Posts by Godfrey

If you zoom in on the images in my original post, you can see tiny numbers beneath the sculptures. Descriptions of these are in the text to the left of the two Epicurus images.

Yes. Sorry for the poor image quality!

Today I was in an out-of-town bookstore with my family and ran across this book, which is the catalog from the exhibit at the Getty in Malibu a few years ago:

Buried by Vesuvius: The Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum - Google Books

It may be of interest in itself, but what I noticed while quickly browsing through it was a few images in particular. Pardon my poor photo quality; the store was one of those great rabbit-warrens of books and lighting wasn't a prime concern in the design....

(L-R, top to bottom: Epicurus, Epicurus, Hermarchus and Demosthenes)

Here's an image of the pig. In case it's not legible, the dimension given is the height, which is 40cm (15.75") including the base.

And the prosciutto. The height is 11.3cm to which the ring adds 2.5cm; the width is 7.8cm.

Not to repeat myself, but this also relates to my comment elsewhere:

Post

RE: PD01 - Gratitude and Weakness (Especially In Relation to the Gods)

This brings to mind pleasure ethics v duty ethics: if you consider it to be your duty to do a particular thing then you're likely to pursue it regardless of the pain involved. Compare this to pleasure ethics, where minimizing pain is a concern: you may achieve the same thing, but often much more pleasurably for all involved. Or you may choose to flee from the particular thing if you judge it to be a corrosive desire.

Godfrey

May 14, 2023 at 7:27 PM

This brings to mind pleasure ethics v duty ethics: if you consider it to be your duty to do a particular thing then you're likely to pursue it regardless of the pain involved. Compare this to pleasure ethics, where minimizing pain is a concern: you may achieve the same thing, but often much more pleasurably for all involved. Or you may choose to flee from the particular thing if you judge it to be a corrosive desire.

I'm just hoping that one isn't required to know Latin to participate Not being a scholar, and all.

It does sound like it would have a lot of overlap with the podcast and the forum.

What exactly is a "text-in-translation" reading group? Is that a specific way of saying that they'll be reading it in English?

Quote from Cassius

Can you summarize his view of the difference?

To add to what Pacatus just said....

The book is part of a reworking of a dissertation that Guyau wrote, which was a critique of utilitarianism. He considered Epicurus to be the first utilitarian philosopher. In Book 4 of this book he looks at 17th and 18th century utilitarian/Epicurean thinkers. Since I'm not well versed in utilitarianism, or in the other philosophers he discusses, I can't comment very intelligently (assuming that I ever comment intelligently ) on those subjects.

I agree that we can critically personalize our approach in the context that Pacatus describes, subject to continual verification. We on this forum don't always agree on everything and we rarely agree with the academics: this necessitates that we form our own opinions. And of course philosophizing is thinking, not copying. This book is a useful vehicle for stimulating thinking and for examining Epicurus in a historical context which begins with Epicurus and ends with Guyau.

So, to answer your question Cassius , I was referring specifically to the subject of pleasure. The way that I read Guyau, he thinks that Epicurus tends toward tranquilism. But he thinks that tranquilism is incomplete and he embraces an inclusive view of pleasure, much as we do. So we can disagree with his interpretation of this, while at the same time agreeing with his conclusion.

Having now read further in Guyau it appears that he interprets Epicurus one way, but understands Epicureanism another way. His thoughts on Epicurus don't always agree with ours, but his thoughts on using the philosophy seem to.

Part of his approach is that philosophies, like organisms, grow and evolve. So in reading the book it's possible to take issue with some of his interpretations and still get a lot of benefit from his presentation.

Once one has children, keeping one's calm becomes a natural and necessary desire. When looked at in this way, it bumps it up in the list of priorities to be dealt with.

I wish I'd understood this while rearing my kids, but I was stuck in the mindset of duty ethics. Fortunately I'm beginning to figure this out, now that further challenges await (as they always will).

Thank you Pacatus for the kind words!

There's a pleasurable aspect to gratitude as well, such as the gratitude of waking up to a beautiful day in a beautiful place. Whereas normal folk may feel a pleasing sense of gratitude in this case, apparently a god would experience the pleasure but no gratitude.

I hope you amass many "utils" from reading it I certainly have!

More food for thought: Guyau on the gods. The idealist v realist debate has gone on for at least 150 years…. Notes from Book Three, Chapter 4 - “Epicurean Piety. The Struggle against Divinity understood as Efficient Cause”

- Even if there isn’t a divine creator, this doesn’t have to lead to atheism.

- If it’s a fact there all men believe in the gods, in order for the philosophy to be founded on facts it must take this into account.

- Creation doesn’t require divinity. And according to Epicurus the supreme happiness of the gods would preclude them from taking on the task of creating and managing the universe.

- Epicurean theory of the gods seems rather strange, but it follows “logically from the principles”. It attempts to interpret superstitious beliefs that come from “hallucinations”.

(Note: apparently utilitarianism has a definition of "interest" which I think is something like "self-interest" and contrasts with "obligation". In utilitarianism, it seems that this self might be a person, a group, a nation, or whatever particular entity is being considered.)

- Oddly “for a utilitarian system, religious sentiment and the cult of divinity become entirely disinterested.”

- Whereas prayer typically involved fear and petitioning the gods, Epicureans consider the gods to be indifferent to their concerns. “Prayer becomes, then, useless and absurd; pure worship replaces it, but a form of worship detached from every personal feeling. Vulgar piety is always mixed with feelings of fear and hope. People pray to the gods in order to obtain the goods they desire, or to eliminate the evils they fear. The Epicurean, on the other hand, does not fear anything coming from the gods, nor does he expect anything from them, and nevertheless, he worships them. Why? Because they are [the expression of] an ideal form of happiness and serenity; because they represent that which the Epicurean ought to be; because they are beautiful to contemplate, and they enchant our own thoughts, just like the marbles of Phidias please our sight.

- According to Seneca, Epicurus removed disinterestedness from his ethics, but then he placed it in his piety. Seneca objects to this. Guyau: “However, the piety of the Epicureans is indeed less astonishing than it seems, especially if one realizes that it does not cost a great deal of effort [to them], [or] if one realizes that effort and trouble would be much greater if one were to succumb to vulgar beliefs. Their piety also seems less astonishing if one realizes that these beliefs themselves have a natural ground and are quite rational in their principles. The gods really exist according to Epicurus; they are beautiful and happy. They are like an embellished image of ourselves: why wouldn’t we, then, bow before them?”

- Guyau dismisses the idea that Epicurus was insincere in his presentation of the gods and was actually an atheist.

- “If Epicurus clearly affirmed the existence of the gods, if he consecrated a full work to piety, and if he offered his life as an example of the piety he praised in his writings, this is because he really believed in the existence of the gods, which he worshipped as genuinely real beings.”

- Lange (a contemporary of Guyau) came up with the idealist interpretation of the gods: Epicurus’ gods did not have real existence: they were simply ideals. ‘Undoubtedly, Epicurus honoured the belief in the gods as an element of [the] human ideal, but he did not see in the gods themselves exterior beings. Epicurus’ system would reveal itself as fully contradictory were we not to look at it from the perspective of this subjective respect for the gods, which creates a harmonious agreement within our soul.’ According to Lange, while the many worshipped the gods because they believed in their existence, Epicurus did the opposite: he did not believe in them, but nevertheless worshipped them. When Epicurus revered the gods for their perfection, ‘it mattered little to him whether this perfection showed itself in exterior acts, or if it was employed only as an ideal within our thought’.

- But Lange had no textual basis for his theory, he based it on resolving what he saw as a contradiction in the system. Guyau believes that this contradiction doesn’t exist. “We have seen that, on the contrary, Epicurus’ doctrine does not contain any contradiction but only a certain number of unsound deductions." I'm assuming these are unsound based on modern science, but his wording is unclear.

- "For Epicurus, the gods certainly represent an ideal, but it is a realized ideal, as well as a living ideal.”

- "His system rests precisely on the identity of the subjective and the objective, for he claims that every sensation necessarily corresponds to a reality. Additionally, according to him, given that every idea has its roots in sensation, the human mind cannot have any ideal superior to reality itself. It is from reality that our mind borrows the ideal it conceives.”

- “Epicurus’ gods were not mere ideals and, as we have seen, they even nourished themselves with very real food, like simple mortals. Philodemus even asks himself whether or not the gods sleep. Ideals do not eat or sleep. We should not attribute modern doctrines to Epicurus, doctrines that are born from the progress of the sciences and of thought. Epicurus’ system, with its strong and weak points, simply accords with its own time.”

Since there is ambiguity surrounding the original Greek words and the dearth of extant texts (made worse, as you point out, by rival misinterpretations and the undue acceptance of these) it would seem that the best clarification of pleasure would be in outline form that builds up to a precise explanation.

I'm time crunched at the moment, but post #13 would be a piece of that: relating pleasure to the doctrines of desire and to modern understanding as well as to the extant texts. Having a document showing how the pieces fit together in the comprehensive philosophy, but focusing on the ethics of pleasure to present a logical argument.

Two approaches to clarify an approach to the ultimate goal come to mind offhand:

1) Is the healthiest functioning of an organism stress free? Not entirely. Being stress free means that one's needs are met, but stress indicates a need for change and is a healthy response to stimuli. As humans, we can arguably be happier and more productive if we subject ourselves to a certain amount of stress (exercise, thinking about the value of serenity &c). But certain baseline mental stresses (fear of gods, fear of death &c) work against healthy functioning; eliminating these produces a baseline of serenity that allows for healthy functioning regarding other stressors.

2) Looking at the desires: to my understanding the necessary desires are pretty much a given that are specific to each individual at a specific time and are relatively easy to satisfy to maximize the specific individual's pleasure. The unnatural desires are, also, pretty much a given to each individual at a specific time and need to be fled from to maximize the individual's pleasure. This leaves the natural and unnecessary desires (Emily Austin's extravagant desires) as a potentially huge group of possibilities for pleasure, and the most active field of choices and avoidances (or engaging and fleeing). If we were to do nothing but seek serenity and avoid pain, then this category would be nonsensical.

It's certainly not Epicurus on the cover. Looks more like Hermarchus than Metrodorus; the source photo is probably online somewhere, but I haven't found it.

I probably shouldn't have led with "absence of pain".... I did so knowing that it's a hot-button issue here, and hoping to demonstrate that he presented an interesting view of it.

Having said that, Guyau does make an emphatic case against "absence of pain." Where I get uncomfortable (in a good way ) is with his narrowing the goal to a single focus of serenity. However, and I think Don might have something to say about this, it's not wrong to pursue serenity. Especially if you're thinking of it as homeostasis. A singular focus on serenity may not be correct, but serenity allows for maximal appreciation of a variety of pleasures. I think Epicurus repeatedly makes the latter point.

Part of what's interesting to me is that Guyau wrote in French (which I don't speak) and naturally interpreted some of the tricky Greek words differently than we might. At the same time, much of what he wrote aligns well with my current understanding. Reading this book is making me think deeper, and in a new way, about a variety of ideas.

Very well done Joshua !

For me, this book isn't about climbing aboard. There seems to be more nuance to his position than what that summary indicates, and that's what makes it interesting to me.

Quote from Guyau

Finally, another strongly positive term that is employed by Epicurus confirms our interpretation: it is the term hugieia; that is, the healthy and good proportionate state of the being as a whole, body and soul, in order and harmony. This is undoubtedly the happiness that the Epicurean sage finds within himself once he has eliminated all trouble. 51

This sounds to me like homeostasis, in current terms.

Further:

Quote from Guyau

51 ...That which also helps refuting Ravaisson’s position is the consequences that he extracts from his hypothesis: ‘If the end goal of happiness is not suffering or perceiving any pain, doesn’t this mean that what is most desirable for man is to die – and, what is more, to never have come into existence in the first place?’ (Essai sur la Métaphysique d’Aristote, II, 113).... Moreover, Ravaisson writes, ‘Pleasure is nothing but the end of pain, and whenever pain comes to an end only by means of death itself.’ – Believing that Epicurus did not see these consequences or simply accepted them means attributing to him incredible naivety and absurdity. Let us look, by means of contrast, to a text by Epicurus: ‘Death is indifferent to us, because all good and all evil reside in the action of feeling, and death is the privation of sensibility...’ (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, X, 124). How could one [after reading this passage] still defend the thesis according to which Epicurus thought that insensibility and negation found in sterēsis (privation) consisted in achievement and perfection, or the sumplērōsis (plenitude) of the good? Neither insensibility nor death are good for Epicurus, and he clearly responds to all those who attribute this idea to him."

After giving Epicurus' view of death, this:

Quote from Guyau

" ‘From the moment when we are freed from pain, we enjoy the deliverance itself and exemption from every kind of constraint.’ (Cicero, De finibus, I, xi, 37; I, xvii, 56) To live in freedom, in rest and harmony with oneself, to have the inner feeling that one lives, this is supreme pleasure, in comparison to which all the others are but so many changing forms. Forever the same, this pleasure can exist independently and subsist above all others."

Which sounds something like what we often say, that we only have one life to enjoy so we should appreciate and make the most of it. And perhaps another version of homeostasis?

Quote from Guyau

It is to restrain and restrict all the fugacious and superficial enjoyments to just one, an indestructible and profound one, which is an enjoyment of life itself. The good, then, is serenity."

I'm not sure that I would equate "an enjoyment with life itself" with "serenity." My focus in this quote was the former, not the latter. And I was again comparing this to homeostasis. The quote itself seems contradictory, so one has to piece together the totality of his argument at look at the wording, knowing that it's a translation from Greek (or Latin) to French to English.

This is one reason why I feel that there's much to get from this book. He says a lot that I agree with, some things that I don't, and many that I need to think about more. It may be a little maddening, but at least for me, it's not a book that you can home in on one sentence or paragraph and draw a final conclusion, but an opportunity to consider the puzzle pieces and perhaps come away with a deeper understanding of my own interpretation even if I don't fully agree with him. There's a lot there to dig into, and he's quite sympathetic to Epicurus. So, another source to be aware of!