Posts by Godfrey

Off the top of my head, Buddhism is a religion that doesn't worship a god but follows its founder's teachings. So that might apply in some way to this discussion.

Quote from Cassius

Pleasure is where I think the deepest questions arise as to how that faculty came to be - because the others all seem to be channeling data to it, where alone the "stop" and "go" signals arise.

This brings to mind the work of Lisa Feldman Barrett that Don and I have posted about previously. As I recall, she discussed in a podcast (I'm not sure if it's in her book) a million year old primitive life form as being a very early manifestation of the faculty. But she's not looking at the way Epicurus described things: modern neuroscience just seems to have a lot of overlap with his thinking.

In her book she describes "affect": a combination of pleasant/unpleasant and calm/agitation. She discusses the neural networks and systems involved, and the comparison to the Canon (with which she apparently is not familiar) is quite thought provoking.

For a non-Greek allegorical anecdote about the good as a noun:

I recently purchased a small ceramic sculpture. One day as I was observing and thinking about it, it occurred to me that it was precious in a certain way and that it could be instructive to compare it to "the good." How would I respond to it as something "precious?" Observe it, treat it with care, contemplate it, place it somewhere that I can maximize my opportunities to appreciate it.... Considering it precious, should I stress out over damaging or losing it or maximize my pleasure regarding it? I also realized that while it may seem precious to me, to someone else it may seem like junk! (But this realization digresses from my point.)

Well, naturally I arrived at the conclusion that the best thing to do is to maximize the pleasure that I can gain from this object. In this particular case the pleasures are primarily mental: observing the object, thinking about other pieces by the sculptor and the ideas she may be working with, trying to understand how it was constructed, thinking about what it is that I enjoy about it, noticing the various textures, remembering the pleasant circumstances in which I first encountered it, &c.... (I guess if I had a different disposition I may have concluded that it's my virtuous duty to care for it, but that's not where I ended up.)

My point is that it's possibly useful to think of the sculpture as a proxy for "life itself," and to think of my conclusion of the best thing to do as "the goal." Of course one may arrive at their own conclusions....

(For the record, the sculpture isn't all that precious but, personally, I'm enjoying it greatly.)

I hadn't thought of it in this context, but over the years I've derived much pleasure from geometry, trigonometry and basic math. They have been pleasurable in themselves to varying degrees, and also as useful tools to realize the joys of drawings, which often themselves were useful tools in the creation of a variety of objects and spaces.

In dealing with various theories of beauty and proportion, to me beauty and resonance in the resulting products invariably come down to the humanity and the feelings expressed. Without humanity and feelings, any coherent inner logic falls flat.

Furthermore, I can't say that geometry, trig or math ever provided me with any valuable insights; they assisted in refining and communicating other, more interesting and relevant ideas.

Quote from camotero

I like that she's very clear about logic being able to provide "valid" arguments, but not necessarilly "true" arguments, particularly that an argument can be valid but not necessarilly true.

This is what has always struck me about logic (not that I'm close to being an expert!). You can have an internally consistent argument that has no basis in reality, so what's the point?

Thanks for the podcast link, it looks interesting.

The feelings are the primary and the final guides for our little boats, but like the other canonical faculties they need to be considered and evaluated to be acted upon in the most advantageous way in each given situation.

Considering and evaluating are not part of the canon but they're definitely crucial to choosing and avoiding. They just tend to mislead without the canon and are therefore useless on their own.

That song is quite a time capsule!

Quote

Suppose it could be some kind of variation of the Plutarch statement about the greatest joy arising from escape from the greatest evil?

That's how I had read it, although without thinking of Plutarch. Epicurus Wiki is along the same lines:

http://wiki.epicurism.info/Vatican_Saying_42/

To me, "life as the greatest good" is a fruitful thing to ponder but I probably wouldn't call it Epicurean, at least as I'm thinking about it at the moment. It begs the question "how do I respond to what is precious to me?" Some replies are: study it, appreciate it, respect it, use it fully, preserve it, learn from it, enjoy it fully.... Also, being overprotective of what is precious can lead to pain.

As an Epicurean I would turn to the guidance of pleasure/pain to understand how to deal with something precious to me: this emphasizes the faculty of Feelings and therefore that maximizing pleasure would be my "goal" in interacting with the precious thing. But a Stoic, for instance, might use virtue or duty as a guide or an end. This could bring them pleasure, but also great consternation.

Quote from Don

What he's talking about here is not "good" as in just the adjective "good/bad" it's "the good" ταγαθον (tagathon) as in the goal, the telos, the Alpha/Omega, the beginning and the end of life. Pleasure = The Good. He's planting his flag for pleasure as The Good in opposition to those who would tout virtue, etc.

I was going to bring that up.... DeWitt makes a similar point except that as I recall he refers to the "greatest good" as life itself. Pleasure would then be the telos if I understand him correctly. Greatest good, good, telos, summum bonum... oh my!

Yes I agree it seems very similar to Lisa Feldman Barrett's work.

It's interesting to me because he is by his own description not a philosopher and is studying effective strategies. So I guess we could expect that some things would end up in one philosophical camp and some in another, and that's what he gets. Some statements sound Epicurean to me, others very anti-Epicurean. Probably there are a lot of preconceived ideas, perhaps Aristotelean, that he is unconsciously working with as well.

There has been some discussion here as to how to define "happiness." Here is a brief article discussing how happiness is thought of in different cultures:

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/07/happiest-country-definition/619441/

Four different models of happiness:

- Happiness comes from good relationships with the people you love

- Happiness comes from a higher consciousness

- Happiness comes from doing what you love, usually with others

- Happiness comes from simply feeling good.

A point made in the article is that you can’t rank happiness, but you can classify it. It brings to mind the subjectivity of happiness, which in turn makes it difficult to define.

A very brief article on neuroscience for dummies, applicable to the Canon:

https://bigthink.com/personal-growth/interoception-how-to-improve-your-gut-feeling

The embedded video discusses feelings:

- Feeling is the process of perceiving what is going on in the organism when you are in the throes of an emotion.

- Feeling guides us in advance planning.

This showed up in one of my feeds and could be fruitful for discussion:

RHR: How to Achieve Happiness and Well-Being, with Kennon Sheldon

In this episode of RHR, I talk with Kennon Sheldon about how to understand and cultivate happiness in order to improve our overall health, well-being, and…

chriskresser.com

The link is to a podcast and comes with a full transcription, which is quite convenient.

I'm not sure where to begin the discussion so I'll just post this and see where it goes

These provide great examples of things to choose (paying attention) and to avoid (mumbo jumbo). Personally I feel that paying attention to one's faculties is a key part of an Epicurean lifestyle. Mindfulness and meditation are potentially useful tools in that endeavor. There are occasional points of overlap between the traditions from which they come and EP, and these points can be useful to understand the tools. Of course the danger is that one ends up misunderstanding the overlaps and practicing an inconsistent mishmash of a philosophy, so one must pay attention

Stallings, lines 75-79:

In triumph he returns to us, and brings us back this prize:

To know what things can come about, and what cannot arise,

And what law limits the power of each, with deep-set boundary stone.

Therefore it is the turn of Superstition to lie prone,

Trod underfoot, while by his victory we reach the heavens.

Having not watched the video, the "takeaways" slide looks to me like total gibberish! It looks like he's trying way too hard to morph the two philosophies into one, and in the distorting the essential ideas of (at least) Epicurus.

Cassius I'm curious to see what you find out about the closing quote by Jefferson. At first reading there are several things that I don't agree with, but going to the source may put them in a better context.

This reminds of "the three jewels" of Buddhism: Buddha, dharma and sangha, which may or may not be similar to: Epicurus, the true philosophy and the Garden. The Garden would have been a center for friendship as well as learning and practice. The corresponding Buddhist sangha has thrived over the millennia and I imagine has been instrumental in keeping Buddhism thriving as well.

A case could be made that the disappearance of the gardens was even more contributory to the decline of Epicurean philosophy than the disappearance of the texts. In addition to their social functions, as centers of learning the gardens would have preserved the prior texts and added new ones.

Welcome Kalosyni !

I'm yet another one who spent a few years dabbling in Zen, before discovering the Hellenistic philosophers and ultimately Epicurus. Just recently I've been reviewing the 4 Noble Truths (suffering, the cause of suffering, the end of suffering and the path to the end of suffering): the Buddha and Epicurus seem to have had similar concerns in some ways (without getting into the "absence of pain" discussion). Epicurus was attempting to remove irrational fears, which are one form of suffering. His treatment of desire, to me, is more nuanced and useful than the Buddhist desire to get rid of desires. His grounding in the Canon and observable reality is also both comforting and inspiring.

As to Joshua 's mention of rebirth, I can't quite figure out how rebirth squares with the Buddhist doctrine of "no self." Epicurus describes an impermanent, material consciousness that ends with the death of the body and precludes an afterlife as well as rebirth; this seems more consistent, believable and correct.

There's absolutely no evidence of Epicurus doing so, but as I reread books by today's Buddhist authors I almost get the sense that much of what Epicurus did was to correct the errors of Buddhist philosophy, just as he did with Plato.