Posts by Godfrey

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.

Don you might add "won by gifts" and "obligation" to the "favor" brew....

"For perfect peace gods by their very nature

Must of necessity enjoy, and immortal life,

Far separate, far removed from our affairs.

For free from every sorrow, every danger,

Strong in their own powers, needing naught from us,

They are not won by gifts nor touched by anger."

Lucretius I.44-49 (+/-) Melville translation

Arghh, there's "immortal" again. But "won by gifts" fits well with "favor" or "obligation".

I would vote for Wallace. It's not perfect, but I think it's the only one with "incorruptible" and with "favor" instead of "gratitude".

This sounds like an interesting practice which may apply for adding sensitivity to one's choices and avoidances. The Epicurean process, I think, is much less specific than the Six Steps and probably more "rational" as well. But, at least for me, there's a point where I rely on my "intuition" in the decision making process and I think that this might be considered the elegant choice.

Tasty food for thought!

This article addresses what has really been bugging me: the precise meanings of khara and euphrosyne in Fragment 2 from Epicurus. I just can't wrap my head around these terms in the context of this discussion, and they seem to be the source of what I find "off" in the chart in post #30. (BTW, apologies for "banal" and "useless"; I didn't mean to sound so harsh.)

https://cup.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Philosophies-of-Happiness-Appendix-8.pdf

I'm not sure that it provides a satisfying answer. But there is this:

[footnote] xi However, we should allow also for another possibility. Epicurus is not a systematic philosopher in the same way as Aristotle. We have seen that in his use of the term pathos he slides from a generic sense to a more restricted, technical sense. Likewise, although he may say that animals experience hedonê, while joy is a rational emotion (and thus imply that pleasure is a function of the non-rational soul), he may use the terms somewhat interchangeably. Thus he may not always parse out the precise distinction between pleasure and joy; he may see the katastematic condition as a fluid conjunction of pleasant experiences of both the rational and non-rational dimensions of the soul.