to think about death, or if we wait til some priest or academic philosopher hits us with some tricky question about infinity, then we're much less able to deal with those problems than we would be if we had engaged in regular practice.

I think we could almost say with confidence that people who are into Thoreau are not going to be the type who need to worry about this issue very much!


The main reason for my qualification is that I want to be sure that we don't find ourselves ONLY talking to the type of person who likes Thoreau. I think Epicurean philosophy has a truly correct perspective on the universe that can appeal to almost everyone of any mental acuity at all, and we shouldn't limit ourselves to the highly educated. I gather that Cicero indicates that it was the "middle classes" in which Epicurean philosophy was most successful in the ancient world, and I think we could make major inroads into the same classes today.

And those ordinary people are the ones who are most concerned, and will need the most deprogramming, in order to understand how far their ideas of divinity have gone astray.

But we all have our own individual circles in which we move and it's natural that we'll want and need a division of labor and coordination of strengths, rather than a single approach.

Also as to this I think we may have a residual wording issue:

Quote from JJElbert

The gods

1.) Arose out of eternal Nature. They did not give rise to the natural order; if they exist, the natural order gave rise to them.

I am thinking that our Darwinian evolutionary perspective probably applies only LOCALLY, and not universally.

In the universe as a whole I presume that the Epicurean physics means that there has NEVER BEEN A TIME when planets with life of all kinds and levels existed. In other words, as a class (and not as individuals), a succession of Epicurean gods and other life forms would ALWAYS have existed into the boundless past, for the same reasons that the atoms have combined into boundless combinations now, and always will.

Locally all things have a birth and death, but births and deaths have been going on infinitely into the infinite past, so I think Epicurean terminology needs to reflect that to be consistent.

I agree with all but the last sentence. I think it DOES help us strive for our own happiness to think about our place in the universe, and that we are neither the only place life exists, nor the highest. That's a severe problem largely cultivated by Abrahamic monotheism.

We are neither "worms" nor are we the "highest" and it helps I think reconcile us to the nature of living and dying to keep things in proper perspective. And I think that is exactly why the Epicureans devoted so much time to discussing it,

Some of us today seem to think that science has educated us to the point where these issues are no longer troublesome, but I think these are natural issues that will always concern the far greater part of humanity.

ABSOLUTELY!! It is amazing that so many don't seem to get this! Deist gods are just Judeo/Christian/Islamic/Abrahamic gods with a lazy streak.

Epicurean gods are absolutely not supernatural in any respect. Most people seem to have great difficulty separating "supernatural" from "gods" but once you get that straight in your mind then I think most of the opposition to "Epicurean theology" evaporates.

Most of the rest of the opposition (besides the opinion that "gods" must be "supernatural" is the epistemological issue that since we've never seen "gods" we can't have confidence that they exist. But I think Epicurus would say "we've never seen atoms but we have confidence that THEY exist."

Once you focus on "nature never makes a single thing of a kind" and add that to "the universe is boundless in size" and "there are innumerable worlds with life" then I think Epicurus would say it's not only not a leap - it's an obvious deduction - that there must exist life forms which have evolved to the point of deathlessness and living in constant pleasure with no pains.

I'm not an expert by any means on Hobbes so I am sure at some point we meet with fundamental divergence from Epicurus -- Hobbes is not known as an Epicurean, to my understanding, so somewhere he goes off in another direction.

David I think you're getting to the issue that Epicurus seems to describe as the "confident expectation" of continuing to experience pleasurable living. Certainly we do need to prepare for hunger in the future by planting crops in the spring, etc.

Desire isn't a bad thing at all - it's natural and in fact the desire for pleasure is THE motivating force of all life, as stated in many ways through the Epicurean texts.

"Contentment" can never be stretched in Epicurean terms to the point where we say. "OK I've lived a happy life til this point, I think I'll choose to die now." because that would be perverse.

From the letter to Menoeceus I think it is clear that life is desirable and it is unnatural and perverse to choose to die before it becomes necessary: "The wise man does not deprecate life nor does he fear the cessation of life. The thought of life is no offense to him, nor is the cessation of life regarded as an evil. And even as men choose of food not merely and simply the larger portion, but the more pleasant, so the wise seek to enjoy the time which is most pleasant and not merely that which is longest. And he who admonishes the young to live well and the old to make a good end speaks foolishly, not merely because of the desirability of life, but because the same exercise at once teaches to live well and to die well. Much worse is he who says that it were good not to be born, but when once one is born to pass quickly through the gates of Hades. For if he truly believes this, why does he not depart from life? It would be easy for him to do so once he were firmly convinced. If he speaks only in jest, his words are foolishness as those who hear him do not believe. "

I worry a little bit that some people are perceiving a tension between "absence of pain" and proper desires as to lifespan. I don't think Epicurus said at all that it is unnatural or undesirable to live as long as possible. We can and do wish to continue living as long as our minds and bodies are sustainable in a position of net pleasure, and there is nothing wrong with that even under the Epicurean formulas.

It's really Stoic / Platonic / JudeoChristian pollution which causes us to think in terms of living "forever" or reaching some plateau of perfection that once we reach it, that plateau is the equivalent of living forever, or living in a state of divinity.

I don't see anything in Epicurus which deviates from the common sense approach: we live minute by minute as long as our circumstances allow. We can direct our attention at any time to the past, present, or future, but all we can really control is our current level of pleasure and pain at the current moment of experience. And we should wish to continue to prolong our lives as long as we can reasonably expect that those current moments of experience will be, or will return to being, net pleasurable.

Just because we don't NEED to live forever in order to live a fulfilled life, that's no reason that we don't want to continue to live as long as possible while conditions allow us to experience net pleasure.

Otherwise we would be saying "That six day old baby need not want to live a moment longer, because it has already experienced pure pleasure." That would be absurd.

But the same observation applies whether the person is six days old or sixty years old.

Why did these arguments about "pure pleasure" or "limit of pleasure" that can at times seemingly trip us up even arise? Because they are necessary in order to respond to dialectical trickery, for those who for whatever reason need to play that game or respond to it.

Outstanding, Joshua! I think you will really find a lot in the rest of Book X. The narrative part contains tons of important details not in the letters.

Looking forward to the podcast prototype!

D.G. :

A few more quotes from Hobbes' text Leviathan: " the felicity of this life consisteth not in the repose of a mind satisfied. For there is no such finis ultimus (utmost aim) nor summum bonum (greatest good) as is spoken of in the books of the old moral philosophers. Nor can a man any more live whose desires are at an end than he whose senses and imaginations are at a stand. Felicity is a continual progress of the desire from one object to another, the attaining of the former being still but the way to the latter. The cause whereof is that the object of man's desire is not to enjoy once only, and for one instant of time, but to assure forever the way of his future desire. And therefore the voluntary actions and inclinations of all men tend not only to the procuring, but also to the assuring of a contented life, and differ only in the way, which ariseth partly from the diversity of passions in diverse men, and partly from the difference of the knowledge or opinion each one has of the causes which produce the effect desired. So that in the first place, I put for a general inclination of all mankind a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death. And the cause of this is not always that a man hopes for a more intensive delight than he has already attained to, or that he cannot be content with a moderate power, but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without the acquisition of more." ... I wonder what Epicurus would say to Hobbes? This quote is especially interesting in light of the Epicurean emphasis on friendship and community as aids to security and comfort. As it can be difficult to secure the objects required to satisfy even one's natural and necessary desires (continuously); especially in the contemporary world."


Cassius:

David my reaction to the Hobbes quote so far as it goes is generally positive. Even the sentence " For there is no such finis ultimus (utmost aim) nor summum bonum (greatest good) as is spoken of in the books of the old moral philosophers" to which I think Ilkka is objecting, could be reconciled I think.

It seems to me that much of the "ultimate good/summum bonum" discussion comes from Cicero, which DeWitt attacks I think with much success. It's from these same considerations that DeWitt talks about life itself being a higher good from some perspectives, in that pleasure means nothing to the dead.

The latter part of the quote about needing more I suspect is tied to other arguments and other contexts which are not clear from this excerpt.

But if the basic point is that there is no state of rest in time after which a person can say "I'm here and that's all I need" then I think that is something Epicurus would agree with.

I share some of Ilkka's concerns but I think you are right in asking about this and thinking it is compatible to at least some degree.

Also I don't think this hasa problem reconciling with the description of the full vessel as the analogy of the best life. That analogy seems to me more of a logical device to respond to Platonism, and to show that pleasure has a limit, but that device does not mean that we can look to fill our experience with pleasure at any one moment and consider that we are "finished."

As is said here, we are not finished pursuing pleasure until we die.

I hope others will comment here. This does seem to me like an interesting way to look at several important issues.

D.G.:

IIkka indeed; I suppose as students of Epicurus' philosophy it is useful to think through Epicurus' position(s) relative to other schools of thought. One point the quote makes is that by nature desires are recurrent. For instance, the desire to procure food day to day. I was wondering if these kinds of concerns are mitigated in part by the Epicurean emphasis on community and friendship; as Hobbes' observation will be that these desires are easier to satisfy in civil society. I disagree on your last point; sometimes necessary desires are not easy to satisfy; hence people die of starvation, exposure and lack of security far to frequently.

Cassius:

I was rerereading your post David and this struck me as funny:

" For instance, the desire to procure food day to day. I was wondering if these kinds of concerns are mitigated in part by the Epicurean emphasis on community and friendship; "

I know you didn't mean it that way yourself, but the idea that "friendship" could fix the human need to eat every day strikes me as pretty much exactly the kind of stretched logic of people who want to make Epicurus into a stoic.

Yes if we organize our lives properly it becomes easier to find food at eat every day, but friendship in no way relieves us of hunger and the need to eat, any more than "absence of pain" or "ataraxia" constitutes a state that means that we aren't going to pursue normal mental and bodily pleasures.

That's where I think Hobbes was going (or should have been going). There is no single "goal of life" that we can reach like the stoics reach their mountain peak of virtue. There's only the guide that nature gives us to live life moment by moment looking for as much pleasure as possible (which also means keeping pain to a reasonable minimum.)

We need to presume that Epicurus had at least as much common sense as we do, and any interpretation of Epicurus that violates common sense should immediately be ruled out of court as inconsistent with what we know about Epicurus.

Ed I don't think I realized that you were a writer / journalist. What type writing do you do?

Ed you will get it automatically. Unfortunately I have not been rigorous in preparing it monthly but I will be sure you get it when I do.

Great to hear from you Ed. And I want to memorialize that you were the one that first introduced me to "A Few Days In Athens" so I will always be appreciative to you for that!

Yes agreed! good poem!

AR:

Epicurus would agree that being alive means the triggering of desires that need to be fulfilled for further life, health and happiness.

"We must also consider that some of our human desires are given to us by Nature, and some are vain and empty. Of the Natural desires, some are necessary, and some are not. Of the necessary desires, some are necessary to our happiness, and some are necessary if our body is to be free from trouble. Some desires are in fact necessary for living itself."

He would explain that it's up to us to resolve these toward health and happiness:

He who has a correct understanding of these things will always decide what to choose and what to avoid by referring to the goal of obtaining a body that is healthy and a soul that is free from turmoil, since this is the aim of living happily. It is for the sake of living happily that we do everything, as we wish to avoid grief and fear.

Cassius:

Yes I agree with AR and I should have started by highlighting that, since so many other philosophies and religions argue that eliminating desire should be the goal. Eliminating desire is perversely anti-Epicurean. It's the desires that lead to more pain that pleasure that should be reduced and if possible eliminated.

The desires that lead to more pleasure than pain are what life is all about. There's probably no better way to sniff out an argument that is anti-Epicurean than discussion which talks generically about elimination of desire being a good thing. And Stoicism is riddled through and through with that.

Also, the advice of Epicurus to the young man about reducing his desire for sex, or the advice to anyone about restraining desires, does not in any way contradict that.

The foundation that the desire for pleasure is natural and what life is all about was laid at a much more basic level, and that foundation is not contradicted by observing that *some* desires lead to more pain than pleasure.

The full context can be found at the link below, but I find this passage very interesting and I will comment on it standing alone, even though I have not read the full context. I would want to study parts of it to be more clear, because I would want to see "things" having very broad reference to include all a person's bodily and mental desires, and not just "material goods." I would also want the meaning to refer to the overall effect of experiencing the pleasures of life predominating over the pains of life as the meaning of felicity, because I believe that Epicurus would say that that result is achievable, or is at least a reasonable goal, for most people.

But the part that strikes me as the most important to consider is the "life is but motion and we can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense." With the caveat that many fears *can* be eliminated or reduced to a minimum, I think this statement does reflect Epicurus' view of the nature of human life. Life is motion from birth to death, and there is never any final rest from motion until death. This is exactly why I think the modern commentator focus on tranquillity cannot be an accurate expression of Epicurus' own views. Epicurus' started with physics and from the nature of the universe derived his ethics, and that nature compels this conclusion.

In terms of not being able to eliminate all pain entirely, I am reminded of this from Diogenes of Oinonanda:

"These medicines we have put [fully] to the test; for we have dispelled the fears [that grip] us without justification, and, as for pains, those that are groundless we have completely excised, while those that are natural we have reduced to an absolute minimum, making their magnitude minute."

The goal is to eliminate those which can be eliminated, and to reduce those which are natural and therefore inevitable to an absolute minimum.

The idea that Epicurus was so unrealistic as to think that people can -- or even should - eliminate ALL pain and fear is absurd. That result would be obtainable only by an Epicurean "god" who had so conquered the makeup of its own atomic structure as to be able to constantly regenerate itself, and have confidence in being able to continue to do so into perpetuity. For us humans in our current state of technology, each of us faces the possibility of a painful death through disease or worse, just like Epicurus himself did. Epicurus offset his physical pain with mental pleasure, but he could not eliminate it.

https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/h/hobbes/thomas/h68l/chapter6.html

Thanks to D.G. for this quote and question:

I wonder what Epicurus would have thought had he been able to read the following passage in Hobbes' Leviathan:

"Continual success in obtaining those things which a man from time to time desireth, that is to say, continual prospering, is that men call Felicity; I mean the felicity of this life. For there is no such thing as perpetual tranquility of mind, while we live here, because life is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense."

Welcome EpicureanEd ! When you get a chance please tell us a little about your background and interest in Epicurus.

For the Lucretius discussion, let's plan to use the versions listed below:

We will probably refer to several translations during the discussion so we can compare meanings of the difficult passages, but below is what I think we should use as the base. Two important caveats: (1) I think we should skip over the "poetic" versions in favor of the narrative translations, as the narratives are intended to be the most accurate and faithful to the original meaning, and (2) It will be best to use the public domain versions so that the same edition is available to everyone:

1. The most recent public domain version is Cyril Bailey's, and that is the one I think we should refer to primarily. It is well regarded, written by an eminent Epicurus scholar, and is accessible to everyone at Archive.org: https://archive.org/stream/onnatur…age/n3/mode/2up

2. On any issues that appear to be unclear, all of us can refer to several other translations, next in order of time and authority being Hugh Munro: https://archive.org/stream/in.erne…age/n5/mode/2up

3. I have found that even though it is considerably older, the Daniel Browne 1743 edition is frequently easier to understand than Bailey or Munro: https://archive.org/stream/tlucret…age/n9/mode/2up

Most of the text of these three editions is transcribed here, so we can cut and paste to use in online discussion: https://epicureanfriends.com/wiki/doku.php?…ature_of_things

Of course for those of us who have access, we can refer to the Martin Ferguson Smith / Hackett Publishing edition, which I think is probably the most current cutting-edge academic version. https://www.amazon.com/Nature-Things-Lucretius/dp/0872205878

Thanks to Martin Kalyniuk for forwarding a link to an article about the poet Horace's well known phrase, "carpe diem." Because we're trying to keep the group aware of controversies in Epicurean interpretation, we need to point out that this is a link that needs to be considered with a strong dose of caution. It's the point of the article to argue that "carpe diem" shouldn't be considered to mean "seize the day" in an active aggressive action, but rather that it evokes "the plucking and gathering of ripening fruits or flowers, enjoying a moment that is rooted in the sensory experience of nature." The author also cites the familiar “Gather ye rose-buds while ye may” phrase. In other words, according to the author, Horace allegedly doesn't call us to action, but to "a far gentler, more sensual image than the rather forceful and even violent concept of seizing the moment."

There are many facets to translation issues, and it may very well be that Horace would say that his phrase had multiple meanings, including the one suggested by the article. However, to just enjoy sensations at suitable moments (e.g. while we walk through a park) does not mean that we should not take resolute action at other times when we pursue opportunities for hard work to assure future pleasures.

This article has a strong scent of being part of a widespread tendency to reduce Epicurean philosophy to a campaign against modern consumerist society. No one here (that I know of) advocates "consumerism," but to reduce the the philosophy to that issue alone trivializes it.

About Horace himself, Wikipedia says: "An officer in the republican army defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC, he was befriended by Octavian's right-hand man in civil affairs, Maecenas, and became a spokesman for the new regime."

That is not a description of a wallflower who hides in his cave gathering pretty mushrooms. That is a description of a man of action, who may not have been thrilled with the results of the war in which he had fought, but by no means decided to sit and sulk, and made an entirely new and productive career for himself afterwards. Not the type of many to complain about "consumerism," but the type of man to "do something about it" if he had a problem.

In addition, it isn't clear why the author would think "pluck" is not an action word-- if you are plucking flowers, you are doing something - you aren't simply meditating like some would advocate.

It's not our goal to buy things we don't enjoy (or refrain from buying what we enjoy) just for competition, whether that's a competition to accumulate or minimize possessions. What we want is to choose the pleasure out of the offerings of the day, to pluck the pleasure and leave behind the rot.

Sometimes the wonderful flowers will have thorns but still be worth plucking... sometimes it's all flower. Then there's the planting and tending, for future flowers of pleasure.

But there's definitely a need to pluck whatever is in full flower now, not delay. Those flowers of pleasure don't last forever!

Here's the link and now you have the argument with which to keep it in perspective. Articles like this preaching passivism in the name of Epicurus are all over the place. Be careful of calls to inaction and don't let them get you down, instead - Seize the day!

https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%…CjCnaRWtUJMPHJT

Last year we held a series of discussions on the DISCORD chat service where we went through the Norman Dewitt book on Epicurus by chapter. Planning for Upcoming Voice Chats on DeWitt's Epicurus and His Philosophy

We reached Chapter 12 and though we didn't finish the full book, I thought the chats were pretty successful and worth finishing and doing again. In fact, they are worth doing over and over as a general introduction to the philosophy.

This weekend it also occurred to me that even many of our most regular people have not completely gone through Lucretius' On The Nature of Things poem. We therefore need to set up a series of online to discussions to organize our reading of that.

Let's talk about setting these up. Here are some questions to consider:

1 - Do we pick up where we left off on the Dewitt book, or do we start over? We were going chapter by chapter. Does that method still make sense?

2 - Let's set up an entirely separate discussion program for Lucretius. We have access to several online free translations and it will be relatively easy to divide the books of the poem up into readable chunks. As is, I think each book is far too long and detailed to be covered in one session per book.

3 - What day of the week and time of day is best? Shall we try to do one of these per week, or one every other week so that we do one of Lucretius and one of DeWitt per month? What kind of schedule makes sense?

Oh - one more point about Elayne's numbered list suggestion: I've already been working on the FAQ which is here https://www.epicureanfriends.com/wcf/index.php?faq/

So it's kind of natural to coordinate these two efforts. I don't think at this point that it makes sense to merge the documents, because the "Not Neo" document is more targeted to quick response and inoculation against common fallacies. It's a summary of major errors/problems, and needs to be separate so that we can refer to those all in one place with people who are more experienced in reading the standard academic material.

On the other hand the FAQ is targeted to a more general audience looking not only for responses to negative issues but also positive statements, and less in need of immediate "deprogramming." This is more like the group of people who read DeWitt early in the process, never get led too far astray, and so don't need to be hit immediately with a list of mistakes.

But it's easy to see that a FAQ could point to items in the Not-Neo list and how they complement each other.