Posts by Cassius

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  • The Notre Dame Fire

    I have heard of that Follett book but not read it. Yes indeed it is a great tragedy to lose it. I suppose that's a reason to keep it in context, that the world also has lost many more, and more beautiful buildings, from the ancient world, so that this isn't unique. It's still shocking and disconcerting, regardless.

  • The Notre Dame Fire

    **Gods Do Not Protect Their Temples** - I think this time line has been posted before, but today is probably a good day to repost it. Epicurean philosophy has pointed out for 2000 years the lesson of this timeline, that neither the ancient gods, nor the modern ones, protect their temples. And that is because of the observation made in PD1:

    "1. A blessed and indestructible being has no trouble himself and brings no trouble upon any other being; so he is free from anger and partiality, for all such things imply weakness."

    And in the letter to Menoeceus:

    "For there are gods, and the knowledge of them is manifest; but they are not such as the multitude believe, seeing that men do not steadfastly maintain the notions they form respecting them. Not the man who denies the gods worshipped by the multitude, but he who affirms of the gods what the multitude believes about them is truly impious. For the utterances of the multitude about the gods are not true preconceptions but false assumptions; hence it is that the greatest evils happen to the wicked and the greatest blessings happen to the good from the hand of the gods, seeing that they are always favorable to their own good qualities and take pleasure in men like themselves, but reject as alien whatever is not of their kind."

    http://churchandstate.org.uk/2016/06/christ…an-persecution/

  • The Notre Dame Fire

    The Notre Dame fire today is a huge event that has many political implications that are not appropriate for this forum. But it clearly is Epicurean to observe that the gods of the religionists do not intervene to protect their temples.

    I clearly seem to recall that there are passages in some of the ancient texts about how "the gods'" fail to protect their temples, and that their thunderbolts even burn down their own altars, but at the moment I can't recall a cite.

    If any of you remember good texts that would be appropriate for graphics in the coming weeks and months, please post those here too. Because the images of the burning Notre Dame are going to become 9/11 style iconic images showing that the gods do not intervene in the world of human affairs. And that far transcends the politics of 2019.

  • Epicurus: Against the Use of Empty Words

    Good find Elayne. I've never understood why anyone would want to identify themselves as a "Hedonist" rather than an "Epicurean" other than as a way of distancing themselves from the full implications of Epicurean theory.


    Who are these "others"? Why "must" their interests be considered equal to the interests of myself, family, and actual or potential friends?


    "Must" is always a loaded word. Says who?


    More of the same, as Elayne pointed out. So "he believes" these things? Based on what? "Worth"? To whom? Why?

    And as Elayne said, why is a happy human being "better" than an unhappy human being? The "universal" dose of pleasure? This sounds like Benthamite utilitarianism - the "greatest good for the greatest number" for which I see no basis in Epicurus.


    And while I personally agree with this, we are supposed to be discussing philosophy. WHY are these outcomes desirable, especially if we're just interested in the greatest pleasure for the greatest number -- why not just kill all the minorities and the majority would then be totally happy, wouldn't they? Why should we consider those who are killed in the process? All these questions seem to me to be unresolveable under what he has said so far.


    On the other hand, I think they ARE resolvable under the plain words of Epicurus, including PD39 and PD40 - we simply have to recognize that there are no absolute standards of right and wrong, and that every living being will prosper or fail according to how they and their like-minded friends organize their affairs:

    PD 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.

    PD 40. Those who possess the power to defend themselves against threats by their neighbors, being thus in possession of the surest guarantee of security, live the most pleasant life with one another;

  • Epicurus: Against the Use of Empty Words

    This is the kind of thing that I'd like to work on correlating:

    (1) The book by DeLattre apparently indicates that the material being discussed is from Book 18 of On Nature. it was published in 2010.

    (2) The Wurzburg Center for Epicurean Studies listing of the available texts does not even include anything from Book 18 at all: Wurzburg Center for Epicurean Studies

    There must be a way to find either at Wurzburg or some other site a comprehensive listing of what parts of what books are available.

  • Wurzburg Center for Epicurean Studies

    http://epikur-wuerzburg.de/aktivitaeten/thv/

    Google Translate Version:

    NOTE -- I cut and pasted this page on 4/15/19 from the original site. The "thvproject" link below appears to have been "re-assigned" all right -- it now appears to be a PORN site. I am leaving the text as is for the moment, or at least until i can find the correct replacement link.

    Thesaurus Herculanensium Voluminum

    On the initiative of Gianluca Del Mastro, the Centro Internazionale per la Studio dei Papiri Ercolanesi began in 2008 with the construction of a full-text database of herculean papyri ( Thesaurus Herculanensium Voluminum , THV). In collaboration with the Department of Classical Philology I at the University of Würzburg, a total of 26 texts were entered and made available at http://www.thvproject.it (this address has since been re-assigned and contains other material). In 2013, the transfer of existing and new texts began in the Digital Corpus of Literary Papyri , which was coordinated by Holger Essler in Würzburg. Today, with 124 texts and 240 inventory numbers, almost all Greek papyri from Herculaneum in the Corpus are recorded and searchable . The text input and revision was based on the latest complete edition. Later partial editions or readings are listed in the literature.

    Codes of the Würzburg Epikureismuszentrums

    under the direction of Holger Essler

    Coding of the Centro Internazionale per lo Studio dei Papiri Ercolanesi

    under the direction of Gianluca Del Mastro

    © 2019 Würzburg Center for Epicurean Studies

  • Epicurus: Against the Use of Empty Words

    Hiram have you found anything further about who the writer and editor of this book are, in terms of their background and qualifications? I would love to know what access they have to the fragments of Book 18.

    I see this page describing the book https://www.librairiecosmopolite.com/livre/1221170-…teurs-gallimard


    which google translate gives (poorly) as:

    "Epicetus" for Epictetus, "hog" for others, Epicurus sparked fierce debate. Calling for individual liberation from fears and delusions, an overt attack of superstition, his philosophy was perhaps too innovative. She passed on to posterity thanks to De rerum natura by Lucretius, and to Epogenide's Life of Diogenes Laertius, which transcribed the Master's Philosophical Abstracts and his Maximal Capitals - before the discovery, at Herculaneum, of a philosophical library resurrect other epicurean writings. This volume opens on the indispensable testimony of Diogenes Laertius, then it offers, for the first time in French, a translation of the found fragments of the Nature of Epicure. Then come the collections of testimonies and fragments relating to the disciples of the first generation (Métrodore, Hermarque ...), in a presentation identical to that of the volume that the Pleiade dedicated to the Presocratics. Garden disciples who flourished at the turn of the 2nd-1st centuries BC, we give the few texts, Zeno of Sidon, Philodemus, which have reached us, and of course the poem of Lucretius, here published in a new translation . In counterpoint is the testimony of Cicero, one of the main detractors of epicureanism. Finally, we focus on epicureanism of the first-third centuries, known mainly through testimonies (Plutarch, Seneca, Galen). The volume ends with Diogenes d'Oenoanda, who wanted to give the inhabitants of his city the epicurean precepts by engraving them on a wall. Thus we are given back the epicurean philosophy, with which a whole dimension of modernity was constituted

    Edition published under the direction of Daniel Delattre and Jackie Pigeaud.

  • Epicurus: Against the Use of Empty Words

    Very impressive work in assembling the text and the narration!


    Text:

    Visit societyofepicurus.com

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    Script:

    In its battle against the errors of Platonic philosophy, Epicurean philosophy invites us to call things by their proper name and to avoid empty words.

    The first Epicureans often changed the names or definitions of things with empirical justification, so that the words were in line with the things signified and with their own descriptions. The idea is that every word that is used must have a clear correspondence in nature, in reality, as is evident to our faculties.

    The practice of clearly establishing the definitions before starting an investigation, debate, or philosophical speech originates from this idea, which helps us to philosophize with our feet on the ground and to avoid pointlessly building castles in the air.

    This was such an important issue that Polyaenus, one of the founders of Epicurean philosophy, devoted a treatise to Definitions. In the treatise, the distinction is also discussed between the knowable and the unknowable (i.e., what can and cannot be known through the senses and faculties).

    When the mind clearly focuses on an impression received from a perceived object, the mind acquires a clear concept of the object and is able to assign a category or definition to it.

    This is known as an attestation or testimony.

    Epicureans greatly value enargeia, which is the clear immediacy of an attestation.

    In the absence of an immediate or direct apprehension of the object, the mind is able to carry out a conceptual process by which an opinion concerning a being or imperceivable phenomenon undergoes the conceivability test.

    This typically involves reasoning about that which is non-evident by using an analogy from that which is evident and similar, that which has already been perceived and conceived clearly.

    The notion of the inconceivable is derived from this process because in order to refer to something, we must first clearly conceive it.

    As we can see, all these terms attach importance to evidence and things perceived. But what methods are used to reason about actions and theories? Epicurus says that we think empirically concerning actions based on the results observed from any course of action.

    If we have the intellectual rigor to follow these guidelines, we can easily dismiss false opinions, theoretical arguments, and judgments if they are based on false testimony, or if when we establish a link with action, it proves to be disadvantageous.

    People in ancient Greece were often confronted by rhetors , sophists, and logicians who liked to play with words and confuse people.

    For instance, when asked whether it is possible to know and not know something at the same time, a man was presented with his father wearing a veil. This supposedly proves that it is possible to know and to not know the same thing (because the man knows his father, but does not recognize him when veiled).

    Epicurus makes use of this example to show that one can not conclude a universal based on a particular example -- in this case, that it is possible to know and to not know something at the same time

    To reach a satisfactory conclusion to a universal proposition, its truth must be based on empirical grounds, and translated into practical behavior by the person who admits it.

    Epicurus not only forces us to consider the evidence provided, but establishes a relationship between practice and theory.

    I see the description now on the Youtube page.

    And on the Society of Epicurus page:


    http://societyofepicurus.com/reasonings-abo…of-empty-words/

    Also, I didn't immediately recognize the veil analogy near the end of the audio. What is the source for that?

    Edit: I see you are citing this book, which you have mentioned before:

    https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/207…af51070c900bf38

    I still have seen no other English material on this book 18 of On Nature, so I don't have a clue whether this text is reconstructed or how reliable it may be. I hope we'll eventually find more information on this because if there is substantial material from Book 18 available, we need access to it in English.

  • A Discussion On Anticipations from 2017

    Cassius to Elli -

    Yes Elli I am thinking that the Canon provides a reference that functions "automatically" without conscious reasoning (maybe the better word is "logic") and before the application of words. In other terms I see anticipation and all elements of the Canon as inputs in the formation of words, but not words themselves. Concepts and words I see as the work product of the reasoning mind after the injection of opinion. "Zebra" is our opinion of a good word to use for a particular variety of horses but the concept and word zebra exist only in the human mind after reasoning through a set of attributes we decide to call essential for "zebras." And no human would ever have been able to develop the concept / word zebra, no matter how many striped horses he saw, if he did not have an innate faculty disposing him to organize observations into words. But the faculty itself does not contain words because words are formed only after inclusion of opinions.

  • A Discussion On Anticipations from 2017

    From Elli:

    Cassius wrote : <<It is important to see that the faculties of the Canon are *pre-cognitive.*>>

    What means pre-cognitive ? Based on lexicon I found the etymology and the meaning of this word.

    precognitive adj (seeing the future) ?! ενορατικός, προγνωστικός, μαντικός.

    precognitive adj (happening without cognition = parapsychology) ?!

    εξωαισθητήριος (=out of sensory-out of senses)?!

    oracular adj (prophetic) προφητικός, μαντικός (seing the future) ?!

    visionary n (person who sees visions) (κάποιος που βλέπει οράματα) ενορατικός ?!

    e.g. Felisa Sistiaga was a visionary who claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary.??!!!

    Has this word “pre-cognitive” something to do with Epicurean philosophy and the Canon ??


    Cassius my friend, I have the feeling that you try to reject totally the reasoning from the Canon ? If you try to reject the Reason by itself and the mind/brain by itself, ok that’s right, I agree with you. But there is a DANGER to fall in trap to conclude that the Canon has not reasoning at all, but this is false. Indeed the mind/brain without the senses is a mass of meat, but in the contrary the mind/brain by itself in a quite room is able to do SOBER REASONING to CALCULATE, since mind/brain HAD STORED many CONCEPTS based on words with images that are based on past senses and feelings. These are the ANTICIPATIONS OR PRECONCEPTIONS.

    Mind/brain can composing unaffected and more abstract subjective thinking drawing from the most distant imagination. Mind/brain can manage data of a produced sensation and emotion. Is a criterion of judgment with the collaboration of senses and the feelings of course. But the Senses by themselves can’t work too, because as Epicurus said senses are ALOGES -=without reason. For this here comes the mind/brain to declare what the senses had seen, heard, touched etc. as well as the mind can do the calculation among pleasure and pain (PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE)

    Doctrine 24. If you reject any single sensation and fail to distinguish between the conclusion of opinion as to the appearance awaiting confirmation and that which is actually given by the sensation or feeling, OR EACH INTUITIVE APPREHENSION OF THE MIND, you will confound all other sensations as well with the same groundless opinion, so that you will reject every STANDARD OF JUDGEMENT. And if among the mental images created by your opinion you affirm both that which awaits confirmation and that which does not, you will not escape error, since you will have preserved the whole cause of doubt in every judgment between what is right and what is wrong.

    From the letter to Meneoceus based on reasoning :

    - The right procedure, however, is to weigh them against one another and to scrutinize the advantages and disadvantages; for we treat the good under certain circumstances as an evil and conversely the evil as a good.

    - Of all these virtues the source is the prudence, the greatest good of all – and hence more precious than philosophy itself – teaching us the impossibility of living pleasurably without living according to reason, honor, and justice, and conversely, of living according to reason, honor, and justice without living pleasurably; for the virtues are of one nature with the pleasurable life and conversely, the pleasurable life is inseparable from the virtues.

    - It is not continuous drinkings and revelings, nor the satisfaction of lusts, nor the enjoyment of fish and other luxuries of the wealthy table, which produce a pleasant life, but sober reasoning, searching out the motives for all choice and avoidance, and banishing mere opinions, to which are due the greatest disturbance of the spirit.

    Some sayings that are based on reasoning :

    E.S. 27. In all other occupations the fruit comes painfully after completion, but in philosophy pleasure goes hand in hand with knowledge; for enjoyment does not follow comprehension, but comprehension and enjoyment are simultaneous.

    ES. 45. The study of nature does not make men productive of boasting or bragging nor apt to display that culture which is the object of rivalry with the many, but high-spirited and self-sufficient, taking pride in the good things of their own minds and not of their circumstances.

    ES 55. We must heal our misfortunes by the grateful RECOLLECTION of what has been and by the RECOGNITION that it is impossible to undo that which has been done.

    ES 71. Every desire must be confronted by this question: what will happen to me if the object of my desire is accomplished and what if it is not?

  • A Discussion On Anticipations from 2017

    From Elli:

    IMO this is a description of the Canon : Epicurus had limited the Dialectic method on the rules that lead to the formation of correct judgments namely to distinguish the imaginary from the real. This clarification he named it Criterion of truth and this part of his philosophy called it Canonicon or Stichioticon.

    The Canon includes:

    1. Two principles: a) Nothing can be created from nothing. b) the principle of the analogy (as long as all the known elements of two bodies are similar then all their unknown will be similar).

    2. Fourth criteria of truth: a) The senses. b) The passions or emotions (pleasure and pain) c) the anticipations or preconceptions (concepts based on words) d) the fantastic impositions of the mind.

    3. The empirical methodology of the confirmed and not contradicted and the non confirmed and contradicted.

  • A Discussion On Anticipations from 2017

    From Elli -


    Guys It took me a whole year and something to LEARN my two little boys to not shit on their napkins-pampers. It took me a whole year and something to learn them WORDS AND WHAT THE WORDS DENOTE ! Epicurus DOES NOT addressed to little children. Epicurus adressed to mature guys and speaks about pre-concepts/images that are in the brain and derived from concepts based on words :

    First of all, guys, we must grasp the CONCEPTS attached to words, in order that we may be able to refer to them and so to judge the inferences of opinion or problems of investigation or reflection, so that we may not either leave everything uncertain and go on explaining to infinity or use words devoid of meaning. For this purpose it is essential that the first MENTAL IMAGE associated with EACH WORD should be regarded, and that there should be NO NEED OF EXPLANATION, if we are really to have a STANDARD to which to refer a problem of investigation or reflection or a mental inference. And besides we must keep all our investigations in accord with our sensations, and in particular with the immediate apprehensions whether of the MIND or of ANY ONE OF THE INSTRUMENTS OF JUDGEMENT, and likewise in accord with the FEELINGS existing in us, in order that we may have indications whereby we may judge both the problem of sense perception and the unseen..

    And every image which we obtain by an act of apprehension on the part of the mind or of the sense-organs, whether of shape or of properties, this image is the shape or the properties of the concrete object, and is produced by the constant repetition of the image or the impression it has left. Now falsehood and error always lie in the addition of opinion with regard to what is waiting to be confirmed or not contradicted, and then is not confirmed or is contradicted. For the similarity between the things which exist, which we call real and the images received as a likeness of things and produced either in sleep or through some other acts of apprehension on the part of the mind or the other instruments of judgment, could never be, unless there were some effluences of this nature actually brought into contact with our senses. And error would not exist unless another kind of movement too were produced inside ourselves, closely linked to the apprehension of images, but differing from it; and it is owing to this, supposing it is not confirmed, or is contradicted, that falsehood arises; but if it is confirmed or not contradicted, it is true. Therefore we must do

    our best to keep this doctrine in mind, in order that on the one hand the standards of judgment dependent on the clear visions may not be undermined, and on the other error may not be as firmly established as truth and so throw all into confusion.

    Moreover, we must suppose that human nature too was TAUGHT and constrained to do many things of every kind merely by circumstances; and that later on REASONING elaborated what had been suggested by nature and made further inventions, in some matters quickly, in others slowly, at some epochs and times making great advances, and lesser again at others. And so NAMES too were not at first deliberately GIVEN TO THINGS, but men’s natures according to their different nationalities had their own peculiar feelings and received their peculiar impressions, and so each in their own way emitted air formed into shape by each of these feelings and impressions, according to the differences made in the different nations by the places of their abode as well. And then later on by common consent in each nationality SPECIAL NAMES were deliberately given in order to make their MEANINGS OR CONCEPTS less ambiguous to one another and more BRIEFLY DEMONSTRATED. And sometimes those who were acquainted with them brought in things hitherto unknown and introduced sounds for them, on some occasions being naturally constrained to utter them, and on others choosing them by REASONING in accordance with the prevailing mode of FORMATION, and thus making their MEANING-CONCEPT CLEAR.

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