Posts by Godfrey

I'm just speculating that when you believe in and promote something with no empirical basis, it would be natural to fear having your beliefs shown as groundless. Not an obvious fear on the surface but a deep seeded one that you would only become aware of by paying attention to your sensations, preconceptions and feelings.

I've noticed this in myself various times in different contexts. I may have a feeling that I'm digging my heals in about some issue, but when I examine my faculties I realize that I'm reacting this way because I don't have all of the facts and my ego is perhaps digging in. I'm describing this ego reaction as fear.

But for those who are promoting a "noble lie" in order to achieve certain ends, having their falsity exposed could truly be dangerous and worthy of fearing. At the very least it would be a threat to their power, which such a person would presumably fear.

Also, when I wrote that comment I was specifically thinking of religion. The fears inherent in that are, of course, fearing gods and death, as well as what I've just described.

I agree about rediscoverability, but on a less hypothetical note religion has become a dominant power structure and will always use any vestige of its tremendous resources to see that its ideas, and therefore power, prevail.

It seems to me that "realists" don't often see the need to fight for their beliefs as they are self evident. Meanwhile the "idealists" expend great effort defending and spreading their beliefs. Could this be due to the fears inherent in "idealism"? Particularly the fear of looking like a fool? This in addition to the craving for power.

Quote from Kalosyni

I need to study the basics more and take better notes, and learn how to present my ideas in a cleaner, clearer fashion.

If it's of any help, over the time that I've been posting here I've found a similar need to be more precise in my wording. But I've also found that that is part of the process of learning and communicating philosophy and has been very beneficial for me.

Quote from Kalosyni

...at what point does an Epicurean say: "I've studied the teachings and I've learned the teachings, now I will simply just live the teachings." Yet, one would not feel fully contented until one as established the fundamental material attributes underlying the Epicurean lifestyle.

One of the best ways that I find to understand the teachings is to try to live them and then evaluate the effects in terms of enjoying my life. Participating here is part of that process: instead of a physical Garden, we have this community where we can share ideas, get feedback and continue to study. So, to me, you begin living the teachings early on and continue to do so. And you continue to study indefinitely: there's always some new nuance to appreciate and incorporate into understanding and living. Understanding is continuously growing, branching out into new areas and providing additional pleasures!

Welcome boyh0wdy!

I'm curious as to what Stephen Bachelor has to say about Buddhism and Hellenistic philosophy. My limited understanding is that there was cross fertilization between Greek and Indian ideas. I thought, though, that that was quite controversial from the Buddhist perspective.

There doesn't seem to be much scholarship on the subject. To me it's a fertile area, though not so much for the similarities. Epicurus successfully developed and enriched ideas from certain of his predecessors. Knowing how these predecessors interacted with Buddhism could be fruitful for appreciating how Epicurus evolved particular dogmas.

The danger from a Greek point of view, as pointed out in previous posts, is that it's very easy to read similar ideas into different philosophies and leave it at that, without appreciating the nuance and development involved.

Anyway, that's my long winded way of saying howdy boyh0wdy!

Don I like how you've formatted your translation. It's nice to be able to read through it uninterrupted, and then refer to the translations as desired. Nice work!

Kalosyni thanks for the link. A very good take on tranquility!

Not to get political, but it also features Ronald Reagan. I'm not sure if that's him or Massey on the right in the still.

Excellent posts Joshua ! This really gets to the meat of the opposition to Epicurean justice. From what little I know of it, it goes back at least to Plato's Republic and the idea of the noble lie: the myth that is useful for governing the masses. Hence the fierce opposition to Epicurus, who sought truth and ended up shattering the "noble" myths.

This is pretty random, but we were watching Scooby-Doo with our son earlier today. Watching it, I noticed

- a dedication to observation and science over superstition

- a group of friends working together

- a perhaps overly gluttonous enjoyment of food

- and, of course, the pleasure of laughter!

Hmmm....

These new options are nice! They really update the look. For now I've settled on the Radiant Transparent, but it's so easy to change that I may experiment more later. If I remember, that is....

That sounds good to me, too. I was going to say that "ataraxia is one type of pleasure," but class and species is more precise.

Quote from Cassius

This recalls Joshua saying in episode 95 that he does not enjoy spending too much time defining pleasure. I think that is a very good observation and it represents a goal we should have not to worry about these issues. But like Joshua also said after his first podcast, he felt like Cicero had us dancing like puppets on his arguments.

While listening to both of those statements I thought they were spot on. So just for the record,

Also the roach analogy is a good one. If your house is infested, pain. After getting rid of the roaches, pleasure. Once you're used to the roaches being gone, you now jump to the analogy of Chrysippus' hand. It's just not something that you notice, because it's as it should be. If you only focus on the roaches, after the initial pleasure passes you'll become neurotic by focusing on roaches which aren't there. So by this reasoning all pleasures come and go, and the more I think about it the more unnatural a katastematic pleasure is, unless you're a god. For a properly functioning human being it would be more of a background condition for which you experience the pleasure of gratitude from time to time.

Quote from Kalosyni

So then, this is mostly in regard to the fear of a mythical religious afterlife? Not so much as simple fear of non-existence(?) since atheism is only a limited modern movement.

To my understanding it is in regard to both religion/superstition and the fear of non-existence. Also the fear of being a rotting, worm infested corpse, buried in a claustrophobic box. Or of anything that may happen to our body after we're dead. Even worries such as what will happen to loved ones or some project that one might feel is of great importance. Do our best to live life now; once we're gone, we're gone.

PD04 seems to address 3), and I'm curious if it touches on 4) as well.... And the unlimited time issues are probably worth at least one thread of their own.

Aka "Hand Experiencing Katastematic Pleasure".

There's a book titled Greek Buddha, by Christopher Beckwith, that describes how Pyrrho spent several years with Alexander and studied the version of Buddhism existing at that time. He proposes that there may have been cross pollination between Pyrrho and the Buddhists.

I believe that DL mentions that Epicurus was an admirer of Pyrrho. If all of this was so, I can imagine that Epicurus made improvements to Pyrrho's ideas in the same way that he did to Democritus' ideas. For example, as I understand Buddhism, a goal is to eliminate desire (which is of course impossible: you really have to desire to eliminate desire in order to eliminate desire!). Epicurus came up with an elegant and more evidence based theory of the various types of desire. But this is speculation on my part and I gather that Beckwith's book is controversial.

As a technique of "Epicurean mindfulness" I sometimes focus on my current sensations, preconceptions or feelings. I may start out by focusing on a particular sensation, and then notice to my surprise that I'm aware of a preconception involving that particular experience.

Having said that, my understanding is that "meditation" for the ancient Greeks was actually more of a thought process, for example memorizing doctrines or visualizing the extent of the universe, as opposed to Buddhist or Hindu forms of meditation. It's taken me a while to buy into this, but now I think that the Greek technique is quite good for internaliziing the philosophy and increasing pleasure.

That leads to quite a different understanding than "Aristippus sets as the goal of life a constant round of active pleasures." Looks like a fruitful paper!

Some quick thoughts....

I'm not very familiar with Aristippus and his ideas. But for Epicurus it was very important to have a correct view of the gods and death, meaning a correct world view, as a central component of a life of pleasure. So I'm curious as to the world view of Aristippus was.

In another thread we've been discussing pleasure and some of the PDs. One approach to comparing the two philosophies would be to compare "a constant round of active pleasures" to pleasure as described in PD03, PD09 and PD10. For instance PD10 could be read as a direct Epicurean response to Aristippus, although I don't know if that's historically accurate.

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PD10 If the things that produce the delights of those who are decadent washed away the mind's fears about astronomical phenomena and death and suffering, and furthermore if they taught us the limits of our pains and desires, then we would have no complaints against them, since they would be filled with every joy and would contain not a single pain or distress (and that's what is bad).

Looking at PD03 is tricky as it's usually mentioned as a rebuttal to Plato. But what if you look at it as a recipe for the best life, from which you can and should draw your own conclusions? If you are striving for the greatest pleasure, how could you go about it? People immediately jump to "Remove all pain! Remove all pain!" But is that really what he's saying? True, if you've reached the limit of pleasure then you won't have feelings of pain. So how do you do that? If you have pleasure in your stomach for a moment then there's no pain in your stomach for that moment. If you have peace of mind for a moment then there's no pain in your mind for that moment. Knowing this, you can strategize how to achieve the longest lasting, most complete and most sustainable experience of pleasure.

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PD03 The limit of enjoyment is the removal of all pains. Wherever and for however long pleasure is present, there is neither bodily pain nor mental distress.

Don you mentioned Barrett's use of emotions.... I'm thinking that what he's calling feelings are more like what she calls affect...?

Also at one point in passing he listed desire along with some other things as emotions. If he meant that specifically then I'm curious as to the neurochemical relationship between desire and pleasure. And of course his categorization would challenge what I see as Epicurus' separation of desires and pleasure

That's what it seems like to me. And the feelings as he describes them seem to me to be pretty much what Epicurus described as feelings: guides to choices and avoidances.

It's also interesting how he makes a clear distinction between sensations and feelings. As I understand it he says feelings are critical for consciousness while sensations are not. So I wonder if he might say that death is nothing to us because when we're dead we have no feelings?

This was a very good advertisement for his book! I think I'll read it at some point to dig in to his ideas a bit more.