Posts by Eikadistes

I just wanted to add another brief reflection on the "embracing" versus "spitting" nuance:

There are a variety of ways in which people seem to interface with death: fearing death, fleeing from death, fighting death, chasing immortality, damning life, welcoming death, accepting death, expressing gratitude for having lived, and plenty of other responses and orientations I'm not picturing. Adding another dimension (perhaps arbitrarily ... just thinking out loud) we can [1] lament life, and fear death, [2] lament life and accept death, [3] prize life but fear death, or [4] prize life and accept death. In Menoikeús, Epíkouros explicitly rejects [1 + 2] lamenting life in any capacity, and he rejects [3] fearing death in the first two Key Doctrines, so, in general (by this measurement), the appropriate Epicurean attitude would be to [4] prize life and accept the inevitable necessity of death.

I think that concept reinforces what (I believe) I'm seeing, visually. No spitting.

Quote from Kalosyni

VS47. "I have anticipated thee, Fortune, and entrenched myself against all thy secret attacks. And I will not give myself up as captive to thee or to any other circumstance; but when it is time for me to go, spitting contempt on life and on those who vainly cling to it, I will leave life crying aloud a glorious triumph-song that I have lived well." (Bailey translation)

I am wondering if it literally says "spitting contempt on life" or what exactly it said?

Don  Bryan  Eikadistes

Great question!

I found differing renderings from different authors. Bailey seems to be an outlier in his transposition; note the verb προπτύσαντες (proptúsantes) versus προσπτύσαντες (prosptúsantes).

Screenshot 2025-07-17 at 10.33.27 AM.png

The first rendering προπτύσαντες (proptúsantes) is (I believe) the aorist active participle of the verb προπτύω (proptúo), meaning something like "having spit out" ... or else, the "-αντες" ending refers to a plural, active participle, meaning "you [all] are spitting out"? (...I wasn't really sure).

The second rendering προσπτύσαντες (prosptúsantes) is the aorist active participle of the verb προσπτύσσομαι (prosptússomai), meaning "having received", "embraced", or "folded to oneself" ... or else, here again, it might be the plural active participle, meaning "you [all] are embracing".

Screenshot 2025-07-17 at 10.34.36 AM.png

... it looks like the second one to me, with the extra sigma, προσπτύσαντες (prosptúsantes).

...ἀλλ᾽ ὅταν ἡμᾶς τὸ χρεὼν ἐξάγῃ
μέγα προ[σ]πτύσαντες τῷ ζῆν καὶ...

A directly-transposed translation might be something like (it's clunky, but...) either:

...but when, [for] us, a [life full] of necessities recedes,
[the] great [thing], [subjects] are spitting out, then, to live, and...

or perhaps:

...but when, [for] us, a [life full] of necessities recedes,
[the] great [thing], [subjects] are embracing, then, to live, and...

So the question I then struggle with, is to decide "to which of the implied subject(s)/object(s) do the articles/pronouns refer?" Are people vomiting (rejecting?) their natural impulse to live? Or are necessities vomiting (killing?) people from life? Otherwise (I think this is the case based on the screenshots above) people must be embracing the necessary end to living (i.e. accepting death).

...but could be totally wrong. 100% amateur here.

It knows everything.

Ask it anything, no matter how absurd.

Quote from DistantLaughter

These are my reflections on the relationship between Epicurean prolepsis and Chomsky’s theory of Universal Grammar

This is great. Chomsky often comes to mind when I think about prolepsis.

I'm glad you mentioned it.

Quote from Kalosyni

And here was the ai reply:

Quote

"Yes, Google Search's AI algorithms do factor in your past browsing and search history to personalize your search results"

No doubt.

This is why everyone in the forum should be aware that your search queries are going to use confirmation bias as a tool to provide you with satisfying (not necessarily true) results.

Quote from Kalosyni

Quote

Here's why:

• Personalization:

  Google uses your past search history.

  ...

Good guess, AI, but not true in this case.

Working in IT for almost 13 years now, I browse anonymously, use a VPN, auto-clear my cache, turned off search history, and removed all personalization related to Google.

Quote from Kalosyni

Quote

• ...location, language settings....

This is probably it.

It's another example of AI restricting its presentation based on assumptions it is making about the user in an effort to be helpful. Like any algorithm, it wants to satisfy you with compelling information, not necessary thorough and accurate data. It's just a well-read stranger on the street with a big vocabulary. We have to cross-reference everything it claims.

We have some experts here. If anyone wants information on Library and Informational Science, Don is your resource, not AI. If you have questions about American jurisprudence, you'll get a more functional, accurate answer from Cassius than AI. When I'm looking for help with language, academic dictionaries are great, but not always as great as Elli who is living and breathing the language everyday, or Bryan who is constantly advancing his study.

I am concerned about the growing tendency (I observe) to automatically use AI as a resource. I'm seeing my family asking it medical advice instead of their doctor, and people with college degrees asking it to construct paragraphs for them in e-mails, and people going for their Master's degrees getting suspended for allowing AI to write their papers for them. What's going on?

Side-note: AI is now citing the interpretations presented in this forum:

Quote from Cassius

I have posed the following question to the latest Grok

We shouldn't, because...

Quote from Cassius

Those who have time and inclination can parse through this response and continue to discuss it's accuracy or inaccuracy.

We know that it doesn't know, and we already have to evaluate it for falsehood.

Grok possesses a vast knowledge base, yet a shallow one; it's evaluations are confident, yet hasty; it represents itself with authority, yet has none; it employs technical jargon without proper context; it cannot recognize anachronisms; it blindly accepts published conclusions without self-review; it's capacities to perform analyses are limited to the minds of the developer(s); it's reviewing philosophical propositions like the computer programmers who developed it (I'm surprised it didn't find a way to incorporate politics into the response based on its latest update); even if politics weren't a factor, it would still be limited by the opinions of contemporary academics. Don demonstrated that the "early tenth" refers to the Twentieth, and this is corroborated by the findings of Stephen White (2021) ... but right now, Grok, and Gemini, and Siri are just going to provide you with the inaccurate, scholarly consensus (or Wikipedia): he was born on the 10th (wrong).

These language models are a bad research assistants.

Quote from Cassius

Physicists Aligned with a Heraclitean Flux Perspective...

This is a great example of the kind of anachronism I mean.

There isn't a "Heraclitean Flux" model in contemporary physics. You will not find the phrase "Heraclitean Flux" outside of philosophy papers, archaeological journals, or history publications. No physicists right now express their positions on the Standard Model in terms of "Heraclitean Flux". I'm willing to bet that most of them have no idea who Herakleitos was; if they doing, I'm further willing to bet they only know the idiom "...same river twice..." and nothing else.

Grok neither knows that, nor cares. It's assuming an answer based on our question. I bet if we asked it, "Grok, which modern musicians reflect the realization of the Hegelian zeitgeist?", I bet it would provide a coherent response with sources, even though it's an nonsense question.

____________________

I don't think, for me, comparing ancient physics with modern physics will be helpful to try to improve our understanding of either. Herakleitos, as far as I know, concludes that "fire" is the fundamental substance of reality, and that's a wild idea. If we're trying to make an analogy between the two, we'd have to apologize for the fact that his proposition implies that "fire" is smaller than a hydrogen atom. That's a dead-end to me. I know that Stoics like to argue that "fire" can be interpreted as a very loose metaphor for something like "quantum foam" or "the latent energy of spacetime" ... but I think that's equivocation and apologism for a myth in the first place.

This is an interesting division that Diogénēs makes. (Come to think of it) I wonder how reliable of a transmitter he is of Hellenistic philosophy? The Peripatetics ... as far as I know, the "flux" is categorically Heraklitean; the Aristotelians were interested in syllogistic logic, and built a formal body of rational knowledge. Herakleitos was ... sort of a mystic? While his propositions have implications for physics, I see it as contributing more to philosophy of identity, mind, and language.

Thank you, everyone!

Quote from Rolf

I'm a big fan of this poem, but I feel it's acutely anti-Epicurean. "Raging against the dying of the light" brings to mind a bitter and agonising response to dying. Of course an Epicurean would hardly welcome death (beyond very specific scenarios), raging against it doesn't seem to be the most prudent response in any situation.

Love it, too, and also feel that the tone doesn't quite capture Epicurean thanatology, which triggers a reflection in my mind on Epíkouros resting in a bathtub, declaring "Remember the doctrines!"

Dylan Thomas had a turbelent life, and his pre-mature end was a bit gruesome. Prior to his death, that struggle shows in his poetry. There's a lot of despair and emotional violence there. I'm not sure how his father died, but it sounds he struggled to accept the necessary end time requires.

I really enjoyed chewing on these ancient slurs.

I appreciate that there seems to be a universal preconception for "Hater" or "Haters".

In particular, I like thinking that Plato is not just "golden", but "gilded", as in, "cheap" and "superficial", like modern currency, or that his dialogues are just gold leaf painted over bad philosophy.

Good find on Sannídōros! I missed that etymology completely.

Quote from Adrastus

I've been toying with the use of some personal interpretations of the Johari Window

That's interesting; I've never come across that idea named before.

Back in theatre school, they used to tell us (as regards auditions), "You're basically three people..."; I've heard this from so many, random acting coaches and casting agents: "Who people see you as, who you think you are, and who you really are". I wonder if they got it from Luft and Ingham?

Quote from DaveT

The following comments and quotations in DeWitt seem to respond to the original query in this thread.

My post #43 is just a collection of the sources De Witt cites.

So, no issues taken, there! He's accurate.

Quote from TauPhi

2) Prolepsis is a form of reasoning and cannot be considered canonical faculty or knowledge is impossible. That means Epicurus blundered with his description of canon or applied pure reasoning in his description of gods. Whether his reasoning is correct or incorrect remains forever undetermined as knowledge is impossible in this case and everything goes.

I would consider prolḗpseis to just be raw, pre-interpretive mental data, like sensations are just physical data, and feelings are just emotional data, all of which are produced prior to evaluation or reflection. We digest all of this data when we exercise various applications of the mind, like imagining, supposing, entertaining, fantasizing, considering, exploring, believing, or formulating (which can all produce false results), and then there is acknowledging the raw data, just witnessing, or observing, or recalling, which is just recognizing the objects of experiences that are self-evident.

It's like lying to ourselves: we just can't. It catches up to us, because reality doesn't go away.

In that regard, I think of the mind like the moon, and prolḗpseis are like impact craters that deepen over time. The mind is physically bombarded with hard impulses, and they leave marks in the form of memories. As humans, the shape of our craters are comparable – the "yellow" crater looks yellow on everyone's personal moon, and the "dog" crater looks like a dog. The craters for "mortals" looks the same, and "animals" (they're all breathing and making babies), and it would follow then that the basic crater of "divinity" largely looks the same to everyone (they're perfectly happy).

I think we all have an idea (just as people) of what a category of beings that are perfectly happy would be like (we all seem to share that notion), and that notion is perfectly natural, so it's just being received from environmental stimuli and physical experiences, because its shared.

Epíkouros explains that we're not physically observing the visible particles of the gods, like lights and colors, but rather, we receive knowledge of the gods by the means of subtle particles that only interface with the mental organ, comparable to the way we receive knowledge of justice. Justice has no color, nor a shape, nor a sound, nor a language; it is only expressed by particular examples. The gods are the same way. We have a basic definition of "a god" we can apply to various candidates for divinity. For example, Jews propose that the divine is YHWH. Fair enough. That's a proposition we can evaluate for truthfulness, and we can do so because we have a firm grasp of what the definition of a real god (who doesn't cause trouble), and that is our ruler to test for truth (literally, those basic understandings are part of the canon, meaning "ruler"). YHWH causes trouble, therefore, YHWH is not a real god. At best, YHWH (if real) is a meddlesome extra-terrestrial, or, more likely, a misconception, caused by mixing the notion of god with the notion of a moody human. Christians maintain, like Aristotle, that God created the universe. Diogénēs the Epicurean wonders, Why? Was he bored? Was he lonely? From where does he inherit his artistic creativity? That "God" sounds more like a human sculptor or a chemist than it does a principle of Goodness. We'll find false gods in anything supposed to have created us, evaluates us, and anything that interferes with our history. People throw around their conceptions of "God" all the time, and we know, for a fact, they are nonsense, because all of those conceptions contradict the basic notion of a happy being. Jesus literally bleeds for us (so they say). I can do that, and I am most definitely not a god. And you can't be both mortal and immortal, or else the meanings of words just dissolve into confusion.

In general, the prolḗpseis are grasped by the applications of the mind (like contemplation and reflection) in the same way that contemplation and reflection also grasp ideas like "Middle Earth" and "lightsabers" (which are only real as fantasy), but the difference is that all of these other mental objects are generated by the faculties of reason, whereas prolḗpseis are like fish captured by a mental net: the mind captures what nature gives it; our myths are made, not captured.

We talk a lot about what the gods are in this forum, and, I believe, most of the candidates we have proposed tend to contradict the raw definition of divinity that Epíkouros provides. We like the idea that they might just be mental conceptions that only exist in the human mind, made of mental particles, and that, perhaps, they were first recognized by early hominids in dream-states (either nocturnal dreams or perhaps self-induced visions). We also like to consider that the gods are some kind of laughing, talking, respirating space ghosts (I'm sort of joking). Honestly, we're not sure, but, we can be sure that it is irrational for any hypothetical "god" to act "ungodly", because, without a doubt, we know, for a fact, what the definition of a "god" is, regardless of which one.

Quote from Rolf

Actually, could somebody take a crack at explaining fundamentally what prolepsis is? Is it innate knowledge that we’re born it? I’m more confused than I thought!

I can provide a few instances that might help orient the idea. (And not that I have a full grasp – it's a slippery concept for us all – but these are the examples I found in the available works).

Diogénēs provides us with the following definition (per my swing at translating).

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33 But they call the [next criterion] “Preconception“⁵⁰ as if a comprehension, or a right opinion, or notion, or universal thought stored in her, that is, memory of the appearances repeatedly [received] from abroad, like [the form of a] Human, such is one example; for once it [appears], the clear [form of a] Human attaches to [the] preconception, and the imprint of the sensations is preceding [it]. Then, each name primarily follows [what] is visible, since we could not have sought the investigation if we had not first perceived it, just as [we] have further established a horse is [this] or [a] cow [is that]. For one must perceive before the preconception the [physical] form of [a] horse and of [a] cow. One should not at all have named something, not before one experienced the [physical] impression related to the preconception. But the preconceptions are manifest [to the mind], and because of prior [experience] the conjectural things are contingent upon sensible [stimuli] to [which] we say they are referring, as when we have confirmed if [a] Human is there. ³⁴But they also call the preconception [an] opinion [that] they affirm [to be] either true or false; for indeed, to be true, [it] must corroborate or not contradict; but if not corroborating or contradicting, [it] happens to be false. Hence, this has introduced [the need to practice] waiting [for confirmation]; for example, a [soldier] had waited [to make a judgment] and had advanced near a watchtower, and [having advanced] near, it had become known what sort [of watchtower] it appears [to be].

One takeaway here is that, of considerations, a prolḗpsis is a true consideration, and, further, a consideration the directly corresponds with a real, demonstrable thing, or type of thing. Truth is a true belief about reality, so the prolḗpsis of gods is having the right opinion about theology.

Epíkouros gives us an example of a true belief versus a false belief:

In the Epistle to Menoikeus, in a discussion on theology, the ΠΡΟΛEΨΣEΙΣ or προλήψεις (prolḗpseis) are contrasted against ΥΠΟΛEΨΣEΙΣ or ὑπολήψεις (hypolḗpseis). Whereas the prolḗpseis are formed in the mind "before", so hypolḗpseis are formed "after" (123). The prolḗpsis of a god is a being who is blessed and incorruptible. The hypolḗpseis of a god is a being who is corrective, punitive, meddling, and generally troublesome. The prolḗpsis in this case is just the basic definition of "a god", whereas the hypolḗpsis incorporates another, unrelated prolḗpsis (like the prolḗpsis of the atmospheric phenomena of static discharge) to create a fantastical narrative that deviates from this fundamental definition (like Zeus smites the wicked with thunderbolts or rewards the faithful by not obliterating them). Hypolḗpseis are false assumptions, directly contrasted against reliable prolḗpseis.

From this, I take away that the prolḗpsis of the gods corresponds with the notion that a god is a perfectly happy being, whereas a mortal is an animal that dies, and a horse is a hooved quadraped. In this sense, it can be helpfully contextualized as part of the process of a naming schema. All disconnected cultures of peoples have a words for "warmth" and "baby" and "milk" and "hair", "light", "dark", and, as the cross-cultural exchange triggered by Alexander demonstrated to Hellenic Greece, apparently, as is evident to anthropologists, archaeologists, and linguists, "gods".

In the Epistle to Herodotos, the Hegemon contrasts the prolḗpseis of objects perceived by us against the "concept of Time", which is not described as a thing like a "horse", or "man", or "god", nor a category of things like an "animal", or "mortal", or "immortal", nor even expressed as a quality of a real thing, like "having hooves", or "respirating", or "being perfectly happy", but is rather just a kind of relative, measuring stick, an "accident of accidents" (172). We casually throw around the word time to actually mean something like any relative, human measurement against periodically-rotating, nearby objects, albeit the annual revolution around the Sun, or the frequency of a Cesium-133 atom. Here, Time is a bit of a contrast against a classical, Epicurean preconception.

Mentioned elsewhere, in the final few Doctrines, Epíkouros identifies "justice" as a prolḗpsis, which, itself, is neither a real thing (like a "man" and "horse"), but more of a category (like "vertebrates") but as applies to situations and events, as a pact to neither harm nor be harmed. The preconception is realized during any periods where pacts are being honored between different parties. Here, there's not a Golden Triforce you can pocket called "justice", but there are examples of the "justice" that is evident within "just actions", so, this is another, kind of categorical preconception.

That's how I read it. These are the main instances I found where "preconception" is used.

That's a really beautiful sentiment. I think I'd like to encourage these options with all of my family members. I worked IT for a funeral home acquisition company, and I spent some time installing network equipment in funeral homes after-hours, observing the traditional options. Without getting too specific, I'll just say I came out not liking any of the traditional options.

GREAT find!

Quote from Don

Quote from Eikadistes

try A. E. Stallings. I like his flavor.

"Her"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._E._Stallings?wprov=sfla1

Right on! I had no idea.

Also, Bryan or Don, if you have guys have any interest, would you take a swing at translating P.Herc. 1520 ("On Philosophy") by Polystratos? My translation right now sucks.

There's a lot of P.Herc. that needs English translations.

I've connected with some folks in a Herculaneum Forum on Discord. So far, I haven't found any Epicureans, but I really would like to organize a project to provide these resources.