Posts by Godfrey

That IS a slippery word! Maybe "buxom" would be a better translation

This word is a good illustration of the woes of translating.

The words that evoke a negative response in my mind are:

- "proper" (Makridis)

- "rightly" (St.-Andre)

- "nobly" (Strodach)

For me, these words sound Aristotlean in that they imply some sort approved standard to abide by.

In my neighborhood there's an Episcopalian church that, until COVID, provided spaces for a Zen sitting group and a yoga studio. I don't know if that's common practice or the work of an enlightened priest, but that might be another option to explore. Although opening up to Epicureans might be beyond the pale!

Quote from Don

Desires imply cognition and rational decision-making, whereas pleasure and pain are sensations which we can't decide not to feel.

This needs a bit more parsing: I don't think that there's always a rational component to desires. In fact a large part of advertising is finding ways to create desires which get beneath the rational. Choosing whether or not to act on a desire is definitely a rational operation, but on some level a desire is a craving, a feeling, perhaps a type of pain.

From Oxford Languages Dictionary online:

de·sire /dəˈzī(ə)r/ noun

a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen.

"a desire to work in the dirt with your bare hands"

You make some good points Don ... I'm definitely still percolating as well!

The 80/20 part needs a lot more explanation and clarification and is probably best left out for now. It also is a modern idea and is just confusing things at this point. (Having said that, the 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch is an excellent book on the subject, and one theme of the book is maximizing happiness.)

Quote from Don

the one thing that strikes me as askew is comparing desires with pleasure. Desires to me are one thing; pleasure and pain are another thing. Desires imply cognition and rational decision-making, whereas pleasure and pain are sensations which we can't decide not to feel.

Excellent point! I'm basically seeing the pursuit of pleasure and analysis of desires as two mental models to help achieve the goal of pleasure. In order to maximize our pleasure, we can focus on either or both. For the moment let's ignore the categories to get to the "higher level" thoughts. Thinking out loud, the moment that we "pursue" a pleasure we have created a desire that we are attempting to satisfy. By experiencing the pleasure, we have satisfied the desire. So any choice or avoidance is, I think, subject to this process as you rightly describe.

OK, so, working with choices and avoidances, let's now look at categories. I guess what I'm trying to get to is using PDs 15, 21, 26 and 30 as a boardwalk to the ocean of katastematic pleasure, and in so doing to demystify katastematic pleasure and make it a practical idea. The way that I'm trying to do this is by thinking in terms of efficiency: thinking through the things in our lives that give us the most lasting pleasure and/or the most nagging pain, and determining the most effective ways to address these things so as to maximize our pleasure. By no means would this mean eliminating the "icing on the cake" (or the cake), but it's a way to organize our time to provide the greatest pleasure, whatever that may be for each of us. It's also a way to dig into some of these issues like pleasure v desire, katastematic v kinetic, intensity and duration of pleasure....

Quote from Don

you're proposing that the bulk of our "baseline" pleasure is going to come from meeting our "natural and necessary" desires, but the kinetic pleasure is ...to make up a new metaphor... the icing that really makes the cake delicious?

Yes, but I'm reading natural and necessary as defined as "those that bring pain when unfulfilled and that don't take undue effort to fulfill." There is no pre-determined list of these things, they are only things described by this definition. And, to me, this definition describes desires that, when fulfilled, give us "a lot of bang for our buck", that bang for our buck being katastematic pleasure. So Epicurus isn't laying down some mystical dogma, he's describing the most efficient way to maximize our pleasure. Very practical and medicinal.

Katastematic pleasures then are those that result from specific (to each individual) natural and necessary desires as just defined. Referring to the examples in post #57 above, two of these could be (for a particular individual, and possibly changing over time) the pleasure of financial stability, and the pleasure of awe combined with a sense of belonging in the material universe.

Here are some texts that may reinforce my post to some degree....

Diogenes of Oenoanda fragment 34:

• Let us now investigate how life is to be made pleasant for us both in states and in actions.
• Let us first discuss states, keeping an eye on the point that, when the emotions which disturb the soul are removed, those which produce pleasure enter into it to take their place.
• Well, what are the disturbing emotions? They are fears -- of the gods, of death, and of pains --and, besides these, desires that outrun the limits fixed by nature. These are the roots of all evils, and, unless we cut them off, a multitude of evils will grow upon us.

PDs:

• PD15 Natural wealth is both limited and easy to acquire, but the riches incited by groundless opinion have no end. St-Andre
• PD21 One who perceives the limits of life knows how easy it is to expel the pain produced by a lack of something and to make one's entire life complete; so that there is no need for the things that are achieved through struggle. St-Andre
• PD26 The desires that do not bring pain when they go unfulfilled are not necessary; indeed they are easy to reject if they are hard to achieve or if they seem to produce harm. St-Andre
• PD30 Among natural desires, those that do not bring pain when unfulfilled and that require intense exertion arise from groundless opinion; and such desires fail to be stamped out not by nature but because of the groundless opinions of humankind. St.-Andre

I've been meaning to address this from another angle but haven't made much progress. So, rather than let the perfect be the enemy of the good, I'm just going to put some thoughts down in a rather stream of consciousness fashion.

It begins with thinking about the practical implications of katastematic and kinetic pleasures. Why separate them, in addition to a philosophical argument? What use can we make of this distinction in terms of living our most pleasant lives?

The "fancy pleasures" theory would have one believe that katastematic pleasure is something special. Maybe a particular absence of a particular pain. If I reject that idea, where does that leave me? My answer is the same as it always is: the guides to living are pleasure and pain. Pain includes fears and desires, and Epicurus developed the three categories of desires. You might say that these are a more detailed way of understanding the guidance that we get from pain. Running with that for a moment, why would there not be a similarly more detailed way of understanding the guidance we get from pleasure? And since choosing/avoiding pleasure and avoiding/choosing pain are, to some degree, ways of achieving the same result, wouldn't it be logical to have categories of pleasure analogous to those of desires? If this is so, then I'm next suggesting that katastematic pleasures come from natural and necessary desires and that kinetic pleasures come from natural and unnecessary ddesires . OK, but how is this useful?

Pondering this leads me to thinking about the 80/20 principle: 80% (give or take) of a particular set of results tend to come from 20% (give or take) of a particular set of inputs. Applying this to pursuing pleasure, I'm suggesting that katastematic pleasures and natural/necessary desires are simply the 20% of things that an individual can choose to pursue, based on their individual circumstances, that will result in them achieving 80% of their pleasure. For instance, putting together and following a well-researched financial plan is something that will potentially result in a lifetime of pleasure while taking a relatively small amount of effort. Or, gazing at the stars each night can, bit by bit, result in a baseline of pleasure and of belonging to the material universe. What do these have in common? They are both effective ways of achieving a baseline of pleasure. Kinetic pleasure would, at least in this train of thought, be the 20% (+/-) of pleasure achieved by 80% (+/-) of actions.

This is unorthodox but, with further development, might provide a useful alternative to the primrose path of Ciceronian obfuscation that we now have. I hope it makes a certain amount of sense.... Anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts: let 'er rip!

Here's yet another introduction to the poem. It did have at least one point of interest in that it posits that the poem ended as intended, and gave a couple of reasons why the author thinks that.

Lucretius | Poetry Foundation

I recently read Johnston's translation from a downloaded pdf (read it on the ReadEra app) and liked it; I also like the Melville translation. I agree that Stallings can get old. Haven't read the Copley translation but I'm curious how you like it as you proceed.

Some many translations, so little time! I, too, tend to compare various translations as I read a particular version.

You've undertaken quite a sleuthing project Don !

Pondering the data from a current, English-speaking perspective that is ignorant of Greek (mine):

- Interesting that 6 and 7 have a dot between them as they seem to address the same subject. Why a dot there, but not between 5 and 6?

- Why between 11 and 12, but not between 10 and 11 or 12 and 13? I would tend to combine all four.

- I considered the individual PDs as we now have them, so I'm just beginning where Don left off.

The above post seems to make this project even more difficult than it appeared before! The red dot is the logical (maybe the only!) place to start this quest, but as I understand it all of these manuscripts were created over 1,000 years after Epicurus' death. I'm curious if those who wrote these manuscripts had a different use for the red dots than separating individual PDs. Might it be an attempt to split up a continuous text into equal chunks, regardless of meaning?

Having never heard of an interpunct, of course I went to: Interpunct - Wikipedia. From that article:

Quote

Greek: "The Hellenistic scholars of Alexandria first developed the mark for a function closer to the comma, before it fell out of use and was then repurposed for its present role.[8]"

Latin: "The interpunct (interpunctus) was regularly used in classical Latin to separate words. In addition to the most common round form, inscriptions sometimes use a small equilateral triangle for the interpunct, pointing either up or down. It may also appear as a mid-line comma, similar to the Greek practice of the time. The interpunct fell out of use c. 200 CE, and Latin was then written scripta continua for several centuries."

Does this open up the red dots to any different interpretation?

My preference is Inwood and Gerson, particularly “The feeling of pain does not linger continuously in the flesh; rather, the sharpest is present for the shortest time...." Somehow that seems to be a subtly better description than the other translations.

There doesn't seem to be any reference to motion or homeostasis in the Greek, but to me that's a key part of what this PD is discussing. Sensations and feelings are always changing. When pain stops for a while, the pleasure is great: kind of like bread and water being extremely tasty when one is extremely hungry.

I think that the prose idea is definitely worth pursuing! It seems to me that this adds a degree of clarity to understanding the PDs (KDs?) that is sometimes hard to find with them split into a neat little list of 40.

Wouldn't the summit be the summit of pleasure/removal of pain and the bottom the "summit" of pain? At least that's how I read it from Eikadistes 's translation above.

Maybe the bottom could relate to katastematic pleasure.... But that might invite going down another rabbit hole, as it were.

I voted for Bailey, but also like the Hicks version. Which brings up the question: which is the best word choice, "quantity" or "magnitude"?

Also, I prefer the versions that begin with pleasure rather than removal of pain. Just seems that this arrangement emphasizes pleasure rather than absence of pain.

It takes practice to rely on emotions. But it's also not a case of "either emotions or reason". It's become such a paradigm that reason is the basis of wise choices. I'm finding that understanding the Epicurean Canon and the role of pleasure and pain within it is, with some work, a game changer for prudent decision-making.

Our feelings are always going to be there. Science is confirming that we just need to learn to listen to the wisdom that they offer us.

That's an illuminating translation from White! I haven't read that in a while, and hadn't read White's version.

Just for reference: Natural science - Wikipedia

On a more prosaic note: is "dissolved" the most accurate English word? It's in most of the translations, but I keep associating it with dissolving something in water. Resolved into its elements, dispersed, dispersed into elements, broken down into atoms seem to work. Especially "dispersed into elements".

What is X 77?

I actually like "the".

1) Epicurus maintained that gods do exist.

2) With an idealist interpretation of the gods, the implication of "the" is that such a condition is achievable. "A" somehow seems watered down to me.

Quote from Joshua

In Lucretius these two emblems symbolize his entire project--the sweet golden honey of his beautiful verse, graced by the muse's touch, masking the bitter but healthful draught of true philosophy.

I was actually thinking today that another thing Lucretius was doing was that the first 7000+/- lines of De Rerum Natura are the honey and the plague of Athens is the wormwood.