Posts by Eikadistes

I'm just reading his book, and Haris Dimitriadis seems to make the same observation when he writes that "Thoughts, musings, and plans are not true, if they are not based on direct, real and obvious evidence, such as those that carry our physical characteristics, namely the senses, emotions, and anticipations. This clearly describes a Principal Doctrine '... and such evidence must come from the five senses, the feelings of pain and joy, and the impressions of the mind that arise from anticipation...' (Epicurus and the Pleasant Life: A Philosophy of Nature, 35)

Quote from camotero

As a god, right?

Definitely!

Quote from camotero

Does someone care to elaborate on what Epicurus could've meant here?

Totally! (Sorry I'm late to the conversation).

The English translations of the second paragraph of the Epistle to Menoikeus disappoint me, and I came up with a paraphrazation (not a translation, but a re-wording) that I think better contextualizes his nuances:

".... What I have to share with you should be seriously considered if you want to live well. First, having acknowledged that ‘a god’ is properly defined as ‘a ceaselessly satisfied being’, do not contradict this acknowledgment by proposing that something other than only ‘a ceaselessly satisfied being’ could qualify as ‘a god’, for the natural anticipation of ‘a perfect existence’ is relatable and therefore implicitly accessible to all living beings; But herein, note that this acknowledgment is seen as being controversial to the masses who employ myth to obscure the contradiction: that a being worthy of reverence could became embarrassingly impassioned by the activities of one specific species of primate on Earth. These are true perverters of our natural religious sympathies—despite their popular appeal to the general public—for their propositions are ultimately at odds with the reality of their own lived experiences as animals; So, as far as this material theology goes, tragedy strikes those beholden to superstition, and fortune favors the students of nature, because ‘a being who lives a perfectly pleasant life’ knows that ‘a perfect existence’ means studying nature to develop ways to preserve their pleasure, such as cultivating friendships with other ‘ceaselessly satisfied beings’ who also guard against the misery that results from any disruptions to the continuation of their ‘divine existences’ ...."

"God" (or "the gods", "deity", "divinity") is a pre-conceptual category, like "Justice". Whether or not we have any individual examples of "gods" is irrelevant: we know "the Perfect Existence" when we see it. We know Justice when we see it, even though "Justice", itself, refers to a condition or state, rather than an object or item. A mutual agreement is an example of the concept of Justice, though, it will end, and newer circumstances may no longer be evident of Justice. However, for that time, the mutual agreement had all of the marks of a "just" agreement.

Likewise, Epicurus posits that we implicitly recognize "the Perfect Existence" because, like Justice, the expectation of Living Your Best Life comes from Nature, and that's what "God" is: Nature giving you direct knowledge through pleasure and pain as to what Living Your Best Life looks like.

Many beings in an infinite universe fit that definition. If we were to gain knowledge of an extraterrestrial entity who enjoys a life of ceaseless satisfaction, and therein neither causes drama nor suffers anyone else's drama, we'll all recognize that as "God". Furthermore, this pre-conceptual impression also informs us as to what is not "God", for example: a being that adopts homo sapiens as surrogates and declares our primate species to be "its children".

Epicurus was neither saying (so to speak), "Displace reasonable judgment and practice blind faith in the Divine Entity That Guides You (because its Favor is real)", nor was he saying "We all dream about Space Zeus (et. al.), and having raw unconditional belief in the physical existence of those Space Olympians is a reliable way to live."

He was saying "If you think 'god' is anything but 'an animal living a perfectly-pleasureful life', then you're going to get confused and easily manipulated by supernatural religion, and you'll suffer."

Stevie Wonder really said it better than I just did:

"When you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer. Superstition ain't the way."

So this is sort of Epicurus' way of naturalizing the phenomena of human belief in the supernatural.

It's the natural impulse to know and pursue living your best life ("the perfect existence", "the gods", "God"). When we look to the perfect existence as something other than (1) really [physically] existing [being a real goal you can actually achieve in your natural lifespan], and (2) constantly being "perfect" [in other words, "full of uninterruptible pleasure"], then we are turning away from the reliable preconception of the perfect existence, and, instead, adopting some mythic narrative that was invented in accordance to the misunderstandings of the authors who peddled it.

Intuitively, I entertain the idea that Preconception fits into the moment when you realize "I've been lying to myself this whole time", or "I think some part of me always knew." I recognize this feeling as being equivalent to dreams that compel me to ask "I wonder what that meant?", regardless of any developed perspective I have regarding my intellectual judgment of the activity. It's also the part of me that drops LSD, eats mushrooms, or takes Nitrous (I recently had a vasectomy and had way too much nitrous which lead to a fascinating experience) and experiences an un-intellectually-filtered world without the context of having access to the parts of my brain that formulate analytical thought, construct sentences, recognizes relations, and links words. However, I remember that in that state, I feel overwhelmed with a sense of meaning; I'm just cut off from the easy ability to express that meaning with any sort of symbolic knowledge, such as spoken or written language, or even sign language. I've done it enough to learn to recognize non-linguistic impressions that do not dematerialize once the link between the language centers of the brain get "disconnected" from the processing of sensory experience, so, when I "come out of it", I tend to bring some kind of meaning with me, but it's also after interpretation, and never before. Like waking up from a dream. You are only mechanically capable of remembering the parts of the dream that you were able to link with a symbolic, conscious words, concepts, or thoughts at the very final moments of the dream, just prior to waking up (I've been keeping a dream journal for 12 years and have a wealth of evidence to support the regularity of the experience I'm describing).

All in all, I feel like dreams and psychedelic experiences give me a direct link to interface with Preconception prior to having those intuitive impressions dissected by the intellect like a medical student performing an autopsy. At most, in that medical metaphor, you can only learn about inanimate organs, without seeing how they work together. Likewise, there's a danger in language to mistake "the map for the territory" and getting lost in the "map" without actual going on a journey. The Preconception would never make the mistake of mis-recognizing the map. In fact, I don't think Preconception is aware that some other part of the Intellect is a map-maker that is trying to write an encyclopedia for later reference. The human brain (as I continue to speculate) shifted to a "map-making-centric" intellectual schema somewhere between 10,000-50,000 years ago versus the previous mental schema, which was able to pursue pleasure, learn about nature, and predict natural patterns without the benefit of complex, recursive language.

I think language is the thing that disrupts the clarity of Preconception. Or, at least, I propose that.

There seems to be particular importance in my mind on the "pro-" part of "prolepsis". The particular prefix that is added to the root word indicates a temporal relation, in this case, "before". This third criterion of knowledge (whatever it is) is occurring "before" something else, indicating that Epicurus was critically evaluating the thing that comes "later" in relation to the more reliable thing "before". In this case, it seems to be some form of mental activity.

The typical kinds of mental activity we observe and to which we can readily relate are things like "thinking", "imagining", "reflecting", "contemplating", calculating", "reasoning", "rationalizing", "problem solving", all of which take time.

He's talking about something that happens incredibly fast (or has already happened as far as we're concerned).

So, as far as this article goes, I think it is giving a good, mechanical description of some of those intellectual activities that happen so fast, they not only precede, but they help shape later activities like "conceptualizing".

I'm not sure. The minute activity of the soul is a complicated mess.

"During the 100ms, the human brain pieces together information from memories, past personal experiences, and intrinsic values to generate calculated judgements. [...] The researchers also found that the first impressions were heavily influenced by the evaluation of how much value the fictional person presented would add to the test subject’s life.This again presents first impressions as a way to befriend solely for personal gain, but also aligns with theories of evolution that state that humans developed first impressions to avoid interactions with dangerous organisms." (https://frontiersmag.wustl.edu/2018/12/21/neu…st-impressions/)

I propose that ΦAΝTAΣTΙΚΗΝ EΠΙΒΟΛΗΝ TΗΣ ΔΙAΝΟΙAΣ is used as a placeholder in PD24 for ΠPOΛEΠΣIΣ.

While continuing to expand my glossary, I came across an interesting phrase that has lead me down a rabbit hole, from which I am still attempting to emerge. Join me, and note that the following phrase is taken from the middle of the somewhat-lengthy KD24:

ΠAΣAΝ ΦAΝTAΣTΙΚΗΝ EΠΙΒΟΛΗΝ TΗΣ ΔΙAΝΟΙAΣ

As I understand it, Epicurus is employing the rhetorical device of repetition. In this case, the sentence separates three ideas by the conjuction “and”, indicating that the same value is being placed on each of the three ideas — they are equivalent. Given that the first two ideas are “Sensations “and “Feelings”, the structure of the sentence would indicate that the third idea should hold the same value, or would be placed in the same conceptual category as “Sensation” and “Feeling”. It is irregular to suppose that the "phantastikai epibolai tês dianoias" would be anything but “preconceptions”.

Let’s turn to the translators, themselves. Our 13-or-so English translators since 1850 have rendered the following:

Of the 1st Criterion:

- “Sensation”, “the Senses”, “Sense-Perception”

Of the 2nd Criterion:

- “Affectations”, “Feeling(s)”, “Passions”.

Of the 3rd Criterion:

- “conceptions of the mind which arise from the observable representation”,

- “mental apprehension”,

- “mental examinations of confirmed conceptions”,

- “focusing of thought into an impression”,”

- “intuitive faculty of the mind”,

- “application of the intellect to presentations”

- “mental examinations of confirmed concepts”,

- “imaginary twist of mind”,

- “layers of imagination involved in your thoughts”,

- “some percept of the mind itself”,

- “perception”,

- “presentational application of thought.

While further researching the issue, I came across the following observation, provided by the Oxford Handbook of Epicurus and Epicurean Philosophy: “Preconceptions are direct apprehensions, true beliefs, concepts, and universal thoughts that are formed fromt he outside by the repeated impressions of simulacra emitted by objects, which ultimately are stored in our memory through an act of focalization of the mind [EΠΙΒΟΛΗΝ TΗΣ ΔΙAΝΟΙAΣ]” (310). The author explicitly describes prolepsis according to KD24.

As I understand, this definition of prolepsis seems to drastically expand the number of concepts that qualify as “true preconceptions”.

However, an older group of Epicureans present a different interpretation:

“According to Diogenes Laertius (10.31-2 = LS 17A), Epicurus recognizes three criteria of truth […] his followers added ‘impression-applications of the intellect’ (phantastikai epibolai tês dianoias). […] As for the ‘impression-applications of the intellect’, these were coubtless introduced to cater for cases like those of the gods, apprehended by images directly affecting the mind rather than through senses.” (Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics: An Introduction to Hellenistic Philosophy, 19).

So, the “Epicurean Sophists”, as Diogenes documents, seem to indicate that a 4th Criterion (Impression-Applications of the Intellect) is needed to elaborate on the 3rd Criterion (Preconceptions), since the 3rd Criterion (Preconception) required those “anticipations” to have been “impressed” by the 1st Criterion (Sensation), whereas concepts that are not directly, physically sensible except through the theatre of the mind (like “the Gods”), cannot be justified by prolepsis, and requires a separate kriterion to add to the other three.

I note that the word kriterion is ONLY used once in the Kuriai, and happens to be found in KD24, which, as far as I can tell, is also the ONLY doxa to list the criteria of Sensation and Feeling, indicating that Preconceptions would also be there.

Thus, the “Epicurean Sophists” (as ancient Athenian traditionalists argued), have misinterpreted the phrase EΠΙΒΟΛΗΝ TΗΣ ΔΙAΝΟΙAΣ to express “concepts (like ‘gods’ and ‘justice’) formed from other, foundational concepts, or even dreams” (4th Criterion), versus the correct understanding which is that EΠΙΒΟΛΗΝ TΗΣ ΔΙAΝΟΙAΣ includes BOTH “preconcepts (like ‘dog’ versus ‘cat’)" as well as "concepts (like "gods" and "justice").

I propose that ΦAΝTAΣTΙΚΗΝ EΠΙΒΟΛΗΝ TΗΣ ΔΙAΝΟΙAΣ is used as a placeholder in KD24 for ΠPOΛEΠΣIΣ.

Quote from Cassius

I would never have thought it, but in trying it I am actually now preferring the "Radiant transparent" theme, which has the top of a mountain as a background image. I'm not sure that a mountain is the best image - might hint of Stoics climbing their mountain of virtue - but the blue sky works well to set off the page on desktop and mobile. This might actually be the most advanced-looking theme of them all. Dark, but not too dark.

Epicurus uses this word AKRON - AKPON - ἄκρον - /'aːkron/ - an infection of ἄκρος (ákros) meaning “highest”, “end”, “extremity”, referring to the ends of the magnitude of pleasure (KD4), that carries the connotation of a "peak" or “mountain top”. While the "mountain top" stirs images of bitter cold, thin air, and bracing wind, there is a semantic connection between Epicureanism and a symbolic mountain in the Doxai. (This theme also happens to be my favorite, though, it is a little chilly!)

One point of interest I've observed while documenting translations is the semantic treatment of pain. Epicurus uses either algoun or lypoumen (or inflections thereof) when referring to pain. Algoun seems to describe all forms of pain, both physical and psychological. Lypoumen, on the other hand, is almost exclusively used to describe mental anguish. Several times, Epicurus has to preface the word algoun with sarks, meaning "flesh" or "body" to distinguish the physical nature of algoun because there is no word for "just physical pain". Algoun, by itself, is not enough to indicate the quality of the pain. Overwhelmingly, Epicurus uses the word algoun, by itself, without distinguishing whether the Pain is mental or physical.

Based on the words he chooses to use in the Doxai, the concept of bodily discomfort and mental anguish are both subsumed under the larger category of Pain. Epicurus identifies the goal of life as relieving pain (all pain), not just mental anguish. Prioritizing mental tranquility without addressing physical circumstances is the beginning of delusion.

Even when dying of kidney stones, aponia is still relevant: adjust your position to ease the tension in your joints, consider the consequences of adopting a better posture, regulate fluid intake to manage the discomfort, find your "goldilocks" zone so you feel cool and at ease, keep a towel or cloth around to absorb perspiration, ask to be surrounded by friends and smiling faces rather than a cold, lonely hospital bed. To deny any of these comforts is to neglect the needs of the body and dull the very sensory mechanisms that allowed us to understand dis-ease in the first place.

I challenge anyone with a viscous hangover to stand in front of a class and convince a room full of students that mental tranquility, by itself, is enough to allow them to overcome their vicious hangover. Not gonna happen.

Sorry about that, guys! I accidentally deleted the primary file during updating.

I am particularly interested in any connections you might find between words like heykhias (KD14) which later developed (and/or were appropriated) into Christian lore (see: Hesychasm). I have attempted to translate most of the stand-alone nouns, adjectives, and adverbs from ancient Greek (leaving the articles and prepositions to fend for themselves), so I welcome any elaboration anyone can share when it comes to accessible cultural links to these ideas.

Such was the basis for some of the speculation I included in italics on words like kharisi in my search for links (this, as was demonstrated through Hesiod, turns out to have been a false lead on my part.

A tribe after Karl Popper's own heart! I remember reading about the Pirahã when I was investigating the etymology of the neologism "ignosticism" coined by the late Rabbi Sherwin Wine of a branch of Humanistic Judaism (it implies that the subject questions the value or relevance of non-falsifiable ideas like "omniscience" and "omnipotence")

The structural parameters of their language, as I recall, means a mythic culture without abstract nouns: "immaterial" propositions like "a Creator" cannot even be conceptualized. I think we would call this theological non-cognitivism. Mathematics only exists with reference to immediate, countable items, so there are only words for "one", "a couple", and "many". Integers do not exist. There is no perfect geometry, so why bother speaking or thinking about it? There are only real-world objects which can be referred to by indicative pronouns like "that" and "this", so there don't need to be abstract nouns implying the existence of universal forms – conceptually, this shows how they do not see objects as individual examples of a universal archetype, but, simply, individuals. Likewise, "Death" does not exist, since a non-present person cannot be described: they cannot be the agents of action, so they cannot be the subjects of present-tense verbs in sentences, thus, there is nothing to communicate nor share as being real.

I often think that Plato, specifically, and the people whom he inspired were obsessed to the point of developing behavioral neuroses with a religious veneration of the phenomenon of "language". I think a tremendous part of our current intellectual culture is absorbed with this same, mistaken conceptualization of linguistic objects as real entities. I also think that Epicurus completely bypasses this trap door of language to which other intellectuals fall prey by grounding his ethics and epistemology in a justifiable physics. He would have a lot to talk about with the Pirahã!

As I continue to update it, I've placed each Doctrine in the Table of Contents as a hyperlink and each page has another hyperlink that redirects you back to the Table of Contents.

The addition we see in the Germans' form of Idealism is their response as faithful Christians to the undeniable success of Empiricism during the Enlightenment period. German Idealism provided modern Christians with a narrative to protect their faith while also accepting the observations that came from a camp of thinkers who were deeply skeptical of religious narratives. It allowed Idealists to interface with the observations of science while simultaneously marginalizing those findings as mere "phenomena" which cannot speak to the "true nature" of reality. Platonism didn't provide them with the defenses they needed to reject materialism since science by the 18th-century had advanced significantly, so they had to adapt new ways of explaining how Jesus the Christ could still exist in a world of machines.

As philosophical questions about the "Mind" were enthusiastically answered by materialists who grounded the unique, subjective experiences of life into universal, biological processes, Transcendental Idealists subsumed both "Mind" and "Matter" beneath the single banner of "Spirit". By the late 18th-century, Idealism was no longer adequate to explain the difference between air and oxygen, to explain how lightning was a discharge of electricity, to explain the similarities between fossils in the ground and living creatures: only chemistry, physics, and biology were robust enough for that. Kant (among others) saw the need to justify how God can still operate in a world of physical interactions. Like Gassendi with Epicurus, Kant stitched one philosophical world together with another, but, in this case, backwards.

If we turn out attention from Europe to America, we observe a similar trend in Ralph Waldo Emerson, who eventually rejected the orthodox philosophy of Harvard's school of divinity and incorporated Vedantic philosophy to help explain his position: both the mind, full of religious sympathies, and matter, which constitutes the beautiful, beneficent world of nature, are facilitated by the Spirit. This can also explain why ancient Hindu philosophy was so well received by Emerson, Schopenhauer, and others: the primary focus of ancient Indian philosophers was to reconcile Dualism and Monism. They provided extensive arguments to explain how they interface with each other, and this is exactly the sort of philosophy needed during the modern debate between Descartes' Dualism and the Monism of both Idealists and Materialists.

Quote

In what "general" ways were the German idealists seeing themselves as different?

Ultimately, their goal was to synthesize the the school of the Rationalists with the competing school of Empiricists, so Plato may have only been an influence through the reach of Descartes' Rationalism. That being said, Kant mentions Plato by name in his introduction to Critique of Pure Reason, so I think Plato is a major influence:

“The light dove, cleaving the air of her free flight, and fleeing its resistance, might imagine that its flight would be still easier in empty space. It was thus that Plato left the world of the senses, as setting too narrow limits to understanding, and ventured out beyond it on the wings of the ideas, in the empty space of the pure understanding.”

I'd call German Idealism an extension or expansion of Plato, not a revival, but an addition.

He would have utterly rejected the German Idealists.

In general, they supported revelation over reason, faith over experience, and mind over matter. The school develops after Kant distinguishes "phenomena" from "noumena" or the "thing-in-itself" and postulates that we can never really know the "thing-in-itself", thus, faith and revelation become useful tools in a world that is completely mysterious. There's also a tinge of political Nationalism in the German Idealists that frequently see gets misdirected at Nietzsche.

Then, right in the middle of their movement, the Indian Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita get translated into European languages and light the "noumena"-obsessed Germans on FIRE. To students of Vedanta, Kant's "noumena", the "thing-in-itself" sounds like the Hindu "atman" or "Self". These Idealists got prescribed a second dose of Idealism.

Then Hegel comes along and places Plato's crown on himself as the new King of Idealism.

German Idealism has a lot in common with Platonism, Pyrrhonism, and Academic Skepticism. This is particularly true when we consider that the agnostic Indian texts that influenced Pyrrho were, for the first time, being introduced to Europeans in their own language, so there's a common influence besides the obvious influence of Plato.

Elli, I'm curious what you think of this translation by Odysseus Makridis:

6. “This <human ability to lead a good life> originally became possible by nature and for the sake of imparting courage in human beings <who were then living in a pre-social condition.> And this is the natural origin and principle on which all authority—be it even kingship—is based. And it is from the same <natural propensities> that a human being is able also to arrange a good and pleasant life.” (Letters and Sayings of Epicurus)

XXIV (24)

εἰ τινʼ ἐκβαλεῖς ἁπλῶς αἴσθησιν καὶ μὴ διαιρήσεις τὸ δοξαζόμενον καὶ τὸ προσμένον καὶ τὸ παρὸν ἤδη κατὰ τὴν αἴσθησιν καὶ τὰ πάθη καὶ πᾶσαν φανταστικὴν ἐπιβολὴν τῆς διανοίας, συνταράξεις καὶ τὰς λοιπὰς αἰσθήσεις τῇ ματαίῳ δόξῃ, ὥστε τὸ κριτήριον ἅπαν ἐκβαλεῖς· εἰ δὲ βεβαιώσεις καὶ τὸ προσμένον ἅπαν ἐν ταῖς δοξαστικαῖς ἐννοίαις καὶ τὸ μὴ τὴν ἐπιμαρτύρησιν <ἔχον>, οὐκ ἐκλείψεις τὸ διεψευσμένον, ὡς τετηρηκὼς ἔσῃ πᾶσαν ἀμφισβήτησιν κατὰ πᾶσαν κρίσιν τοῦ ὀρθῶς ἢ μὴ ὀρθῶς.

“If you simply discard a sense, and do not distinguish between the different elements of the judgment, so as to know on the one hand, the opinion which goes beyond the actual sensation, or, on the other, the actual and immediate notion, the affections, and all the conceptions of the mind which arise from the observable representation; you will be imputing trouble into the other senses, and destroying in that quarter every species of criterion. But if you allow equal authority to the ideas, which being only an opinion, require to be verified, and to those which bear about them an immediate certainty, you will not escape error; for you will be confounding doubtful opinions with those which are not doubtful, and true judgments with those of a different character.” Yonge (1853)

“If you reject absolutely any single sensation without stopping to discriminate between that which is matter of opinion and awaits further confirmation and that which is already present, whether in sensation or in feeling or in any mental apprehension, you will throw into confusion even the rest of your sensations by your groundless belief, so as to reject the truth altogether. If you hastily affirm as true all that awaits confirmation in ideas based on opinion, as well as that which does not, you will not escape error, as you will be taking sides in every question involving truth and error.” Hicks (1910)

“If you reject absolutely any single sensation without stopping to discriminate with respect to that which awaits confirmation between matter of opinion and that which is already present, whether in sensation or in feelings or in any presentative perception of the mind, you will throw into confusion even the rest of your sensations by your groundless belief and so you will be rejecting the standard of truth altogether. If in your ideas based upon opinion you hastily affirm as true all that awaits confirmation as well as that which does not, you will not escape error, as you will be maintaining complete ambiguity whenever it is a case of judging between right and wrong opinion.” Hicks (1925)

“If you reject any single sensation and fail to distinguish between the conclusion of opinion as to the appearance awaiting confirmation and that which is actually given by the sensation or feeling, or each intuitive apprehension of the mind, you will confound all other sensations as well with the same groundless opinion, so that you will reject every standard of judgments. And if among the mental images created by your opinions you affirm both that which awaits confirmation and that which does not, you will not escape error, since you will have preserved the whole cause of doubt in every judgment between what is right and what is wrong.” Bailey (1926)

“If you reject any sensations, and if you fail to distinguish between conjecture based upon that which awaits confirmation and evidence given by the senses, by the feelings, and by the mental examinations of confirmed concepts, you will confuse the other sensations with unfounded conjecture and thus destroy the whole basis for judgment. If among all opinions you accept as equally valid both those that await confirmation and those that have been confirmed, you will not free yourself from error, since you will have preserved all the uncertainty about every judgment of what is true and what is not true.” Geer (1964)

“(1) If you are going to reject any sensation absolutely, and not distinguish opinions reliant on evidence yet awaited from what is already present through sensation, through feelings, and through every focusing of thought into an impression, you will confound all your other sensations with empty opinion and consequently reject the criterion in its entirety. (2) And if you are going to treat as established both all the evidence yet awaited in your conjectural conceptions, and that which has failed to <earn> attestation, you will not exclude falsehood, so that you will have removed all debate and all discrimination between correct and incorrect.” (Long, The Hellenistic Philosophers 87; 1987)

“If you reject absolutely any single sensation without stopping to discriminate with respect to that which awaits confirmation between matter of opinion and that which is already present, whether in sensation or in feelings or in any immediate perception of the mind, you will throw into confusion even the rest of your sensations by your groundless belief and so you will be rejecting the standard of truth altogether. If in your ideas based upon opinion you hastily affirm as true all that awaits confirmation as well as that which does not, you will not escape error, as you will be maintaining complete ambiguity whenever it is a case of judging between right and wrong opinion.” O'Connor (1993)

“If you reject unqualifiedly any sense-perception and do not distinguish the opinion about what awaits confirmation, and what is already present in the sense-perception, and the feelings, and every application of the intellect to presentations, you will also disturb the rest of your sense-perceptions with your pointless opinion; as a result you will reject every criterion. If, on the other hand, in your conceptions formed by opinion, you affirm everything that awaits confirmation as well as what does not, you will not avoid falsehood, so that you will be in the position of maintaining every disputable point in every decision about what is and is not correct.” Inwood & Gerson (1994)

“If you arbitrarily reject any one sensory experience and fail to differentiate between an opinion awaiting confirmation and what is already perceived by the senses, feelings, and every intuitive faculty of mind, you will impute trouble to all other sensory experiences, thereby rejecting every criterion. And if you concurrently affirm what awaits confirmation as well as actual sensory experience, you will still blunder, because you will foster equal reasons to doubt the truth and falsehood of everything.” Anderson (2004)

“If you expel each and every sensation without qualification, and fail to draw <fitting> distinctions applying to what is opined <about sensations> as between what is present already and what is anticipated; or if you fail to draw distinctions applying to what is opined <about sensations> as to whether such opinions are according to sense perception, the passions, or some other imaginary twist of mind: you will, then, confound also the rest of your sensations <in addition to the ones you are trying to expel directly> because of this ineffective way of judging, so that you will also have expelled all criteria for judging what is true and what is false.” Makridis (2005)

“If you reject a perception outright and do not distinguish between your opinion about what will happen after, what came before, your feelings, and all the layers of imagination involved in your thoughts, then you will throw your other perceptions into confusion because of your trifling opinions; as a result, you will reject the very criterion of truth. And if when forming concepts from your opinions you treat as confirmed everything that will happen and what you do not witness thereafter, then you will not avoid what is false, so that you will remove all argument and all judgment about what is and is not correct.” Saint-Andre (2008)

“If you summarily rule out any single sensation and do not make a distinction between the element of belief that is superimposed on a percept that awaits verification and what is actually present in sensation or in the feelings or some percept of the mind itself, you will cast doubt on all other sensations by your unfounded interpretation and consequently abandon all the criteria of truth. On the other hand, in cases of interpreted data, if you accept as true those that need verification as well as those that do not, you will still be in error, since the whole question at issue in every judgment of what is true or not true will be left intact.” Strodach (2012)

“If you reject any sensation absolutely, and do not distinguish be- tween an opinion that awaits confirmation and a present reality (whether of sensation, feeling, or perception), you will also throw your other sensations into confusion with your groundless belief, and in doing so will be rejecting altogether the criterion. But if, when assessing opinions, you affirm as true everything that awaits confirmation as well as that which does not, <. . .> you will not escape error; for you will be preserving complete uncertainty in every judgment between right and wrong opinion.” Mensch (2018)

I found his translation of PD6 interesting because it's significantly longer than other translations and seems to convey some of the points (specifically "kingship") that Elli contextualizes in a separate thread:

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“This <human ability to lead a good life> originally became possible by nature and for the sake of imparting courage in human beings <who were then living in a pre-social condition.> And this is the natural origin and principle on which all authority—be it even kingship—is based. And it is from the same <natural propensities> that a human being is able also to arrange a good and pleasant life.” Makridis (2005)

Principal Doctrines

Odysseus Makridis

As presented in Letters and Sayings of Epicurus (2005)

1. “That which is blessed and indestructible has no affairs of its own to attend to; nor does it inflict any trouble on others. So, it is agitated neither by ire nor by partiality. For all such are to be found in that which lacks power.”

2. “Death is nothing to us. Because, what has been dissolved has no sense perception; and, according to us, what has no sense perception is nothing to worry about.”

3. “Pleasure has its <upper> limit in the removal of everything that produces pain. For, wherever that which produces pleasure resides, for as long as it abides, there can be nothing that produces pain, grief, or both.”

4. “What produces pain does not remain constantly in the body over a long period of time; it is rather that the maximal pain persists for the least span of time, and even that bodily pain which barely exceeds pleasure does not continue to happen for many days <in a row.> And, indeed, chronic illnesses themselves have an excess of what produces bodily pleasure over what is productive of pain.”

5. “It is impossible to lead a pleasant life without leading a life that is prudent, proper, and just. Nor is it possible to live a life that is prudent, proper, and just without living a life that is pleasant. Whoever lacks <any one of> the above <elements of a good and pleasant life> cannot have a good life.”

6. “This <human ability to lead a good life> originally became possible by nature and for the sake of imparting courage in human beings <who were then living in a pre-social condition.> And this is the natural origin and principle on which all authority—be it even kingship—is based. And it is from the same <natural propensities> that a human being is able also to arrange a good and pleasant life.”

7. “Some have wished to become famous and enviable, thinking that they would in this way procure for themselves security from other human beings. In that case: if their life is secure, they have indeed enjoyed what is the good by nature; if, however, they are not safe, they still lack that naturally familiar good for the sake of which our appetites have striven from the very first stirrings of human nature and in accordance with natural principles.”

8. “No pleasure is a morally bad thing in itself. But the agents that produce certain pleasures bring about vexations that outnumber the pleasures themselves.”

9. “If all pleasures could be added together consecutively with respect to space and duration, and across the entire span over which they had all existed, or at least across the principal parts of human nature <which are naturally susceptible to pleasures:> then, pleasures would not be different from each other in any respect.”

10. “If those elements that are productive of the pleasures of the debauched released them from the mental apprehensions aroused by natural phenomena, fear of death, and <obsessive anticipation of> pain; if, in addition, they formed their characters in such a way that they knew when to set a limit to their desires, we would then never have anything to censure them about: indeed, they would then be fully actualizing all the pleasures and in no way would they have either what is painful or what is productive of grief in them—and it is this latter condition <which they would be avoiding> that is morally bad.”

11. “If we were never perturbed by frightful second-guessing of natural phenomena and death; if, adding to the above, we were never <beset by> failure to comprehend the proper limits of pains and pleasures: then, we would have no need of natural science.”

12. It is impossible to be released from fear about the most important things for one who, not having adequate knowledge as to what the nature of the whole is, is trying to second-guess this or that in accordance with the <traditional> fairy tales. Hence, it is impossible to enjoy the pleasures in full unless one has studied natural science.”

13. “There is generally no benefit in procuring safety and protection from other human beings when one lives constantly in frightful conjecture about what is over our heads and those that are under the earth and those that simply are, without qualification, in boundless space.”

14. “Although safety from human beings may be secured, up to a point, by means of bountiful resources and power that can exempt one from <some risks;> yet, the most genuine safety comes from leading a tranquil private life and keeping aloof from the masses.”

15. “The bounty of nature is not only easy to extract as a resource; it also has its own limits set <by nature> <so that one cannot run into excess insofar as he is attuned to nature;> but the opulence of hollow fancies plunges precipitously into a space that has no limits.”

16. “The wise are rarely infringed by chance; the matters that are most significant and decisive have been, are, and always will be governed by reason throughout the entire span of a wise person’s life.”

17. “The just person is the most imperturbable; but the unjust is filled with ample distress.”

18. “Bodily pleasure cannot increase anymore once all the pain produced by need has been removed, even if this happened for the first time; <after that point, additional> pleasure can only <accrue from> variation. But the limit of the pleasure produced by mental pursuits is generally attained by means of reflecting on all those things, and on others kindred to the things, which furnish the mind with the greatest frights.”

19. “Time without limit affords the same amount of pleasure as does limited time—if one measures the limits of pleasure precisely and by using reasoned judgment.”

20. “The body picks out the end points of pleasure as lying beyond any limit, and marks the time needed to procure this <pleasure> as being unlimited. But the mind, grasping the final goal and terminating limits of the body by means of comprehending judgment, and obliterating the dread of an eternal afterlife, makes possible a life that reaches all goals “within itself and has no need whatever of infinite time. But it should not <be thought> that the mind flees from pleasure —not even at that moment when circumstances bring about the extraction from this life—or that it destroys the pleasures as if they were unworthy of the best life.”

21. “He who knows well the limits of living also knows that to remove pain caused by need is easy—resources for that are not lacking—so that one’s entire life can be rendered complete and replete with all possible purposes. It follows that there is no need whatever of things unless they are won by noble struggle.”

22. “When all is said and done, we need to take into account what kinds of things exist in the universe and every vivid and clear sense perception, to which we must refer opinions; if we fail to do so, everything will be full of gullibility and confusion.”

23. “If you wage battle against all the sensations, <not only will you lose those you are directly fighting against but, also> you won’t even have those sensations left, by reference to which alone you could claim to have won your case.”

24. “If you expel each and every sensation without qualification, and fail to draw <fitting> distinctions applying to what is opined <about sensations> as between what is present already and what is anticipated; or if you fail to draw distinctions applying to what is opined <about sensations> as to whether such opinions are according to sense perception, the passions, or some other imaginary twist of mind: you will, then, confound also the rest of your sensations <in addition to the ones you are trying to expel directly> because of this ineffective way of judging, so that you will also have expelled all criteria for judging what is true and what is false.”

25. “If you don’t judge every one of your actions by reference to the end and goal dictated by nature, in accordance also with the proper natural timing for each action, but, instead, second guessing <nature,> you veer off ahead of time attempting either to pursue or to flee <goals,> then your acts will not be turning out to be consistent with your rationalizations.”

26. “Of desires, those which do not bring one to pain if they remain unfulfilled are not necessary; such desires are actually accompanied by appetites that are easily defused: indeed, <this is evidently what happens> when it is thought difficult to find the means to satisfy <unnecessary desires> or when the desires themselves are thought to be productive of harm.”

27. “Of all those things by means of which wisdom can procure blessed bliss to last for an entire life, by far the greatest is the acquisition of friends.”

28. “The same (judgment) which enables us to wax confident in contemplating that no dreadful thing is eternal, or even of long duration, also knows well that, in these our constrained circumstances, security depends on having friends more than on anything else.”

29. “Of desires, some are natural and (necessary; some are natural and) not necessary; some are neither natural nor necessary and are only created by empty belief.”

30. ”Certain natural desires, which do not reduce one to pain if they are not satisfied, have, nevertheless, a commensurate inherent need for satisfaction. Such desires are born, indeed, of empty belief: the reason they are not defused is not to be traced to their intrinsic nature but to the person’s vacuity”.

31. “Natural justice is an expression of the <natural> interest <everyone has> and consists in both: a) not causing harm to others, and b) not suffering harm for oneself.”

32. “Some animals are incapable of entering into compacts that agree not to inflict harm in order to avoid suffering harm: in the cases of such animals neither moral right nor moral wrong can be said to apply. Similarly, there are communities which are either incapable or unwilling to make treaties that undertake not to inflict harm in order to avoid suffering harm: <in the cases of such communities, the concepts of moral right and moral wrong cannot be said to apply either.>”

33. “Abstract justice “in itself does not exist. Justice rather <comes into being only> in instances of reciprocal intercourse, applies specifically to this or that place <and time,> and consists in a covenanted agreement to refrain from inflicting harm for the sake of not having harm inflicted on oneself.”

34. “Injustice is not a moral evil in itself: what is bad about injustice consists in the wearying apprehension that one might fail to escape detection by those who mete out punishments.”

35. “And it is not possible for someone to be confident that he will not be detected if one has acted surreptitiously in violating any one of the provisions of the social contract, which consists in <an agreement> to refrain from harming for the sake of avoiding harm for oneself; not even if one has escaped detection a myriad times until the present: for even to the moment of one’s final demise, there can be no sure sign or assurance that one will continue to escape detection.”

36. “Generally speaking, justice is one and the same for all: i.e., justice is something or other that is to one’s interest in mutual intercourse. But, speaking on a case-by-case basis, justice is not the same for all as it depends on <specific> regions and factors.”

37. “Among those things that are conventionally accepted as just, whatever is universally acknowledged to be conducive to the purpose of maintaining civic society is necessarily adjudged to be a patently just thing, whether it is the same for all people or not. But if one stipulates something as the law even though it is at cross purposes with the interest of maintaining civic society—such an ordinance does not partake of natural justice in any way. In addition, if and to the extent that the interests which are in accordance with natural justice prove variable, so that concepts of justice can remain harmonious with natural interests only for a certain period of time: we must say that such concepts of justice <though short lived> are no less just within their corresponding frames of time.”

38. <”This is what we must say> if we are not to perturb ourselves with hollow words but rather take our bearings from the truth about human affairs. In those instances, in which, without any new developments arising, it becomes evident that the accepted concepts of justice are not, after all, in harmony with concrete interests or exertions of human effort: we must, in such cases, admit that those concepts of justice have had nothing to do with justice to begin with. But, in those instances, in which novel developments make it disadvantageous to preserve the same <concepts of> justice: in such cases, we must say that the concepts of justice were true in the past, for as long as they were conducive to the mutual association of fellow citizens, but, subsequently, when they were no longer advantageous, they were no longer just to adhere to.”

39. “He who was fittingly constituted in such a way that he could not face up to external dangers prepared a family made up of as many kindred beings as he was able to bring together; or, those he could not bring together, he related to as if they were not, at any rate, members of a different species. And with those beings, which he was altogether unable <either to bring into a family or to relate to in any way,> he did not mingle at all and, to the extent that it was to his benefit to do so, he had nothing to do with them.”

40. “Those who had the greatest ability to prepare defenses against their neighbors, so they could face up to them, were the ones who lived with each most pleasantly—since they had the most certain guarantee <that they were in no danger in any respect.> And, given that they had once enjoyed the most complete intimacy, they would not lament or cry for mercy if one suffered a premature demise.”