Posts by Hiram
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Reasonings about Philodemus’ On Frank Criticism
Frank Speech and Friendship
Master as Moral Model
Against the CharlatansBlogs
On Natural Community
Naturalist Reasoning on Friendship
Concord: a Book on Friendship (review of a book from AC Grayling's The Good Book) -
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Since she claimed to be Aristotelian, I have created this thread to post blogs and pieces with arguments that criticize her philosophy from our vantage point.
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It's been said that Epicurean philosophy treats the mind in its healthy, natural state, like positive psychology does, but what happens when people are so sick and broken, psychologically, that they take pleasure in masochism, sadism, and cruelty? What happens when people take pleasure in horrible things.
One reply I can come up with is in PD 39, where we are invited to remove ourselves from the presence of this person, to ostracize a sociopath or psychopath, which our legal and prison system already does. The words used as "so far as it is advantageous, exclude them from your life" - because friendship should be, and is by nature, mutually advantageous. A psychopath provides no advantage by his friendship.
QuoteThe man who best knows how to meet external threats makes into one family all the creatures he can; and those he can not, he at any rate does not treat as aliens; and where he finds even this impossible, he avoids all dealings, and, so far as is advantageous, excludes them from his life.
If others would like to brainstorms arguments re: psychopaths and pleasure so that we can more accurately debate this issue, please share those here.
Unread Threads
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Philodemus' "On Anger" - General - Texts and Resources 20
- Cassius
April 1, 2022 at 5:36 PM - Philodemus On Anger
- Cassius
July 8, 2025 at 7:33 AM
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- 20
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Mocking Epithets 3
- Bryan
July 4, 2025 at 3:01 PM - Comparing Epicurus With Other Philosophers - General Discussion
- Bryan
July 6, 2025 at 9:47 PM
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- 3
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- 410
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Best Lucretius translation? 12
- Rolf
June 19, 2025 at 8:40 AM - General Discussion of "On The Nature of Things"
- Rolf
July 1, 2025 at 1:59 PM
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- 12
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The Religion of Nature - as supported by Lucretius' De Rerum Natura 4
- Kalosyni
June 12, 2025 at 12:03 PM - General Discussion of "On The Nature of Things"
- Kalosyni
June 23, 2025 at 12:36 AM
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New Blog Post From Elli - " Fanaticism and the Danger of Dogmatism in Political and Religious Thought: An Epicurean Reading"
- Cassius
June 20, 2025 at 4:31 PM - Epicurus vs Abraham (Judaism, Christianity, Islam)
- Cassius
June 20, 2025 at 4:31 PM
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Finding Things At EpicureanFriends.com
What's the best strategy for finding things on EpicureanFriends.com? Here's a suggested search strategy:
- First, familiarize yourself with the list of forums. The best way to find threads related to a particular topic is to look in the relevant forum. Over the years most people have tried to start threads according to forum topic, and we regularly move threads from our "general discussion" area over to forums with more descriptive titles.
- Use the "Search" facility at the top right of every page. Note that the search box asks you what section of the forum you'd like to search. If you don't know, select "Everywhere." Also check the "Search Assistance" page.
- Use the "Tag" facility, starting with the "Key Tags By Topic" in the right hand navigation pane, or using the "Search By Tag" page, or the "Tag Overview" page which contains a list of all tags alphabetically. We curate the available tags to keep them to a manageable number that is descriptive of frequently-searched topics.