Posts by Cassius

**Visualizing Principal Doctrine 6** This doctrine has some issues with translation, but in the end the meaning seems clear. The text which is generally reproduced today is that in the attached graphic: "To secure protection from men anything is a natural good by which you may be able to attain that end." I have retained that formulation in this graphic because I believe that this statement is accurate to the thrust of Epicurean philosophy.

As stated at Attalus.org and other authorities, the text from which translators work references kingship, and can be translated into English as

"In order to obtain security from other people, there was (always) the natural good of sovereignty and kingship, through which (someone) once could have accomplished this."

Apparently many authorities, including Usener and Bignone, believe that the explanation here is that the reference to kingship was just such a reference, made by someone in commenting on the text over the ages, which at some point crept into the text itself. This theory would be consistent with the statement made elsewhere in the Epicurean texts that "the wise man in an occasion, will serve even a king/monarch."

Be that as it may, the wider view that anything (and not just the assistance of kings) is a natural good when necessary to obtain safety from other men. This wider meaning without the reference to kingship is amply supportable by Epicurean philosophy. One such example in a text that survives intact is Torquatus' statement in On Ends:

"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."

The same view is also consistent with the last of the Principal Doctrines, PD40:

As many as possess the power to procure complete immunity from their neighbors, these also live most pleasantly with one another, since they have the most certain pledge of security, and after they have enjoyed the fullest intimacy, they do not lament the previous departure of a dead friend, as though he were to be pitied.

So whether the subject is kingship or any other defensive or preventatively offensive device, the wider meaning is clear:

"To secure protection from men anything is a natural good by which you may be able to attain that end."

--------------------------

More graphics for Principal Doctrine 6 can be found here.

This thread is for discussion of the FAQ entry found here.

I noted this alleged limitation on what Epicurus meant by "pleasure" just this morning, and don't have the time to expand the argument beyond what is below. I have a lot of respect and appreciation for the author of the Monadnock website, but I think this alleged interpretation of "pleasure" in this fragment is a serious misinterpretation of the meaning. This is Stoic-influenced projection, and there is no way that ancient Epicureans would have accepted this understanding of what Epicurus was teaching, from the man who was famous for his candor, and who explicitly endorsed pleasure as normally understood rather than word games, and who said:

I know not how to conceive the good, apart from the pleasures of taste, of sex, of sound, and the pleasures of beautiful form.” - Diogenes Laertius

He differs from the Cyrenaics with regard to pleasure. They do not include under the term the pleasure which is a state of rest, but only that which consists in motion. Epicurus admits both; also pleasure of mind as well as of body, as he states in his work On Choice and Avoidance and in that On the Ethical End, and in the first book of his work On Human Life and in the epistle to his philosopher friends in Mytilene. So also Diogenes in the seventeenth book of his Epilecta, and Metrodorus in his Timocrates, whose actual words are: “Thus Pleasure being conceived both as that species which consists in motion and that which is a state of rest.” The words of Epicurus in his work On Choice are : “Peace of mind and freedom from pain are pleasures which imply a state of rest; joy and delight are seen to consist in motion and activity.” - Diogenes Laertius

They affirm that there are two states of feeling, pleasure and pain, which arise in every animate being, and that the one is favorable and the other hostile to that being, and by their means choice and avoidance are determined; and that there are two kinds of inquiry, the one concerned with things, the other with nothing but words.

- Diogenes Laertius

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?

- Torquatus, In Cicero's On Ends

Source for the alleged limitation - see note to translation of fragment 70: http://monadnock.net/epicurus/fragments.html#n70

I was having a conversation with a friend about all this earlier today, and I realized something I should have seen years ago: probably the best way to start explaining the philosophy of Epicurus would be to show this video, and to also show two other videos, one from Timaeus on the nature of the universe as divine, and one from Philebus on Plato's objection to pleasure as the ultimate guide to life. That would provide a good foundation for then beginning to explain Epicurus' response in each of the three main areas of philosophy (epistemology, physics, and ethics). I wish there were equivalent videos on Timaeus and Philebus -- in the absence of them they will need to be created.

Has everyone here seen this? It is super-critical. If you haven't seen it, watch, and be revolted! (And better yet, revolt and join Epicurus!)

Thank you Oscar!

I am looking for a free usable PDF Greek-English dictionary for helping check basic words. I see this one on books google com and it appears to be the best I've come across so far, but I haven't checked Archive.org.

I respect the scholarship of older writers at least as much as I do the modern ones, so I would think anything published from 1800 to about 1950 would be very usable.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

https://books.google.com/books?id=b_UzA…tionary&f=false

" ... there was an established tradition of reading Odysseus' professed appreciation of Phaeaciean pleasures as an Epicurean manifesto."

I maintain there is no telos more pleasing than when good cheer fills all the people, and guests sitting side by side throughout the halls listen to the bard, and the tables are loaded with bread and meat, and a steward drawing wine from the bowl brings it round to our cups. To my mind this (telos) is something most beautiful.

And this is exactly on point: There are times to celebrate richly, rather than simply:

The Epigrams of Philodemus: http://www.attalus.org/poetry/philodemus.html

I particularly like the implications of this one, imagined to be said by Venus to humans who throw their lives away pursuing asceticism rather than pleasure. It mirrors several sayings including "30. Some men spend their whole life furnishing for themselves the things proper to life without realizing that at our birth each of us was poured a mortal brew to drink."

[5.306] { G-P 13 } G

Addressed by a Girl to a Man

You weep, you speak in piteous accents, you look strangely at me, you are jealous, you touch me often and go on kissing me. That is like a lover ; but when I say "Here I am next you" and you dawdle, you have absolutely nothing of the lover in you.

If you can't walk and chew gum at the same time you aren't going to be a very successful human, and if you can't navigate between the extremes of asceticism and extravagance then you certainly aren't going to be a successful Epicurean.

So in that spirit if you can't consider the image of Venus with which Lucretius opened "On the Nature of Things," or of Aphrodite, the patron goddess of all those of ancient Greece who honored Pleasure, without tripping up on the perils of intoxicated hedonism, then you're not on your way toward understanding the ancient Epicurean elevation of Pleasure as the alpha and omega of the blessed life.

So here are a couple of artistic evocations of that understanding.

Philodemus:

Charito has completed sixty years,

but still black is her long wavy hair

and still upheld those white, marble cones of her bosom stand firm without encircling by brassiere.

And her skin without a wrinkle, still ambrosia,

still fascination, still distills ten thousand graces.

But you lovers who shrink not from fierce desires,

come hither, forgetting of her decades.

Hiram one thing i will never believe about you is that you would be satisfied living only on water and toast! I have seen too many of your food postings to believe that.

And I mean that in a GOOD way, and not in the way that some would say means you are not a good Epicurean. I think you are a good Epicurean because you embrace pleasure for the sake of pleasure, and you don't run from pain as if that were the meaning of life.

Yes, I agree that the "water and toast" and "bit of cheese and compete with Zeus" can indeed good "in your face" ways to state the extreme of the position. But debating extremes seems to me to be useful mainly in dialectical argument with enemies, and I am not at all sure that we profit a lot by engaging in dialectical argument with enemies.

Our enemies always stress the simplicity and the implied asceticism, but normal people will NEVER interpret asceticism as consistent with the pleasures that make life worthwhile. And I think that expectation of rejection by normal people is exactly why most philosophers, who are at base anti-Epicurean, talk about little else but these sections of the Epicurean texts.

I read the whole article and in general think it is excellent, until it gets here:

So the best way this writer can think of to spend our time, once we realize how valuable it is, is to have a glass of water and a crispy piece of toast???? Maybe if you're living in a concentration camp, or under some similar form of oppression.

As Theon says in "A Few Days in Athens" --- YE GODS !!!!!

I see this article as one in many that comes so close to grasping the core of the Epicurean message, and then throwing it away because it can't break free from
"simplicity above all."

Vatican Saying 63: There is also a limit in simple living, and he who fails to understand this falls into an error as great as that of the man who gives way to extravagance.

Letter to Menoeceus:

Again, we regard independence of outward things as a great good, not so as in all cases to use little, but so as to be contented with little if we have not much, being honestly persuaded that they have the sweetest enjoyment of luxury who stand least in need of it, and that whatever is natural is easily procured and only the vain and worthless hard to win. Plain fare gives as much pleasure as a costly diet, when once the pain of want has been removed, while bread and water confer the highest possible pleasure when they are brought to hungry lips. To habituate one's self, therefore, to simple and inexpensive diet supplies all that is needful for health, and enables a man to meet the necessary requirements of life without shrinking, and it places us in a better condition when we approach at intervals a costly fare and renders us fearless of fortune.

It is observed too that in his treatise On the Ethical End he [Epicurus] writes in these terms:

“I know not how to conceive the good, apart from the pleasures of taste, of sex, of sound, and the pleasures of beautiful form.”

– Diogenes Laertius, Book X

Torquatus, from On Ends:

The truth of the position that pleasure is the ultimate good will most readily appear from the following illustration. Let us imagine a man 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? One so situated must possess in the first place a strength of mind that is proof against all fear of death or of pain; he will know that death means complete unconsciousness, and that pain is generally light if long and short if strong, so that its intensity is compensated by brief duration and its continuance by diminishing severity. Let such a man moreover have no dread of any supernatural power; let him never suffer the pleasures of the past to fade away, but constantly renew their enjoyment in recollection, and his lot will be one which will not admit of further improvement.

My answer on 2/26/19 to someone asking "where to start reading?"

How much background in philosophy in general do you have? We can fine tune the suggestions much better if we know that. In the meantime I want to say that in my view the best book for a person new to philosophy to read is Norman DeWitt's "Epicurus and His Philosophy." Don't pay an exorbitant price for it - any library has it, and you can buy digital versions for a reasonable price, and if you search hard enough you can find PDFs online.

Another excellent free online source is Frances Wright's "A Few Days In Athens," which is a fictional story that does an excellent job of introducing someone to Epicurus (that is in fact the theme of the story - introducing a new student to Epicurus). https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3…D20frGAxNzYhgfP

I don't have the time to develop this point as I would like to at this moment, but I want to stress that unless you are recently arrived from Mars, you are going to bring with your reading of Epicurus many preconceptions which need to be put aside in order to judge Epicurus fairly. The dominant philosophy of the world today is a mishmash of stoicism / platonism / aristotelianism / judaism / christianity which is virtually inescapable. You are conditioned to view all issues through that lens, and most people see what they expect to find when they are reading Epicurus.

The advantage of reading A Few Days In Athens or DeWitt's book is that both sources explain the background of the issues that were present in Epicurus' day, and how he answered them.

Unless you read a work like that, which explains the situation, it is very difficult to get a balanced picture by going straight to the letters of Epicurus, or even to Lucretius, which is a much longer and therefore more thorough presentation.

An excellent test for whether you are getting a balanced perspective is the treatment given by a writer of Epicurus' views on pleasure. If you come away with the idea that the writer is telling you that pleasure is nothing more than the absence of pain, and that the best life is therefore gained by suppressing pain in any way possible, and that the simplest life is always the best, then you should look elsewhere (to DeWitt or Wright) for a more balanced perspective.

Another excellent test is to look for how many references a writer makes to "pleasure" in discussing Epicurus. You will find that writers who are ultimately some version of Stoic will de-emphasize the word pleasure, and talk mostly about "happiness" or "ataraxia" or even "flourishing" -- and these writers too are perverting Epicurus to fit their own perspective of the best life.

There are many good books that have many excellent points about Epicurus, and I specifically include Hiram's book and Haris' book (both members here) as good for practical application of the full theory. But neither of these attempt to provide the full sweep of the theory in a manner that an ancient Epicurean would probably approve, and you won't get in English anywhere but DeWitt, and to a lesser extent from Wright.

Thanks Oscar! I will check into the file upload limit.

Looks like this link will get it off Google books -- should have looked there first! Thanks!

I am still hanging a little at FB, but boy you and I do think alike on the general strategy!!

A friend today pointed me to this link to find an old book:

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.…;view=1up;seq=6

Does anyone have "partner access" (perhaps through a university library) where they could download the full PDF and provide me access to a copy. The book is of course long out of copyright, but the site only allows one to read it, or download it page by page, and I would like to get a local copy for bookmarking important sections.

Interestingly I see this title page refernces St. Evremont -- would that be friend of Ninon De L'Enclos?

Oscar you are full of good ideas!

- Yes the goal of sending on the Twentieth is a great idea!

- Yes the discussion of the Frederick quote is also a great idea. I think one of the major attractions here is that we can have extended and in-depth discussions of hard-to-find points like that, so that is an excellent example of something to include!