Posts by Cassius

I see we haven't updated this thread or moved on to complete Chapter 12 for a couple of months now. When someone is ready for another one of these sessions please post and we will get started again!

E: I think putting all the PDs together, both agreement and mutual advantage apply, and "advantage" I don't know how to read as other than net pleasure. So consented surgery, etc, could fall under the category of a just contract.

But not all agreements would be under the umbrella of justice-- if they do not provide mutual advantage/ net pleasure. It appears to be a very specific term as Epicurus uses it. That doesn't mean a situation is wrong if it falls outside the umbrella-- it can be "not applicable", I think. I would save the term unjust to use as he did, for when contracts are broken or --the way I'm reading it-- if laws are imposed AS IF they were agreements but are not mutually advantageous (coercion can often fall in this category). These are the occasions when our intuition of injustice rises up, so that we desire to obtain our freedom, or, as he says, when we know we've broken a contract and live in fear.

K, or anyone, do you disagree with what E just wrote? I agree that *both* concepts apply: these PD's specifically reference "agreement," and "harm" has to be consisted in context with what we know from many other Epicurean references:

(1) "harm" of "evil" or "what is bad" must ultimately be tied to "net pain for the person involved."

(2) "advantage" or "benefit" or "what is good" must ultimately be tied to "net pleasure for the person involved."

And the reason I think "for the person involved" is important is that even though the person involved might not realize the full effects at the moment, the ultimate calculation is HIS/HER personal calculation.

It isn't an "absolute" or "objective" calculation by some outsider who wants to substitute their definition of "harm" for that person for that person's own experience.

?????

M: I've read somewhere that it (justice) was partly defined as what people would agree to if they were not under coercion. Assuming that isn't right, where do you think this misconception came from?

H: If you google the Principal Doctrines you will find justice explained as mutual advantage in the last ten Doctrines, with more detail furnished there.

E: I don't think you've got that wrong. Coercion wouldn't be part of a mutual contract. A person might choose an agreement that appears asymmetric in some ways, if they find it to their advantage. But if they aren't choosing it, that's not really a contract. By contract, I'm including informal, unspoken understandings between people who have at least met each other.

The thing people do, though, is make a leap and say ok, then if an interaction isn't proceeding according to mutual free agreement then it's "wrong." But there's no absolute standard. If there's no contract to begin with, it might even be hard to say "unjust"-- because that assumes mutually beneficial contracts should be the rule for every interaction, no matter who is involved, and poof, there you are, back to social utilitarianism.

The way I think of it is that I strongly prefer to interact with people who do not try and coerce me. And I avoid coercing others partly because it's just not my personality but also because I prefer to establish relationships where that doesn't happen, for the sake of my happiness.

V: The prohibition on coercion is a consequence, not a definition. The definition of justice is: One person must not harm another. You are acting justly when you don't cause harm to others. Coercion is a form of harm, and therefore against justice.

In terms of what is and isn't just, agreement has very little to do with it. People can willingly agree to all manner of silly things that are harmful to them... and anyone who takes advantage of such agreement is behaving unjustly.

Cassius Amicus to Mike -- What I remember questioning the accuracy of your statement was this point about "if everyone were in the same position" --- which is not at all the same as your point about "not being under coercion" - "not being under coercion" is simply a part of the definition of an "agreement."

Like the others are saying, if you are under coercion then you are not "agreeing." Check the exchange below and you'll see that my point was that Epicurus never said the world was fair that justice applies only "when everyone is in the same position."

Cassius Amicus Of the answers above I think we ought to discuss V's: "The definition of justice is: One person must not harm another. You are acting justly when you don't cause harm to others. Coercion is a form of harm, and therefore against justice."

Without some pretty strong qualification I don't think I agree with that. For example, I would never admit that it is "unjust" to harm a burglar, or someone trying to kill me or my family. We could define "harm" as "unjust harm" and reach that result, but that would be circular, stretching words out of their ordinary use, and clarify nothing.

Now the point about "can we agree to give or receive harm" is I think the more important issue.. We can and often do agree to receive pain from someone else, such as when we sign up for gym training and we follow the instructions of the trainer, or we willingly accept a "shot" from a doctor.

So I think we have to discuss what "harm" is and whether Epicurus would have used that word as having an "absolute" or "subjective" definition.

Here is an example from "On Ends" of Torquatus saying that some men must be "restrained": "Yet nevertheless some men indulge without limit their avarice, ambition and love of power, lust, gluttony and those other desires, which ill-gotten gains can never diminish but rather must inflame the more; inasmuch that they appear proper subjects for restraint rather than for reformation."

I don't see a necessary distinction between "restraining" them or "harming them to stop them." They are not agreeing to be restrained, but we are not acting "unjustly" in restraining them. In any situation where there is not agreement on both sides, nothing is "unjust" - and in fact "justice" does not apply at all in Epicurean terms.

Here for easy reference are the main doctrines in issue:

31. Natural justice is a pledge of reciprocal benefit, to prevent one man from harming or being harmed by another.

32. Those animals which are incapable of making binding agreements with one another not to inflict nor suffer harm are without either justice or injustice; and likewise for those peoples who either could not or would not form binding agreements not to inflict nor suffer harm.

33. There never was such a thing as absolute justice, but only agreements made in mutual dealings among men in whatever places at various times providing against the infliction or suffering of harm.

34. Injustice is not an evil in itself, but only in consequence of the fear which is associated with the apprehension of being discovered by those appointed to punish such actions.

35. It is impossible for a man who secretly violates the terms of the agreement not to harm or be harmed to feel confident that he will remain undiscovered, even if he has already escaped ten thousand times; for until his death he is never sure that he will not be detected.

36. In general justice is the same for all, for it is something found mutually beneficial in men's dealings, but in its application to particular places or other circumstances the same thing is not necessarily just for everyone.

37. Among the things held to be just by law, whatever is proved to be of advantage in men's dealings has the stamp of justice, whether or not it be the same for all; but if a man makes a law and it does not prove to be mutually advantageous, then this is no longer just. And if what is mutually advantageous varies and only for a time corresponds to our concept of justice, nevertheless for that time it is just for those who do not trouble themselves about empty words, but look simply at the facts.

38. Where without any change in circumstances the things held to be just by law are seen not to correspond with the concept of justice in actual practice, such laws are not really just; but wherever the laws have ceased to be advantageous because of a change in circumstances, in that case the laws were for that time just when they were advantageous for the mutual dealings of the citizens, and subsequently ceased to be just when they were no longer advantageous.

Cassius Amicus I do think that PD32 does place the focus on "agreement" in defining justice, and that absent agreement, the concept of justice does not apply to what happens between the people involved. All sorts of other concepts and issues do apply, but in a world without absolute justice, "justice" is not one of them -- unless you want to talk purely in terms of "civil justice" or "conventional justice." Seems to me that Epicurus is pretty clearly focusing his point on emphasizing that there is no NATURAL or ABSOLUTE justice ---->

"Those animals which are incapable of making binding agreements with one another not to inflict nor suffer harm are without either justice or injustice; and likewise for those peoples who either could not or would not form binding agreements not to inflict nor suffer harm."

So to repeat I would like to know what people think about this:

Now the point about "can we agree to give or receive harm" is I think the more important issue. We can and often do agree to receive pain from someone else, such as when we sign up for gym training and we follow the instructions of the trainer, or we willingly accept a "shot" from a doctor, or even when we agree (like Socrates (?)) to accept certain criminal penalties.

So I think we have to discuss what "harm" is and whether Epicurus would have used that word as having an "absolute" or "subjective" definition.

If "harm" has an 'absolute' definition, then what is that definition, and what happens when the person involved doesn't agree with that definition?

Joshua your last comment is a subject on which I am intensely interested as well.

I largely agree with what I perceive Gibbon says that it was the influence of Judeo/Christian/Eastern religions that was one of the most important destructive forces, but if we use the civil war as a dividing line that's presumably a little too early --- however the problems in the empire with various Jewish rebellions may have been spreading the eastern influence well before Christ --- as I recall one of Cicero's speechs talks about Jewish movement of goal to Jerusalem from other places, and governors trying to clamp down on that, as well as references to Jewish monied influence in Rome. And those factors don't even address philosophical changes.

I hope you will post any thoughts that you think are relevant in any thread or subforum that seems appropriate, or we can set up another one something like "How The Ancient World Came to An End" or whatever you wish.

Very very interesting and thank you Joshua! And I think you are right to suspect that some people might have seen it as a golden boy inside joke!

But how in the world does a Stoic philosopher wind up with that name UNLESS it is an explicit reference to Plato????? This is weird and I hope we can track down something that shows more light on this.

The coinage is an excellent path!

If this from Brittanica is correct, then our humble virtuous philosopher Marcus DID start to adopt the name "Golden" during his reign.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marc…s-Roman-emperor

If I were more familiar with MEDITATIONS I would look for a quote on modesty and paste it into one of Nate's graphics with something like "Preached Modesty" << >> "Called himself 'Golden'"

This describes the system but doesn't address our guy -- http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman…GRA*/Nomen.html

(I think Martin and I crossposted.) If someone has good info on the family name and origin of "Aurelius" please post. I kind of think given his temperament he might not have accepted people calling him "the golden" in his lifetime. Maybe so, maybe not.

IT would be a very interesting aspect of his character if Marcus DID ask for, or accept as part of his official title, the word "Aurelius" if that was not already associated with his family.

Actually I wonder who gave the name "golden" to the son of Marcus Annius Verus, That sounds like it could be a much later development. Anyone know?

Wikipedia says "Marcus was born to Marcus Annius Verus, a praetor and the great-great-nephew of Emperor Trajan, and Domitia Lucilla, a wealthy noblewoman and heiress."

So sounds like the family name was Verus? And that Aurelius might not ever have been used while he was alive? Would be interesting to track down but Wikipedia doesn't seem to say. Seems possible that it was a later addition by philosophers specifically remarking on his philosophy.

Yes I agree it is more fitting to Plato, but is not "Aurelius" a given name that means "golden", so that he was EXPLICITLY called golden and specifically because he was such a philosopher?

The main reason I fudged the name is because the statement in the balloon is not a quote, and I didn't want to be accused of misquoting.

I'm no fan of Marcus Aurelius, but the only reason I picked him for the graphic rather than someone else is that Nate gave the perfect blank form. On the other hand he is an icon of the Stoics so makes a perfect foil for Epicurus that many modern readers will recognizing. Actually this graphic looks to me more like a typical 60's college professor than he does Marcus Aurelius anything. Anyway thanks for the feedback I have changed it around several times already and may again.

One more comment -- I am a HUGE fan of ancient Rome so I don't lightly make fun of the Romans. I agree too that Aurelius is more eclectic than stoic, but the modern stoics have adopted him as their patron saint so for effectiveness of graphics his image is hard to beat as a stand-in for Stoicism. Zeno or Chryssipus would be better, but no one would recognize them.

Thanks to Nate for helping me express in one graphic what I have spilled weeks of time writing in much less effective form.

Quote from Elayne

When I read DeWitt, I realized how important the contexts were. For myself personally, when I study for my own pleasure, that automatically includes wanting the pleasure of those I'm close to. Not a whole country

That is the impression I got from DeWitt too and I think it is persuasive. I have read many times in other places that Greek education was heavily oriented toward "producing good citizens." if so, that would make total sense with DeWitt's interpretation -- that we are educating ourselves (in philosophy and in most all else too) not "for Greece" but for ourselves. Which does not mean that Greece is not an important part of our world, but that ultimately Greece itself is not the highest value - especially if "Greece" is not the equivalent of "our friends." Under the right circumstances I could imagine that the two could be roughly equivalent, but the larger and more problematic the political situation the less equivalent that would be.

I think what is coming into focus is that in terms of real-life meetings, we're almost going to have to find a way to do some shotgun style advertising to draw as many people as we can into what may almost be a lecture-like environment, and hope that maybe 5% or some very small number will have enough interest to come out.

I am thinking that Meetup is so heavily oriented to a "lonely-hearts club" type person (and I am not criticizing that) that the people we will find there will be even less motivated - maybe substantially less motivated - than facebook.

It might take targeting a very large community (like Atlanta in my general area) and then using meetup maybe for logistics but plan to find a way to solicit interest from local philosophy departments / schools / colleges and even looking for local facebook groups (if they exist). In other words looking for a wider variety of places to advertise so that we aren't just relying only on Meetup.

When I was younger meeting notices for such things used to be placed in Libraries and other gathering spots but I am not sure that works anymore.

Quote from Elayne

What caught my eye was that pleasures are only "generally good", when it is actually that the pleasures themselves are always good but that sometimes pains come along with certain pleasure-bringing actions and thus those actions are not advisable. It's not the pleasure that's the problem at all-- it's the entire consequences of the action. That might sound like a quibbling distinction but I don't think it is minor. Because sometimes one can modify the results of an action so that the pleasures remain and the pains are lessened or removed.

Oh I missed that and I completely agree with this.

joshua I appreciate your helping me think these things through. Like i said I am trying to put my myself in the place of someone who tries to stay as rigorously consistent with the principles as possible without injecting my / our modern viewpoint. But it's of course hard to do that so it helps to test the arguments against ever more extreme test cases to see if they can stand the strain. So far I think they can if we rigorously reject the idea that any law or morality can be the same for all people at all times and all places under all circumstances.

"where the strong make decisions and the weak suffer what they must is a contradiction in terms, "

I know that what you say applies to me, but it concerns me that this comes close to drawing a bright line that may not be in fact so bright. Is it not possible to imagine situations where the strong do make decisions for the weak that do in fact lead to greater pleasure for both? Is a parent child relationship such an example? Generalities are useful but the closer we get to stating that anything is a "rule" the closer we probably get to extending our personal opinion further than it has the "power" to go over the feelings of the people involved.

If I understand your points I think I agree with all you wrote. I realize as I think about things things that I am trying to take these issues to their logical conclusion.

IF there is nothing eternal except matter in motion through the void, and if the universe has no "center" and no "outside" from which a creating power looks on and says "THIS is good and THAT is bad" then we are truly left with the feelings of pleasure and pain as the motivation for all action.

We can set our sights on things that we think will please us (democracy, equality, capitalism, socialism, communism) but never can there be any "outside" justification for it other than ourselves and what we set as our goals. Presumably we set goals for some reason, and that reason ultimately is a function of our calculation of how our feelings of pain and pleasure will be impacted.

All of this might seem like the path to nihilism, but I think Epicurus probably saw it as the opposite: He presumably saw it as daring to cut away all illusions and getting right to the heart of the matter. Looking for justification "out there somewhere" is a dream - all justification must come to us in life, and ultimately through our feelings of pleasure and pain. Deprive us of all feeling, and we are dead, as per PD2. But rather than look at feeling as "all we have" and feel like we are deprived of something that we "ought" to have, such as gods might have, I think the point would be that since our feeling is ultimately our most important connection to reality, we have to guard it as rigorously and intensely as we can, because in very short order life is over and it is gone.

And in one of the phrases from DeWitt's commentary that I remember best, I think it's true that all these issues of morality and ethics and pain and pleasure have meaning ONLY to "the living."

Ha - I just came across this which I have never seen before but is relevant to our discussion of "morality"

"Catherine Wilson asserts the MORAL right to be identified as the author of this book!"

Is this some kind of new phrasing in international copyright law?

Good grief. I would have thought that "Copyright Catherine Wilson 2019" was sufficient for that, must we appeal to absolute morality in a book on Epicurus???

I agree with you as to "orientation" Joshua. And I bet if I had taken the trouble to read the text first, there might be explanations there that would make it clear.

As to "moral relativism" the more I think about anything involving "morality" the more I question whether the Epicureans even spoke in that term as we use it today. Certainly they spoke about "virtue" and "good" and "evil" but do we have good cites from Epicurus or Lucretius talking about "morality" as anything other than tied to pain and pleasure?

For example in your sentence: ". An Epicurean may well argue that slavery was immoral even in ancient Greece, in spite of their social conventions, specifically because the slave was never a party to the 'social contract' in the first place." The Epicurean would surely note that the relationship is pleasurable to the owner, and painful to the slave, and that if the relationship did not come about by agreement (I suppose that is possible) then it would be unjust. And even if it came about by agreement at first, and the parties changed their mind, then we would at most have a breach of contract, not anything that violates any kind of abstract natural or divine or ideal law.

But would an Epicurean talk in terms of their being some kind of outside standard of "morality" which slavery in ancient Greece (or any other place) violated?

Certainly we have the example of Cassius Longinus who decided that Caesar (arguably a dictator against the law) offended his sense of *something* enough to assassinate him and to go to war against his successors. In those letters between him and Cicero he talks about the interrelation between virtue and pleasure as they applied to that situation, but I don't recall that he spoke in terms of the problems being one of "morality" or Caesar being "immoral."

Sometimes it is hard to separate the philosophical issue from the emotion of the particular example (slavery, here) but I think that is exactly what Epicurus was advising in those PD's on Justice from 30-40.

We personally find some things so painful and offensive to us that we go to war and fight to the death over them, but if there is no god, no ideal forms, no abstract eternal truths, then when we fight to the death we should realize that we are fighting for our own preferences, not because we are vindicated by gods or outside standards.

At least that is the way I am reading it. I am very interested in any opinions otherwise, or with a different twist on it, but I think the Epicurean fundamental principles of the way the universe work compel that conclusion.