Posts by Cassius

Yes the religious association is a major turnoff. I am trying to get on a one meal a day schedule to lose maybe 15 pounds and so far working very well.

I have traditionally not been interested in exploring fasting, in significant part because I associate it with asceticism and/or mystical eastern religious practices. I've been a reader and fan of low-carb diet theory, but I've not expanded that to fasting.

In recent years however I've become interested in the work of Dr. Jason Fung, especially with intermittent fasting such as here. Anyone here have any experience with that? Here's their main Facebook group, which I hate to recommend but which has good info.

This is a placeholder for discussion of vegetarianism, which some assert was practised by Epicureans, but for which there is little if any textual support for that conclusion.

Here is a post by Hiram on the topic. This is the only reference I've seen to vegetarianism being discussed, and it is far from clear that it supports the conclusion that most or even a significant number of Epicureans were vegetarian. I recall nothing in Diogenes Laertius, Diogenes of Oinoanda, or Lucretius which supports vegetarianism.

Thanks Hiram.

At first glance looks fairly promising as remaining consistent with Epicurus:

As does the conclusion:

Welcome JVA ! When you get a chance, please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your background in Epicurean philosophy.

For refutation of the "state of mind" allegation see the article by Matthew Wenham:

This is a strongly overbroad attempt to incorporate Benthamite utiltarianism when there is no justification whatsoever, and much opposed, to looking at "the whole" of society/nations/the world.

And thus the payoff of this type of article: ASCETICISM

Thanks for posting Hiram. After reading, my summary is: An abysmal collection of every Stoic-lite / modern misrepresentation of Epicurus:

It is a guarantee you can take to the bank that someone who emphasizes "True Pleasure" is going to trample over Epicurus' own viewpoint that "all pleasure is good." Sigh.

Thanks Hiram.

Very typical of a stoic-lite / ascetic article in the model of Okeefe, who is referenced in the article. As I see it this is the conventional / Okeefe model:

1. Start out by with branding Epicurus a "hedonist" (a loaded negative term) but say he was a "strange kind of hedonist."
2. Argue that Epicurus's reputation should be rehabilitated because he defined pleasure as nothing more than "absence of pain."
3. Pull out the tetrapharmakon, rather than citing the original text of PD1-4, and dumb down the list of core principles by dropping all their original depth.
4. Argue that Epicurus prioritized "static/katastemetic" pleasure as the next step in deprecating "pleasure" as normally understood.
5. Then, once you have set the groundwork to compel the conclusion that Epicurus was either a perverse word-game-player, and/or stupid, pull out the "natural and necessary" categories and argue that regardless of anything else, Epicurus preached a minimalist lifestyle.
6. Follow up by arguing that even though Epicurus taught that we should shun pleasure as normally understood, Epicurus also emphasized "friendship," and allege that he was the original advocate of loving everyone in the world indiscriminately.
7. Then finish up by arguing that later Epicureans like Philodemus were free-lancing and significantly changing Epicurean philosophy themselves, with the implication that Epicurean philosophy was an evolving set of ideas that we too can mold to suit our own viewpoints regardless of what Epicurus taught himself.

With the result that Epicurean philosophy is transmuted into Stoicism-lite.

By cherry-picking from among texts and downplaying or eliminating the contradictory texts, you conclude that Epicurus reached the same conclusions as the Stoics/Christians/Platonists/religionists, except that he wasn't direct like they were. Instead, Epicurus played word games with terms like "pleasure," "gods," "all sensations are true," etc.

This is the model followed by virtually all modern academic writers on Epicurus. The ones I am aware of that are exceptions are:

1. Norman DeWitt ("Epicurus and His Philosophy")
2. Gosling & Taylor ("The Greeks On Pleasure")
3. Boris Nikolsky ("Epicurus On Pleasure")
4. Mathew Wenham ("On Cicero's Interpretation of Katastematic Pleasure In Epicurus")

I would like to expand this list. If anyone knows of others who don't follow this model please let me know.

Also typical of this model is that she goes straight from this "strange sort of hedonism" to citing the Tetrapharmakon, rather than citing the full text of PDs 1-4.

Which is also typically followed by a reference to static/katastematic pleasure and the natural and necessary categories to imply asceticism:

Thanks Hiram.

It would probably be necessary to examine the original source in its full form, at length, to be sure what it is talking about. For example it looks like a lot of the discussion is oriented to discussing legalities, which are purely by convention and not something that is inherent to Epicurean thought.

But yes that is the source I remember, and beyond that (which is not clear at all) I am aware of no authority whatsoever that indicates that Epicureans were in general or by aspiration vegetarian.

For me personally it's kind of a tough question. No way I could eat an animal I raised, and I realize there's no real difference between the ones I've raised and the ones I haven't. Then you have issues like factory farming that I also find repulsive. Then you have to think about how a lot of this is cultural and apparently they eat dogs in the far east without any issues. On the other hand I am not, have never been, and probably never could be a vegetarian.

To me this is a good reminder about how values and even senses of pleasure are not world-wide and and absolutely contextual. No god, prime mover, or any other supernatural or natural force programmed everybody the same way.

Poster: Max Tegmark promotes the idea of a Mathematical Universe in his homonymous book. He uses the concepts introduced to discuss the meaning of Multiverse and to what extent we can test the premises that would validate its existence. Here's a talk he gave on the topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3UxvycpqYo\

And in response to that is this: https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=6551

I think Hiram has his finger on some material perhaps from philodemus or another source that may bear on this, but it is FAR too on the periphery of the texts to be taken as authoritative, IMHO. Plus when I read it, it wasn't even clear to on its face that it is pro-vegetarian, expect to the extent that eating animals bothers the person eating them. For the person who is not bothered even that rationale doesn't apply. Hiram ?

To start immediately, I am NOT convinced that Epicurus or the epicureans were vegetarians. I agree that that kind of thing is often thrown around but the core texts, even / especially Lucretius, make NO Reference to such a thing.

I think it's entirely compatible to be sympathetic with animals as well as to eat them, at least under certain conditions.

You are quite an artist! Keep us posted.

I would think certainly in the realm of scientific observation he would have understood that better data would mean choosing from options that at that time seemed possible. So no doubt he would have expected the scientific understanding to advance.

In ethics he really did not derive final "rules" anyway - that would have violated the underlying premise that there aren't any absolute rules.

In epistemology also he described how to use faculties without reaching conclusions on what the faculties would reveal, since circumstances change. This area seems to be the one where according to DL and maybe Cicero the later Epicureans did improvise, but I think as best I can tell the improvisations were harmful and maybe disastrous.

The two areas of divergence I remember as best documented are where Cicero says some Epicureans tried to defend pleasure be "abstruse reasoning" or some such, plus in DL where he says that the "Epicureans generally" accepted a fourth leg of the canon. Both of those seem to me to be attempts to compromise with dialectical logic, which is a road to ruin because you give up the original high ground that logic is dependant on the senses.

That's a good question but my answer to that would be along the lines that whether you consider it finished or evolving, the key ethical insight of Epicurus was that the faculty of feeling - pleasure and pain - is the end point of the analysis (or the starting point). Epicurus doesn't give a set of rules to follow and he would be the first to say that one size doesn't fit all, and that circumstances change. But I think he would also say that the ultimate guide remains the faculty of feeling, so that's what we look to, even while acknowledging that it isn't a rule that is set in stone and unchanging.

I see this as closely related to skepticism and the limits of skepticism. Epicurus was looking for (and I think found) the proper perspective on the issue of certainty vs skepticism. We aren't ever going to find absolute truth, but we have good reason to be content with the "truth" that is available to us, and we don't have to / shouldn't agonize ourselves over standards of certainty that are unattainable.

Also Jordan, when you read virtually any book on Epicurus written in the last 50 years you will see broad statements implying that Epicurus taught a semi-christian view of general universal brotherly love. If you stick to DeWitt through to the end you'll have no issue seeing how that goes significantly astray. Epicurus' own statements are almost always tied to "friends," and the above-referenced PD39 makes clear he had no illusions about everyone in the world being his friend.

When the "universal brotherly love" utilitarians try to bring Epicurus into their camp, they most frequently turn to citing a couple of relatively ambiguous passages from Diogenes of Oinoanda, who noted on his wall that he hoped it would be good for anyone who happened to see it. Going too far into those couple of references would get us too far off track, but when you study that you'll see that Diogenes himself made drew some very clear lines. He labelled some peoples as "vile" in their corruption through religion, he never gives any indication that he intends to deviate from Epicurus, and that attitude shows that his statements are best viewed as aspirational rather than a call to "universal indiscriminating christian brotherly love."

And it's not even necessary to go to Oinonanda for this illustration. Lucretius' poem is itself a good example and contains statements about how sad it is that so many people "wander in darkness" due to their errors. An Epicurean would certainly hope that everyone will come around to the Epicurean way of thinking, and so Epicurus wrote letters and books, Lucretius wrote his poem, Diogenes wrote his inscription, many others wrote their works, and we come to today with our open forums.

But as stated in Diogenes Laertius, " ....However, not every bodily constitution nor every nationality would permit a man to become wise."

I completely agree with E1's interpretations, and this can be citing in the future as an example of how I (and others here) do not worship DeWitt as infallible.

Jordan as you read DeWitt you will see repeated references to connections between Epicurean views and Christianity, and you may know that DeWitt wrote a second book called "St Paul and Epicurus." In my view DeWitt's points are generally good but sometimes go to far on this relationship. Whether that's a result of his own disposition to build more link than is there, I can't say. I do think that many of DeWitt's explanations of New Testament passages as relating to Epicurus do make sense, however.

But to the main point, DeWitt stresses throughout the book that Epicurus placed pleasure at the center of his philosophy, and that even in the issue of friends the instigating factor is still the pleasure of the person being considered. I don't believe DeWitt ever defines what he means by "altruism" and if he had meant it as a rule that the interests of other people **always** be placed first, that definitely could not be reconciled, any more than any other kind of "virtue" could be explained.

As you read further into the book and see how DeWitt constructs the big picture, I bet your concern about this (which is valid) will recede in significance. Because once you get a grip on how uniform and connected the big picture is in focusing on the feeling of pleasure (very broadly understood as including all mental and bodily pleasures), it becomes very easy to see how any competing "ism" (such as altruism or egoism for that matter) will fall to the wayside.

The issue with 'altruism" is much the same issue as with "egoism" -- the real issue is whether and how the "interests" of people are defined. And with Epicurus the issue always comes back to a calculus of pleasure and pain, with the interests of other people factored in for the result that it causes to us and to those of our friends who we value as much as we do ourselves. The "interests" of some people are going to be of vital importance to us, while the interests of some other people are going to be largely irrelevant. And that is why "the greatest good of the greatest number" is eliminated.

PD28 rules "egoism" out of the picture just as much as PD39 and similar very clear doctrines rule "altruism" out of the picture, and DeWitt knows that very well and presents it all very clearly.

28. The same conviction which inspires confidence that nothing we have to fear is eternal or even of long duration, also enables us to see that in the limited evils of this life nothing enhances our security so much as friendship.

39. The man who best knows how to meet external threats makes into one family all the creatures he can; and those he can not, he at any rate does not treat as aliens; and where he finds even this impossible, he avoids all dealings, and, so far as is advantageous, excludes them from his life.

Poster:

Hello. I have bought Norman DeWitt's 'Epicurus and His Philosophy' and am reading the first chapter. One sentence has caught my attention: "both (Epicurus and Comte) stressed altruism as opposed to self-love..." My question is, to what degree? As an ex-Christian, the problem I had with Christian ethics was that it demanded so much of what Iris Murdoch called 'unselfing' as to undermine both my individuality and my own pleasure. Could a more senior Epicurean spell out what DeWitt means by this sentence? What is Epicurean altruism? Thank you in advance.

Also, does that mean he was opposed to self-love? I thought that's what hedonism, even Epicurus's prudent hedonism, was all about.

Answers:

E1:

Hi Jordan! I am sure some of the long time Epicureans can pitch in here. IMO DeWitt doesn't get this right.

Pleasure is always the way to untangle these questions!

When sharing leads to net pleasure, it is wise.

Because the pleasure of friendship is so great, most of us feel strong pleasure when witnessing the pleasure of our friends-- so it isn't two conflicting goals, our pleasure vs theirs. Our kindness to our friends is inseparable from our own pleasure-- no need to try and pick that apart!

Poster2 : I think Dewitt is trying to say it is different from utilitarian philosophy

Poster1: Oh really? I thought there would've been some overlap between Epicurean and utilitarian philosophy

E1: It is an individual utilitarian philosophy though. Not social utilitarianism.

Poster 3:

Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism had based his philosophy on the pain/ pleasure criterion but extended it to a panhuman level. J.S. Mill said that utilitarianism and Epicureanism were in essence the same. (Ican hear some eyes rolling after reading this )

Poster 1:

In the sense that the pleasure of others is linked with my own pleasure? For instance, I wouldn't flirt with the girl at the bar because the displeasure this would cause my girlfriend would cause me displeasure too (because I love her). Is that about right?

E1:

There's a huge difference between social utilitarianism and individual utilitarianism ?. We are definitely not social utilitarians in this philosophy.

But insofar as we judge an action desirable or not according to its effects on us, we are preceding according to the utility of the action rather than making up some fake absolute categories of actions.

If a person never shares with friends, this won't tend to lead to strong social ties and could be detrimental to long term pleasure.

If we share with our enemies, in some cases we might save ourselves and in others we might have wasted our resources and strengthened those who would harm us-- so the specifics of each situation are critical.

A difference between wise sharing and idealistic sharing is that for us, we don't make altruism itself the goal. Sharing would be like eating, sleeping, reading, working-- any action we put to the test of its effect on us.

Here is a reminder of what someone who had full access to Epicurean texts, teachers, and friends, stressed as important about Epicurean philosophy: The key to Happiness is in understanding how Nature works, and it is this knowledge which allows us to drive away all fears, including fear of "fate" and of punishment after death.

(from Virgil's "Georgics" 2.490)

Excerpt from Wikipedia on Virgil's Georgics

:

The two predominant philosophical schools in Rome during Virgil's lifetime were Stoicism and Epicureanism. Of these two, the Epicurean strain is predominant not only in the Georgics but also in Virgil's social and intellectual milieu. Varius Rufus, a close friend of Virgil and the man who published the Aeneid after Virgil's death, had Epicurean tastes, as did Horace and his patron Maecenas.

The philosophical text with the greatest influence on the Georgics as a whole was Lucretius' Epicurean epic De Rerum Natura. G. B. Conte notes, citing the programmatic statement in Georgics 2.490–502, which draws from De Rerum Natura 1.78–9, "the basic impulse for the Georgics came from a dialogue with Lucretius." Likewise, David West remarks in his discussion of the plague in the third book, Virgil is "saturated with the poetry of Lucretius, and its words, phrases, thought and rhythms have merged in his mind, and become transmuted into an original work of poetic art."