Posts by Cassius

**Visualizing Principal Doctrine 9 ** "If every pleasure could be intensified so that it lasted and influenced the whole organism or the most essential parts of our nature, pleasures would never differ from one another."

This doctrine is one of the more difficult sayings, because the context is not as clear as many of the others. In my view, the point of this one relates to the material discussed in DeWitt's "Fullness of Pleasure" discussion, and has at least these two major points:

(1) All pleasures share in the same unifying character - they are pleasurable because our feeling of Pleasure tells us so. There is no outside standard or worthiness or nobility or good or bad, and no need for evaluation by logic or reason. We know a thing is pleasurable (or painful) because our Feelings tell us so. This is of course important because we need to eliminate once and for all the viewpoint that there is something floating in the universe, in the nature of a supernatural god, or a Platonic ideal form, or an Aristotelian essence, that defines for us what pleasure is. Pleasure and pain are understood by us through the Feelings, and through the Feelings alone.

(2) In addition to the main point, it seems to me that this doctrine also calls to mind the context that the individual human experience is limited, as illustrated in the analogy of the vessel or jar. Once full, the vessel can hold no more, and one full vessel is essentially the same as any other full vessel. Of course the question will be asked whether all full vessels are the same if they vary in content. Within the context in which we are speaking, that of all pleasure being "good" because it is pleasurable, all full vessels are the same.

Many challenging questions follow from these observations. One of the most challenging would be something like: "So you are saying that the person who spends a lifetime digging worms, because it is pleasurable to him, is to be rated the same as a person who spends his life studying science and making the world a better, healthier place for generations to come?

The point we have to keep coming back to is that there is no supernatural god or ideal forms or "virtue" that answer this question for us. Many people want to think that their god or their morality justifies their view of ranking some lives as "worthy" or "unworthy."

That is the point which has to sink in by stating these issues in extremes, as Epicurus is doing. No god, no set of ideal forms, no single list of "virtue" validate our choice of how to live. In reality, there is only Nature, and Nature gives us only pleasure and pain by which to decide how to live. We can answer whether a life of devoted to science is "better" than a life devoted to digging worms only by looking at the outcome, and calculating which of the two is likely to lead to the most pleasurable life.

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More graphics for Principal Doctrine 9 can be found here: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/wcf/gallery/in…e-list/196-pd9/

Excellent points of contrast Daniel! All of these have many uses, especially in distinguishing Epicurus from Stoicism and Aristotelianism -

Quote from Daniel

"...we must also realize that Christians were not the only ones arguing from an intelligent design position. Much of what is said in this chapter of Christianity, insofar as it is based on the natural law, could be said of Stoicism and Aristotelianism as well, but historically Stoicism and Aristotelianism were influential in the long run because they supported the approach of Christianity, and therefore, Christianity took up their arguments and carried them forward..."

I just noticed that the online version of St Paul and Epicurus does not contain the "Verses Newly Explained or Translated" table. If someone is looking for a particular verse, such as when we are putting together this spreadsheet, they will need that table.

Here it is - attached

Soon I have to make a drive that is about ten hours one way, so I wanted to load my telephone with audiobook material that will make the drive more productive. I have listened before to Cicero's "On Ends" that way, and also to the full set of Diogenes Laertius biographies. This time I want to listen to Cicero's "Tusculan Disputations," and I see that there is an edition by C.D. Yonge that combines that with "On Ends."

I plan to listen to that for much of the trip, but the reason for this post is that I see that this book contains a very good summary of the major aspects of the forty or so philosophers mentioned by Cicero. That list covers the majority of those with whom the ancient Epicureans dealt, so if you're looking for a good and relatively short summary of the important ones, this is a fairly quick read.

Since this book was published in 1875 I have pasted a copy on the EpicureanFriends wiki here: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/wiki/doku.php?…ek_philosophers

I should add that although I am no major fan of computer voices, I find that the text-to-voice engine on my android telephone does an acceptable job, and the voice doesn't get in the way of understanding the words.

Going through these Bible verses in St Paul and Epicurus reminds we why the book has good information, but is somewhat narrowly targeted to people who want to compare Epicurus to Christianity. Many of the cites in the table are to rather fine points of Christian theology. The ones I think are most useful are those where it seems clear that in complaining about "elements" and similar things, Paul is directly criticizing Epicurean philosophy. Those are worthwhile finding for future use.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…dit?usp=sharing

Link to the subforum set up for this book - "St. Paul And Epicurus" - By Norman DeWitt

Thanks Oscar. I have noticed that sometimes but not always, but now that you mention it in the absence of a "paste as text" option, I have been copying text into a text editor and then pasting from there.

Rivelle:

(1) Good questions - I have not heard of those books.

(2) I noticed like before in a couple of your posts seem to be in a very dark font that is kind of hard to read on the default dark theme here. Are you changing the text color to black or some other color? Not sure why that is happening. I can probably edit it to make it more readable but you must be using a light theme and probably don't realize it's hard to read on dark.

Very interesting quotes.

Got to hand it to this guy that I think he's as wrong as he can be, but he follows ever wrong lead to its logical conclusion!

Quote from bradley.whitley

As much as we ascribe good and bad to hypothetical states of being,

I think over time that is one of the most important lessons of all. How can there be something good and bad in itself, if there is no central authority stamping "good" and "bad" on it? Which means that ultimately it's only pleasure and pain given to us by Nature that serves as the "stamper." But then we go and get confused and think that our particular stamp does or should apply to everyone. Yes it's true that it does seem to apply to people who are like ourselves, but to people who are raised or for whatever reason see things differently, their view is as justified for them as our view is to us.

Have a blessed day, Brad!

Quote from Daniel

the command of God not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil

Even if the heavens were to open and Jesus were to appear to me personally I would never buy that this was a legitimate position for "God" to take.

Link to the full text of the book: St Paul and Epicurus

Not everyone is interested in this topic, but many people are, and those may find that a connection between Epicurus and apparently-obscure verses in the Bible will push them over the line into reading more about Epicurus.

So in the interest of preparing a list of "highlights," let's prepare a list of the verses, with the verse itself, that DeWitt suggests refers to Epicurus or Epicurean philosophy. DeWitt has a table of all verses cited in his book on page 194. It appears, however, that this is a full table of all verses referenced, and most readers will be more interested in only that selection that seems to directly refer to Epicurus.

Here is a link to view the table being worked on at Google Docs. If you would like to help add to the list, please send me a private message and I will send you a link with edit capability. Thanks!

Excellent stuff Elli ---

Before I forget where I was going originally, let me put this back out there again. Did the Greek gods feel pain? Did a Greek god ever choose to die? Is it possible that an Epicurean god could die if he chose, and feel pain if he chose, but simply chooses not to and has the ability to carry out that choice?

I think the practical application of that question is as above: "What, in Epicurus view, did "the gods" have that humans cannot experience? Is the only or main difference that the gods can experience pleasure longer and with more variation? Our variation is limited by our lifespan, in that we cannot control our atoms so as to self-renew our bodies. The "gods" can do that, and thus have unlimited variation.

Is it possible that this perhaps the main difference between us and the Epicurean "gods"? That may not be at all true, but if it were, certain comments like the "gods among men" comment would be more understandable.

Yes I live in a similar community and people many people here like nothing better than talking about possible identifies of Antichrists, and "Princes of Power of Air" and stuff like that

Oscar I think you are right that the days of the free-market-libertarian "my money is as good as yours" approach are over. With the flood of information available to so many people we now see very clearly what is behind a particular product or service, and we know the political agendas of those with whom we deal.

This is a two-edged sword and people of all political persuasions can play it, but I don't think there is any getting this sword back in its scabbard, and I doubt that would be a good idea if we could. We're all just going to have to deal with the ramifications of a free flow of information. I think the total result of that will be much for the good, and that this is going to assist everyone in applying the last two PD's.

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.

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....

Quote from Daniel

a happy accident of chance

Same comment on this as before in my reference to A.A. Long. I think it is a common theme among religious opponents of Epicurus that they like to attribute the fact of life to "chance" rather than to the natural properties of the elements. "Chance" seems to carry a derogatory weight that they like to exploit.

Elli also what about the point of whether any gods in Greek religion died, or chose to die?

Do I take it to be obvious that the Greek gods experienced pain of some degree, in that they were always fighting among themselves and being mad at each other?

Again, I am wondering about the context that was familiar to Epicurus when he started thinking about this subject.

You said a lot there Elli but here's one among many:

What do the gods have that humans cannot experience but more variation? Our variation is limited by our lifespan, in that we cannot control our atoms so as to self-renew our bodies. The "gods" can do that, and thus have unlimited variation.

But as Epicurus said, variation, while desirable, does not fill a vessel past the point of being full. The gods have an unlimited sized vessel, ours is of limited size. Is this perhaps the main difference between us and "the gods"?