Posts by Cassius

Welcome Garden Dweller ! When you get a chance please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your background in Epicurus.

Welcome   azbcethananderson ! When you get a chance please let us know your background in Epicurus!

Exactly Charles. This information is out there, but I think very few people have taken the time to digest it and think about its implications. And the last couple of decades the problem is accelerating -- all people are reading nowadays is popular wikipedia-like summaries, and the most recent commentaries, and the misinformation is accelerating like a snowball on a hill.

According to Doctrine 3, Epicurus held that the limit of quantity of pleasure is the absence of pain. This is a function of the truism / premise that there are only two feelings - pleasure and pain - which means that in quantity, the measurement that describes the "absence" of the one is the same measurement as the "presence" of the other. But this observation is limited to quantity - it has nothing to do with the quality or the detail of the type of pleasure (or pain) that is being experienced at a particular moment.

Nevertheless, there is at loose in philosophical communities today the idea that Epicurus taught that pleasure is exactly equal - is defined as - "absence of pain," and so many are motivated to try to reconcile the inconsistencies in the texts by holding that Epicurus meant "tranquility" and that "tranquility itself" is the goal of life. What they would really say, if they followed their conclusion to the end, is that "tranquility is the highest pleasure" -- but you rarely see that formulation, as it is so obviously and counter intuitively incorrect.

The record of how all this discussion got started is out there if people would look. Much of the story begins with Plato and Philebus, but Epicurus was not the only one to grapple with the issue. One philosopher -Heronymous of Rhodes - explicitly adopted the modern "absence of pain" position - and everyone at the time knew the difference. Heronymous of Rhodes is forgotten today, but Epicurus is tagged with his incorrect viewpoint. Beware!

Cicero - Academic Questions:

Cicero - On Ends:

I will give Hieronymous credit for one thing: he is consistent in seeing that holding up "absence of pain" as the goal means to depreciate "pleasure" as the goal of life. Whether they admit it or not, this is the natural road which proponents of "absence of pain" will follow - they end up being opponents of "pleasure" as ordinarily understood.

Next - again from Cicero, On Ends:

Cicero the lying litigator at work again! Cicero KNOWS that Epicurus did not make the mistake of calling "absence of pain" the goal of life, as Hieronymus did, but because some are so obtuse as to think "absence of pain" makes sense (Hieronymous was such a one!) Cicero is able to use the argument to great effect - or so he thinks! But once we see that the goal is PLEASURE, rather than absence of pain, Cicero's argument falls to the ground:

[Admin note 1/11/21 - Something has happened the image from the autarkist blog referenced below. I'll try to rconstruct what the image was, but in the meantime the article referred to is probably this one.]

Some time ago Hiram pointed to a book by Lampe entitled "The Birth of Hedonism" and made this statement on his Autarkist blog:

I have been wanting to track that down and finally today I found the page which is being referenced here:

This is another situation where words can be used in different ways, and it is necessary to be precise. Lampe's reference here does a good job of clarifying the issue being discussed. He is talking about the Cyreniacs, but if we just step back and think about the topic in general, then this passage makes clear a distinction between the words "happiness" and "pleasure," and probably explains why Epicurus used both words in different contexts.

In general and most frequently, it seems to me that when people use the word "happiness" in philosophical discussion it is very difficult to be sure what they mean, and how to unpack the definition. On the other hand, again generally, "pleasure" or "pleasing" generally refers to a "feeling" for which this statement from Torquatus applies:

We are inquiring, then, what is the final and ultimate Good, which as all philosophers are agreed must be of such a nature as to be the End to which all other things are means, while it is not itself a means to anything else. This Epicurus finds in pleasure; pleasure he holds to be the Chief Good, pain the Chief Evil. This he sets out to prove as follows: Every animal, as soon as it is born, seeks for pleasure, and delights in it as the Chief Good, while it recoils from pain as the Chief Evil, and so far as possible avoids it. This it does as long as it remains unperverted, at the prompting of Nature's own unbiased and honest verdict.

Hence Epicurus refuses to admit any necessity for argument or discussion to prove that pleasure is desirable and pain to be avoided. These facts, be thinks, are perceived by the senses, as that fire is hot, snow white, honey sweet, none of which things need be proved by elaborate argument: it is enough merely to draw attention to them. (For there is a difference, he holds, between formal syllogistic proof of a thing and a mere notice or reminder: the former is the method for discovering abstruse and recondite truths, the latter for indicating facts that are obvious and evident.) Strip mankind of sensation, and nothing remains; it follows that Nature herself is the judge of that which is in accordance with or contrary to nature.

What does Nature perceive or what does she judge of, beside pleasure and pain, to guide her actions of desire and of avoidance?

_____________

All of which is not to be negative about "happiness" being an abstraction, because abstractions are incredibly useful. But in order to be clear as to what we mean we have to be very precise, and there are huge variations in opinion as to what makes a person "happy."

Note how sarcastic Cicero is when he says that "in your view even divine happiness involves being bored to death with idleness." This illustrates that in many cases Cicero wasn't reporting factually on Epicurean doctrine with the view toward getting to the truth, he was ridiculing and argumentatively distorting positions in a way that no Epicurean would have ever accepted. And Cicero *knew* that he was distorting and falsifying, because in other sections of his works (Torquatus on the best life) Cicero correctly recorded that the best life involves "living in the continuous enjoyment of numerous and vivid pleasures alike of body and of mind, undisturbed either by the presence or by the prospect of pain: what possible state of existence could we describe as being more excellent or more desirable?"

And yet Cicero's ridiculous distortion -- "being bored to death with idleness" is what a large section of modern Epicurean commentators teach is exactly what Epicurus taught as his "tranquility" model of the best life!

Good to hear from you Todd - hope you'll post more often!

Cassius started a new event:

Event

Featured Online Book Discussion - DeWitt's "Epicurus and His Philosophy" Chapter 13 - The True Piety - Skype

This week will be Chapter 13 - The New Piety. Outline To be Posted Soon!

Sun, Oct 6th 2019, 11:00 am – 12:00 pm

Cassius

September 30, 2019 at 3:33 PM

Quote

This week will be Chapter 13 - The New Piety. Outline To be Posted Soon!

Great points Nate!

Some number of them are exactly like that -- we'll never make any progress with them. But most of us here were probably raised with some variation of that point of view, and yet here we are!

I guess the practical test is how do we separate those with whom discussion is possible from those who are just so closed-minded that it makes no sense even to engage them.

Previous version

Exactly and I totally agree! That's my experience too. They will reconcile ANYTHING contradictory in order to maintain their prior worldview.

The intersection of (1) Nietzsche's analysis in ANTICHRIST of Epicurus as combating Christianity before it even existed, with (2) DeWitt's analysis in "St Paul and Epicurus" of several of the "antichrist" references as essentially referring to Epicurus, is something I find extremely interesting and important. As important as I find many other issues in life, I doubt there is any more important that properly diagnosing and combating Judeo-Christian theology.

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.

St Paul and Epicurus

...

All the armament of Epicurean logic which had been developed to combat Greek paganism and Platonic idealism was available from the outset for the crusade against the nascent Christianity. This conflict fell chiefly upon Paul, because it was his lot to carry the new gospel to the Greeks. For him the specific task was to build up a new structure of spirituality in the face of an entrenched and confident structure of materialism. It was the logic of the cross against the logic of the atom, an early phase of the long strife between science and religion. Epicurus himself became a sort of Antichrist.

...

The very first of his Authorized Doctrines declared the gods to be incapable of anger. Anger was a disturbing emotion and a symptom of weakness; to ascribe such an emotion to the gods was to detract from their sanctity and to diminish their claim to the worship of mankind. Upon this worship as embodied in the public festivals, especially the music, he placed supreme importance and among his sayings is one to the effect that "the wise man will derive more enjoyment than other men from the state festivals."

If this elimination of anger from celestial minds was offensive to orthodox pagan Greeks, it was still more so when it became known to orthodox Jews, whose Jehovah bore a unique reputation as a God of wrath. Equally offensive was the removal of the gods from all participation in human affairs, which involved the rejection of belief in divine prophecy, in miracles, and divine providence.

These teachings were judged to cancel all the merit that resided in the demand of Epicurus for more reverence for godhead; they relegated him to the evil eminence of being the archenemy of religion and a sort of Antichrist.

...

In seeking help from Epicurus to explain Paul it deserves also to be brought to knowledge that this procedure involves a shocking rivalry of loyalties. In the Greek language the name Epicurus signifies "helper" or "succorer" and this may account in part for Paul's detestation of it and unwillingness to mention it. To concede to the adversary the title of helper, which by implication belonged to Jesus, was only one degree less repellent than to know that his disciples knew him as a savior, which they did. Epicurus became virtually a sort of Antichrist.

The Prince of the Power of the Air

There was one talent the exercise of which was denied to both Epicurus and Paul. Both were ardent moralists, a noble breed of men but as such forbidden the use of humor. The one form of wit that befitted them was satire, which belittles the competitor and lingers in the memory. Epicurus was a master of it. He dubbed the Platonists as "hangers-on of Dionysus," the god of the theater; he referred to them as "the men who pitch their voices low," as if unemployed actors, would-be Hamlets, as it were, itching for kingly roles. Paul belittled the Epicureans as a Peace-at-any-Price Party or Safety-First Party, designating them by their catchwords Peace and Safety; but his masterpiece of satire is to be found in this Epistle: he satirizes Epicurus as "prince of the power of the air."

...

Peace and Safety

Among the numerous clues that serve to identify references to the Epicureans none is more specific and certain than the mention of their watchwords Peace and Safety. These occur in First Thessalonians 5:3, where the King James Version runs: "For when they shall say, Peace and Safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them." This falls far short of exactitude but it is superior to the Revised Standard: "When people say, 'There is peace and security,' then sudden destruction will come upon them."

The unlucky change from "when they shall say" to "when people say" is based upon the gratuitous assumption that no particular group or sect is being singled out for censure but merely some section of the populace that refuses to be alarmed by the prediction of the second coming and the destruction of unbelievers. The perplexity of translators is due to the fact that catchwords of unmistakable reference in Paul's time have lost their significance through the lapse of the centuries.

No person of ordinary intelligence at the date when the letter was written would have been ignorant that peace and safety were objectives of the Epicurean way of life. Recognition of this fact will enable us to correct the translation. To this end it must be remembered that the second coming and the destruction of unbelievers are events in the future but the threat is present and perpetual. With this knowledge kept well in mind we shall be able to set the tenses to rights: "At the very moment that they are saying 'peace and safety' sudden destruction is hanging over them."

When once this identification of the Epicureans has been made, confirmation will be the more certain in the seemingly innocent words (4:3), "the others who have no hope." This signifies no hope of benefiting by the grace of God and the Epicureans were so characterized even outside of the New Testament by their rivals the Stoics, because they denied divine providence.

Additional confirmation of a new and oblique sort will be found in the Second Epistle, 2:1-12, where the coming of Antichrist is predicted. It has long since been observed that the description admirably fits the character of the notorious Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria and persecutor of the Jews. What has not been so well known is the fact that this king became a convert to the creed of Epicurus and adopted it as the court philosophy. Thus the ominous inference is forced upon us that Epicureanism is to be associated with Antichrist.

Welcome JCRAGO! When you get a chance please introduce yourself and tell us about your background with Epicurus.

And this is the Epicurean subreddit! ?! It is hardly possible to engage the discussion when people approach life from such basically different viewpoints. What does living happily mean to someone who sees life as a matter of serving "God" above all?

I just remembered another text that bears on this topic, from the famous opening of Lucretius' Book One.

Note that Lucretius is calling on Venus, the goddess of Pleasure, for aid in restoring peace to his country during troubled times, and that he is ALSO, at the same time, saying that Memmius, his intended target to convert to Epicurean philosophy, will NOT DESERT THE STATE in its time of trouble.

Lucretius joins his call to the philosophy of pleasure with a call to **action**, but he does not presume to tell Memmius *how* to come to the aid of the state.

And someone correct me if I am wrong, but this would have been written during the period of the Civil War, so it would not have been a matter of presuming that Memmius would fight against a foreign enemy. It would have been a matter of hot dispute as to which side of the Civil War on which Memmius would fight, and Lucretius does not tell him which side to choose.

I plan to try to get over there more often, but it's a problem of (1) lack of resources, and (2) motivation. Reddit is much more like a gladiator school where there is constant confrontation and fighting. That can be good motivation for producing new content, but in the end we have to decide how much time to spend opposing people who are never going to be on "our side" vs. building our own team. EpicureanFriends is our team - the Reddit subgroups are not set up to be for the benefit of, or (to my observation) run by, people who hold to a non-Stoicized version of Epicurus.

And the non-Stoicized version of Epicurus is essentially the Ciceronian / Plutarchian criticism of Epicurus melded with an "apology" for Epicurus. Their position is that Epicurus fully defined pleasure as "absence of pain," and that once you understand that what Epicurus was really after was "tranquility" rather than "pleasure" you will see that Epicurus was as much of a virtue-ethicist as any Stoic or Platonist.

It is one of the hardest realizations to accept, but I am thoroughly convinced that there will always be "sides" and "teams" on these issues. We have to accept that not everyone is going to agree with us, nor is it productive for us to try to change the minds of our opponents after a certain point.

Recalling what Frances Wright had Epicurus say in Chapter 8 of "A Few Days In Athens" -

Theon: “Then, truly, if the master had such an intention, I am very glad I did not follow him. But I passed the evening at my own lodgings, with my friend Cleanthes.”

Epicurus: “Trying to talk him into good humor and charity, was it?”

Theon: “Something so.”

(Remainder of names are omitted - the flow of conversation continues - )

“And you succeeded ?”

“Verily, I don’t know; he did not leave me in worse humor than he came.”

“Nay, then it must have been in better. Explanation always approaches or widens the differences between friends.”

“Yes, but we also entered into argument.”

“Dangerous ground that, to be sure. And your fight, of course, ended in a drawn battle.”

“You pay me more than a merited compliment, in concluding that to be a thing of course.”

“Nay, your pardon! I pay you any thing but a compliment. It is not that I conclude your rhetoric and your logic equal, but your obstinacy and your vanity.”

“Do you know, I don’t think myself either obstinate or vain,” said Theon, smiling.

“Had I supposed you did, I might not have seen occasion to give you the information.”

“But on what grounds do you think me obstinate and vain?”

“Your years; your years. And do you think there is a man under twenty that is not both?”

“Why, I should think an old man, at least, more obstinate than a young one.”

“I grant you, when he is obstinate, which is pretty often, but not quite always; and when he is vain, the same. But whilst many old men have vanity and obstinacy in the superlative degree, all young men have those qualities in the positive. I believe your share to be tolerably moderate, but do not suppose that you have no share at all. Well, and now tell me, was it not a drawn battle?”

“I confess it was. At least, we neither of us convinced the other.”

“My son, it would have added one more to the seven wonders if you had. I incline to doubt, if two men, in the course of an olympiad, enter on an argument from the honest and single desire of coming at the truth, or if, in the course of a century, one man comes from an argument convinced by his opponent.”

“Well, then, if you will allow me no credit for not being convinced, you may at least for my not being silenced, I, so young an arguer, and Cleanthes so practiced a one!”

I completely agree with what Elayne wrote and wish to stress this: " Our own pleasure is closely bound up in the pleasure of our friends -- and this is not a "should" situation, just an observation."

The point I am emphasizing is that Epicurean philosophy has no "should" rules other than what we perceive ourselves through pleasure and pain. Elayne has used the example of volunteering in trail maintenance, and how she experienced direct pleasure in her own actions, as well as mental pleasure from knowing that her actions would be of benefit to other hikers like herself.

This is an example of how Epicurus considered the effect of *all* types of pleasure, both physical and mental, in his philosophy. He stated that mental pleasures *can be* (but are not necessarily) stronger than physical pleasures. But he gave no ideal formula by which every person must (or should) add up those pleasures in his or her own experience. That is up to us to do, and it cannot be done by an outsider who does not have our own bundle of likes and dislikes and genetic and cultural and educational history. We can *force* such calculations on others, which is what is done by "the greatest good of the greatest number" but we can never really know that our forced calculation is what each individual would choose for him or herself. In fact, what we know is the opposite - that generalization will never fit the reality of the individuals.

These observations are very unsettling for many people. They presume due to their training in religion or in secular humanism that everyone is or should be basically alike, and that they see things the same way we do. Not to endorse or to criticize it, but such a viewpoint is rolled up into politicians who, for example, wish to "export democracy" or "make the world safe for democracy" and to compel everyone to share their own view of government, whether it be Marxist or capitalist or socialist or libertarian or whatever.

Such "universalist" or "utilitarian" or "one size fits all" viewpoints go far enough to realize that pleasure comes in many forms, both mental and physical, and that abstractions can be very pleasurable to contemplate. But those viewpoints dismiss the truth that different people calculate their abstractions in different ways, and that there is no "higher" justification that any abstraction "should" carry any greater weight than any other. There is only what "is" in the lives of real people. We can wipe out our political enemies in the millions with firebombs and nuclear weapons, and then bask in the glory that everyone who is left shares our views, but after such as war there is not a bit more "justification" for our having taken those actions than we had before the war started. There is no God or ideal perfect standard by which we can say that our actions were justified by a higher good. Those actions may or may no lead to our greater pleasure or pain than if we had not taken them, but that standard (pleasure and pain) is the only standard given by Nature for such decisions.

If you read the last ten of the doctrines of Epicurus, which focus on the fact that there is no such thing as "absolute justice," you will see that Epicurus was fearless in following the observations of his physics and epistemology to their logical ethical conclusions.

Elayne to New Poster E:

New Poster E, the decision process is the same in all cases. We consider the likely effects of different actions on our personal pleasure and choose to maximize it.

All new members were asked to say they have read the file document "Not Neo-Epicurean but Epicurean" before joining, and that document explains that we do not take the social utilitarian perspective of "the greatest good for the greatest number."

Epicureans treat our beloved friends differently from those who try to harm us. Our own pleasure is closely bound up in the pleasure of our friends-- and this is not a "should" situation, just an observation. It's natural for us to want our friends to be happy, and that can extend (depending on the person) to include the happiness of strangers. For instance, yesterday I spent a couple of hours volunteering on trail maintenance in my local land trust, and I got pleasure out of knowing this would be helpful to other hikers in my city. I didn't tell myself I should have pleasure from it-- it was spontaneous. Epicureans regard pleasure and pain as primary sources of information about our environment, which means we don't idealize them anymore than we would tell people they ought to start seeing a yellow sky instead of a blue one.

But we aren't indiscriminate. We don't abstract humans into numbers and treat them all the same-- that's the type of thing you hear in an idealist, rule-based philosophy.

That's why the process is the same for politics as for choosing what to eat for dinner. For each proposed law, I consider how it would affect my pleasure. I weigh also the consequences of spending time on political involvement for specific issues, vs using that time on something else. Sometimes I have found political activity itself to be fun-- depends on who I would be working with and other factors. I have enjoyed knowing I contributed to a handful of changes in my state laws, by meeting with legislators and giving them information.