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Cassius

Discussion Plan For Chapter 15 "Extension, Submergence, And Revival" (Norman DeWitt's "Epicurus And His Philosophy") (Needs Completion)

CHAPTER XV - EXTENSION, SUBMERGENCE, AND REVIVAL

General Evidence of Popularity
Fortunes of the Parent School
The Beginning of Stoic Hostility
The School In Antioch
Epicureans In the New Testament
The School In Alexandria
Epicureanism In Italy
Epicureanism In Rome
The Reaction Against Epicureanism
Epicureanism In The Early Empire
Plutarch, Anti-Epicurean
Epicureanism In The Graeco-Roman World
Third And Fourth Centuries
Epicureanism In the Middle Ages
The Epicurean Revival

Cassius

Discussion Plan For Chapter 14 "The New Virtues" (Norman DeWitt's "Epicurus And His Philosophy") (Needs Completion)

CHAPTER XIV - THE NEW VIRTUES

Introduction:
1. Compare Epicurus with Plato: "Plato viewed the topic of ethics within a political context. His four cardinal virtues, Wisdom, Temperance, Courage, and Justice, were defined within the political context and they were meshed alike with the division of citizens into men of gold, silver, and iron and with the tripartite division of the soul as rational, appetitive, and passionate."
2. "While the good Platonist, like the Christian, lived in contemplation of immortality, the Epicurean was taught to live in contemplation of mortality. The chance of achieving happiness was narrowly confined to the interval between birth and death. This had the effect of bestowing great urgency upon the business of living rightly; procrastination became the greater folly. Only the present is within man's control; the future is unpredictable, and to alter the past is beyond the power of Jupiter himself. This way of looking at the problem of living constitutes a matrix of meanings for Patience, Hope, and Gratitude, corresponding respectively to present, future, and past."
Wisdom
1. "In Plato's psychology Wisdom was associated with the rational part of the soul; its highest activity was the study of mathematics, and in ethical and political investigations its instrument was dialectic. Since Epicurus dethroned Reason and found in Nature the source of ethical and political truth it followed that dialectic became superfluous."
2. " In place of the grandiose notion of Wisdom, identifiable with pure reason and divinity and existing apart from mankind, Epicurus chose to exalt the practical reason, phronesis, which was "the greatest good and the beginning of all the other virtues." An alternative title was "sober calculation," of which it was the function "to search out the reasons for every choice and avoidance and to expel the false opinions, which are the chief cause of turmoil in the souls of men." 2 Its method of procedure was to weigh the advantages against the disadvantages in every contemplated action. In Authorized Doctrine 16 it is declared capable of controlling the whole conduct of life, rendering man independent of Fortune."
Temperance
1. DeWitt notes the Greek context of this was related to issues of homosexuality and "Platonic love."
2. Says in Epicurus' context: "He also worked out a procedure for developing self-control in his disciples. The working principle, which rather oddly, had its ultimate source in Platonic teaching,3 was the classification of desires as natural and necessary, natural but not necessary, and neither natural nor necessary. The practical reason was the umpire in every choice and the operation runs as follows, Vatican Saying 71: "To all desires must be applied this question: What will be the result for me if the object of this desire is attained and what if it is not?""
Courage
1. "In the extant writings of Epicurus not a single mention of Courage is found, but it is clear from Authorized Doctrine 28, which Cicero quotes under the topic of friendship, that Epicurus associated it definitely with enduring torture or dying for a friend. To understand this Doctrine the principle must be carried in mind that "nothing terrible can happen to one while living who has thoroughly grasped the truth that there is nothing terrible in not living." 10 The text, rather curiously worded, runs as follows: "The same argument that assures us of nothing terrible lasting forever or even very long discerns the protection furnished by friendship in this brief life of ours as being the most dependable of all." n If this be kept in mind, it is possible to understand a saying reported of Epicurus at second hand that "Courage comes not by Nature but by a calculation of advantage."
Justice
1. "The importance he attached to the topic is indicated by the relatively ample coverage in the Authorized Doctrines, eight items out of forty, and every one anti-Platonic. In respect of the origin of Justice he holds to the theory of the "social contract,"
2. It is very probable that in speaking of wild animals Epicurus was thinking chiefly of elephants. The data gathered by Alexander's scientific staff were promptly reported, and the later work of Megasthenes on the flora and fauna of India was published in 310 B.C., four years before Epicurus settled down in his Cecropian Garden. The belief that elephants would not harm one another proved so fascinating that, as the elder Pliny informs us, King Bocchus of Numidia decided to make a test of it.17 It was found that even a herd of specially trained beasts refused to attack another herd. In the same context Pliny credits the elephant with "a divination of Justice." This is the Prolepsis or Anticipation of Justice, to which Epicurus refers twice. It is an innate, an embryonic idea, which exists in advance of experience, anticipates experience and predetermines conduct. In the case of human beings it is capable of development by instruction and reflection but its validity as a criterion comes from Nature. Reason is not necessary to discover it. Dialectic is a superfluity.
Honesty
1. "The Greek word around which he chose to build up his cardinal virtues was parresia, "freedom of speech." The practice of this was a boast of the Athenians in both public and private life. In the political sphere it signified the right of every citizen to stand up in the public assembly and express his honest opinion. For the contrary vice of shameless assentation the Athenians had developed a special term, sycophancy. It consorted with flattery. During the enforced residence of Epicurus in Lampsacus the Athenian assembly was showering honors upon the Macedonian governor Demetrius Phalereus. After his expulsion it reversed itself and outdid itself in honoring his supplanter."
2. "On this topic of outspokenness Epicurus issued a veritable manifesto, Vatican Saying 29: "As for myself, I should prefer to practice the outspokenness [parresia] demanded by the study of Nature and to issue the kind of oracles that are beneficial for all mankind, even if not a soul shall understand, rather than by falling into step with popular opinions to harvest the lush praise that falls from the favor of the multitude." In this instance, as in many others, it should be borne in mind that by the multitude Epicurus means the people seated in the public assembly. It was his conviction that the democratic political life made dupes of both politicians and people. It was his advice "to avoid publicity."
3. He did not, as editors would have it, exhort the youthful Pythocles "to flee from every form of culture," but rather "to shun the whole program of education." The dialecticians were called "wholesale corrupters."2a Socrates, because of his dishonest affectation of ignorance and his concealment of the deadly weapon of dialectic, was judged guilty of cheating.
4. Epicurus was aiming a sidelong thrust at Socrates when he described the wise man as follows: "The man who has once attained to wisdom never exhibits the opposite diathesis nor does he deliberately simulate it."
Faith
1. A brief chain argument will show how the doctrine of Faith fits into the new matrix of meanings. As a dogmatist Epicurus believed that truth was discoverable and also that he had discovered it. He called his teachings "true philosophy." Since this philosophy was presented as ultimate truth it demanded of the disciple the will to believe and in the case of junior pupils subjection to indoctrination.
2. "Epicurus was more restrained and stopped short of fanatical trust in his creed. Friendship was subject to planning and began with advantage even if developing into affection and faith. Authorized Doctrine 40: "All those who have best succeeded in building up the ability to feel secure from the attacks of those around them have lived the happiest lives with one another, as having the firmest faith." Thus even faith is in part the result of planning."
3. Epicurus was aware nevertheless of the saving function of faith. He assures his disciples that his account of the soul will result in "the firmest faith,"48 and the sole objective of the study of celestial phenomena is to acquire "tranquillity and a firm faith."
4. It is uncertainty rather than outright disbelief that seemed to Epicurus the opposite of faith. Assuredly uncertainty was deemed more destructive of happiness. Two of the Authorized Doctrines, 12 and 13, bear upon this point: "It is impossible for men to dispel the fear concerning things of supreme importance not understanding the nature of the whole universe but suspecting there may be some truth in the stories related in the myths. Consequently it is impossible without the knowledge of Nature to enjoy the pleasures unalloyed." "Nothing is gained by building up the feeling of security in our relations with men if the things above our heads and those beneath the earth and in general those in the unseen are matters of suspicion.
Love of Mankind
1. "Vain is the word of that philosopher by which no malady of mankind is healed, for just as there is no benefit in the art of medicine unless it expels the diseases of men's bodies, so there is none in philosophy either unless it expels the malady of the soul. - It is on this principle that he denied to Leucippus the right to the name of philosopher and chiefly on the same ground that he broke with Democritus, who seemed in the opinion of his great disciple to impose upon men a paralyzing law of physical necessity.
2. Vatican Saying 52: "Love goes whirling in dance around the whole earth veritably shouting to us all to awake to the blessedness of the happy life.
3. Although Love is said by Epicurus to go whirling in dance around the whole earth, there is no specific command to go into all lands and preach the gospel to every creature. It is true that Epicurus anticipated the apostles in the writing of pastoral epistles, but he did not undertake missionary journeys. Neither did he enjoin this upon others. Each Epicurean household was to become a cell from which the true philosophy should be quietly extended to others. His imperative was "to take advantage of all other intimacies and under no circumstance to slacken in the effort to disseminate the sayings of the true philosophy."
Friendship
1. Epicurus was extolled for "his humane feeling toward all men.
2. Authorized Doctrine 27: "Of all the preparations which wisdom makes for the blessedness of the complete life by far the most important is the acquisition of friendship."
3. Vatican Saying 23: "Every friendship is desirable for its own sake but has its beginning in assistance rendered."
4. Epicurus is careful to observe "that the way must be prepared in advance of needs, for we also sow seed in the ground." 59 Upon prospective friends a very discerning eye must be cast. Two sorts will be rejected at the outset, Vatican Saying 39: "Neither is he a true friend who is continually seeking help nor he who on no occasion associates friendship with help, because the former is bartering his gratitude for the tangible return and the latter is cutting off good expectations concerning the future." Caution is recommended against hasty judgments, Vatican Saying 28: "We must not be critical either of those who are quick to make friends or those who are slow but be willing to risk the offer of friendship for the sake of winning friendship." In the end it is asserted "that the tie of friendship knits itself through reciprocity of favors among those who have come to enjoy pleasures to the full." 60
Suavity
1. St. Augustine, who, like other churchmen of Africa, possessed a good understanding of Epicureanism and but for its denial of immortality would have awarded it the palm, in one passage selected as its watchwords "pleasure, suavity, and peace."
2. It is quite to be expected that in Cicero's sly but genial essay On Friendship, a topic for which Epicurus possessed a moral copyright, we should find it briefly defined as "a certain agreeableness of speech and manners.
3. It connoted both a quality of voice and an expression of countenance, as Nepos makes plain in his characterization of the youthful Atticus.65 Cicero in his letters knew the value of complimenting Epicurean friends upon the possession of it. Even to the lean and hungry Cassius, hardly sweet of disposition though known to have followed Epicurus, is ascribed "an unlimited fund of sweetness." ee The merry Papirius Paetus deserved better to be told that his letters "overflowed with sweetness." 6T Cicero even claimed the quality for himself, though famed for the acidity of his tongue.68 It fitted much better the jocular Eutrapelus, whom he addresses as "my sweetest Volumnius."69 So singular is the usage of the word that it almost ranks as a test for identifying Epicurean correspondents.
Considerateness
1. the Epicurean "holds in high regard as many people as possible."
2. Vatican Saying 15: "We prize our own characters exactly as we do our private property, whether or not this property be of the best and such as may be coveted by men. In the same way we ought also to respect the characters of our neighbors, if they are considerate."
3. Neighbors who exhibited a lack of consideration were to expect retaliation in kind. The Donatus commentary specifically identifies as an example of epieikeia the following sentiment in the prologue of the Phormio of Terence: "Let him reflect that the treatment dealt out to him has been the same as was dealt out by him." The commentary attaches the same label to a threat in the prologue of the Eunuchus: "I warn that man not to make a mistake and to cease provoking me."
Hope
1. The proper attitude toward the future was diligently studied and set forth with disjunctive lucidity: "It must be remembered that the future is neither altogether within our control nor altogether beyond our control, so that we must not await it as going to be altogether within our control nor despair of it as being altogether beyond our control."
2. the words of Cicero to the merry Epicurean Papirius Paetus: "You, however, as your philosophy teaches, will feel bound to hope for the best, contemplate the worst, and endure whatever shall come."
3. Horace to the unstable Licinius, Odes 2, 10.13-15: sperat infestis, metuit secundis alteram sortem bene praeparatum pectus. "The man whose mind is well prepared hopes for a change of fortune in adversity, fears it in prosperity.
4. "What else," he cites him as demanding, "falls more within the province of the soul than the stable well-being of the flesh and the confident expectation concerning the same ?" 96 This doctrine touching the feasibility of counting upon the continuance of health became such a crux of controversy as to be quoted by pagans and churchmen over the space of five centuries. Cicero makes four references to it, ascribing it to Metrodorus, while three others give it to Epicurus.
5. The core of this dialectic was the doctrine that experience could be controlled and that man could make himself master of his fate. The controlled experience upon which he pinned his hope was chiefly the simple life, independent of wealth and luxury and far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, about which no other had more to say. Vatican Saying 33 must have been a favorite: "The cry of the flesh is not to hunger, not to thirst, not to suffer cold, because, possessing these and expecting to possess them, a man may vie with Zeus himself in respect of happiness." That this attitude may attain the rank of a kinetic pleasure is clear from another saying, the one that is mentioned seven times: "The stable condition of well-being in the flesh and the confident hope concerning this means the height of enjoyment and the greatest certainty of it for those who are capable of figuring the problem out." 88
Attitude Toward the Present
1. For Epicurus the chief factor of choice was the denial of immortality, which confined the chance of happiness to the here and now. The effect of this was to endow the present with a tremendous urgency as affording the sole opportunity for action.
2. "He that sayeth the hour for putting philosophy into practice is not yet come or has passed by is like unto him that sayeth the hour for happiness is not yet come or is no more."
3. The imperatives of Horace exhibit a contrast of their own, now gaily admonitory, now peremptory: carpe diem, "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may," as it were; sapere aude, incipe, "Dare to translate wisdom into action; make a beginning."
4. Vatican Saying 30, ascribed to Metrodorus: "Some men devote life to accumulating the wherewithal of life, failing to realize that the potion mixed for us all at birth is a draught of death." Diverse tones resound in the sharp words of Epicurus himself, Vatican Saying 14: "We are born once and we cannot be born twice but must to all eternity be no more, and fool that you are, though not master of the morrow, you postpone the hour and life is frittered away in procrastination, and each one of us goes on making excuses till he dies."
Gratitude
1. In relation to happiness, the goal of living, it functioned as a chief coefficient, just as ingratitude was a chief cause of misery. In respect of free will, it represented the proper attitude to be chosen toward the past, though active also in the present. The cultivation of it presumed the feasibility of a total control of experience, including thought itself: "Moreover, it lies in our power to bury, as it were, unhappy memories in everlasting oblivion and to recall happy memories with sweet and agreeable recollection.
2. Vatican Saying 75: "The adage which says, 'Look to the end of a long life,' bespeaks a lack of gratitude for past blessings."
Gratitude to Teachers
1. DeWitt says Epicurus held: "the greatest good is life itself and the fulfillment of life is found in tranquillity of mind; this in turn depends upon knowing the true way of life; consequently the greatest gratitude is due to the pathfinder who has discovered the true way and sets the feet of the disciple in the road he must follow."
2. The proper relation between teacher and pupils was regarded as identical with that of father to children. Only in the light of this truth is it possible to arrive at a correct translation of an excerpt from a letter of Epicurus to his chief financial supporter, Idomeneus of Lampsacus: "Send us, therefore, your first-fruits for the sustenance of my sacred person and for that of my children, for so it occurs to me to express it."
3. Hippocratic oath: "I will look upon him who has taught me the art as I do my parents and will share with him my livelihood; if he is in need I will give him money
Gratitude to Nature
1. "Gratitude is due to blessed Nature because she has made life's necessities easy of acquisition and those things that are difficult of acquisition unnecessary."
Gratitude To Friends
1. Epicurus published a book to fit the time, entitled On Gifts and Gratitude.
2. "Friendship has its origin in human needs. It is necessary, however, to prepare the way for it in advance — for we also sow seed in the ground — but it crystallizes through a reciprocity of benefits among those who have come to enjoy pleasures to the full."
3. Horace, 1.7, addressing Maecenas, who was pressing his rights as patron too rigorously, states his stand as follows: "The good and wise man declares himself willing to assist the deserving and I too shall show myself deserving in proportion to the merit of my benefactor."
4. "The wise man alone will know true gratitude and with respect to friends, whether present or absent, will be of the same mind throughout the whole journey of life."
5. Horace cited above, lines 20-21: "The open-handed fool makes a gift of that in which he sees no use or value. This is a seed-bed that has produced crops of ingrates in the past and will do so for all years to come."
Fruits Of Gratitude
1. "Unlike the Stoics who came after him, Epicurus entertained no distrust of the emotions. To the wise man he ascribed an exceptional depth of feeling. At the same time he was mindful of expediency. Emotions under proper control contributed to happiness, and happiness was a form of the advantageous."
2. "Both when young and when old one should devote himself to philosophy in order that while growing old he shall be young in blessings through gratitude for what has been."
3. "Forgetting the good that has been, he becomes an old man this very day."
4. We must not spoil the enjoyment of the blessings we have by pining for those we have not but rather reflect that these too are among the things desirable.
5. "It is the ungratefulness in the soul that renders the creature endlessly lickerish of embellishments in diet."
6. Vatican Saying 55: "One should heal his misfortunes by grateful recollection of friends who have passed on and by reflecting that what has once happened cannot be undone.
7. When Epicurus, in Vatican Saying 66, wrote, "Let us show our sympathy with our friends, not by wailing but by taking thought," it was almost certainly meant that comfort should be found in the thought, as Horace expressed it, that Jupiter himself was impotent to cancel the recollection of a happy past.
8. Vatican Saying 47: "When Necessity does remove us, spitting scornfully upon life and those who foolishly cling to it, we shall depart this life with a beauteous paean of victory, raising the refrain that we have lived a good life."

Cassius

Discussion Plan For Chapter 13 "The True Piety" (Norman DeWitt's "Epicurus And His Philosophy") (Needs Completion)

CHAPTER XIII - THE TRUE PIETY

Introduction
1. Epicurus approached the topic of piety as a reformer, a materialist, and a dogmatist. As a reformer he believed that the natural piety of mankind had suffered perversion and that his mission was to recall men to true piety.
2. The nature of the gods includes that they are not deathless (or at least were not called deathless by Epicurus himself); gods are made of atoms and void like everything else; all gods are not exactly the same; gods are at the top of an ascending scale of animate life; the idea of gods is something innate in mankind.
Knowledge of the Gods
1. Dewitt says that the desire to classify Epicurus as an empiricist helps explain why many commentators say that knowledge of the gods comes through vision, but that is not what the weight of the texts indicate.
2. "According to these evidences the sources of knowledge are multiple. The Prolepsis apprises men of the blissfulness and incorruptibility of the gods. The Feelings, that is, fears and worries, serve to inform the individual of the true nature of the divine through the distress that follows upon "false opinions." Reason, by deductive inferences from the Twelve Elementary Principles, informs men of the existence of gods, of their corporeal nature, their number, their gradation in kind and their abode. By the method of analogy, that is, progression from similars to similars, reason also produces confirmatory evidence concerning their form, by a chain argument concerning their nature, and by a disjunctive syllogism concerning the kind of life they lead."
3. It is important to note that this entire issues appears to be an advanced topic reserved for advanced students, as it is not covered in detail in Lucretius, which is in turn based on Epicurus' On Nature.
The Proper Attitude Or Diathesis
1. DeWitt quotes Diogenes of Oinoanda as writing: "Happiness is mainly a matter of attitude, of which we are the arbiters."
2. The Epicurean doctrine is ""The blissful and incorruptible being neither knows trouble itself nor occasions trouble to another, and is consequently immune to either anger or gratitude, for all such emotions reside in a weak creature." In spite of its prime importance, however, this first Doctrine is only a particular instance of a more comprehensive principle, which is stated negatively and positively as follows: "First of all, believing the divine being to be a creature incorruptible and blessed, just as the universal idea of the divine being is outlined, associate no idea with it that is alien to incorruptibility or incompatible with blessedness and cultivate every thought concerning it that can have the effect of preserving its blessedness along with incorruptibility."
3. This attitude is not at all like modern concepts of omnipotence and omniscience ascribed to gods: "The feeling he was enjoining toward the gods was the same that his countrymen entertained in their better moments. The Greek word for it was eusebeia, "reverence," and the quality in the gods which evoked it was semnoma, "sanctity." The latter is sometimes translated "majesty," which is misleading to modern readers. There is no suggestion of omnipotence, omniscience, or omnipresence, which were not current Greek conceptions but the result of a progression of religious thought that took place beyond the original area of Greek religious ideas."
Existence of the Gods
1. It was Eudoxus and Plato who appealed to vision as the evidence of the existence of gods, not Epicurus. "The former declared that it mattered little what a man thought of the gods of Greek mythology but it mattered much what he thought about the visible gods, that is, the planets. It was on account of his revulsion from this teaching that Epicurus damned the Eudoxans as "enemies of Hellas.""
2. The major surviving Epicurean argument for the existence of gods is in Cicero's "On The Nature of the Gods" and the basis stated there by Velleius, the Epicurean speaker, is that the idea of godhood is implanted in humans at birth.
3. Confirmatory evidence for the existence of gods was found in logical deduction; this will be discussed in the section on Isonomy and the Gods.
The Form of the Gods
1. All we know about the details of the Epicurean gods comes from deduction, not observation.
2. Gods have human shape, with "pseudo"-physical bodies, and possess reason, and are believed to be beautiful.
Gradation In Godhead
1. It is debated whether Epicurus held there to be more than one class of god, but DeWitt appears to contend that he did hold there to be at least two classes.
2. "Even with heroes and daemons eliminated, however, there still remain reasons for entertaining the belief that Epicurus favored some degree of gradation in godhead. The first of these reasons is the current assumption of an ascending gradation in the order of living creatures. Belief in this was old, and it received a powerful impetus in the growth of biological knowledge that took place in the youth of Epicurus under Aristotle's leadership. According to Epicurus, it must always be borne in mind, the gods are zoa, "animals," or, if this word seems offensive to us, at least "animate creatures." They are thus not placed outside the ascending series of living beings but at the top of it. Between man and god a physical nexus remains; they are both corporeal. Moreover, there is a psychological and ethical nexus: the idea of god exists congenitally in the minds of men, a model of happiness to which they may aspire."
3. "In support of this assumption may be cited a statement of Aetius the doxographer, which informs us "that Epicurus represented the gods as anthropomorphic and all of them discernible only by reason." ie Why, unless he understood them to differ in kind, should he have written "all of them"? There is also a passage of Philodemus in which he allows that more reverence is due to certain gods than to others."
4. These general considerations are reinforced by the specific evidence of the scholium to the first of the Authorized Doctrines, if only it be translated and interpreted without emendation: "In other writings he says the gods are anthropomorphic, discernible only by reason, some of them existing under limitation, others [not under limitation] by virtue of identity of form arising from the perpetual afflux of similar images wrought to the same shape."
Incorruptibility And Virtue
1. DeWitt says that the gods maintain their own deathlessness. "Plutarch, for example, who, though hostile, wrote with texts of Epicurus before him, has this to say: "Freedom from pain along with incorruptibility should have been inherent in the nature of the blissful being, standing in no need of active concern."57 This manifestly implies that the Epicurean gods were unable to take their immunity from corruption for granted but must concern themselves for its perpetuation."
2. Eusebius quotes his Atticus as saying: "According to Epicurus it's good-bye to providence, in spite of the fact that according to him the gods bring to bear all diligent care for the preservation of their own peculiar blessings."
3. Porphyry, who lived early in the third century AD, cited Horace, who had quoted freely from Lucretius: "I have learned the lesson that the gods live a life free from concern." 60 The comment runs: "This derives from the doctrine of the Epicureans, who assert that the gods cannot be immortal unless enjoying leisure and immune from all responsibility."
4. "The gods are characterized by two attributes, blissfulness and incorruptibility. Neither is inherent in their nature. They are incorruptible only because the contingency of destruction is avertible by their vigilance. If this seems subtle, the notion that keeps company with it is more so and also paradoxical. Let it be allowed that incorruptibility is tantamount to eternal life. Then, according to Epicurus, this eternal life is not to be thought a cause of happiness but rather the perpetuity of happiness is a cause of eternal life. The gods win eternal life by maintaining their own pleasures perpetually. This conceit appealed to Menander, who exploited it in his Eunuchus. It survives through transfer to the Andria of Terence, where the happy lover is made to exclaim: "I think the life of the gods to be everlasting for the reason that their pleasures are perpetual, because immortality is assured to me if no grief shall intervene to mar this joy." 81 This is labeled as "Epicurean dogma" by the Donatus commentary."
Isonomy And the Gods
1. DeWitt: "It was from this principle [isonomia] that Epicurus deduced his chief theoretical confirmation of belief in the existence of gods. It was from this that he arrived at knowledge of their number and by secondary deduction at knowledge of their abode. He so interpreted the significance of infinity as to extend it from matter and space to the sphere of values, that is, to perfection and imperfection. In brief, if the universe were thought to be imperfect throughout its infinite extent, it could no longer be called infinite. This necessity of thought impelled him to promulgate a subsidiary principle, which he called isonomia, a sort of cosmic justice, according to which the imperfection in particular parts of the universe is offset by the perfection of the whole. Cicero rendered it aequabilis tributio, "equitable apportionment." The mistake of rendering it as "equilibrium" must be avoided."
2. Cicero recorded: "The nature of the universe must be such that all similars correspond to all similars." Also ""If it be granted that the number of mortals is such and such, the number of immortals is not less."
3. Cicero: "And if the forces that destroy are innumerable, the forces that preserve must by the same token be infinite." DeWitt: "This doctrine, it is essential to repeat, holds only for the universe at large. It is not applicable to the individual world and it does not mean that the prevalence of elephants in India is balanced by the prevalence of wolves in Russia. Isonomy does not mean "equal distribution" but "equitable apportionment.""
The Life of the Gods
1. "From the proleptic belief in the perfection of divine happiness Epicurus also drew the inference that the gods were immune to all disturbing emotions, such as anger, and were consequently indifferent to human wickedness."
2. "Philodemus presents a brace of interesting details. As usual, the subsumed method is that of analogy and transition. The gods, like human beings, must be endowed with speech, "for we shall not think of them as more happy and indissoluble if not speaking nor conversing with one another, but like dumb people." 90 The second point is the conclusion that they speak Greek. "Yes, and I swear by Zeus," he adds, "we must believe that they possess the Greek language, or something not far different; in no other way do we understand gods existing unless they use the Greek tongue."
Communion And Fellowship
1. Lucretius warns the impious man "that he will not draw near the shrines of the gods with a heart untroubled nor will he be able to capture the images that from the sacred persons of the gods float into the minds of men, harbingers of the form divine."
2. "Let us Epicureans, at any rate, sacrifice piously and properly where it is required and let us do every thing else according to the laws, not troubling ourselves about popular opinions in respect of the things that are highest and holiest."
3. Vatican Saying 32: "Reverence for the wise man is a great blessing for the one that feels the reverence."
4. Philodemus quotes the master as saying: "The following truth is also of great moment and in respect of its guiding power, so to speak, is of surpassing importance: for every wise man has chaste and pure notions of the divine and takes it for granted that this divine nature is exalted and august.
5. Philodemus in his essay on the subject has this to say: "Let this much be said also now, that the divine being stands in no need of worship but it is natural for us to worship him above all with pious thoughts and next in importance by the rites handed down by our fathers for each of the gods respectively."
6. A passage from the work of Philodemus On the Life of the Gods: "[The wise man] regards with wonder the nature of the gods and their disposition [tranquillity], and endeavors to draw near to it and yearns, as it were, to touch it and to be in its company, and he also calls wise men the friends of the gods and the gods the friends of the wise."
7. Dionysius the Great, Bishop of Alexandria, for example, is quoted by Eusebius as writing of Epicurus: "In his own writings he puts oaths in his own mouth and those of others, swearing continually this way and that by Zeus, making all and sundry swear, including those with whom he is conversing, in the name of the gods, having no fear of perjury himself, I presume, nor ascribing any fear to the others, and adding to his words this empty, false, idle, and meaningless appendage of superstition."
Prophecy And Prayer
1. "According to certain of the Twelve Elementary Principles the universe was declared to be infinite, there could be no divine being outside of it to govern its operations and maneuver human events by remote control. Moreover, since predetermination was thus lacking, neither could there be prediction from that source."
2. "The visions of sleep possess no divine nature nor prophetic power but are accounted for by the invasion of images.
3. "The art of prophecy is nonexistent and, even if it did exist, external events are to be thought of as meaning nothing to the life within us."
4. Cicero: " there is nothing Epicurus ridicules so much as the prediction of future events."
5. Lucian: "depicts "Epicurus'" opposition as "adamantine," and he tells how the false prophet Alexander "waged against him a truceless and undeclared war" and used to apply to him an epithet which in current slang is equivalent to "hard-boiled," because all prophesyings were denominated by him as "something to be laughed at and as childishness."
6. Epicurus: ""For the birds can bring to bear no sort of compulsion to bring winter to an end, nor does some divine being seat itself to watch for the departure of these creatures and then bring these signs to fulfillment, because such silliness would not befit even an ordinary being, even if only a little superior, much less one possessed of perfect happiness."
7. DeWitt: "it was the Epicureans in Thessalonica who by their derision aroused the indignation of St. Paul, then prophesying the second coming of Christ. In his retort he denied them the honor of mention by name but identified them adequately by those catchwords of their creed, "Peace and Safety." It may be added that the Epicureans, as usual, were in the right; the prophecy was not fulfilled."
8. DeWitt: "That the badgering tactics of the Epicureans were directed also against the Jews is revealed by Josephus. With him, as with his race in general, the question of prophecy was tightly tied in with the belief in the divine government of the world. Since the prophet Daniel, for instance, was believed to have been inspired by God, it was to be expected that his prophecies would be fulfilled by God. Prophecy was subsidiary to divine providence. In conformity with this view Josephus gives a somewhat extended account of the prophecies of Daniel and their precise fulfillments, thus demonstrating for his readers the falsity of the Epicurean doctrines, which he rehearses at suitable length."
9. A scholium to Aeschylus runs as follows: "There is a doctrine of Epicurus denying the art of prophecy, 'because,' says he, 'if fate is the master of all, when foretelling calamity you have caused pain before the due time and when foretelling something good you spoil the pleasure.'"
10. "If the divine being complied with the prayers of mankind, all men would speedily be perishing, because they are continually praying that diverse misfortunes befall one another."
11. Vatican Saying 65: "It is useless to ask of the gods such blessings as a man is capable of procuring for himself."
12. Horace: "It is enough to pray to Jupiter for what he gives and takes away, that he give length of life, that he give the means of life. As for the quiet mind, I shall provide that for myself."

Cassius

Discussion Plan For Chapter 12 "The New Hedonism" (Norman DeWitt's "Epicurus And His Philosophy") (Needs Completion)

CHAPTER XII - THE NEW HEDONISM

The "Summum Bonum" Fallacy - What Is The Meaning of "Highest Good"?
1. In Cicero's "On Ends," the discussion is framed in terms of a "greatest good" or "summum bonum." There is an ambiguity here - do we mean our "greatest good" in terms of that which is most valuable for us to have, or the "end" in terms of a "goal" which we should use as a "guide" in determining what we choose and avoid at any particular time? DeWitt says that every end presumes life, and so in that sense "life" is the "greatest good" while the "goal" or the "guide" is pleasure.
2. "The first step toward understanding rightly the new hedonism of Epicurus is to discern and eliminate this summum bonum fallacy. Since the Latin language lacks the definite article, the Romans were unable to say "the good," which is in Greek an alternative way of denoting the end or telos of an art or activity. Neither could the word finis be equated with telos, because it means end in the sense of limit or termination and not in the sense of fulfillment or consummation. Consequently the Romans were forced to adopt a makeshift, which happened to be summum bonum. Only by convention was this employed to denote the telos, but so inveterate did the convention become that the ambiguity of summum bonum was overlooked. Literally it means the highest or greatest good but this was not necessarily the telos. To Epicurus pleasure was the telos and life itself was the greatest good."
3. Vatican Saying 42: "The same span of time includes both beginning and termination of the greatest good."
4. While this quoted statement is first-hand evidence of the Epicurean attitude, the syllogistic approach is also known from an extant text, of which the significance has been overlooked. The major premise is the assumption that the greatest good must be associated with the most powerful emotions, that is, the worst of all fears and the greatest of all joys. Now the worst of all fears is that of a violent death and the greatest of all joys is escape from the same. The supporting text runs as follows: "That which occasions unsurpassable joy is the bare escape from some dreadful calamity; and this is the nature of 'good,' if one apprehend it rightly and then stand by his finding, and not go on walking round and round and harping uselessly on the meaning of 'good'." 2 This passage marks the summary cutting of a Gordian knot, the meaning of "good," upon which Plato had harped so tediously. Epicurus finds a quick solution by appealing to the Feelings, that is to Nature, as the criterion; it is their verdict that the supreme good is life itself, because the strongest emotions are occasioned by the threat of losing it or the prospect of saving it
Pleasure Identified As the Telos
1. "When once the summum bonum fallacy has been detected and the difference clearly discerned between the greatest good, which is life itself, and the end or telos, the next step is to apprehend clearly by what procedure the end or telos is identified as pleasure. The nature of this procedure and of the attitude which determined it was one thing in the time of Cicero and quite another in the time of Epicurus himself. In the space of the two centuries between these two men the study of formal logic had been forced into a dominating position in the curriculum through the aggressive genius of the Stoic Chrysippus, and after his time the incessant needling of Stoic adversaries had shaken the confidence of many Epicureans in the word of their founder.3 The faith of Epicurus himself had pinned itself upon Nature as the norm, not upon Reason. The faith of the Stoic, on the contrary, and of those Epicureans who wavered in their faith, while ostensibly pinned upon Reason, may more correctly be said to have been pinned upon argumentation and disputation."
2. "At any rate the declaration of Epicurus, as reported by Cicero, runs as follows: "Every living creature, the moment it is born, reaches out for pleasure and rejoices in it as the highest good, shrinks from pain as the greatest evil, and, so far as it is able, averts it from itself." In the evaluation of this text the important words are "the moment it is born." By narrowing the field of observation to the newborn creature Epicurus was eliminating all differences between rational and irrational'creatures. In infancy even the creatures that by courtesy we call rational are as yet irrational. By narrowing the field to the newborn Epicurus was also reducing animate life to its minimum value, because at the moment of birth even some of the senses have not yet begun to function. Consequently, as Cicero says in the same context, "since nothing is left of a human being when the senses are eliminated, the question, what is according to Nature or contrary to Nature, is of necessity being judged by Nature herself."
The True Nature of Pleasure
1. Pleasure, Epicurus declares, is cognate and connate with us, and by this he means not only that the interconnection between life and pleasure manifests itself simultaneously with birth and by actions that precede the capacity to choose and understand; he means also that pleasure is of one nature with normal life, an ingredient or component of it, and not an appendage that may be attached and detached; it is a normal accompaniment of life in the same sense that pain and disease are abnormal.
2. It follows from this that pleasure is not to be opposed to pain on the ground alone that all creatures pursue the one and avoid the other; the two are true opposites because they stand in the same relation as health which preserves and disease which destroys. It is for this reason that the one is good and the other is evil, Vatican Saying 37: "Human nature is vulnerable to evil, not to the good, because it is preserved by pleasures, destroyed by pains." This may be taken to mean that pleasure, as it were, is nutriment to the human being, as food is, and that human nature reaches out for it just as each living thing by some natural impulse seeks its appropriate food.
The Dualistic Good - Pleasure of Mind and Pleasure of Body
1. When once the association of pleasure with health and pain with disease has been established, the next step is to recognize the good as dualistic, being concerned with soul and body alike.
2. From such materialistic reasoning arose the famous Epicurean doctrine of the dualistic good, health of body and health of mind. Even if no longer citable in so many words from the extant remains, it is abundantly assumed; it was absorbed anonymously into the stream of Western culture and survives in thought and literature down to our day. In Rome, where Epicurean teaching under Augustus was forced into anonymity, this ideal was publicized by the poet Horace, though verbally concealed with such painstaking felicity in a mosaic of diction that recognition escapes the commentators: frui paratis et valido mihi, Latoe, dones, at precor Integra cum mente. "I have made preparations for my old age. Grant me, child of Leto, health to enjoy them, and I beseech you, also with soundness of mind." The same dualism presents itself again in the famous satire of the incomparable Petronius: bonam mentem bonamque valetudinem sibi optarunt, "they wished one another health of mind and health of body." It also furnished a memorable finale for the famous satire of Juvenal: mens sana in corpore sano
The Natural Ceilings Of Pleasure
1. Having established body and soul upon a parity, equal partners in life, Epicurus next proceeded to propound a number of paradoxes: first, that limits of pleasure were set by Nature, beyond which no increase was possible; second, that pleasure was one and not many; and third, that continuous pleasure was possible. The contrary doctrines had been sponsored by Plato and his followers, who in this instance agreed for the most part with the multitude.
  1. The first paradox is part of Authorized Doctrine 3, and by this position its prime importance is revealed: "The removal of all pain is the limit of the magnitude of pleasures." The meaning is plain if the pleasure of eating be taken as an example. Nature is the teacher, as usual, and sets the norm. Hunger is a desire of the first category according to Epicurus: it is both natural and necessary. Where this natural and necessary desire for food exists, the pleasure of satisfying it cannot be exceeded. Cicero cites the example of the first Ptolemy of Egypt, who, it was reported, had never been genuinely hungry until on a certain occasion he was parted from his escort and received the gift of coarse bread in a cabin; it seemed to him that nothing had ever been more delicious than that bread.18 This testimony is the more telling for two reasons: first, because Cicero quotes it in an explicitly Epicurean context; second, because it was this Ptolemy to whom Colotes of Lampsacus, a charter member of the sect, dedicated his satire on earlier philosophers.
    
    Thirst, of course, belongs in the same category with hunger, and Cicero in the same paragraph cites the example of that Dareius who fled before Alexander the Great: in his extremity he drank filthy water polluted with corpses and declared he had never drunk with greater pleasure. This example is contemporary with Epicurus and little doubt can exist that Cicero drew from it the same text as the story of Ptolemy, possibly the book On the End, which was in his hands at the time.
  2. Cicero says "the pleasure can be variari distinguique but not increased." The first of the verbs italicized applies properly to color and the second to needlework, as may be gleaned in the lexicon. Lucretius confirms this: "It hurts us not a whit to lack the garment bright with purple and gold and embroidered with striking designs, provided there still be a plain cloak to fend off the cold."
    
    When once the meaning of poikillo has been fixed as "embellish" and applicable alike to diet, clothing, and housing, the doctrine can be extended with precision. The function of walls is to afford protection from the weather; the enjoyment of this is a basic pleasure, and, being basic, cannot be increased. If the walls are decorated, the enjoyment of them is merely a decorative pleasure. Similarly, the function of a garment is to avert the pain arising from cold and the resulting pleasure is basic and, being such, cannot be increased but is merely embellished if the cloth is gaily colored or brocaded.
    
    The case is not different in respect of diet. The satisfaction of natural hunger is the basic pleasure, which is not increased but merely embellished by richness of diet. Epicurus is recorded by a late doxographer as saying: "I am gorged with pleasure in this poor body of mine living on bread and water." Porphyry records him as saying: "It is better for you to lie down upon a cheap cot and be free of fear than to have a gilded bedstead and a luxurious table and be full of trouble."
    
    In the same Authorized Doctrine, 18, in which the ceiling of pleasure for the flesh is defined, the ceiling of pleasure for the mind is set forth: "As for the mind, its limit of pleasure is begotten by reasoning out these very problems and those akin to these, all that once created the worst fears for the mind." These words need not seem enigmatical: the worst fears are created for the mind through false opinions concerning death and the gods, the topic of Authorized Doctrines 1 and 2. These fears rank in point of importance with false opinions concerning pleasure and pain, the topic of Doctrines 2 and 4. The cure for all these false opinions and the fears they entail was dubbed by detractors the tetrapharmacon, or fourfold remedy.
    
    In the the letter to Menoeceus Epicurus says: "It is for this that we do everything, to be free from pain and fear, and when we succeed in this, all the tempest of the soul is stilled, the creature feeling no need to go farther as to something lacking and to seek something else by which the good of soul and body shall be made perfect." In speaking of "going farther" and "seeking something more" he refers to the superfluous or merely embellishing pleasures.
Pleasure Not Increased By Immortality (the second paradox and contradiction of Plato)
1. PD 19: "Infinite time and finite time are characterized by equal pleasure, if one measures the limits of pleasure by reason." To Christians and Platonists, with their stately, elaborate, and mystical eschatology, it must have seemed like nihilism.
  
  In other places Epicurus maintained that pleasure is not altered in kind by the fact of duration or extension; here he declares that it is not increased in quantity. All pleasures have fixed ceilings and fixed magnitudes. When in the words of the Doctrine he speaks of "measuring the limits of pleasure by reason," he means recognition of the fact that for the body health and the expectation of its continuance is the limit of pleasure, and that for the mind the limit is the emancipation from all fear of the gods or death. The attainment to this state, he now declares, is a condition of one dimension. He seems to think of it as a mountain climber would regard the ascent of an arduous mountain peak. The pleasure would not be increased by remaining on the summit.
The Fullness of Pleasure
1. Two bases in logic: the first basis is the infinity of time, from which it is deduced that there can be nothing new. As the Epicurean Ecclesiastes expresses it, 1:9: "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun." Lucretius reminds us in similar vein "that all things are always the same" and "no new pleasure can be devised." From this it follows that the exhaustion of pleasures is feasible and the fullness of pleasure is attainable.
2. The second basis is the existence of natural ceilings of pleasure, which, being thus limited, could be enjoyed to the full. Out of this comesA the metaphor of the aged sage as taking leave of life like a satisfied banqueter. Lucretius has Nature rebuke the complainer because he cannot depart "as a guest who has had his fill of life" or "as one who is full and has had his fill of experience." The wise man, on the contrary, can say bene vixi, "I have lived the good life." This is the cry of triumph uttered by old Diogenes of Oenoanda; to quote his own words: "Facing the sunset of life because of my age and on the verge of taking my leave of life with a paean of victory because of the enjoyment of the fullness of all pleasures."
3. This doctrine supplements the doctrine that death is anesthesia. The latter may help to reconcile men to the state of being dead but it fails to compensate for the surrender of immortality. Only the possibility of having enjoyed all pleasures to the full in this life can counterbalance the relinquishment of the hope of enjoying eternal pleasures in the afterlife. This is the "true understanding" of which Epicurus speaks: "Hence the true understanding of the fact that death is nothing to us renders enjoyable the mortality of existence, not by adding infinite time but by taking away the yearning for immortality." What cancels the yearning for immortality is the conviction that the fullness of pleasure is possible in this mortal life. The ingenuity of this argument is undeniable; it means the victory over death and we have proof of its wide acceptance in the vigor with which St. Paul in his ardent plea to the Corinthians champions the resurrection of the dead as a new means of victory over death.
4. Note by Cassius: While this understanding takes away the yearning for immortality, it focuses the mind that we need to pursue pleasure while we are alive. Yes we CAN enjoy the fullness of pleasure in this life, but that doesn't mean we will enjoy it unless we act wisely to experience pleasure while we are alive.
The Unity of Pleasure
1. Epicus discerned that according to Aristippus and Plato no such thing as continuous pleasure was possible; they recognized only peaks of pleasure separated by intervals either devoid of pleasure or neutral or mixed. From this it followed with inevitable logic that the wise man could not be happy at all times. This conclusion was repugnant to Epicurus. This repudiation could be made good only by vindicating for freedom from fear and pain the status of a positive pleasure. This in turn resulted in a doctrine of the unity of all pleasure.
  
  Though we certainly fall short of possessing the whole argument of Epicurus, there is ample evidence upon which to construct the skeleton of a case. The Feelings, as usual, are the criterion. It may be recalled how he proved life itself to be the greatest good by pointing out that the greatest joy is associated with the escape from some dreadful destruction. By a similar argument, even if not extant, it could be shown that the recovery of health is a positive pleasure when the individual has recently survived a perilous illness. It would be a positive pleasure also to be freshly relieved from the fear of death and the gods through the discovery of the true philosophy.
  
  To substantiate this drift of reasoning it is not impossible to quote a text: "The stable condition of well-being in the flesh and the confident hope of its continuance means the most exquisite and infallible of joys for those who are capable of figuring the problem out." This passage marks a distinct increase of precision in the analysis of pleasure. Its import will become clear if the line of reasoning already adumbrated be properly extended: let it be granted that the escape from a violent death is the greatest of joys and the inference must follow that the possession of life at other times cannot rank greatly lower. Similarly, if the recovery from a dangerous illness be a cause for joy, manifestly the possession of health ought to be a joy at other times. Nevertheless the two pleasures differ from one another and it was in recognition of the difference that Epicurus instituted the distinction between kinetic and static pleasures. The difference is one of intensity or, as Epicurus would have said, of condensation. At one time the pleasure is condensed, at another, extended. In other words the same pleasure may be either kinetic or static. If condensed, it is kinetic; if extended, it is static.
  
  There is a catch to this reasoning, however; it holds good only "for those who are capable of figuring the problem out." This marks Epicurus as a pragmatist, insisting upon the control of experience, including thought. His reasoning about kinetic and static pleasures is sound, but human beings do not automatically reason after this fashion; they fail to reason about the matter at all. Although they would spontaneously admit the keenest joy at recovery from wounds or disease, they forget about the blessing of health at other times. Hence it is that Epicurus insists upon the necessity of being able to reason in this way. Moreover, this reasoning must be confirmed by habituation. The same rule applies here as in the case of "Death is nothing to us." It is not enough to master the reasons for so believing; it is also necessary to habituate one's self to so believe. This is pragmatism.
The Root of All Good
1. Epicurus had formulated the doctrine of the unity of pleasure at a very early date and it was a chief cause of his conflict with the Platonists of Mytilene.43 The particular belief with which it clashed was that which postulated an ascending series of pleasures, depending upon the organ affected and culminating in the supreme enjoyment of intellectual contemplation. Aristotle, who had founded the Platonic school in Mytilene, was very explicit on the point.44 "The sense of sight is superior in purity to the sense of touch, and the senses of hearing and smelling to the sense of taste; in a quite similar way the respective pleasures also differ, both the pleasures of the intellect from those of the senses, and the pleasures in each of these two classes from one another." Obviously, if the truth of this be denied and the assertion be substituted that goodness can be predicated of the pleasure of the stomach on the same basis that this is predicated of the pleasure of pure reason, it requires no unusual acumen to realize that a doctrine esteemed as sacrosanct was being derided, and one can better understand the fury of the Platonists of Mytilene, who proclaimed a state of riot and dispatched messengers in hot haste for the gymnasiarch.
Pleasure Can Be Continuous
1. No philosophy that offered merely intermittent intervals of pleasure would have possessed any broad or cogent appeal for those in quest of the happy life.
  
  The desired logical basis for the continuity of pleasure was afforded by the discovery of natural ceilings of pleasures. From this is derived the division into basic and ornamental or superfluous pleasures, corresponding respectively to natural and necessary desires and those that are neither natural nor necessary. Hunger and thirst exemplify the former class while the desire for rich viands and rare wines belongs to the second class. Correspondingly, the satisfaction of normal hunger and thirst is a basic pleasure while the gratification of abnormal desires for rich foods and drinks is ornamental and superfluous.
  
  This recognition of basic pleasures, in its turn, signified the recognition of a normal state of being, consisting of health of mind and of body and freedom from fears and all unnecessary desires, which was called ataraxy or serenity. This condition was denominated static, but allowance must be made for a certain variation. Hunger and thirst recur and call for satisfaction, which is a moderately kinetic pleasure, whereupon the individual returns to the normal state of absence of pain. Epicurus describes it in one of those reciprocal statements for which he had a preference: "Only then have we need of pleasure when from the absence of pleasure we feel pain, and when we do not feel pain we no longer feel need of pleasure." 52 While these words have reference to the natural desires of the body, the description of the normal state must be understood to include freedom from pain in the body and distress in the mind.
  
  The extension of the name of pleasure to this normal state of being was the major innovation of the new hedonism. It was in the negative form, freedom from pain of body and distress of mind, that it drew the most persistent and vigorous condemnation from adversaries. The contention was that the application of the name of pleasure to this state was unjustified on the ground that two different things were thereby being denominated by one name. Cicero made a great to-do over this argument, but it is really superficial and captious. The fact that the name of pleasure was not customarily applied to the normal or static state did not alter the fact that the name ought to be applied to it; nor that reason justified the application; nor that human beings would be the happier for so reasoning and believing.
  
  Even at the present day the same objection is raised. For instance, a modern Platonist, ill informed on the true intent of Epicurus, has this to say: "What, in a word, is to be said of a philosophy that begins by regarding pleasure as the only positive good and ends by emptying pleasure of all positive content?" This ignores the fact that this was but one of the definitions of pleasure offered by Epicurus, that he recognized kinetic as well as static pleasures. It ignores also the fact that Epicurus took personal pleasure in public festivals and encouraged his disciples to attend them and that regular banquets were a part of the ritual of the sect. Neither does it take account of the fact that in the judgment of Epicurus those who feel the least need of luxury enjoy it most and that intervals of abstinence enhance the enjoyment of luxury.55 Thus the Platonic objector puts upon himself the necessity of denying that the moderation of the rest of the year furnishes additional zest to the enjoyment of the Christmas dinner; he has failed to become aware of the Epicurean zeal for "condensing pleasure."
  
  It would have been strange if this doctrine of continuous happiness were absent from the Authorized Doctrines. Its presence is easily overlooked, because the context of the controversy has become blurred with the lapse of time, but the emphasis derived from prominence of position must have been at one time arresting. It forms part of the famous tetrapharmacon, Doctrine 3. The first part, already quoted, identifies the basic pleasure as freedom from pain, the only kind that could be continuous: "The removal of all pain is the limit of magnitude for pleasures." This rules out the "neutral state" as postulated by Plato; it identifies the neutral state as one of static pleasure. The second part of the Doctrine disposes of Plato's "mixed states": "And wherever the experience of pleasure is present, so long as it prevails, there is no pain or distress or a combination of them." This amounts to denying that pain and pleasure are capable of mixing and of resulting in a state that is different from either. Epicurus implies instead and elsewhere teaches that pain is subtractable from pleasure, leaving a balance of the latter.5T This principle applies either to physical pain or mental distress or to both together. It is essential to the thesis that continuous pleasure is possible.
2. Is the wise man could be happy under all circumstances? The importance of this revealed itself shortly after Plato's demise and showed no abatement for three centuries. In two passages Cicero lists the names of those who gave an affirmative answer — from which the name of Plato is conspicuously absent — and elsewhere he pretends to cite the opinion of Epicurus, misrepresenting him shamelessly and using his name as an excuse for parading a tedious collection of his own translations from Greek tragedy on the topic of pain. What Epicurus is on record as saying is this: "Even if under torture the wise man is happy." Cicero chose to imagine him in the brazen bull of the tyrant Phalaris, in which the victims were roasted alive, and as saying "How pleasant; how little this torture means to me!" This is a shabby invention and shameless 'quibbling. It ignores the difference between suavis, "pleasant" and beatus, "happy."
  
  Even Epicurus could not have used pleasure as an invariable synonym for happiness. He died a happy man but in physical agony. His last words, known even beyond his own sect, exhibit the triumph of happiness over pain: "On this blissful day of my life, which is likewise my last, I write these words to you all. The pains of my strangury and dysentery do not abate the excess of their characteristic severity and continue to keep me company, but over against all these I set the joy in my soul at the recollection of the disquisitions composed by you and the rest." 80 He is here exemplifying the subtraction of pain from pleasure, leaving a balance of pleasure, which is happiness. The letter is addressed to Idomeneus but is intended for the whole Lampsacene circle, which made many contributions to the literature of the school. It is the grateful recognition of this service, together with all that it implies, that in this instance is declared to outweigh the physical pains.
  
  It was the discovery of static pleasure, without which continuity of pleasure was impossible, that resulted in the division of pleasures into static and kinetic. There was no call for such a division until the name of pleasure had been extended to denote the possession of health. On this point, however, as on many others, greater precision is possible. The modern use of the word static as opposed to kinetic is Aristotelian in origin. The Epicurean word is katastematikos, from katastema, explained in the lexicon as "stable condition." It connotes, moreover, change of state, from action to rest. To Epicurus it denotes a normal state of pleasure to which the individual returns after kinetic pleasure, which is activity. For example, it is the comfortable feeling that follows after the satisfaction of hunger and thirst, the relaxed condition that follows after attending the theater, a public festival or a banquet. Exceptionally, it describes the return to normal after the joy of escape from peril of life.
Continuous Pain Impossible
1. Authorized Doctrine 4: "Pain does not prevail continuously in the flesh but the peak of it is present for the briefest interval, and the pain that barely exceeds the pleasure in the flesh is not with us many days, while protracted illnesses have an excess of pleasure over pain in the flesh." There is another saying extant which is supplementary to the former: "Acute pains quickly result in death; protracted pains are not marked by acuteness." In protracted suffering the principle of the subtraction of pain from pleasure holds good. Upon this notion depends the so called Calculus of Pleasure. This title is neither ancient nor precise; it is no more a calculus of pleasure than of pain and it might more rightly be called a calculus of advantage. The supporting text runs as follows: "The right way to judge all these pleasures and pains is by measuring them against each other and by scrutiny of the advantages and disadvantages." Since it is postulated that continuous happiness is possible, it follows that the process is always subtraction. The pain is subtracted from the pleasure.
The Relation of Pleasure To Virtue
1. The importance accorded to this problem is demonstrated by its prominent position among the Authorized Doctrines after the famous four. The fifth Doctrine declares in effect that pleasure and virtue are inseparable. They are thought of as being linked to each other like health and pleasure, disease and pain. The reason for this pronouncement becomes manifest if it be recalled that Plato and Aristotle upheld a contrary doctrine. Becoming the victims of a common semantic fallacy, they assumed that pleasure, possessing a name of its own, must be an independent entity, attachable and detachable, which might or might not be combined with a given activity. Aristotle, for example, recognized a pleasure that was proper to the study of geometry, but this pleasure did not always accompany it, as cold experience must have taught him.
  
  This principle, moreover, was assumed to hold good also for the virtues. For example, it was believed that if pleasure should be added to justice or temperance, the value of these goods would be enhanced by the addition, and the same would hold true if any good be added to another; any good would be more desirable when combined with another than when isolated. Aristotle also quotes Plato as denying on this ground that pleasure could be the good "because the good is not made more desirable by the addition of something to it."
  
  In this line of reasoning Epicurus, always on the alert to be exact, would have detected two fallacies. In the first place, he would have denied it correct to put temperance and geometry in the same class and to apply the same reasoning to both. It would not follow from the fact that the study of geometry might or might not be accompanied by pleasure that the practice of temperance might or might not be accompanied by pleasure. The logical procedure here called into question is reasoning by analogy, a tricky kind and valid only among true similars. Geometry and temperance are not true similars. The error will be more unmistakable if modern examples be employed and the study of trigonometry, geology, and chemistry be placed in the same class as the practice of diligence, veracity, and sobriety. While it is not on record that such a criticism was made, it is of a kind in which Epicurus was extraordinarily sharp.
  
  The second fallacy in the reasoning of Plato and Aristotle was expressly urged. The error, according to Epicurus, lay in the assumption that pleasure was an independent entity and capable of being combined with the practice of virtue or detached from it. His reasoning on the point was similar to his reasoning about pleasure and living; life was the greatest good; it was a pleasure to be alive, even if maimed or in pain. Pleasure is virtually an attribute of life and the principle enunciated by Lucretius holds good, that an essential attribute of a thing is incapable of being removed without destroying the thing itself.69 Heat cannot be separated from fire, sweetness from honey, nor whiteness from snow. Pleasure and virtue are similarly inseparable.
  
  In order to apprehend this fifth Doctrine with complete precision the factor of reciprocation must be clearly recognized: A is impossible without B and B- is impossible without A: "It is impossible to live pleasurably without living according to reason, honor, and justice, nor to live according to reason, honor, and justice without living pleasurably." Incidentally, it may be recalled that by reason is meant the practical reason, which guides the individual in every choice between doing and not doing a given thing; by honor is meant the unwritten law that determines the conduct of a gentleman; and by justice is meant obedience to the written laws of the country.
  
  At first glance this reciprocation of pleasure and the virtues may seem to result in placing pleasure and virtue upon a parity of importance, but this inference is readily shown to be illusory. Virtue, unlike pleasure, is not "the first good" nor "the beginning and the end of the happy life." Even if Nature approves of virtue, she first bestows approval upon pleasure, because she links it with life from the moment of birth in advance of volition and intelligence. Pleasure possesses a long precedence over virtue in the growth of the human being; the newborn infant can feel pleasure but cannot practice virtue. By benefit of this priority pleasure becomes a criterion and, when at length the choice to act virtuously or otherwise must be made, this choice must be decided by the criterion that has the priority. Thus virtue is chosen for the sake of pleasure and not the contrary. This reasoning holds good if the genetic approach is admitted to be correct.
  
  In the heat of controversy Epicurus did not shrink from employing strong language: "I spit upon the beautiful and those who unreasonably adore it when it gives no pleasure." When he says "unreasonably" this is more than mere derision; it is fundamental doctrine. Since the only real existences are atoms and void, it follows that no abstractions exist; "justice is nothing by itself"; form cannot exist apart from substance, quality apart from thing, virtue apart from action. This results in a sort of nominalism; virtue becomes an empty name, corresponding to no reality. "You think virtue a mere locution and a stately grove just sticks," wrote Horace; this was alleged to be Epicurean doctrine. The same allegation applied to the saying that passed as the last words of Marcus Brutus: "O unhappy Virtue, so you were just a word after all and I was practicing you as something real."
  
  These judgments of Epicurus were well deliberated and logically based upon his premises. His denial of immortality resulted in the restriction of pleasure to the brief span of mortal life. The reward of virtue could not be postponed but was bound to be immediate and concurrent. This view is explicit in Vatican Saying 27: "In the case of other activities completion is toilsome and the reward conies after it, but in the study of philosophy the pleasure keeps pace with the process of learning and the enjoyment does not follow after learning but is simultaneous with it." There is no hint of despair or self-abandonment; he does not lightly advise "to take the cash and let the credit go" nor "to eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die"; his attitude is restrained, logical, realistic, and utilitarian. His studied aim is to discover exactly where immediate pleasure is to be found and to seize it.
  
  The success of Epicurus in his sponsorship of pleasure had the effect of embittering the battle of the schools and of advancing it to a new phase. His versatile contemporary Theophrastus devoted some study to the classification of goods, wealth, health, and the like, and after the death of both men the Peripatetics and Stoics pursued this line of inquiry into great detail. Out of this fetishistic comparison of goods arose the question concerning the identity of the superlative good or summum bonum, which it was falsely presumed must be the telos.

Cassius

Discussion Plan For Chapter 11 "Soul, Sensation & Mind" (Norman DeWitt's "Epicurus And His Philosophy")

CHAPTER XI - SOUL, SENSATION, AND MIND

Introduction -
1. All conclusions about the nature of soul, sensation, and mind (just as with all other conclusory ideas) derive from deductive reasoning starting with the Twelve Elementary Principles discussed previously in Chapter 9. For example, because it has been established that nothing exists except solid bodies and void, it is deduced that the soul is itself corporeal: "One principle from which the nature of the soul is deduced is the third: "The universe consists of solid bodies and void." It follows from this by the procedure known in logic as the excluded middle that the soul, like the body itself, is corporeal, consisting of atoms. The contrary doctrine, that the soul is incorporeal, is disposed of by deductive reasoning. Let it be assumed that the soul is incorporeal. There is nothing in nature incorporeal except the void. This, however, is incapable, on the one hand, of initiating motion or of delivering a stimulus and, on the other hand, of receiving a stimulus from a moving body, but these capacities are the characteristic attributes of the soul. Therefore the assumption is false and the contrary proposition holds true: the soul is corporeal."
2. Nature furnishes the norm and the Sensations, Anticipations, and Feelings function as the criteria of truth.
3. "The next of the Elementary Principles from which information concerning the nature of the soul may be drawn is the last, which declares the varieties of atoms to be innumerable. The problem, therefore, is to determine which varieties of atoms compose the soul. As might be expected, it is the Feelings and Sensations that serve as criteria. Under the Feelings may be cited sudden fright, which instantly convulses the whole being. As for the Sensations, their characteristic is quickness of response to stimulus, eukinesia, and with them are to be paired the reactions of thought, dianoeseis, as of perception and memory. All of these bear witness to the extreme mobility of the soul."
4. Lucretius implies that Epicurus followed the Aristotelian division into four elements, but this is almost certainly not true, as Epicurus specified that the number of types of atoms is numberless.
The Body A Vessel
1. Due to the mobility of the soul, the body is analogized to a "vessel" which contains it and in which it must stay to remain intact. Lucretius is specific about the analogy, Epicurus states it by implication.
2. Platonists ridiculed this idea (Plutarch) and Dante made of it a form of torture in his inferno by condemning Epicurean souls to be imprisoned in coffins with their moldering corpses (since they argued the two could not be separated).
Cosensitivity Of Soul And Body
1. Body and soul participate together in sensation: "first, participation in sensation by body and soul, second, simultaneousness of participation, and third, mutual causation in the experience. "
Rational And Irrational Soul
1. The soul has both a rational part and an irrational part, which Dewitt discusses operates "automatically" without reason.
2. Both parts are subject to error, but the rational soul has the capacity to find and correct errors.
The Workings Of Sensation
1. All sensation is a form of "touch" and Epicurus wrote a treatise named "On Touch."
2. This observation probably relates to the recorded statement that "seeing and hearing are just as real as feeling pain."
Vision
1. Epicurus' theory of vision departed from both Democritus and Plato. Plato thought the eyes discharged beams of light, and Democritus thought that the intervening air was shaped into images by the object. Epicurus postulated the movement of atoms from subject to eyes (these are the "idols").
Hearing
1. Sounds also are corporeal, and not just changing he shape of the air, as Democritus held.
2. Friction of speaking on the throat shows the corporeal nature.
3. Odors also held to be corporeal, which was less controversial.
Mind As A Supersense
1. Mind under certain conditions can function as an organ of sensation.
2. Famous reference to this is Lucretius referencing that we need peace of mind to sense the positive images from the gods: "Thus Lucretius warns Memmius that, unless free from such fears "you will never be able to capture with unruffled peace of mind the idols that from the blessed bodies of the gods float into the minds of men." These idols belong in that isolated, vagrant class of images, which, not being part of a pressing stream, are imperceptible to fleshly sensation and register themselves only upon the mind and only under restricted conditions."
Emotional Impulses
1. Emotional impulses originate in the mind and communicate themselves outward through the body.
2. Lucretius is not as clear here as he should be - Epicurus said that the atoms which serve as this channel of communication "resemble" those of heat, wind, and air, and it is likely not correct to consider them the same as those.
Motor Impulses
1. "Even for an act of volition an external cause must be found. Before the human being makes the decision to walk, his mind must receive a stimulus from the impact of images of himself in the act of walking. Inde voluntas fit, "from this stimulus results the will to walk," if the translation may be expanded to bring out its implication. Incidentally, readers will recognize in this theory a precise anticipation of gestalt psychology."
2. But: "It is not unacceptable to be told that the impulse which has been started in the mind, though not by the mind, communicates itself to the rest of the soul, dispersed over the whole body, but when we read that movement comes about through the dilation of all the minute channels of the body, allowing the circulation of surges of air to all parts, this is too fantastic to seem reasonable. Neither does the comparison with the winds driving ships or derricks lifting huge stones result in a verdict of plausibility. The theory may well confirm, however, the truth of the tradition that Epicurus believed the earth to be buoyed up by air."
Mind
1. [This subjection is the concluding summary of the whole chapter, and is very dense with important points, only some of which are referenced here.]
2. "The human being consists of body and soul, both alike corporeal by nature. The two are born at the same time and grow and decline in pace with one another. They are coterminous and cosensitive. They function as a unit and reactions are psychosomatic."
3. "Although it is usual to speak of this part of the soul as rational, the adjective is inadequate. The so-called rational part could with equal justice be called the emotional part, because fears and joys, according to Epicurus, have their seat in the same place.57 In this instance the Latin language is for once superior to Greek in respect of terminology. The word mens is capable of denoting both mental and emotional aspects of the mind's activity, while animus can be equated with Greek dianoia, "intellect," and anima may be used as equivalent to psyche, "soul," including all capacities, rational, emotional, and sensory."
4. "The activity of the rational part, dianoia, animus, is either voluntary or involuntary, that is, either automatic or volitional. The character of the automatic mind that most impressed Epicurus was its speed. Its function is to receive and process sensations and under normal conditions this is done instantaneously: to cite trite examples, the individual is unerringly warned of ditches and precipices and other dangers in his path. It is this automatic mind that takes care of man in his daily rounds on the physical or somatic level of life."
5. "Unlike the automatic mind that warns the observer of ditches and precipices, the volitional mind takes cognizance of the Anticipations, that is, the innate ideas of justice, of the divine nature, and other such abstractions, and it puts to the test every law of the land to determine whether it harmonizes with the innate idea of justice. The volitional mind also takes cognizance of the Feelings, that is, those fears and anxieties which warn the individual of the false opinions concerning things of supreme importance, the causes of the worst turmoil in the soul."
6. "The status of the volitional mind, which alone is truly rational, is that of a judge presiding in court. The litigants are truth and error. The role of the Sensations, Anticipations, and Feelings is that of witnesses. The judge, as becomes his office, rejects no evidence that is pertinent; he distinguishes between mere opinion and knowledge, between the idea that awaits confirmation by additional evidence and that which is already certain, between the immediate, dependable sensation and the deceptive, distant view, between false pleasures and wholesome pleasures and between true and false concepts of abstract truth. If the mind falls short of performing these judicial functions, the conflict in the soul will be prolonged and no satisfying decision between truth and error will be attainable. This is the gist of Authorized Doctrine 24."

Cassius

Discussion Plan For Chapter 10 "The New Freedom" (Norman DeWitt's "Epicurus And His Philosophy") (Needs Completion)

CHAPTER X - THE NEW FREEDOM

Introduction:
1. Remember the context in which Epicurus was writing: "No doctrine of a divine and benevolent creator was current in the time of Epicurus, and for this reason there was no thought of human equality or the rights of man. So far was any belief from prevailing that man was born for freedom that the Greeks thought of the greater part of mankind as born for slavery. Neither was the determining context for Epicurus of a political nature but rather social and ethical. He believed it the teaching of Nature that pleasure or happiness was the goal and consummation of living. It did not follow from this that happiness was a natural right of man; happiness was rather a prize which it was the part of wisdom to strive after with foresight and diligence."
2. Freedom is a necessary requirement for happiness: "To achieve happiness, however, it was necessary to be free and consequently it became necessary first to make an achievement of freedom. To employ the terminology of pragmatism, the individual must plan at all times to retain control of his experience."
Choosing And Avoiding
1. Epicurus and the Greeks thought in terms of the choice of doing and not doing a thing; they did not think in terms of "will" or "will power" as has been the fashion in recent centuries. "Will" and "will power" are abstractions that obscure the issue of freedom as Epicurus would have seen it.
2. Commentary: Is there really a difference? Issue is where does ability to make a choice come from.
The Double Choice
1. Epicurus saw two aspects of choosing and avoiding: (1) the general attitude, and (2) the specific choice: "The first and foremost refinement of the topic in the hands of Epicurus was to draw a clear distinction between choosing an attitude, diathesis, toward action in a given sphere and choosing to do or not to do a given thing within that field."
2. Other philosophies have the same idea.
Freedom And Necessity
1. Greeks of Epicurus' time thought in terms of Fate. Epicurus rejected Fate totally: " Letter to Menecous: "It were better to follow the myths concerning the gods than to be a slave to the Necessity of the physicists, for the former presumes some hope of appeasement through worship of the gods while the latter presumes an inexorable Necessity." The crime of the physicists, in his judgment, had been their failure to deal with the problem of freedom, and their offense was at its worst in the case of the atomists, who found the sole cause of motion and change in the universe to be the motion of the atoms."
2. Fate was replaced by the laws of Nature. Epicurus, having put the mythologers and the physicists in a single class as teachers of fatalism, wished his disciples to see the new order of his own system as governed by the laws of Nature, foedera naturae, as opposed to the laws of Fate, foedera fati. Consequently the new freedom he was offering to mankind "had been wrested from the Fates," fatis avolsa potestas.
3. Note that last sentence on page 175 about laws of nature restricted to inorganic things should not be read too narrowly.
Necessity And Fortune
1. Epicurus rejected "Fortune" as a force no less than he rejected "Fate" - "By the time of Epicurus the ancient and aristocratic cult of Fate or Necessity was finding a vigorous rival in the popular worship of Fortune, Tyche in Greek, the goddess of chance. Epicurus repudiated her as a divinity, "because nothing is done by a god at haphazard," and with equal decisiveness he denied her the Aristotelian status of a fickle cause. It would have been his contention, no doubt, that the hurricane, even though to the agriculturist it appears to be chance and destroys his crops, still follows a law of its own."
2. Is this more than the gods fighting against each other? Is "Fortune" just the name of another god?
3. No necessity to live under necessity..... check this discussion on page 177. Planning is how we overcome necessity.
Freedom And Fortune
1. The attitude recommended by Epicurus toward Fortune was defiance. "Metrodorus, the favored pupil of Epicurus, strikes the true note when he cries exultingly: "Fortune, I have forestalled thee and barricaded thine every entrance, and neither to thee nor to any other surprise of life will we give ourselves in surrender."
2. Doctrine 16: "Fortune plays but little part in the life of a wise man and the things that are of most value and consequence are subject to arrangement by rational planning, and throughout the whole extent of life are subject and will be subject to it."
3. " In none of his ethical teachings and judgments does Epicurus display deeper insight or strike a clearer note than when dealing with this theme of the maintenance of moral independence through all the vicissitudes of life."
4. The best example of all is a passage rarely quoted by Epicurus' detractors. His thesis is that the wise man, and this always means the man whose will remains free, has "no partnership with Fortune": "[Nature] teaches us to appraise as of minor value the gifts of Fortune and to recognize that when fortunate we are unfortunate, and when faring ill not to set great store by faring well, and to accept without emotion the blessings of Fortune, and to remain on guard against the seeming evils from her hand; for everything that to the multitude seems good or bad is but ephemeral and under no circumstances does wisdom enter into partnership with Fortune."
Freedom And the Gods
1. "Epicurus was at no less pains to assert the freedom of the gods than the freedom of man."
2. "Paradoxical as it may consequently appear, the conclusion seems mandatory that Epicurus had no need to work out his doctrines concerning the gods to their logical effects upon the doctrine of divine providence, and this for the excellent reason that the doctrine as later understood did not yet exist."
3. "It is not going too far to say that by his physical and ethical teachings he so manifestly anticipated the arguments against the doctrine of divine providence that the formulation of the doctrine became a philosophical necessity for his adversaries. He was perhaps the most provoking of all ancient thinkers."
The Necessity of Death
1. Vatican Saying 31: "Against all other hazards it is possible for us to gain security for ourselves but so far as death is concerned all of us human beings inhabit a city without walls." The immediate effect of this is to invest the present with a pressing urgency and to demand the control of experience with respect to the past, the present, and the future."
2. "ll thoughts are to be under control: the proper feeling to cultivate toward the past is gratitude, toward the future hope, as will be explained more fully in the chapter on the New Virtues."
3. Vatican Saying 14: "We are born once and we cannot be born twice but for all time must be no more; and you, thou fool, though not master of the morrow, postpone the hour and each and every one of us goes to death with excuses on his lips."
4. The originality of Epicurus consisted in lifting this commonplace from the rank of a sentiment to that of a motive of action. In so doing he was in alliance with the Hippocratic physicians, from whom we have the saying, "Life is short, art is long, the occasion urgent."
5. As a moralist he could not afford to indulge in doubt, hesitation, or pessimism. He was bound to be positive, dogmatic, and hopeful. It was possible to achieve happiness but men must act promptly and vigorously, living sub specie mortalitatis, "in contemplation of mortality."
Freedom, Government, And Law
1. Epicurus was "no anarchist; he knows that a certain degree of legal control over society is a necessity but at the same time he insists that the maximum of liberty implies a minimum of government. In this respect he is totally opposed to Plato, who recommended a highly regimented state and consequently a maximum of government and a minimum of liberty."
2. Authorized Doctrine 5: "It is impossible to live pleasurably without living according to reason, honor and justice."
3. Authorized Doctrine 31: "The justice of Nature is a covenant of advantage not to injure one another or be injured." The very word covenant implies the democratic process and the free choice of the individual as opposed to the imposition of enactments by the law-giver or the golden few, as in Plato's system.
4. The function of government was the protection of the individual along with his property. Epicurus is reported as having said: "Laws are enacted for the sake of the wise, not that they may do wrong but that they may suffer no wrong."
5. He took the attitude, for example, that the religious rites prescribed by law or custom should be observed, even if inconsistent with personal belief: "As for us [Epicureans], let us sacrifice reverently and properly where it is required and let us do everything properly in accordance with the laws, not distressing ourselves over popular opinions in matters regarded as the highest and most solemn."
6. "According to Plato... the regimentation of society is a law of Nature, and this doctrine is important because of the relish and vehemence with which Epicurus revolted against it. [Epicurus] censured Plato for confining his attention to celestial matters and this stricture was not unjust. In the regularity of the heavens Plato discerned what was most worthy of admiration and even worship and, being such, it was worthy of imitation in human society. To imitate it, moreover, it was essential that the behavior of citizens should be reduced to a corresponding regularity and this meant a highly regimented polity. Thus Epicurus and Plato stood at opposite extremes in advocating respectively a minimum and a maximum of government."
Freedom And Public Careers
1. Aristotle discussed "the best life" in his Politics, but the title under which the question standardized itself in literature was Lives. Theophrastus published three books on this topic. He favored the contemplative life, but Dicaearchus of the same age and school preferred the active life. Epicurus limited himself to a single roll on the topic but heightened the heat of the controversy by rejecting both the political life and the contemplative life as Plato and Aristotle had extolled it. He would have limited contemplation and research to the study of nature and especially as manifested in terrestrial things, since he scorned mathematics and astronomy. Moreover, the objective of study was limited to peace of mind; knowledge was not, in his view, an end in itself."
2. As the faithful Diogenes of Oenoanda expressed it, "The secret of happiness is in the diathesis, of which we are sole arbiters."
3. "The avoidance of political careers for the sake of preserving personal liberty served to separate the Epicureans from the other schools. The court posts, for instance, were left to the Platonists and especially the Stoics, whose pious pretensions qualified them uniquely for the role of chaplains. The miseries and restrictions of this occupation have been ably described by Lucian in his essay entitled On Salaried Posts in Great Houses."
Control of Environment
1. The following statement not only demonstrates how carefully the problem had been analyzed but also lays down the general procedure: "The injuries inflicted upon man by man have their origin in hatred or envy or contempt, over which the wise man achieves control by calculation." By calculation is meant a course of conduct rationally planned. It may be added that hatred arises in the competitive life; Aeschines and Demosthenes hated each other. The poor envy the rich or powerful; such men as Miltiades, Themistocles, and Ephialtes paid a bitter penalty for popularity. As for contempt, this was felt for men who defied public opinion by miserliness or other vices, such as Timon the misanthrope."
2. "Epicurus was not averse to fame provided it came unsought; he really desired a fame that was earned and deserved.48 His warning was against the notoriety that is earned in the public assembly and on the streets. When it is said of him that he remained virtually unknown to the Athenians,49 this does not mean that his name was unknown but rather his face. "
3. "It is also manifest that he looked chiefly to friendly diplomacy to keep the environment in control. Good will is a catchword of his creed no less than Peace and Safety. It is a precondition of Peace and Safety. He wrote, for instance: "A life of freedom cannot amass great wealth because of success in this being difficult apart from servitude to mobs or monarchs but it does enjoy all things in uninterrupted abundance; if, however, now and then great wealth does fall to its lot, it would gladly disburse this to win the good will of the neighbor."
Freedom And The Simple Life
1. "No one, as Cicero testifies, had more to say about the simple life, and it may be added that no Roman writer had more to say about it than the Epicurean Horace. To Epicurus the simple life meant contentment with little and this was called self-sufficiency, which in turn meant freedom: "Of self-sufficiency the most precious fruit is freedom." That the reference of these words was to food and not to friendship is made clear by the following: "The wise man, when confronted by lack of the necessities, stands by rather to share with others than to have them share with him; so great a reserve of self-sufficiency he discovers."
2. In this, as in all spheres of conduct, the rule of the two choices holds good. The proper attitude toward the desires, according to Authorized Doctrine 29, is to regard some as "natural and necessary," others as "natural but not necessary," and the rest as "neither natural nor necessary." The first class has reference to food, drink, clothing, and housing, the second to sexual desires; under the third fall the appetite for luxurious viands and the hankering in public life for crowns and statues, the equivalent in modern life of honorary degrees.
3. The correct basis of choice with reference to the particular desire is furnished by Vatican Saying 71: "To all desires must be applied this question: What will be the result for me if the object of this desire is attained and what if it is not?" This, of course, is the calculus of advantage in operation, and the correct procedure is defined in Vatican Saying 21: "Human nature is not to be coerced but persuaded, and we shall persuade her by satisfying the necessary desires, and the natural desires if they are not injurious, but relentlessly denying the harmful."
4. Even these details fall short of representing the whole creed of Epicurus touching the simple life. He says that it "creates a better attitude toward expensive foods when they become available after intervals of scarcity" and that "those who feel the least need of luxury have the keenest enjoyment of it." 81 If credence may be allowed to the slurs of his detractors, as well it may, this principle was practiced and the plain diet of the school was replaced on the twentieth of each month by more bountiful repasts. These celebrations marked the high points of the fellowship for which the sect was notorious."
5. "Epicurus discerned no merit in the creed of such a man as Diogenes the Cynic, who eschewed the comforts of life while scorning civilized society; neither did he see merit in the ascetic, who eschewed the comforts without scorning society. His estimate of the proper attitude was based upon a keener analysis: the sole merit lay in the control of experience, which signified freedom. His considered judgment is as follows: "We judge self-sufficiency to be a great good, not meaning that we should live on little under all circumstances but that we may be content with little when we do not have plenty." He does not fail to mention that the simple diet conduces to health but the greater gain is discerned in the feeling of security: it renders the individual "unshrinking before the inevitable vicissitudes of life" and "fearless in the face of Fortune."
Control Of Desires
1. "[Epicurus] sees evil not in desires but only in the consequences that follow their gratification."
2. "[Epicurus] avoids the terminology of both Plato and Aristotle. He has nothing to say about harmony between the parts of the soul nor anything about the mean in virtues. The new context which he sets up for the component ideas has already been mentioned in other connections. Happiness is the natural consummation of life; to be happy man must possess freedom. Freedom, however, is not a right but an achievement; it consists in maintaining and retaining control of experience under all circumstances."
3. Vatican Saying 59: "People say 'The stomach is insatiable' but it is not the stomach that is insatiable; they have a false opinion about the limitless quantity required to fill the stomach." To emancipate one's self from this servitude to false opinion and to make every act an act of choice is made possible through the practical reason.
4. The first step in this process is to choose the diathesis, which consists in believing that of the desires "some are natural and necessary, some are natural but not necessary and others are neither natural nor necessary." The second step is to make the choice in respect of the particular desire, Vatican Saying 71: "What will be the result for me if the object of this desire is fulfilled and what if it is not fulfilled?" This is the calculus of advantage in operation. It is plain pragmatism, the control of experience for the sake of happiness.
5. Advice on Anger: Be Loveable:
  1. "Into this same context of doctrines it is easy to fit the passion of anger. It is the right diathesis to consider "an outburst of temper a brief madness," as Horace states it; Epicurus himself is on record as saying, "Unbridled anger begets insanity." The false opinion would consist in believing that any worth-while satisfaction comes from revenge.
  2. It is easy also to find place in this context for the calculus of advantage. Anger is a turmoil in the soul and as such is destructive of serenity or ataraxy. There is more to be said, however: angry reprisals invite reprisals and would be destructive of that peace and safety which Epicureans raised to the rank of a practical objective. As a sect, Cicero informs us, "they were to the least degree malicious." They were not revengeful; even while attacking them Plutarch ascribes to them the saying "Let this too meet with forgiveness." With the Greeks and Romans the topic of anger was associated with the treatment of slaves, whose revenges could be dreadful. Hence it is not surprising that Laertius speaks of "his gentleness toward household slaves" when praising Epicurus.70 Lucian in his encomium makes mention of "the mildness of his disposition, his considerateness, the unruffled calm of his life and his tactfulness toward those who lived with him."
6. It may be said by the way that the perfect Epicurean approximates closely to our prolepsis or natural preconception of the true gentleman and that those who committed themselves even partially to the practice of his philosophy have proved to be especially likable. The names of Horace and Virgil and even Petronius will suggest themselves. The Stoics whose writings are best known do not elicit affection. Seneca is felt to be insincere, Epictetus a bit priggish, and Marcus Aurelius rather morbid. All three absorbed some Epicureanism but not enough to make themselves lovable."
  1. Is this correct about Marcus Aurelius? Was he really fatalistic, or did emphasize taking action on what we can change?
7. Even as we grow in education toward a sort of perfection that allows us to live as gods, we still do not lose all individual differences:
  1. In this association of fire with anger and the assumption of varying proportions of component elements in things there is nothing unknown to previous thinkers. The rest of the explanation is peculiar to Epicureanism. It is assumed that for some men education can result in perfection; there is such a thing as a perfectus or politus Epicureus. This perfection is attained by actually dislodging from the soul the excess of those atoms which are the causes of faults of character. The text of Lucretius is explicit: "In these matters I do seem able to make this assertion, that so infinitesimal are the residual traces of natural faults which reason cannot eradicate from the educated that nothing hinders them from passing a life worthy of the gods."
  2. It is further assumed that such men as attain this perfection through education will resemble one another. Nevertheless, the dislodgment of the evil atoms is not total; traces of the original disposition are left and under suitable circumstances the hot-tempered man will once more give way to anger. Analogous statements may be made of the cowardly, the lustful, and the rest. Thus those whom the perfection of education has raised to a kind of uniformity may still find themselves on occasion differing from one another.

Cassius

Discussion Plan For Chapter 09 "The New Physics" (Norman DeWitt's "Epicurus And His Philosophy")

Preamble: The Context For This Chapter - Why Are We Studying Physics? What Types of Questions Should We Be Looking to Answer? Examples are:

Is there evidence that the Universe was created at a single point in time, from which data we might draw the conclusion that what existed before, or what brought about the creation of the universe, was supernatural?
Is the Universe finite in size so that there might be a center point, or a superior point from which a god or an omniscient being might have an absolute perspective from which it is appropriate to say "this is absolutely true" or "this is absolutely false?"
Is there evidence of Supernatural management of the universe? If there is evidence of supernatural creation or management of the universe, then we will want to focus our attention on that god in order to determine how to live.
Is the Universe structured in such a way that knowledge is possible? Is there a "flux" and if so does that flux move and change so quickly that knowledge is impossible? This question was addressed by Diogenes of Oeneanda in Fragment 5: "[Others do not] explicitly [stigmatise] natural science as unnecessary, being ashamed to acknowledge [this], but use another means of discarding it. For, when they assert that things are inapprehensible, what else are they saying than that there is no need for us to pursue natural science? After all, who will choose to seek what he can never find? Now Aristotle and those who hold the same Peripatetic views as Aristotle say that nothing is scientifically knowable, because things are continually in flux and, on account of the rapidity of the flux, evade our apprehension. We on the other hand acknowledge their flux, but not its being so rapid that the nature of each thing [is] at no time apprehensible by sense-perception. And indeed [in no way would the upholders of] the view under discussion have been able to say (and this is just what they do [maintain] that [at one time] this is [white] and this black, while [at another time] neither this is [white nor] that black, [if] they had not had [previous] knowledge of the nature of both white and black."
Can a human be structured in such a way as to possess a soul which survive after death?
Can there be a realm of forms or ideas that exist eternally and provide for us an eternal definition of "virtue" and therefore absolute reference for our actions?
Is it possible for there to be in the universe a place of absolute rest where motion ceases and all things remain the same eternally?
Is the Universe finite in size so that there might be a center point, or a superior point from which a god or an omniscient being might have an absolute perspective from which it is appropriate to say "this is absolutely true" or "this is absolutely false?"
Is there evidence that the Universe was created at a single point in time, from which data we might draw the conclusion that what existed before, or what brought about the creation of the universe, was supernatural?
Are there other examples of core questions to be answered by physics which we should add to this list?

CHAPTER IX - THE NEW PHYSICS

Ethics is based on Physics - the Physics makes ethical law based on supernatural or eternal ideal principles impossible : "IN THE Epicurean scheme of knowledge the Physics takes precedence over the Ethics because it furnishes the major premises from which the nature of the soul is deduced and the proper conduct of life is formulated. The Sensations, Anticipations, and Feelings, that is, the Canon, are not represented as furnishing the content of knowledge but as being instruments of precision by which the certainty of knowledge is tested at all times."
The Twelve Elementary Principles - "As a substitute for technical terms he resorted often to the use of synonyms and paraphrases as a means of attaining the desired clearness. To illustrate, in the foreword to the Little Epitome, as a preparation for the tabulation of the Twelve Principles he refers to them in seven different ways: the most comprehensive doctrines; the outline of the whole system; the panoramic view; the most commanding view over the universe of things; the most general outlines; truths condensed to elements and succinct statements; the condensed view of the integrated survey of the whole."
1. Matter is uncreatable.
2. Matter is indestructible.
3. The universe consists of solid bodies and void.
4. Solid bodies are either compounds or simple.
5. The multitude of atoms is infinite.
6. The void is infinite in extent.
7. The atoms are always in motion.
8. The speed of atomic motion is uniform.
9. Motion is linear in space, vibratory in compounds.
10. Atoms are capable of swerving slightly at any point in space or time.
11. Atoms are characterized by three qualities, weight, shape and size.
12. The number of the different shapes is not infinite, merely innumerable.
The Twelve Elementary Principles are proved by Deduction, not induction: "The first two principles deal with the indestructibility and uncreatability of matter. If the question be raised how the truth of these propositions is established, the answer is by deduction. It must be observed that Epicurus makes no show of his logical procedures and, like the layman, employs the enthymeme or elliptical syllogism. Nevertheless, if his omissions be discerned and then supplied, the procedure is as follows. The purpose is to demonstrate the uncreatability of matter. Let it then be assumed for the purpose of the argument that the reverse is true: Matter is creatable. This assumption becomes the major premise and the method becomes deductive. The deductions would be that there would be no need of seeds of plants, no limits of size, no geographical distribution, no part for the seasons to play, and no necessity for fish to be born in the sea nor animals on the land.4 These inferences are all contrary to observed phenomena. Therefore, the assumption is false and the contrary must be true: Matter is uncreatable.
What Constitutes The Universe - "The problem of what constitutes the universe is dispatched by Epicurus with extreme brevity. The universe consists of solid bodies and void. That the former exist the evidence of sensation alone is sufficient proof; in the case of bodies too small to be perceived by the senses recourse must be had to reasoning by analogy from the visible to the invisible. As for space or void, if it did not exist, then solid bodies would have no place in which to rest nor room in which to move, as they manifestly do move. Epicurus does not think it worth while that beginners should be told of the Eleatic philosophers, who held different views."
Attributes and Accidents - "The account of attributes and accidents given by Epicurus is perspicuous. He states that a given object receives a predicate of designation by virtue of a combination of particular qualities reported by the senses. Some of these qualities are always present in the case of a given object; these are attributes. Others may or may not be present; these are accidents. In the Little Epitome space is saved by the omission of examples. In the Big Epitome, represented by Lucretius, weight is cited as an attribute of rocks, heat of fire, and fluidity of water. Lucretius also defines an attribute, coniunctum, as a quality inseparable from an object without its destruction; an accident, eventum, is a quality of which the presence or absence is a matter of indifference." Note: The 1743 translation uses "events" to describe changeable attributes rather than "accidents" as used by more recent translators. Cassius argues that "event" is the better term because "accident" implies a degree of "fortuity" or "chance" which is not consistent with the main point - which is that the regularity we observe in the universe arises from the properties and qualities / events of the atoms which come together to comprise them, rather than from divine will or from chaos.
Gradations In the Atom - " Having assumed the existence of subsensible, immutable, and indivisible bodies as the ultimate existences the next step was to elucidate the description of them. At the outset it might be assumed that they were all alike or that differences existed. If they should be assumed to be all alike it would be impossible to account for the great variety of qualities exhibited by compound bodies. Therefore it must be concluded that differences exist. For example, they must differ in size. Again, once differences of size have been assumed, the question arises whether the differences in this regard are infinite or finite. If it should be assumed that the differences are infinite in number, then in the gradation downward from larger to smaller the ultimate limit would be zero, which is equivalent to annihilation. If, on the contrary, in the gradation upward from smaller to larger the differences should be assumed to be infinite, visible magnitudes would be reached, which does not occur, and it is impossible to conceive of it occurring.18 Therefore the differences must be finite in number, falling well short of zero at the one end of the series and well short of visibility at the other. Even between these extremes it is possible that the differences, if not infinite, should at least be innumerable, and such is the doctrine enunciated."
Micrometry Of The Atom - "... reasoning by analogy from the seen to the unseen. ... In the world of sense we have visible and mensurable magnitudes. Descending one scale lower, we have magnitudes visible but not mensurable, such as grains of dust. Of these we can only say "bigger" of the bigger ones and "smaller" of the smaller ones. Descending another step lower in the scale, we have magnitudes neither visible nor mensurable; these are the atoms. In this last step we are merely extending a long way the meaning of the term small.23 The same reasoning holds, however, and we may still say that some are bigger and some smaller. The visible minima have furnished a standard of measurement for the invisible. Here the analogy ends because, though a heap of dust is possible, "a heap of atoms endowed with motion is an impossibility."
Motion - "Of the Twelve Principles four, Nos. 7 to 10, deal with the topic of motion. Epicurus distinguishes clearly between the motions of atoms through the void and the motions of solid bodies under terrestrial conditions. In the latter he points out the presence of acceleration and retardation while denying the same for atoms or visual images moving through the void.
1. The motions of atoms themselves are of two kinds, being linear in the void and vibratory in compound bodies.
2. He also deals specifically and sensibly with combinations of motions; for example, the atoms in a compound body maintain their vibratory motion at the same time that they share the linear motion of the body in which they are contained.
Linear and Vibratory Motion - "The primary and original motion of atoms is declared to be straight downward owing to weight. This motion is consequently rectilinear. While a slight deviation may occur, as will be mentioned presently, this deviation is assumed to be insufficient to require speaking of curvilinear motion. Moreover since Epicurus, like the rest of the ancients, lacked any precise concept of force as apart from motion, he could have no concept of fields of force and thus was bound to find other explanations for the curvilinear motions of the heavenly bodies. It is thus correct to think of the motions of his atoms as rectilinear. Oblique motions in all directions, including perpendicular motion upward, were thought to arise through successive collisions and to take place at the same velocity as the original motion downward owing to weight. Because of the solidity of the atoms the speed of the rebound was declared to be equal to the speed of impact. Thus all atomic motion, like the speed of light in modern physics, was at a uniform velocity, without acceleration or retardation."
Swerve Of The Atom - "In addition to the linear and vibratory motions of the atoms Epicurus postulated yet a third: it was assumed that at any point in time or space they were capable of veering ever so slightly from the straight line. This is known as the swerve, declinatio, Greek paregklisis. This was an addition to the teaching of Democritus and necessary for two reasons: first, because atoms would never have collided if the motions of all had been downward in parallel lines and consequently no compound bodies would ever have been formed; second, if the atoms were assumed to be incapable of deviating to the slightest degree from a given course, their motions would all have been unalterably predetermined and all events would be part of an infinite chain of causation. This infinite causation, the Necessity of the physicists, was above all things abhorrent to Epicurus and was a prime reason for his defection from the school of Democritus. More must be said on this topic in the chapter on the New Freedom."
Acceleration and Retardation - "One of the more obscure passages in the Little Epitome has occasioned much tribulation among editors; it deals with acceleration and retardation and aims to make clear the difference between atomic motion in the void and the motion of projectiles under terrestrial conditions. The key to the difficulty lies in recollection of the Epicurean rule that any proposition inconsistent with the Twelve Principles is "inconceivable." Let us apply this to the particular instance. It is uncertain just what moving body Epicurus had in mind, but it suits the context to assume that it was a meteor. The flight of this is invisible for part of its course and visible for the remainder. "How then," the critical observer may be imagined to ask, "can we be sure that its speed was not equal to that of the atoms for the first part of its flight?" 41 "The suggestion is inconceivable," Epicurus replies in effect, "because the very fact that the flight of the object at a certain point became visible is proof that retardation was taking place. The velocity of the atoms, on the contrary, is uniform at all times."
"Up" and "Down" In An Infinite Universe - "In an Infinite Universe Epicurus in a single paragraph 4a essays to immunize the minds of his disciples against certain views propounded by Plato and by Aristotle in criticism of Democritus. The latter had postulated a primary motion downward to infinity, which signified a perpendicular universe. Plato flouted this theory on the ground that the universe was spherical, which implied that it was finite. This was equivalent to denying meaning to "up" and "down," because all points on the surface of the sphere would bear the same relationship to the center. Moreover, as he pointed out, if a man should be imagined to walk over the surface of the spherical universe, any given point would be "down" to him when standing over it and "up" to him when he arrived at the antipodal point. Aristotle, in his turn, had advanced the criticism that the downward motion postulated by Democritus would imply the existence of an absolute "up" and an absolute "down," which was meaningless in an infinite universe. In modern parlance he was denying the possibility in an infinite universe of setting up any frame of reference for motion. The paragraph of Epicurus on the topic is designed as much to immunize the minds of his readers against the views of Plato and Aristotle as to refute the same. As for the view of Aristotle that the world has a top and a bottom, he denies its validity for an infinite universe."
A Perpendicular Universe - "The principle of Epicurus that the primary motion of the atoms is straight downward owing to weight involves rather startling inferences so far as concerns the shape of his multitudinous worlds. So far as the atoms and their motions are concerned, the principle is indifferent, because, owing to the constant collisions and the consequent rebounds, the atoms are thought of as moving in every conceivable direction throughout the void. Moreover, there is no such position as upside down or downside up to an atom. With the human being it is otherwise, for whom "up" and "down" have a constant significance. In other words, he must stand upright and he must have something flat to stand on. His major axis must normally be at right angles to a horizontal plane. It follows from these facts that, so far as man is concerned, the universe of Epicurus is a perpendicular one. By the same reasoning, it follows that of his multitudinous worlds only those with a flat top would be inhabitable by man. Furthermore, since motion is conceived of as downward, and not toward a center, the notion of antipodes would be inconceivable, and the proposal to emend the text to make room for this idea is untenable."
The Problem Of Cause - "The brevity of this account has not prevented it from being perspicuous, so far as it goes. The first cause is manifestly weight, which causes the downward motion of the atoms. It is equally manifest that the second cause is the blows arising from the clash of atoms, which are the cause of all opposite and oblique motions. The third cause is the swerve of the atoms from the perpendicular in their downward motion. This serves two ends: first, it makes possible the collisions of atoms, which otherwise would fall in parallel lines and never meet to form compound bodies; second, it emancipates man from an infinite chain of physical causation, the pet abomination of Epicurus, and makes possible the freedom of the will. While this brief account is perspicuous, it is also dogmatic and in keeping with the nature of an epitome. In the Epicurean scheme of education it was intended that the student should first acquire right opinions and only after an interval learn the reasons. The modern reader, lacking the larger works to which the original students had access, must expand the meager data of the Epitome as logically as he can. The swerve, for instance, being inherent in the atoms, cannot be confined to downward motion; it must be extended also to the oblique. Moreover — and this is more important and more subtle — it must be allowed to extend to the vibratory motions, which alone prevail in compound bodies, including the bodies of animate creatures. What then becomes of the finita potestas, "the fixed valence," which determines rigorously what can come into existence and what cannot be? Can variable motion produce invariable results? This question remains unanswered."

Cassius

Discussion Plan For Chapter 08 "Sensations, Anticipations, And Feelings" (Norman DeWitt's "Epicurus And His Philosophy")

Need to be more clear about the meaning of CANON !

CHAPTER VIII - SENSATIONS, ANTICIPATIONS, AND FEELINGS

Introduction -
1. There are three criteria of truth, but there is an unfortunate tendency to consider them as only one by focusing the discussion on sensations. This is an error that comes from considering Epicurus to be an "empiricist" in the modern sense, which he was not.
2. What is true is that all three operate together and do not exist separately - they are three distinct reactions occurring in close sequence.
3. In the sense that they are genetic or biological, there are three levels of experience on which these faculties operate: (1) somatic (immediate bodily sensations), (2) social (relationships with others), and (3) emotional (mental fears, hopes, and other emotions which replace immediate bodily sensations as areas of concern as we grow in maturity).
Sensations
1. These are the five senses: vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch.
2. They are direct physical contacts with external physical reality.
3. They are criteria of truth because they are non-rational - they do not evaluate, they simply report.
4. They are incapable of memory and simply report - without opinion - what they receive at any particular moment.
5. Sensations are "true" in that they report what they observe without injection of any opinion, but this does not mean that they are always accurate to the facts. Vision may truly report that a tower at a distance looks round but we may find when we approach the tower that it is square.
Epicurus Not An Empiricist
1. Epicurus argued that nothing can refute the sensations but this does not mean that he believed the senses are infallible to the facts. Epicurus held that differences in the observers account for differences in reaction to the same phenomena. Each sensation has validity for the observer, but must be checked against other observations to evaluate if it is accurate to the facts.
2. The statement that reason depends on the senses does not mean that the whole content of consciousness derives from the five senses. The faculty of anticipations and the faculty of pleasure and pain provide input to consciousness even though they are not themselves within the five senses.
3. Epicurus defended the validity of sensations as the faculty by which we come into contact with reality, and as taking precedence over reason, but he did not assert that individual sensations represent absolute truth. Individual senses are valuable for assessing reality without necessarily being true to the facts themselves.
4. Epicurus observed the example of the stick in the water appearing to be bent and this alone is sufficient to show that he did not believe that literally "all sensations are true." What Epicurus did teach is that we give attention to all sensations, using some sensations to correct the opinion we derive from others. That is, we observe the stick when out from the water and use that observation to correct our opinion of what happens when we see it placed in water.
5. It is absurd to argue that Epicurus did not take into account common optical illusions such as the stick in water or the tower at a distance.
6. Thus the value of a sensation can vary from totality to zero depending on the circumstances under which they are received. Immediate sensations are highly trustworthy; sensations about events that are distance are often untrustworthy.
7. Observations of composite sensations (combinations of color, shape, size, smell, etc) are "true" in the same way noted above, but these do not rank as criteria of truth under the Canon because intelligence has come into play to assemble them. Epicurus held that recognition by the intelligence is subject to the injection of opinion and therefore error, and thus should not be considered as the same level of trustworthiness are the three aspects of the canon. Later Epicureans are recorded to have done so, however, and DeWitt argues this was a mistake.
8. Because Epicurus was not an empiricist and we cannot consider all sensations to be true to the facts, we must:
  1. Make multiple observations and pay attention to ALL sensations
  2. Check our own sensations against the sensations gathered by others who are observing the same thing.
9. Skepticism must be shown to be incorrect and rejected.
  1. PD23 - "If you are going to make war on all the sensations, you will not even have a standard by reference to which you shall judge those of them which you say are deceptive."
  2. Epicurus warned against conclusions derived from observation at distances, and here he warred with Plato over the reliability of reaching conclusions based on the movement of stars and planets. As a result of his concern about Plato's belief that the stars/planets were gods, he apparently contended that they were not as large in size as the geometricians contended them to be. His reasoning was that here on earth the magnitude of a fire does not seem to diminish as fast as the magnitude of other objects seen at a distance. He therefore argued that the size of the sun was only a little larger than what it "appears" to be. (Note: but what did he really mean by "what it appears to be.")
  3. Allowing the mind to work "automatically" without correction is where error enters. "It is the automatic mind that errs; it may judge the distant tower to be round; this is the error of "opinion." The discreet observer knows the distant view to be deceptive and suspends judgment until the tower is observed at close hand. A tentative judgment is then confirmed or disproved." In the case of the size of the sun, which is visible but never at close hand, it is reasonable to consider the size of the sun to be less than huge because that opinion was not contradicted by evidence available to him.
10. In sum, the sensations are best viewed as witnesses in court. They do their best to testify "truthfully" but what they report may not be true to the facts because they may not have observed up close and with clarity the thing that they are reporting about. It is up to us to take into consideration the circumstances of their operation and observation, to compare all sensations against each other, and then to make a reasoned evaluation based on all the evidence.
11. "Nowhere in our extant Little Epitome or the Authorized Doctrines do we find the statement "that all sensations are true." On the contrary, the Epitome begins by urging the student "to give heed to the sensations under all circumstances and especially the immediate perceptions whether of the intelligence or of an)' criterion whatsoever," which manifestly allows some value to all sensations and special value to immediate sensations. At the end of the Epitome the student is warned to check his own observations by those of others. These authentic statements are incompatible with belief in the infallibility of sensation. They presume belief in gradations of value among sensations and also the need of perpetual caution against error."
Anticipations - (NOTE: This interpretation differs greatly from the 'modern majority' view, which essentially equates pre-conceptions with concepts. You must decide for yourself if DeWitt is correct.)
1. Example - "innate sense of justice" - "The innate capacity to distinguish colors is an anticipation of experience no less than the innate capacity to distinguish between justice and injustice."
2. " The difference is that the color-sense is part of the individual's preconditioning for life in his physical environment and emerges in early childhood, while the sense of justice is part of the preconditioning for life in the social environment and emerges later. developing in pace with experience, instruction, and reflection."
3. Terminology: Anticipation does not mean "concept" - "The term prolepsis was correctly rendered by Cicero as anticipatio or praenotio and less precisely, though intelligently, by the elder Pliny as divinatio. It is wrongly rendered as "concept" by those who confuse the general concept of such a thing as an ox with the abstract idea of justice. One scholar prefers "preconception," but perhaps "pre-concept" would be preferable. It seems most advantageous. however. to adhere to "Anticipation" because this is the meaning of the Greek word prolepsis.
The Account of Laertius
1. The account of Laertius is approved by many scholars, but DeWitt rejects it as a hodgepodge of Stoic and Epicurean doctrine . Laertius describes preconceptions as concepts - of a man, a horse, or an ox. Objections:
  1. DeWitt says general concepts are formed instantly, not after repeated experience.
  2. Epicurus applies the word to the gods, but we have not had repeated sightings of gods as means of our forming preconcepts about them.
  3. Epicurus refers to preconcepts as applying to justice, which is a different category of things rather than concrete ("brute") objects such as horses and oxen.
  4. "if the formation of the general concept ensues upon acts of sensation, then all elements of anticipation are removed; again, if it is formed as the residuum of acts of sensation, this is a sort of inductive process and no result of a rational process can itself be a primary criterion of truth, which Epicurus declared the prolepsis to be.
  5. If the general concept is the sum of a series of sensations, then the prolepsis is merged with sensation, and the second criterion of Epicurus disappears. This, in turn, would mean that Epicurus possessed no criterion of truth on the abstract levels of thought. Such a conclusion is hardly to be tolerated."
The Element of Anticipation
1. Preconceptions must involve an element of "anticipation." - "It is positively stated by Cicero that the use of the term prolepsis was an innovation on the part of Epicurus. It is agreed that this term prolepsis also denotes some sort of concept or idea. No one denies that. its proper signification is "anticipation:' Therefore, if an idea precedes or anticipates something. this can hardly be anything but experience. The said idea must therefore be innate. Quite correctly, therefore, Cicero wrote with studied precision when reporting on the gods of Epicurus, "implanted or rather inborn conceptions of them." (emphasis on "some sort" added)
2. Evidence from Lucretius:
  1. Let the faithful Lucretius be called to the witness stand. Among his more striking and better remembered passages is one that emphasizes the proleptic or anticipatory behavior of all living creatures, including animals. Their first gestures anticipate the activities of their adult state. Children point with the finger before they can talk. Calves butt before they have horns. The cubs of lions and panthers fight with tooth and claw almost before they have teeth and claws. Young birds go through the motions of flying before their wings are fit for flight. Obviously all living things are preconditioned for life in their terrestrial environment. Is it, then, inconsistent with this observed fact to assume that human beings are preconditioned for life in their social environment?
3. Evidence from Epicurus himself:
  1. Basic to his hedonism is the observed fact that all living creatures, brute or human, however young and helpless, reach out for pleasure and shrink from pain. Even before the five senses have begun to perform their parts, long before the dawn of conscious motivation, and long before the development of understanding. pleasure seems to be a good and pain an evil thing. This initial behavior, like the subsequent gestures of play. is at one and the same time prompted by inborn propensities and anticipatory of adult experience. In the growth of the living being and the unfolding of the faculties the attention of Epicurus is manifestly focused upon this principle. the priority of Nature over reason."
  2. Quick learning and rejection of Platonism: "·Epicurus, on the contrary, since he denied both the preexistence and the survival of the soul. found his explanation in the preconditioning of man by Nature for life in the prospective environment. His word for this phenomenon. Prolepsis or Anticipation. is thus the philosophical antonym of Plato's anamnesis or recollection. and so far is it from being true that "the notion of 'innate ideas' would be wholly repugnant to Epicureanism" that it is part of the marrow of his doctrine. His materialism. on this point, is idealistic Platonism in reverse.
Evidences From Specific Contexts - Prolepsis Occurs Four Times in Texts of Epicurus: The first has reference to the divine nature and the second and third to justice; the fourth applies to the concept of time.
1. Letter to Menoeceus: The discussion of the divine nature is found in the letter to the youthful Menoeceus. It is there declared "that the pronouncements of the multitude concerning the gods are not anticipations (prolepseis) but false assumptions."
2. PD37 - "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." The second and third examples of the term prolepsis are found in Authorized Doctrines 37 and 38; the topic is justice. Just as in the case of the divine nature, the first requisite is to discern the essential attribute or attributes. Just as in the case of the divine nature, the first requisite is to discern the essential attribute or attributes. It is Nature that furnishes the norm and implants in men the embryonic notion or prolepsis of justice in advance of all experience. Hence it is called "the justice of Nature," as in Doctrine 31 : "The justice of Nature is a covenant of advantage to the end that men shall not injure one another nor be injured." Setting aside the idea of the covenant. which is a separate topic, it will be noted that the essential requirement of justice is to protect citizens against injury. Thus "safety" becomes a catchword of Epicureanism. Since the laws are the instruments of justice, it is they that must be tested by this criterion. Like other observers of his time, Epicurus was aware of the diversity of laws from age to age, from city to city and race to race. If a given law serves to protect the individual, it is just; if after a time it ceases to perform this function, it loses the attribute of justice. This is the gist of Doctrines 36, 37, and 38.
3. PD 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."
4. Time - "The fourth occurrence of prolepsis, although negative in its bearing, is particularly illuminating. It deals with the nature of time. The prolepsis, as has been indicated, reveals the attributes of a thing at their minimum definition. Therefore, Epicurus virtually says that a prolepsis of time is a contradiction in terms, since time has no attributes. His finding is that time is "an accident of accidents," and, if his reasoning be closely scrutinized. time seems to be even less than this. Incidentally. in the text of Epicurus this paragraph on the topic of time follows immediately upon the discussion of attributes and accidents. This juxtaposition confirms the assumption that the prolepsis is rightly interpreted as an anticipatory notion of the essential attributes of the subject of examination.
Later Evidences
1. Stoic usage of Prolepsis differed from Epicurean: "The word prolepsis, once launched by Epicurus as a technical term. was taken over by the Stoics who cribbed freely from the sect they vilified. It still enjoyed vogue in Cicero's time but the sharp edges of the original idea had suffered detrition through careless handling. The Stoics had developed the study of formal logic and one ingredient of this was the general concept. This denotes the essential attributes of the subject under examination and. if the thinker be not too meticulous about his categories, it is permissible to speak of the general concept of either justice or an ox. Then by a familiar type of semantic shift it he- came possible to speak of "the prolepsis of an ox." just as people call a lighting fixture a chandelier even if candles have been replaced by gas or electricity. As Epicurus employed the term, however, it was no more possible to have a prolepsis of an ox than of a duck-billed platypus or a caterpillar tractor; the pre-existence of the idea in advance of the experience was essential.
2. Later Epicureans diverged from Epicurus' own teaching: "Even within Epicurean circles the term prolepsis underwent unjustified extensions. For instance, Epicurus. recognizing Nature as the canon or norm. had asserted that, just as we observe fire to be hot, snow to be cold, and honey to be sweet, so, from the behavior of newborn creatures, we observe pleasure to be the telos or end. Certain of his followers, however, shaken no doubt by Stoic criticism, took the position that the doctrine was an innate idea. that is, a prolepsis. In strict logic this error was a confusion between quid and quale. The problem was not to decide what could be predicated of the end or telos but what was the identity of the end. Was it pleasure or was it something else?
3. Philodemus - "Several examples of the word prolepsis occur in the writings of Philodemus, all of them falling in the domain of the abstract. One of these is worthy of special mention. It is found in the essay entitled On the Management of an Estate. Other writers are there criticized for not describing the good manager in conformity with a prolepsis; they concern themselves instead with popular ideas on the subject and then endeavor to hitch the resulting description to the wise man. What they ought to do is to ask themselves what kind of business and what size of business and what sort of management are compatible with a philosophic life and intellectual companionship. This may be a sound procedure to follow in writing an essay of this kind, but it is very questionable whether Epicurus ever thought of ascribing to the human being an innate idea of what a good landlord should be."
4. References in Cicero - (DeWitt says these differ from Epicurean usage) - The procedure is to assume that the interlocutor already possesses a proper preconcept of the object of the quest. folded up in the mind like the leaves in a bud, or wrapped up in a sheet, which was an ancient method of carrying luggage. 'With such assumptions in mind Cicero wrote: "Unfold your intelligence and shake it out that you may see the shape and preconcept (prolepsis) of the virtuous man that is found within." In the same context the reader finds the following: "But once a man has consented to unroll the pre concept that is folded up in his own mind he can readily teach himself that the virtuous man is he who will do a good turn to whom he can and will injure no one unless attacked."
5. References in Lucretius not particularly helpful - "Lucretius affords the student no assistance whatever. He makes no attempt to translate the word prolepsis either by periphrase or coinage. He might well have preceded Cicero in the use of praenotio and anticipatio, which, at least in the nominative case, would have fitted into hexameters. His notities translates only ennoia or ennoema. The two passages in which it is alleged to denote prolepsis exemplify an entirely different doctrine, that nonpurposive Nature is the sole creatrix. Human intelligence can only improve upon Nature's beginnings; man could not invent language before nature had furnished a model in involuntary cries. To this restriction even the gods were subject; they could not have created a universe before Nature had furnished a model.
Feelings
1. Nature's Go and Stop signals - ""The Feelings are two," wrote Laertius, "pleasure and pain, characterizing every living creature, the one being akin, the other alien, through which the decisions are made to choose or avoid."
2. "The feelings are distinct from the Sensations by two removes: in the meaning of the Canon sensation is restricted to the sensory stimulus: it is the intelligence that registers recognition or nonrecognition; it is the Feelings that register pleasure or pain. These are accompaniments of sensation, as Aristotle observed in advance of Epicurus."
3. Feelings should not be considered identical with sensations: "The prevailing belief that Epicurus was an empiricist has led scholars to merge the Feelings with the Sensations. It is true that both may be called by the Greek word pathc, but this coincidence of predicate is offset by logical absurdities. Since the Sensations are confined to the five senses, the merging of the Feelings with the Sensations would exclude fears and hopes and all the higher emotions. Again, since Epicurus reduces all sensation to touch, the merging of the Feelings would con- fine these also to touch. Still again, according to Epicurus the higher emotions, which are included in the Feelings, have a different seat from the Sensations, deep in the breast. How then could they be one with the Sensations? Lastly, unless the Feelings are something distinct from both Sensations and Anticipations, Epicurus would lack a criterion on the level of the higher emotions, where the issue of happiness and unhappiness is ultimately decided."
4. Another reason not to merge feelings and sensations is that to do so would remove gradations in pleasures: "It would also be obligatory, should the Feelings be merged with the Sensations, to ignore all gradations in pleasures, which Epicurus did not. Like Plato and Aristotle, he recognized the existence of higher and lower pleasures and he employed the same terminology. The pleasures of the flesh are denoted by the noun hedone and the verb hedomai, the higher pleasures by the noun euphrosune and the "euphrainomai. For instance, it is the latter verb he employs when he speaks of the "higher enjoyment" experienced by the wise man in attendance upon public spectacles and also when he speaks of the "serene joy" with which the wise man approaches the end of life. He has still another synonym to employ, chara, when he denies that unlimited wealth can bring any "worthwhile happiness," and he uses the same word of that "peak of happiness" that comes of the confident expectation of health of body and peace of mind. These are Feelings but not Sensations in the meaning of the Canon."
5. "Unity of pleasures" does not mean that pleasures and pains of the flesh are on same level as pleasure and pains of the mind.
6. The Feelings operate as criteria on all levels of life, somatic, social, and, if a term may be borrowed from religion to denote the higher emotions, spiritual.
7. Feelings as criteria in reference to divinity: "It is chiefly with reference to the gods and death that the Feelings operate as criteria, as may be inferred from the first two of the Authorized Doctrines, If the individual is rendered miserable by the fear of death and of the possible punishment after death, this misery is a Feeling in the meaning of the Canon and a sure evidence of "false opinion." He must habituate himself to the thought "that death is nothing to us," that death is incidental to life, and that "the fullness of pleasure" may be attained within the narrow limits of mortal life."
8. Feelings as a criteria of justice: "The Feelings operate as criteria also in the sphere of justice and injustice. The Pauline doctrine "The power of sin is the law·' is straight Epicureanism. Among sayings of Epicurus covering the point is the following, Authorized Doctrine 34: "'Wrongdoing is not an evil in and by itself; the evil lies in the uneasy feeling, amounting to fear, that he will not escape detection by those appointed for the punishment of such offenses," This fear is a Feeling in the meaning of the Canon; it differs from the child's fear of the fire only by being operative on a higher level of understanding."
9. Feelings as a criteria in choice of attitude toward competitive careers - The Feelings also serve as a Criterion in the choice of a proper attitude or diathesis toward competitive careers. For instance, Diogenes of Oenoanda points out "that the career of the orator allows a man no rest and fills him with anxiety for the success of his plea." The extant sayings of Epicurus himself abound in references to the deceitfulness of the quest for riches, power, or fame.
10. Precedence of Feelings over reason: "As a criterion the Feelings may take precedence over reason. Plato, for example, argued endlessly about the meaning of "good." Epicurus scorned this dialectic and arrived at a simple solution. His line of attack is as follows: the greatest good must be associated with the greatest pleasure. This greatest pleasure is easily identified: "What causes the unsurpassable joy is the bare escape from some terrible calamity." This joy arises from the saving of life, the escape from shipwreck, for instance. Therefore life itself is the greatest good. To think of pleasure as the greatest good is an error; pleasure is the telos and is not to be confused with the greatest good. The testimony of the Feeling functioning as a criterion is decisive."

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Discussion Plan For Chapter 07 "The Canon, Reason, And Nature" (Norman DeWitt's "Epicurus And His Philosophy")

CHAPTER VII - THE CANON, REASON AND NATURE

Introductory Points
1. The Canon was not an afterthought, but occupied first place in the triad of Canon, Physics, and Ethics. This is because the Canon provides the test of the truth of the conclusions in the other two areas.
2. The "canon" is a metaphor for the tools of precision for measuring truth - it is not truth itself. ("It is an even worse mistake to have confused the tests of truth with the content of truth, that is, the tools of precision with the stones of the wall. This was the blunder of Pierre Gassendi, who revived the study of Epicurus in the seventeenth century. It was his finding "that there is nothing in the intellect which has not been in the senses." From this position John Locke, in turn, set out as the founder of modern empiricism. Thus a misunderstanding of Epicurus underlies a main trend of modern philosophy. This astonishing fact begets an even greater concern for a correct interpretation, which may cause Locke to appear slightly naive.")
3. The need for the Canon was provoked by the teachings of the Skeptics, primarily Pyrrho, but also in Epicurus' view Plato, because Plato belittled the senses and looked to "ideas" (which do not have a separate and independent existence outside of our minds).
4. DeWitt sees anticipations as "a kind of intuition."
  1. "He made room also for a kind of intuition, which is incompatible with empiricism. He postulated that man was equipped in advance by Nature for living in his prospective environment, and not in his physical environment alone but also in his social environment."
5. "Thus Nature, having equipped man with a triple contact with his environment, becomes a norm, while the Platonic Reason is eliminated along with the Platonic Ideas. "
The Dethronement of Reason
1. The Canon makes no mention of reason, which means reason is denied rank as a criterion of truth.
2. Of the 12 Elementary Principles "nothing exists except matter and void" (and others of the principles) are totally destructive of Platonic idealism (if only atoms and void are eternal, eternal "ideas" cannot exist; if the only thing that is incorporeal is void, there can be no incorporeal ideas or divine reason - they are absurdities). By the same argument the incorporeal soul is eliminated.
3. For similar reasons, divine reason cannot be the cause of motion ("There is another of the Twelve Principles that has a specific bearing upon the Platonic concept of reason: "The atoms are always in motion." If we seek the implied negative of this positive statement — and Epicurus reasons after this fashion — it will be this, that nothing else in the universe is in motion, because the void is incapable of motion and outside of atoms and void there is nothing. It will follow also that no other cause of motion exists. It will be nonsensical, therefore, to think of divine reason as the cause of motion.")
4. The idea of an ordering mind ("reason") as the cause of order in the universe is likewise absurd. ("There is yet another of the Twelve Principles that possesses a bearing upon the function of reason in the universe. The second Principle reads: "The universe has always been the same as it now is." 3 This principle is known to us as the law of the indestructibility and uncreatibility of matter. To Epicurus it meant that the idea of primeval chaos was absurd; the universe has always been a cosmos. Specifically, speaking of the various motions of the atoms, he said: "Of these there has been no beginning, the atoms and the void being eternal." To him the universe was a cosmos solely because of the various weights, shapes, and magnitudes of the atoms and their motions, all of which were constant factors. Consequently there was no need of the ordering mind (nous) according to Anaxagoras or of the divine demiurge of Plato. Both of these become absurdities. In the extant remains of Epicurus the word nous does not occur; it seems to have been deliberately avoided.")
5. Of course ALL reason is not rejected by Epicurus - the purely human and mortal reason remains and is highly important. (While by this line of argument it will be observed that the incorporeal, eternal, and unerring reason of Plato and Aristotle is eliminated, the purely human, mortal reason remains. Even this is subordinated to the sensations: "Not even reason can refute the sensations, for reason depends wholly upon them." 8 This does not mean, as Gassendi imagined, that the whole content of thought is derived from the sensations, which was not the teaching of Epicurus, but rather that the deprivation of sensation is virtually death.8 The basic idea is the conviction that reason is incapable of making direct contact with reality; reason is active only when the sensations are active. Without the sensations reason possesses no criteria, since they along with the Anticipations and Feelings function as contacts with reality.)
6. Error arises not in sensation but in human intelligence, because sensation is entirely non-rational (pre-rational).
7. IMPORTANT: Epicurus denied that the "recognition" function of the intelligence was a criteria of truth. His later followers, however, changed this, and Dewitt suggests this was a major error of the later Epicureans. (This is a function of the intelligence and the recognition is "an immediate perception of the intelligence." Even to such a perception as this Epicurus denied the rank of criterion, though his successors did not, and the ground of his rejection is manifest. If the observer says, "It is a white ox," this is a judgment and as such it is secondary to the sensation itself and it can err. Thus it does not qualify as a criterion. The sensation, however, does not err. As Aristotle said, "The sense of sight is not deceived as to color, nor is that of hearing as to sound.')
8. Epicurus identified three kinds of reason:
  1. A dependable kind that proceeds by deduction from first principles.
  2. An inferior kind that proceeds by analogy from the visible to the invisible and is thus subject to correction by the former, and
  3. ordinary human intelligence, which is normally automatic and hence fallible and is subject to correction by volitional intelligence.
  4. Justification for this division: "It remains to mention that Epicurus minimized the value of reason even in dealing with things beyond the range of sensation, whether too minute or too remote for observation. To denote the notions relative to these unseen phenomena he raised a familiar word to the rank of a technical term, epinoiai, which by virtue of the prefix means "secondary" or "accessory" ideas. This is the sense in the following pronouncement: "For all accessory ideas (epinoiai) are derived from the sensations by virtue of coincidence, analogy, similarity and combination, reason also contributing something." While this grudging concession to reason should be noted, it is observable also that procedures which employ comparison and analogy seem to Epicurus an inferior kind of reason. By analogy, for example, it should seem possible to have a heap of atoms, since we have heaps of dust, but a superior reason intervenes and reminds us that atoms are endowed with motion.13 Consequently, a heap of atoms is inconceivable. This superior reason employs the method of inference from the Twelve Elementary Principles. The procedure is deductive; Epicurus is not an empiricist."
9. All forms of reason are faculties of the human mind and within the human mind. Outside of the mind there is no reason in the universe.
Ridicule
1. Epicurus was considered heretical to have attempted to dethrone reason as the criterion of truth. "Few concepts are so flattering to the vanity of mankind as the hypothesis that the possession of reason exalts it above the brutes and offers it an affinity with the divine. Mystical notions receive a warmer welcome than cold facts and figures, divine creationism than biological evolution. Plato's mysticism exercised a subtle flattery all its own, especially by the separation of form and matter, by the assumption of a pure reason contemplating absolute truth, by the identification of reason with God. Part of its charm consisted in a vague self-pity for the soul imprisoned in the body, pondering wistfully on the theme of previous existence and future incarnations. To declare the soul corporeal and to make it the equal partner of the body seemed repulsive realism, more easily satirized than refuted"
2. The Epicureans considered the Canon poetically as "fallen from heaven" given its importance. "The language of Epicurus sometimes swerves toward poetical diction, and in one of his more enthusiastic moments he seems to have been moved by gratitude to blessed Nature to characterize the Canon as diopetes, "fallen from heaven," as if it were a holy palladium. It was this epithet that Cicero was echoing when he dubbed it "the celestial rule" and more literally in another passage styled it as "fallen from the sky." ls Plutarch, who employed part of his leisure in digging up old slurs out of the archives, wrote scornfully: "It was not because Colotes had read 'the heaven-descended Canons' that bread was perceived by him to be bread and fodder fodder."
Nature as the Norm
1. Aristotle had shifted the focus of the study of nature to organic life and away from Platonic ideas.
2. Epicurus continued the shift away from Platonic ideas and built on the focus toward "creative nature." "It is this concept of creative nature that Epicurus took over. He calls the study of nature by the name physiology, the rerum natura of Lucretius, which includes nature in all manifestations, but he denied importance to the study of astronomy and eliminated mathematics from the curriculum of study."
3. Epicurus taught that Nature should be considered to be benevolent. "Gratitude is due to blessed Nature because she has made the necessities of life easy to procure and what is hard to procure unnecessary." 21 The gratitude here signified exhibits an advance over the pagan gratitude to Mother Earth as the giver of bread. The word nature has taken on an ethical connotation. Nature is not merely the creatrix. She seems to be also benevolent and provident. The concept of her is close to that of Aristotle when saying "that Nature does nothing at random."
Priority of Nature over Reason
1. Epicurus gives Nature priority as antecedent to rational activity, and as the key to establishing the identify of the end or telos.
  1. Priority in time: "His most telling argument has been preserved by Cicero.22 Let it be assumed that a human being has been deprived of all his five senses. This is tantamount to death and the subject has ceased to be a rational creature. In a muddled paragraph our biographer Laertius ascribes to Epicurus the idea "that the Sensations lead the way." 23 In the present context this notion seems to have apposite application: the possession of sensation seems to be construed as antecedent to rational activity."
  2. Priority as to the telos: "The priority of Nature was also insisted upon in establishing the identity of the end or telos. Aristotle had furnished a precious hint in this connection; he wrote "that perhaps even in the case of the lower animals there is some natural good superior to their scale of intelligence which aims at the corresponding good." 24 To this principle Epicurus adapted his procedure. By the promptings of Nature alone, apart from reason, every animate thing, the moment it is born, reaches out for pleasure and shrinks from pain. Consistent with this reasoning is the steady practice of referring to pleasure as "the end of Nature," which occurs five times in our scant remains. As analogous phrases may be cited "the good of Nature" and "the pleasure of Nature," all of them implying that reason played no necessary role in establishing the truth. Similar is the implication of parallel phrases such as "the wealth of Nature," signifying that Nature and not reason reveals the true meaning of wealth; and also "the limits of Nature," implying that Nature and not reason teaches the true limits of the desires."
  3. The Actions of Nature precede all human institutions and advancement. "Another aspect of this priority of Nature over reason is manifest in the beginnings of human institutions. Since the sole cause of growth and change in the universe is the ceaseless motion of the atoms and this activity is nonpurposive, it follows that actions invariably precede thought. On this point the judgment of Epicurus is explicit: "Moreover, it must be assumed also that human nature by sheer force of circumstances was taught a multitude of lessons of all sorts and compelled to put them into practice, though reason subsequently contributed refinements and additions to these recommendations of hers, in some fields more rapidly, in others more slowly." 26 Lucretius in his fifth book enlarged liberally upon this theme: human beings wore skins before they manufactured garments; they lived in caves before they built huts; they employed clubs before they made weapons; they lived dispersed before they organized governments and built cities."
    1. Origin of language is an example of this. Language arises by nature, not by invention of reason: " The following quotation, though hardly a verbatim report, expressed his judgment: "These men did not assign names to things intelligently but stimulated by a natural instinct, just as men cough or sneeze, cattle bellow, dogs bark and suffering men moan." 28 Subsequently, the talented few, according to his account, taking their cues from Nature and impelled by expediency, by slow degrees brought human speech to its perfection among various races in various environments.29"
  4. Nature is the Supreme Teacher and Physics is the Supreme Science. ""Through this body of knowledge the force of words, the meaning of style and the distinction between the logically consistent and the logically inconsistent can be discerned." "
    1. "..Nature is neither a poet nor a rhetorician nor a dialectician. Words must be taken at their face value, just as Epicurus advises the young Herodotus. This means for one thing that the use of figures of speech is abjured. Although the wise man may become a good critic of poetry, he will not compose poems."
    2. "The writing of Epicurus was characterized by propriety, which means the avoidance of figures of speech. The critic Aristophanes is said to have censured it as "highly peculiar." 36 In this attitude toward style Epicurus was certainly influenced by the contemporary vogue of geometry, which instituted a way of writing unprecedented for its baldness, yet undeniably adapted to its needs. His declaration that the sole requisite was clearness, was no more applicable to himself than to geometers."
    3. "The same priority of Nature over reason that predetermined the right kind of writing and rendered rhetoric superfluous eliminated dialectic, but the logic of this judgment can be given more precision. The effect of the doctrine that nothing exists except atoms and void was to deny the reality of Plato's eternal ideas. Thus dialectic, which was the avenue to comprehension of those ideas, became a superfluity.
  5. It is more Epicurean than Stoic to assert that men should live "according to Nature." (As a parting comment it may be stated that, when once Nature has been established as the norm, it follows logically that man should live according to Nature, but the Epicureans seem never to have followed this inference through. It remained for the Stoics to identify Nature with Reason and to make a fetish of living according to Nature. They believed her supreme teaching was to be found in the divine order of the celestial realm, where Nature and Reason were at one." --- Note: Is this a correct deduction, or is this an artifact of most texts being lost?)

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Until I can determine how to include an IFRAME here so that the following text will expand and collapse within this site, this link will take you to the master collapsible single-page outline.

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I have set up a separate forum for the Book Discussion project, and set up a separate thread for each of the first six chapters. I also prepared an outline for Chapter 6 - here: Discussion Plan For Chapter 06

I will go back and look for the outlines that other people prepared for the earlier chapters. If anyone has ready access to those and wants to post them in the respective thread, feel free! thanks!

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Discussion Plan For Chapter 05 (Needs Completion)

CHAPTER V - THE NEW SCHOOL IN ATHENS

The School Property
Ranks And Titles
Personnel And Students
Reverence
Images
Friendship

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Discussion Plan For Chapter 04 (Needs Completion)

CHAPTER IV - MYTILENE AND LAMPSACUS

The New Philosophy On Trial
The Sorites Syllogism
Homer A Hedonist
Rhetoric
Lampsacus
The Lampsacene Circle
The Regenerate Epicurus

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Discussion Plan For Chapter 03 "Colophon: Development of Doctrine" (Norman DeWitt's Epicurus And His Philosophy)

Outline by - and thanks to! - JAWS

Chapter III: Colophon: Development of Doctrine

Introduction
1. 321-311 BC - Epicurus was in Colophon with his family
2. During this time he fully developed an independent doctrine
3. Synoptic view of this period
  1. 322 BC Athenians evicted per Antipater - Epicurus’s father finds refuge in Colophon
  2. 321 BC Epicurus joins his family in Colophon - Epicurus likely begins to study under Praxiphanes but his studies with him were short-lived
  3. Epicurus enrolls in school of Nausiphanes of Teos
    1. Nausiphanes was a student of Democritus
    2. They explored concepts such as free will, determinism, and the function of philosophy
    3. Hostilities arose between Epicurus and Nausiphanes
    4. Epicurus may have done some teaching in Colophon
  4. Colophon still an intellectual Ionian city
  5. It was common to take one’s time when studying philosophy
Praxiphanes
1. Praxiphanes was one of the foremost teachers of the time
2. Praxiphanes was a Peripatetic
  1. He was a critical student of literature (Homer & poetry)
  2. Separated literary rhetoric from political rhetoric
  3. To him grammar = good writing
3. Praxiphanes was critical and did not get along well with Epicurus
4. Carneiscus, an Epicurean, later condemns Praxiphanes in a biography of another Epicurean friend, thus providing evidence of Epicurean hostilities
5. Epicurus denies tutelage to Praxiphanes by arguing that he was self-taught
  1. The potential of Praxiphanes of being a pupil of Theophrastus would support the claim that Epicurus did not study under Praxiphanes
  2. It is more likely that Praxiphanes studied under Aristotle and that Praxiphanes and Theophrastus were contemporaries
6. The skill in writing that Epicurus exhibits in his Letter to Menoeceus supports the claim that Epicurus studied under Praxiphanes
7. Letters included in the wall at Oenoanda suggest that Epicurus spent some time in Rhodes
8. Letter from Epicurus to his mother helps establish him as the author of the letter that mentions time in Rhodes
9. The second letter expresses gratitude to a woman with whom the author stayed with in Rhodes.
10. The importance of the letters is that it would put Epicurus in Rhodes at the same time as Praxiphanes suggesting that he did study with him
Nausiphanes
1. Pamphilus was a Platonist; Praxiphanes was a Paripatetic; Nausiphanes was a Democritean atomist
2. The above list is given in chronological order of the assumed teachers of Epicurus. Epicurus and Nausiphanes did not part well.
3. Teos was populated by people from the home of Democritus, Abdera. Nausiphanes was known for teaching rhetoric
4. Nausiphanes was greatly influenced by the imperturbability of Pyrrho - as was Epicurus
  1. This is a possible origin of the Epicurean doctrine of ataraxy - tranquility of the soul.
  2. Pyrrho recommended abstention from public life which mirrors Epicurus’s disapproval of public careers.
The Quarrel
1. Epicurus is eventually disgusted with Nausiphanes, calling him lung-fish, dumb animal, imposter, and prostitute
2. Epicurus and Nausiphanes agreed on some things:
  1. Opposition to skepticism
  2. Acceptance of dogmatism
  3. The source of their quarrel may have been over a topic they disagreed on
    1. Free will and determinism
    2. The function of philosophy
3. Nausiphanes has a canon of knowledge called the Tripod
  1. Epicurus has his canon of knowledge also
    1. Sensations
    2. Anticipations
    3. Feelings
  2. One source suggests that Epicurus took his canon from Nausiphanes’ Tripod
4. The charge of imposter and prostitute may be related to vices of Nausiphanes, specifically homosexuality (adolescent lads) and drinking. Epicurus: Intercourse never was the cause of any good and it is fortunate if it does no harm.
5. Epicurus was an irritating pupil.
  1. He had a negative view of most people as slaves who surrender their freedom to Fate - fatalism
  2. Or of the Platonists who surrendered their freedom to the pursuit of power, fame, or wealth
6. Epicurus then retreated to Colophon for independent study
  1. He may have offered public instruction in rhetoric
  2. Recreational style of education - to make play hours of study hours
7. Thus started a period of incubation when Epicurus could work out the details of his doctrine
Self-Taught
1. Epicurus denies tutelage to Nausiphanes and claims to have been self-taught
2. This section discusses the Canon, Physics, and Ethics of Epicurus highlighting what is different (original) from other teachings, thus supporting a claim of self-teaching
3. Canon
  1. We don’t have evidence of what Nausiphanes’s Tripod actually was
  2. It is likely that Epicurus’s demotion of Reason and promotion of Nature is likely not something Epicurus was taught by any of his instructors as none of them was involved in the research of zoology which is the only other place this idea came up
4. Epicurus agrees with Democritus save two concepts: skepticism and physical determinism.
5. Skepticism
  1. Democritus’s belief that all existence other than atoms and void and that everything else existed by convention committed him to skepticism
  2. To Epicurus, “belief or disbelief was a matter of morals and the happiness of mankind”
  3. “Knowledge must not only be possible, but also have relevance to action and to happiness”
6. Physical determinism
  1. Moral reform implies conversion, and conversion presumes freewill. Thus Epicurus could not tolerate an attitude of determinism
  2. The addition of human volition was a new innovation for his ethics
7. Hedonism
  1. Plato suggested the calculus of advantage and the classification of desires but was not a hedonist
  2. Epicurus differed from both Plato and Aristippus in his definition of pleasure - neither of which believed the continuation of pleasure was possible
  3. Epicurus developed his own division of pleasure
    1. Basic: being sane and in good health
    2. All others are decorative and superfluous
  4. This was an Epicurus original
8. Epicurus’s original teleology
  1. Other philosophies based on adaptation of organ to function (Aristotle) or where no teleology was possible as with determinism (Democritus)
  2. Epicurus’s teleology based on natural laws
  3. Only rational human beings are capable of intelligent planning for living and thus a telos is possible and this telos is pleasure as ordained by Nature
  4. This was an Epicurean original
The Function of Philosophy
1. Epicurus believed philosophy was only good if it healed suffering of the soul. To Democritean skepticism he was especially impatient as skepticism paralyzes one from taking action.
2. Epicurus as a pragmatist
  1. “Impatient of all knowledge that lacks relevance to action”
  2. Answering questions like What is the meaning of ‘good’? Are useless endeavors
  3. Supreme urgency: happiness of mankind
3. The pragmatic philosophy of Epicurus was for all mankind including women, children, and slaves and a parallel between medicine and philosophy was born. “There is no one for whom the hour has not yet come nor for whom the hour has passed for attending to the health of his soul.”
4. Epicurus was likely developing the above sentiment while still under the tutelage of Nausiphanes which may have been a source of friction between them. It is also likely that word of it preceded Epicurus to Mytilene and thus setting up hostilities against him.
5. Epicurus likely finished developing his doctrine in Colophon as he immediately offered himself as a public teacher in Mytilene.
6. Once in Mytilene a gymnasiarch either threatened or lodged an indictment for impiety.
  1. This implies that Epicurus’s doctrine already included the denial of divine participation in human affairs
  2. This denial was an integral part of the freedom of man - to be happy, man must be free to plan his whole life
7. Free planning of life requires rejection of determinism, both divine or physical, and the belief in the possibility of knowledge. The possibility of knowledge required the canon of truth.

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Discussion Plan For Chapter 02 (Need Completion)

CHAPTER II - SAMOS AND ATHENS

Samos: Childhood And Adolescence
The Schoolteacher's Son
Schooling
The Paideia Fallacy
Geometry, Rhetoric, Dialectic
Cadetship In Athens, 323-321 BC
Epicurus And Menander
Loyalty

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Norman DeWitt's "Epicurus And His Philosophy" - Chapter Six - The New Education

Summary Introduction:
1. Epicurus developed an integrated program for teaching the Canon, Physics, and Ethics
2. This program was implemented by graded (progressive) texts.
3. The program was designed to rival and replace the Platonic program of education.
  1. The Platonic program was: music, gymnastic, rhetoric, dialectic, mathematics (especially geometry).
4. The Epicurean objective was not to produce a good citizen (Plato's objective) but to produce a happy and contented man.
  1. Gymnastics/exercise was accepted as part of Epicurean program.
  2. Music would also be an accepted part of Epicurean program
  3. Likely hostile to poetry.
  4. Rhetoric denied a place in Epicurean curriculum
  5. Dialectic was rejected.
  6. Mathematics was rejected (?)
The Heavenly Apocalypse
1. Epicurus employed the analogy of being able to fly through the heavens to observe them from great height as a means of teaching how the details fit into the big picture and the big picture relates to the details. (Example in Lucretius Book 1)
The Tour of the Universe
1. The wise man not only ascends but explores the heavens - so the trip is not only up, but through so as to see the details and how the large scale map fits with the small scale map (the Big Epitome and the Little Epitomes)
2. This is a reference to the use of outlines to ensure that we can grasp not only the details but the fundamental principles.
The Use of the Epitomes
1. The brief summaries provide the most panoramic and commanding view of the truth, such as the letters to Menoeceus, Pythocles, and Herodotus.
2. However they are not primers to be mastered and laid aside, but serve as syllabuses to be kept on hand as a summary map of the whole.
3. The Twelve Fundamental Principles of Nature are also an example of this.
4. The method is not from the particulars to first principles, but from first principles to particulars -- DEDUCTIVE, not INDUCTIVE reasoning.
5. This use of the Epitomes shows that Epicurus was not an "Empiricist" as that term is used today.
6. The function of the sensations as part of the canon is to test the correctness of the inferences drawn from the Twelve Principles, but these principles were not themselves based on evidence of sensation - their truth was demonstrated by deductive syllogism.
The New Textbooks
1. Three classes of textbooks, all under the direction of the single organizing mind of Epicurus:
  1. Dogmatic
    1. Textbooks on the Canon, Physics, and Ethics mostly by Epicurus himself, such as the 37 books on Physics
    2. Included works on sensations, physical change, images,etc
  2. Refutative
    1. Series of attacks on other schools, especially the Platonists, such as "Against the Philosophers in Mytilene." Much use of satire.
    2. The purpose of these was to inoculate the minds of students against arguments from other schools.
    3. Lucian: "Well let us be of good cheer, my dear friend, we possess a powerful antidote for such poisonous influences in 'the truth and the philosophy that is invariably right.'"
  3. Memorial
    1. Eulogistic biographies of deceased members of the school.
    2. Secured a form of immortality for members of the school.

Cassius

Quote from AlexanderRios

I like what you wrote. Or better said, I like how I feel, when I consider what your wrote, in support of PD39. Considering that seems to wake me (the "divine" animal in me) up.

Yep that is the way I see the issue too. In terms of waking up "the divine animal" to me there is nothing more effective than to consider that this short span of time is all we have to experience all the pleasure we'll ever experience. That's the antidote to the lethargy brought about by religion and the idea of eternal life -- religion is indeed the opiate of the people. At that's why it alternately amuses me and enrages me when I read the argument the Epicurean philosophy is all about retiring from the world and avoiding pain.

Short of Christianity and the havoc it has wreaked on the civilized world for 2000 years ( and I am following Nietzsche / Antichrist here ) I can't thing of an idea more sweepingly perverse and "evil" than the suggestion that "avoiding pain" should be the sum total of life. If Christianity ever loses its force and the forces of conformity can rely on it no longer, I would expect as major resurgence of the idea that "avoiding pain" is the goal of life -- and I suspect that explains the blessings given by Imperial Rome to Stoicism in the ancient world, and the endorsement given to modern Stoicism today by large parts of the secular "establishment" today.

Cassius

Ok now I finished it. I suspect most everyone here (everyone who reads this) probably considers themselves a nonconformist. (I know I do!) But I don't think that the theory expressed in the video from Becker (which seems to be a call to "personal heroism" or "uniqueness" is really Epicurean. In fact the video even warns that non-conformity for the sake of non-conformity is circular and doesn't make sense. So the video to me clearly has this Platonic/Stoic sense that there is some "ideal" form of human character that we should all strive to attain.

But I don't think Epicurus describes life that way - certainly not that there is an absolute form of ideal - even of "uniqueness" to which we should (ironically, which is the position of the video) conform.

Instead we are born with a faculty of pleasure and pain that applies in all our mental and physical activities, and is partly genetic, partly conditioned, partly arising from our experience (and maybe other factors) but which all adds up to a sum in which we have our own perspective on what will make us happy (give us the most pleasure and least pain).

And since there are no absolutes, ideals, or supernatural gods to tell us what is "right" for us, we have to decide as best we can what to pursue, and we have to understand that others will act the same way.

These videos are definitely NOT a waste of time - they focus the question in a way that makes the issue sharp I think! This is definitely a major issue for all of us -- how do we define and apply what we learn from Epicurus? Do we really have to be "unique" in order to live the most pleasurable life? What is the life best lived? All those questions we struggle with all the time.

And as this thread continues in the future, someone will no doubt want to suggest that the story of Socrates and his forced suicide is directly relevant to this. As we know the Epicureans were not too fond of Socrates. I doubt that many of them would have endorsed his death the way it happened, but I can see them asking whether indeed there was not some justification for what happened to him. Do those who see their greatest pleasure in being unique really have the "right" to expect those who disagree with them to "put up with" their crusading non-conformity?

Cassius

I typed that before listening to all of the second video, and even now I haven't heard all of it, but now I hear "nonconformity is such an important ingredient in a life well lived."

Now that CLEARLY to me as a non-Epicurean ring. I have not listened further to how he is going to define it, but it certainly has a Platonic/Aristotelian/Stoic ring that isn't obviously based on pleasure. But let me listen further....

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CHAPTER XIV - THE NEW VIRTUES

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