Posts by Cassius

I would recommend starting with the Pontius Pilate question: "What is truth?"

Many people accept the standard implication that "truth" requires identification of something that is true at all times, places, and for all people, but is such a thing even possible? If not, what IS possible? Think about the discussion of images and illusions in Lucretius. The awning at the spectacle casts a color on the Senators. Did that "truly" make the Senators that color?

As for anticipations we have much less to go on, but I follow the DeWitt theory and you should at least consider it before deciding. The issue here revolves around whether anticipations are (1) simply what is referred to as conceptualization after experience (I see these animals standing in the field and I names them cows) or whether (2) they are indeed PREconceptions which operated prior to experience. Again, be sure to read and consider DeWitt on this topic before you accept the majority "conceptualization" view.

What I need to write on this is a book, and not a short post, but this is all I have time for at present. I reflect a lot about what might be missing from the modern interpretation of Epicurus that explains why some of us can find it so compelling, yet many others find it not worth a second thought. In the ancient world there were MANY who found it compelling, and even more who found it outrageously evil and worth tremendous effort to stamp out.

There are no doubt many factors that explain the discrepancy, but one I find most likely: the narrow meaning and implication assigned to the term "pleasure" in modern discussions of Epicurus.

I think Epicurus intended "pleasure" to include everything in life we find worthwhile - which by Epicurean definition means everything that gives us pleasure of any kind, not just physical but also mental / emotional. If we find something lovable in life, that response within us is a subset of pleasure. That means everything we find in life that is motivational, from art and science to politics and fame (the latter of which are deemed unacceptable in the modern orthodox interpretation) are desirable because they bring pleasure. There are many passages from which it ought to be clear that NOTHING that brings pleasure is undesirable in itself, and it is only in the likelihood (but not certainty!) that some choices will bring inordinate pain that we are well served to avoid them. That means that the decision to pursue any choice in life which we find to be pleasurable can be understood to be consistent with Epicurean philosophy - it is simply up to us to deal with the consequences if we choose unwisely and our choices bring more pain than we anticipated.

I am of the age where I have gradually had to accept that virtually every religious and ethical proposition I was taught when I was growing up in the 60's and 70's was wrong. As an adult, like everyone else, I witness that public discussion (the media) is totally devoid of "objectivity." The truth of *any* significant matter, if it can be found at all, comes only after intense individual study of competing opinions.

Epicurean philosophy is revolutionary because it teaches that the ethical and political norms which we were taught as children were not grounded, as we were taught, in "god" or "absolute truth" or "natural law." In fact they are grounded in NOTHING. Once we accept the Epicurean world view that a life that there IS no absolute justice, or absolute ethical truth, and instead it is the pursuit of pleasure as we find it that is everyone's true goal, we see that there is no reason to conform to existing norms and orthodoxies if they do not bring us happiness. That's the realization that the world is wide open to *our own* decision and action as to how we pursue our own happiness.

This leads in my mind to the *reverse* of the standard opinion that Epicurean philosophy leads to passivity and withdrawal. Once we grasp the Epicurean insights into the nature of the universe, from which we see that there is no god or central point of reference from which any truth can be deemed absolute, we ought all begin to wake up from our lethargy. Add to that the realization that this is our ONLY life, that for an eternity afterward we will be no more, and that if we don't act to live THIS life to the fullest then there is no god or "force" that will come to our aid, and what do we have? We have a prescription for the most liberating and motivational and *activist* philosophy of life ever invented!

Many in the ancient world saw that, and many adopted that viewpoint, especially the Roman Epicurean examples about which we know the most. But for those Stoics and Religionists who wanted no part of the Epicurean view, we ought to ask ourselves what they would have likely chosen to do in response. What would the more intelligent of them thought to be the most effective way to undercut the philosophy at its start?

I suggest that what the enemies of Epicurus decided to do (remember, he warned against this very thing in the letter to Menoeceus) was is to spread the word that Epicurean "pleasure" amounts to nothing more than sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll. Spread the word that love of wives, love of children, love of family, love of friends, love of one's county, love of one's way of life, love of one's own view of art, love of one's own striving to make oneself better - spread the word that THESE were no part of Epicurean philosophy! Spread the word that Epicurus taught that we should do nothing to gain these, or to protect them when we gain them. Spread the word that Epicureans were lazy, good-for-nothing parasites off the main body of the community, contributing nothing to defend it, nothing to keep it going, playing no role in forming or supporting the organizations that can alone keep us safe from enemies both foreign and domestic.

I'll end these thoughts at this point, but I think the lies we see spouted about every political, religious, and philosophical topic today are not new. Not only are they not new, these same attitudes have been working overtime for 2000 years to keep the majority of people "in line" and "in conformity" with groundless orthodoxies that would be blown away by the slightest breeze of reasoned analysis. Remember Alexander the Oracle-Monger - that story is repeated thousands of time daily in the modern world, but there are few who stand up to it in the spirit of Epicurus!

If we're to rediscover the key to what made Epicurean philosophy so successful in the ancient world, and light that flame again today, it's time to rethink and redefine our understanding of "pleasure."

Good to hear from you TD76! Here are my thoughts on each of your sections, again remembering that there's two ways of looking at these things: (1) Do they accurately reflect Epicurus? and (2) Do we think personally they are correct? My comments are primarily from perspective one:

(1) This one seems very complete, very accurate, and well stated.

(2) This section is probably more difficult, and that's reflected in the brevity of your treatment. What you've said of course is fine, but it's the implications of this section that are the beginning of the stark difference in approach as against the modern world. One of the most important aspects is to address the place and role of "reason" and "logic," and it would be good to expand this section to address that. It's also important to address what Epicurus meant by "truth," whether it is "relative" or "absolute," etc.

(3) I think perhaps because section (2) is a little abbreviated, section (3) is where you need to probably give the most attention. I grant you that your statements after the first two are consistent with the majority view that you'll find on the internet, but I would suggest to you that once in section (2) you fully take leave from any ideas of "absolute" truth or "absolute" justice or "absolute" morality, you'll have reason to reconsider some of your "must" phrasing in section 3. That's the first question I would pose to you - are these "musts" or are they "should probably depending on the circumstances" rules of thumb? Converting them from "musts" to "tools" helps refocus the emphasis from the "tool" to the result, which is going to vary widely according to circumstances.

I would say the same comment especially applies to "live unknown" and "avoid politics." Those are two of the most common deductions of the "passivist" view of Epicurus, to which I personally suggest people keep an open mind toward whether they might be substantially off base, especially if considered to be "musts." We have many examples in the ancient world of Epicureans who did not "live unknown" or "avoid politics," even including the founders, and certainly considering prominent Epicureans in the Roman world.

So in general I think your comments are a great start at a good outline, and the process of working through it and talking about it will be good for you (and all of us who participate here) because these same questions arise over and over.

When you say you are "still thinking about some things" -- are there any in particular that would be good to discuss?

On this Easter Sunday (appropriately April Fool's Day, 2018) it's important to remember that Epicurean philosophy doesn't *start* with "pleasure."

Look at the Principle Doctrines, look at the opening of the letter to Menoeceus, look at the argument presented in Book 1 of Lucretius, and you'll see in the order of discussion the REAL foundation of Epicurean philosophy. That foundation, long before we discuss pleasure and pain is this: (1) There are no supernatural gods creating universes, controlling this Earth, or meddling in human life to punish enemies and reward friends, and (2) Death is the end of our consciousness, and we have but this one life to live as best we can.

These two premises are the antidote to the poison that is celebrated across the world today in "Passover" and "Resurrection Day." There's no need to worry about the rest of Epicurean philosophy until we accept the foundation - the declaration of war on he ideas that are the REAL enemies of our happiness.

Thus also said Nietzsche:

"The sneakishness of hypocrisy, the secrecy of the conventicle, concepts as black as hell, such as the sacrifice of the innocent, the unio mystica in the drinking of blood, above all, the slowly rekindled fire of revenge, of Chandala revenge–all that sort of thing became master of Rome: the same kind of religion which, in a pre-existent form, Epicurus had combatted. One has but to read Lucretius to know what Epicurus made war upon — not paganism, but “Christianity,” which is to say, the corruption of souls by means of the concepts of guilt, punishment and immortality. — He combatted the subterranean cults, the whole of latent Christianity–to deny immortality was already a form of genuine salvation.

Epicurus had triumphed, and every respectable intellect in Rome was Epicurean–when Paul appeared. . . Paul, the Chandala hatred of Rome, of “the world,” in the flesh and inspired by genius–the Jew, the eternal Jew par excellence. . . . What he saw was how, with the aid of the small sectarian Christian movement that stood apart from Judaism, a “world conflagration” might be kindled; how, with the symbol of “God on the cross,” all secret seditions, all the fruits of anarchistic intrigues in the empire, might be amalgamated into one immense power. “Salvation is of the Jews.”–Christianity is the formula for exceeding and summing up the subterranean cults of all varieties, that of Osiris, that of the Great Mother, that of Mithras, for instance: in his discernment of this fact the genius of Paul showed itself. His instinct was here so sure that, with reckless violence to the truth, he put the ideas which lent fascination to every sort of Chandala religion into the mouth of the “Saviour” as his own inventions, and not only into the mouth–he made out of him something that even a priest of Mithras could understand. . . This was his revelation at Damascus: he grasped the fact that he needed the belief in immortality in order to rob “the world” of its value, that the concept of “hell” would master Rome–that the notion of a “beyond” is the death of life. Nihilist and Christian: they rhyme in German, and they do more than rhyme."

My project for the "Easter Weekend" is to get my older websites moved to a new host and out of the clutches of the infuriating "Godaddy." I am going through them sequentially with the smaller ones first, with NewEpicurean.com to be last. [Epicureanfriends.com has always been safely out of reach of the "upselling" mania of Godaddy.

If you haven't seen AFewDaysInAthens.com before, it's a website devoted to the best non-ancient original composition of Epicurean theory, and it is well worth reading. Very rarely does one come across a reading recommendation by Thomas Jefferson himself! If you come across any dead links, typos, or other issues, please let me know.

That sounds to me like KDF has been reading a little Nietzche, and then channeling THIS passage from Lucretius Book 3, (Martin Ferguson Smith), especially the sentence in bold:

"It is the same with human beings. Although education may give certain people equal refinement, it cannot obliterate the original traces of each individual’s natural disposition. We must not suppose that faults of [310] character can be extirpated, and that it is possible to stop one person from being excessively prone to sudden fits of rage, another from succumbing a little too readily to fear, and a third from accepting certain situations more meekly than one should. And in many other respects people must differ in character and consequently in behavior. But for the moment I cannot explain the secret causes of this variety or find names for all the atomic conformations that give rise to it. What I see that I can affirm in this connection is that the surviving traces of our natural dispositions, [320] which philosophy is unable to erase, are so very faint that there is nothing to prevent us from living a life worthy of the gods."

I think we could point to passages in Lucretius on death as being examples of removing self-pity by looking at the big picture. Dealing with resentment (at least in terms of feelings toward those who have more wealth and power than we do) could also be exampled by numbers of passages in Lucretius.

(Now that I think about it, maybe not a Nietzschean reference, in that KDF wrote "self-pity" rather than "pity." I think I keep references to "pity" stored up in my mind because I find that a challenging issue on which I think Epicurus can also help.)

I fully agree KDF. I expect that the entire concept of "living simply" is geared toward achieving what you are talking about - unless you an walk away from a situation financially if it becomes more painful than pleasurable, you're essentially a slave. Throughout my career I have tried to underspend and make sure that if something happened I would have the ability to walk away from any employer.

Wow, that's great KDF! I am moving fast in that direction myself, but I have invested so much time in the Epicurean group I am just trying to figure out the best way to proceed before going cold turkey. It should be fairly easy to occasionally post things there as "advertising" for this group - otherwise I post and read nothing on FB anymore.

Great introduction Eoghan! Thanks for joining us here!

A Question from the Facebook Forum:

"Hey everyone. Epicurus says that Death is indifferent to us. Does It mean that If I'm sick I have no good reason to take a medicament that could save my life?"

My response:

Cassius Amicus I will go further than the posts so far. In my view, Epicurus has clearly said that life is DESIRABLE, and dying is UNDESIRABLE. FULL STOP. Absolutely clear. No need for dialectical word-chopping.

Given the same balance of pleasure and pain throughout the period, it is no doubt better to live ten years than five. We are not and should not be INDIFFERENT to death - that is a Stoic word and a Stoic attitude. Our life, and the lives of our friends, are the most important thing we have and we must act to keep it. Pleasure (and pain) have no meaning to the dead - all that is good occurs in life.

The reason that so much of what is written about this is confusing is that Epicurus was emphasizing the central point that "the state of being dead" - which does not really exist to the dead person, only to us thinking about it - is a state in which there is no pain or punishment to worry about. Therefore once we are dead we don't care about anything because we are no longer exist to care about anything. The entire thrust of this "death is nothing to us" is the focus on "the state of being dead" is not a concern because there is no hell, no god to punish us, no awareness of regret or awareness of anything.

So OF COURSE if you are sick you take medicine. While you are alive, you eat well, you exercise your mind and your body, you act to protect yourself from enemies of all kinds and you act in every reasonable way possible, consistent with your expectation of your personal pain pleasure calculus under your personal circumstances, to extend your life as long as possible, as you know that for an eternity thereafter you will no longer exist.

If I think about this long enough it really steams me that we even need to have this discussion. PLEASURE is the goal / guide of life and the only thing that is desirable in itself -- and pleasure has no meaning except to the living. The alternative suggestion is Christian/Stoic/Platonic "salvation" theory that equates some few moments of virtue/pure reason/etc as superior to a lifetime of pleasure. Epicurus would have considered that to be absurd, and probably wrung his hands to see how something so clear as this could be so misunderstood and warped in the hands of those who don't understand the role of life and pleasure.3

I am not aiming this at you George because the question you ask is asked all the time. But remember from the Epicurean part of Cicero's On Ends:

"Every animal, as soon as it is born, seeks for pleasure, and delights in it as the Chief Good, while it recoils from pain as the Chief Evil, and so far as possible avoids it. This it does as long as it remains unperverted, at the prompting of Nature's own unbiased and honest verdict."
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"No! Epicurus was not uneducated: the real philistines are those who ask us to go on studying till old age the subjects that we ought to be ashamed not to have learnt in boyhood."

We live in a world that is so incredibly perverted. No kitten or puppy or human baby would be could be mistaken that living is good, and dying is bad, and yet as we grow older we are "educated" to be confused about it.

The perversion and corruption is STRONG, and it takes strength of mind to battle back against it. Fighting philosophical and religious corruption and learning to embrace life, and fight death, and not feeble discussion of cupcakes and wine, like a bunch of dottering old men, is what Epicurus is all about.

"So his force,
His vital force of mind, a conqueror
Beyond the flaming ramparts of the world
Explored the vast immensities of space
With wit and wisdom, and came back to us
Triumphant, bringing news of what can be
And what cannot, limits and boundaries,
The borderline, the bench mark, set forever.
Religion, so, is trampled underfoot,
And by his victory we reach the stars."

Humphries / Lucretius Book 1

Here is one of the passages from Barwis that I think states very well a cores aspect of SOMETHING that is going on within us that is not simply the result of conceptualization of cows after setting multiple cows (to which a lot of people want to reduce Epicurus' view of anticipations). There's something within us that influences us prior to experience formed logically into concepts/propositions, and Epicurus would have seen that too:

"The innate principles of the soul, continued he, cannot, any more than those of the body, be propositions. They must be in us antecedently to all our reasonings about them, or they could never be in us at all: for we cannot, by reasoning, create any thing, the principles of which did not exist antecedently. We can, indeed, describe our innate sentiments and perceptions to each other; we can reason, and we can make propositions about them; but our reasonings neither are, nor can create in us, moral principles. They exist prior to, and independently of, all reasoning, and all propositions about them.

When we are told that benevolence is pleasing; that malevolence is painful; we are not convinced of these truths by reasoning, nor by forming them into propositions: but by an appeal to the innate internal affections of our souls: and if on such an appeal, we could not feel within the sentiment of benevolence, and the peculiar pleasure attending it; and that of malevolence and its concomitant pain, not all the reasoning in the world could ever make us sensible of them, or enable us to understand their nature."

And then the same point is made a few paragraphs down, but here we have to substitute "Nature" for "God" / "Divine Creator":

"The reason of man can create no principles in the natures of things. It will, by proper application, enable him to know many things concerning them which, without reasoning, he never could have known; and to explain his knowledge, so acquired, to other men; but the principles of all created beings are engendered with, and accompany, the existence which they receive from their Creator. And in a point so truly essential as that of morality is to the nature of such a creature as man; God has not left him without innate and ever-inherent principles. He has not left to the imbecility of human reason to create what he knew it never could create, and what we know it never can create.

Even in the abstracted sciences of arithmetic and geometry, reason can create no principles in the natures of the things treated of. It can lay down axioms and draw up propositions concerning numbers, extension, and solidity; but numbers, extension, and solidity existed prior to any reasoning about them.

And here I must observe that the assent or dissent that we give to propositions in these sciences, which are but little interesting to our nature, is drawn from a source widely different from that which we give to moral propositions. Thus, when we are told that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, and see the demonstration; we say simply, true. That they are equal to three right angles; false. These things being irrelative to morals, they move no conscious sentiment, and do therefore only receive our bare assent or dissent as a mere object of sense; in the same manner as when we say a thing is, or is not, black or white, or round or square; we use our eyes, and are satisfied.

But the truth or falsehood of moral propositions must be judged of by another measure; through a more interesting medium: we must apply to our internal sense; our divine monitor and guide within; through which the just and unjust, the right and wrong, the moral beauty and deformity of human minds, and of human actions, can only be perceived. And this internal sense must most undoubtedly be innate, as we have already shown; it could not otherwise have existence in us; we not being able, by reasoning, or by any other means, to give ourselves any new sense, or to create, in our nature, any principle at all. I therefore think Mr. Locke, in speaking of innate moral principles, ought, at least, to have made a difference between propositions relative to morals, and those which have no such relation."

http://newepicurean.com/resources/jack…ate-principles/

Eoghan thank you for that post! First, as you'll probably see at the moment we have a much smaller subscriber base here than Facebook, so you might want to post both places. However this is the place where I intend to focus my activity and work to build a real community. As you are around longer in the Facebook group you will see what I mean. It is good for "advertising" but no so much for long-term closeness on the goal of Epicurean philosophy.

You seem very serious about this so let me repeat my recommendation of that Nikolskly and Wenham articles ( which are posted here in the Files section) https://www.epicureanfriends.com/wcf/filebase/ I have tried to place the main articles here, but for someone who is REALLY interested in the background, there's no substitute for the full Gosling &Taylor "Greeks On Pleasure." But the articles here are a good start.

One specific on your post: I think "Friendship" is an example of the cliche "hard cases make bad law." Yes, the doctrine means just what it says, that Friendship is among the most productive tools for pleasurable living, right at or near the top. But I think if you drill down in "On Ends" and in Diogenes Laertius you will see that Epicurus himself was always very rigorous to observe that tools are only TOOLS, and that tools should never be confused with pleasure itself. If one allows an exception to that rule then you do indeed fall into the trap of ranking tools AS IF they were pleasures themselves, and you end up with hard and fast rules about what TOOLS you should ALWAYS to pursue, instead of keeping your eye on the ball that in an atomistic, undetermined, godless universe, there are never going to be 100% hard and fast choices that guarantee particular results. Sometimes even friendship will fall away if the goal of pleasurable living is to be honored. Sometimes we will even die for a friend, but if the friend is lost and tells us to walk away to save ourselves, it is not necessarily the "right" thing to do to die with the friend. A totality of circumstances, not an abstract principle that friendship is an end in itself, must dictate the result.

Thank you again for posting!

Welcome Eoghan Gardiner! When you have time please let us know a little about your background and interest in Epicurus. Thanks for joining us!

JAWS do you see honor as a subset of justice?

Before I forget I want to mention something that I want to record somewhere in the anticipation discussion: the short book "Dialog on Innate Principles" by Jackson Barwis. In that book Barwis articulates a theory that we have innate dispositions to find some ideas pleasing and others painful and if we did not we would have no means of understanding the meaning of concepts that carry an emotional loading. His view is something I believe is helpful in describing how Epicurus would view this topic. We are not born with innate "ideas" but with dispositional principles of functioning that make us find some abstract evaluations more pleasing than others just as some ice cream is more pleasing. http://newepicurean.com/jacksonbarwis/ In my view that book is a gem and I read it regularly almost as poetry.

Here is a post I made on this topic http://newepicurean.com/following-a-20…-anticipations/

Back to Epicurus: if I recall DeWitt says the only other examples in the texts are divinity (where Epicurus says that false ideas of gods are NOT true anticipations) and there is something also about time.

Also the big debate as to anticipation is whether they are a description of the process of conceptualization (I have seen several cows in a field and I summarize them as concept "cow" so the next time I see one I compare to picture of cow stored in my mind). That is NOT Dewitts view but it is the majority view. I agree with DeWitt, using the model of Barwis, but that is a fundamental issue that creates lots of heat in part because most adopt the total "blank slate" theory (which is IMHO much more Aristotlean than Epicurean).

Using your example, i think Barwis and Epicurus would contend that children find honoring ones word pleasing from the very first time someone keeps their word, and breaking ones word painful from the very first time, without need of prior experience. But the majority way experience is necessary in order to form the concept.

If you choose to follow DeWitt / Barwis on this be prepared for a lonely fight, but here again I believe this is the path to the only consistent understanding of Epicurus, the dilution of which by later Epicureans was a major error.

KDF what is your definition of "free will"? We probably always ought to start at that level.

Yes - this is the key for me: "facebook isn't helping me accomplish my goals"

KDF, also, could you post here about how you found this forum? I presume most people find it through Facebook, but if there someone comes here through other means that would be good to know. We've used google's "adsense" at times in the past as another source of "advertising," but I'm always on the lookout for new places to post notices about the forum.

At this early stage in our development one of the best things our friends here can do to help the forum is to start new threads to get discussions going. Even if you don't have answers, disagree with Epicurus on a point, or are just posting questions or unresolved thoughts, activity spurs activity, so as you have time please post! And don't worry if you don't have time for a sustained discussion when you start the topic - this forum software makes topics into what is effectively a database where time is not an issue. Discussions can go on for years as you have time, and what may seem a throwaway short post today could turn into a gem of a discussion tomorrow!

KDF now that we have a thread started on three will it seems to me that at least three others of your points are also worth discussing further, these three being points I thin Epicurus would agree with but which are not frequently discussed in the way you state them. When you have time could you consider picking appropriate forums and posting new threads?

1. All that we should ask from society is to ensure that no one be compelled by force to do anything against there will
2. One has the ability to remove resentment and self-pity from there thinking; removing resentment and self-pity greatly improves happiness
3. One should not suffer a contradiction in their principals; self-deception is the root of much unhappiness

I think point 3 probably falls within the Canon / epistemology discussion, resentment-pity under ethics, and the role of society perhaps under justice.

Thank you for discussing this so civilly as it frequently becomes more heat than light. The great benefit of this forum software is that we can pick up the conversation and add to it over time. This is a topic I need to look further into as I have never pursued it in the detail necessary to be fluent in it. In fact, I am not able easily to even draw up a list of the major arguments of the Pro and Con sides, which probably ought to be a starting point (perhaps a new thread in this same forum group.).

Has the topic interested you (or Eric) enough that one of you has already done that?