Posts by Cassius

Brett - I sent you a private message about his. Be sure to check that message, and also be sure to check out the PDF resources I've linked at this page: http://newepicurean.com/resources/library/

I am so glad you asked that! There is only ONE answer in my humble opinion, and it is head and shoulders the best introduction to Epicurus:

NORMAN DEWITT's "EPICURUS AND HIS PHILOSOPHY"

http://newepicurean.com/other-resource…his-philosophy/

It is out of print but it is not hard to find on Ebay, used book stores, or various other places on the internet.

I would advise anyone reading Epicurus to get this book first. The reasons are many, but they boil down to this: DeWitt makes an effort to present Epicurus in a sympathetic manner, attempting to reconstruct the philosophy as a coherent whole. He shows how Epicurus was reacting against Plato and other opponents of pleasure, and shows how Epicurus differs dramatically both from his Plato and Aristotle and also from the Stoics who came after him. Most every other modern book is an academic presentation that spends more time attacking Epicurus than presenting his position. If you read DeWitt, and then read the others, you'll have both sides of the story and be better able to make your own judgment. If you never read DeWitt, you'll never really hear the "Epicurean side" of the story.

I'm not going to be able to finish the article tonight, but here's another example:

"Any transition to living out a philosophy starts out slow, so I’ll begin by attempting to live humbly."

That violates clear Epicurean doctrine and shows the writer is off base. An Epicurean keeps his eye on the ball, which is living pleasurably. Focusing on the technique, rather than on the goal, is a sure way to go off base, because some circumstances require one technique, and other circumstances require other techniques, with the goal always being that of achieving pleasure and avoiding pain.

And this sentence is an example of why this is NOT Epicurean thought to say with no exception that everyone should live simply in all circumstances: "Contrary to Epicurean thought, many things that are easy to acquire produce misery."

The writer seems unfamiliar with VS63: "63. There is also a limit in simple living, and he who fails to understand this falls into an error as great as that of the man who gives way to extravagance."

Epicurus didn't advise living simply for the sake of living simply - he advised living simply when it makes sense, and enjoying luxury when it makes sense, in order to maximize pleasure and minimize pain under your individual circumstances.

I think the latter part of the section on Nature is just the writer's political preferences, yet he makes no references to the large number of PD's on "justice." And so he reaches the conclusion "In combination, these four large changes in nature make modern Epicureanism miserable and nearly impossible." which I suggest is hogwash.

This is significantly off too: "Yet Epicurus seemed to rely on more than just a barley cake and some water for his happiness. Without a job to support him, Epicurus relied on Greece’s mild climate and bountiful land. He also relied on a relatively small population to compete with for natural resources. In addition, he relied on natural resources that were clean, and open spaces that were free enough to live on peacefully. He relied on a political system that enforced peace, order, and justice without also encroaching on his way of life."

Read Epicurus's will. Epicurus wasn't poor by any means, and he disposes of a significant number of slaves and pieces of property in his will. This implication that he was living poor and off the land is just not supported by the texts.

This part also deserves mention: "After defining good and evil, Epicurus defined the good life. To Epicurus, the good life consists of experiencing as much pleasure, with as little pain as humanly possible. Therefore, to achieve the good life, we must strive for easily accessible pleasures in rational amounts. By keeping our desires humble, we can satisfy them over and over again. Any pain they cause us will be smaller than the pleasure we derive from their satisfaction. In this way, anyone can maintain a sustainably high pleasure-to-pain ratio. "

The first two sentences are correct, I think, but the rest does not follow, and is not what Epicurus really said. Number one, there's nothing in Epicurus about "rational" amounts other than that amount which brings more pleasure and less pain. "Rational" is always a suspect word unless it is kept in mind that the reason behind everything is the pleasure/pain calculus. The rest is also fairly accurate, but "keeping our desires humble" isn't necessarily the same as keeping them sustainable, and also isn't necessarily the same for everyone. There's also the question of individual preference in terms of which pleasures someone is going to decide are worthwhile for them to pursue, and there's no Epicurean method that i know of that says that living 5 years as an astronaut exploring space is less to be chosen than spending 10 years lying in bed in a nursing home.

I am scanning this again and this time this passage caught my eye more: "To Epicurus, satisfaction is the highest pleasure, whereas unfulfilled desire is the highest pain." <<< I am forgetting some of the terminology tonight but this theory of pleasure is not at all the complete story, and that is well established in the texts on pleasure such as Gosling & Taylor "Greeks on Pleasure." One classic example of how all pleasure is not satisfaction of a deficit is the smelling of a flower. Were you in pain because you were not smelling the flower before you smelled it? No, you did not miss the smell at all, and yet it was pleasurable to smell the flower. Many other examples can be given how all pleasure is not the satisfaction of a pain, and this way of analyzing pleasure (and attacking it) was dismissed even before Epicurus.

Thanks for posting that. We have seen and mentioned that on the Facebook page in the past, but of course I doubt I can find that to reference it. I will have to refresh my memory:

FOUND IT! Here it is, and the reaction was what you would expect:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Epicure…54065381309088/

Jason BakerGroup Admin Wolfgang Pauli would likely have had a pithy comment to make about this article. "Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig, es ist nicht einmal falsch!"The album was released on February and was released in " this is not just wrong, it's not even wrong!"Automatically Translated

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· August 2, 2016 at 10:11am
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Cassius AmicusGroup Admin "Both Epicurus and his philosophical rivals the Stoics would quickly assert their definitions for ‘good’. The Stoics would say that ‘good’ simply means ‘benefit’." Oh good grief, is the entire article like this? BENEFIT??? what happened to virtue?

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· August 2, 2016 at 10:18am
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Jason BakerGroup Admin It gets better*.


*read: worse.

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· Reply · August 2, 2016 at 10:19am
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Cassius AmicusGroup Admin Jason Baker Yes you are right it does get worse!!!!

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· August 2, 2016 at 10:24am
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Michael Carteron Yeah, that threw me too. "Benefit" sounds more in line with Epicureanism, although even then way off. I seriously have to doubt the author's knowledge of these philosophies.

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· August 2, 2016 at 7:22pm
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Cassius AmicusGroup Admin Michael Carteron - Right - he does not sound like he has read them deeply - unfortunately his superficial understanding is probably the way the majority of people are taught.

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· August 2, 2016 at 9:56pm
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Michael Carteron I would expect better from a philosopher.

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· Reply · August 2, 2016 at 11:26pm
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Cassius AmicusGroup Admin " To Epicurus, satisfaction is the highest pleasure, whereas unfulfilled desire is the highest pain." Here I think we have another candidate for Ekshesh Bekele's possible view (?) that the eradication of desire is the goal of Epicurus

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· Reply · August 2, 2016 at 10:20am
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Cassius AmicusGroup Admin "After defining good and evil, Epicurus defined the good life. To Epicurus, the good life consists of experiencing as much pleasure, with as little pain as humanly possible. " Ironically this writer states a formulation better than we see in many other places, whether he realizes it or not. He's almost quoting the Ciceronian statement "nothing was preferable to a life of tranquility crammed full of pleasures."

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· Reply · August 2, 2016 at 10:22am
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Cassius AmicusGroup Admin So he swerves off into politics and concludes: "In combination, these four large changes in nature make modern Epicureanism miserable and nearly impossible."

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Cassius AmicusGroup Admin In the end this is a good article to support why I crusade on the issues I do. The version of Epicureanism presented here is essentially the same taught by the majority of websites and academics, and if their version was correct I wouldn't want anything to do with it either.

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· August 2, 2016 at 12:40pm
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Michael Carteron Yeah, it's very odd. He seems to assume that Epicureans don't work or something.

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· August 2, 2016 at 7:23pm
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Cassius AmicusGroup Admin Yep - I'm afraid he takes the stoic view of epicureans and carries it to its logical extreme - which in a way is to his credit, since he is being consistent with what he believes to be true.

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· Reply · August 2, 2016 at 9:55pm
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Ron Warrick I'm hoping this is unserious satire.

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· Reply · August 2, 2016 at 11:50pm
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Michael Carteron I doubt it.

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· August 2, 2016 at 11:51pm
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Cassius AmicusGroup Admin I would like to think satire too, but the drift of the article is what is popularly taught about Epicurus across the internet, eg the DeBotton "school of life" perspective, and even some who post here.

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Scott Heavner I think that the author of this article grossly exaggerated the tenants of Epicureanism. It would be like us saying that the perfect Stoic was a carbon copy of Mr. Spock (though I love Spock). Even a life lived in extreme Christian piety would fail this so called hobo test. Prudent living and fair assessment of life's necessities is a far cry from apathy. This author has a master's degree in philosophy? That kind of nauseates me.

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· August 3, 2016 at 1:00pm · Edited
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Cassius AmicusGroup Admin Apologies to the exceptions, but my perception is that the author is pretty typical of what one becomes when one has a master's degree in philosophy!

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· August 3, 2016 at 1:28pm
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Scott Heavner Very true :-P.

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· Reply · August 3, 2016 at 7:29pm

Suggestion for a main photo for a new Meetup Group:

That is where I think Meetup helps, Eignegrau. I think that pretty much any population center at all, if you put up an Epicurean Meetup group page you can count on 3 or 4 people to "like" it, and that probably is enough to a start. I am going to test all this myself too, so I will report my own experiences!

Suppose you were an educated but normal person looking to fill some free time in your life, and you knew enough about Epicurus to click on a link taking you information about a Epicurean Meetup Group. What topic/information would you want to see on that site, and what would you want to hear about at the first meeting, that would encourage you to go to the Meetup meeting and then come back again for more. That's not far from asking "why did you click on this Facebook group?" In answer, can you help with this list, or suggest items that might not seem related to these but would attract and maintain interest during the initial phases of learning Epicurean philosophy:

(1) Epicurus was widely regarded by some of the world's greatest thinkers, including Thomas Jefferson and Frederick Nietzsche, as one of the world's most important philosophers.

(2) The reason Epicurus has always been held in great esteem by some, and has been hated by many others, is that he taught a way of looking at Nature and our place in it much different from that taught by the religions and philosophies most of us know today.

(3) Epicurus will teach you why your happiness, and not religious and philosophical abstractions, should be the goal of your life.

(4) Epicurus will teach you how to deal with the fear of death.

(5) Epicurus will teach you how to deal with the fear of gods and the threats of religions

(6) Epicurus will teach you that your emotions are not things to be feared, but important guidance on how you should live your life.

(7) Epicurus will teach you that you need not consider your world to be unknowable, and that confidence in your place in the world is possible.

(8) Epicurus will teach you that knowledge is based on the senses, and that calls to "logic" and "reason" must always be grounded in the evidence of the senses.

(9) Epicurus will teach you the true role of the "virtues" and their purpose in life.

(10) Epicurus will teach you why friendship is the most important tool in happy living.

(11) Epicurus will teach you how the nature of "justice" varies with time, place, and circumstance, but has a unifying purpose in human life that is the same for all.

Welcome Martin ! Glad to have you with us and you have my pledge that I am going to work as hard as I can to see that this site is going to be here for many years to come!

Yes Brett, your picture makes it easy to recognize you! And you are welcome - it takes effort but it is fun!

Hello Eigengrau. The most obvious ready-made line of attack is as you say, Meetup. There is an active Meetup group in Sydney Austraiia which has been around a while and provides something of a model - see here: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/wiki/doku.php/…and_conventions

In addition, it appears there are also a couple of active local Epicurean groups in Greece - one in Athens and one in Thessaloniki. They apparently get together on a regular basis and are well enough organized to have regular seminars.

Between these two, we have a model. The next step is setting up a meetup group locally online, working out a discussion plan, and executing. The working out of a discussion plan is probably the first step.

A new Subforum to discuss this topic is now set up here: Planning And Execution of A Local Meetup Group

Epicurean Meetings and Conventions

New: Meetup Handouts

Update: As of 2/10/25 as I am writing this, it is my understanding that the Sydney Australia Epicurean meetup group is no longer operational. I have left the links below in case you want to look for prior versions of the page, but at present i am not aware of any operational Epicurean Meetup groups.

In most parts of the world, there are at present very few opportunities for regular people who are interested in Epicurus to get together to meet each other in person. This is a major problem, as Epicurus emphasized the both the value of friendship and the value of students studying philosophy together with like-minded friends..

A significant part of the problem is that there are few mechanisms to help people find their way to Epicurean philosophy on their own. The odds are stacked against regular people doing so in large numbers, in part because the academic world, with help from misguided fans of “stoicism,” “hedonism,” “humanism,” and related “-isms,” has labeled Epicurus as a philosophy for losers, misfits, loners, and recluses.

Important steps have been taken in recent years toward freeing Epicurean from the cage of the university classrooms. As a first step toward personal engagement, we now have available to us a Facebook group led by people who share a genuine and primary interest in Epicurus. At the Epicurean Philosophy Facebook Group, learning about Epicurus is the true focus, and not just a front or a come-on to some other philosophical agenda. However Facebook is only a part of real life, and many of us who communicate there share the goal of attending local meetings and even conventions on a regular basis.

There are several existing prototypes which provide us a model for future action. In Greece, the friends of Epicurus in Athens and in Thessaloniki meet regularly. Their yearly convention and regular meetings are documented on their web page, and these are excellent resources .

In Sydney Australia there is an active "Meetup" group which has existed since 2011 and has proven to be very active.. Check that page for a listing of all their prior meetups, including the agenda they followed for each meeting. What better example for those interested in starting their own local meetings?

Experience indicates that it is readily possible to get together several people in Meetup format who are generally interested in “philosophy.” The trick is to find the determination and perseverance to keep things focused on Epicurus as the theme. There are strong temptations to wander into “atheism” or “humanism” or “stoicism” or even “political activism,” and those distractions must be resisted if the group is to stay focused on Epicurus. There is no membership database of existing Epicureans from which to draw, but it is probable that almost any metropolitan area of any size would support a Sydney-style meetup group if even one or two people act with determination to keep the meetings on track and recognize that attendance will likely remain small for an extended period.

In addition to using the Sydney Meetup group page as an example for meeting agendas, there are other obvious ways to program a series of meetings. There are several recent books which could be used as a “book club” format to discuss a chapter at each meeting. Haris Dimitriadis' "Epicurus and Pleasant Life" is well organized for that purpose as a balance between introductory theory and practice. Norman DeWitt's "Epicurus and His Philosophy" can be used to structure a series of meetings on Epicurean theory, and Hiram Crespo's "Tending the Epicurean Garden" provides a good way to structure a series of meetings on Epicurean practices.

Because so few embrace the label of Epicurean on their own, a new generation of Epicureans must be developed who will say with Thomas Jefferson that “I too am an Epicurean.” The critical first step toward enlarging those numbers is content creation. Before we can ask others to join with us in Epicurean meetings, we first have to be able to set out ourselves what it means to be an Epicurean and to study Epicurean philosophy..

We already have in place some excellent websites to assist leaning about what it means to be Epicurean. For a simplified list of core Epicurean ideas, see Major Characteristics of the Epicurean View of Life and the summary_of_epicurean_philosophy on this website. In addition to the material cited already, Haris has set up EpicurusPhilosophy.com in support of his book, and Hiram has published his SocietyOfEpicurus.com as part of his work. Many additional resources are available at NewEpicurean.com

Local Meetups do not require anything more than the Sydney Meetup prototype, but the more extensive websites can be used as examples for producing pages dedicated to promoting and coordinating local meetup and wider convention activity. For a current list of activist Epicurean websites from around the world, click here. For a great example of what kind of meeting activity is possible, check out this page detailing the February 2017 Symposium in Athens.

Let's get started and keep moving forward! If you are interested in setting up a local Meetup group, or working toward a regional convention, please be sure to let us know by posting at the Epicurean Philosophy Facebook Group.

Thanks for the comparison to Aristotle Maciej, and I will look into that. I frequently link to an article by Richard Dawkins crticizing Aristotle for "essentialism" which is probably related to this topic. https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25366 As you indicate I believe Epicurus intended to separate himself from Aristotelian essentialism in the respect that we are discussing here.

I think we continue to disagree on the matter of "accidental." When you say "To be more precise they are accidental in relation to the nature of the body they are temporally attached to. " That is exactly what I think is NOT "accidental," or a matter of fortuity in the meaning that I am objecting to. While I might possibly agree that there is some category of perspective that might fit the role of a fortuity, in the discussion of the assembly of the universe from the atomic level to the level of bodies that we experience them, I believe the great majority, and probably all, of the effects that Epicurus was referring to are entirely naturally determined (from the movement and arrangement of the atoms). Now as one moves higher to the level of "Helen of Troy' and other "events of event" as Lucretius presumably was referring to them, when the actions of higher animals are involved, then I can see fortuity having more of a role. But I continue to think that the primary purpose of Epicurus' exercise here was to illustrate how the universe we see operates on natural principles (not by Gods, and not by chance/chaos).

(In case I have not previously referenced it I am heavily influenced in this discussion by my reading of AA Long's "Chance and Natural Law in Epicureanism" which argues that the swerve is of very little impact in the real world other than through the effects of free will in higher animals.)

Welcome JAWS !

Welcome @Haris ! It is an honor to have you stop by and I look forward to continuing our interaction together!

it would be desirable to organize memes /graphics by topic so that we can find them when we are looking for specific ones for specific purposes. I have added all of Elli's memes to a directory in the Gallery:

but it is not necessarily easy to find them there.

I wonder how we could organize access to them? Would it be a good idea to Create a thread in each of the PD and VS directories pointing to memes that associate with each item? Maybe there is a way to tag or search for each graphic individually....