Posts by Godfrey

It's bittersweet how we all get busy with our lives and lose track of people and places that we were once so close to. Sometimes due to moving to new places, demanding jobs, raising a family, caregiving, all of these or many more. And it's not just people and places: at some point we can look at who we, ourselves, used to be and wonder where we went.

I keep seeing articles and podcasts about this, sadly it seems to be pretty common these days. Epicurean friendship and prudence are invaluable in this regard; I wish that I'd discovered these tools long ago! Although the stability of the garden is long gone, the knowledge and understanding that remain can still help us in the sometimes difficult work of living.

Odd feelings and reflective moods, pleasures and pains: our guides, for as long as we listen.

It's one of the gateway drugs to Epicurus

This paper just showed up in my feed, and I haven't yet read it. It may be of interest as it discusses evidence of De Rerum Natura being read in the Middle Ages.

Cassius you're absolutely right about Epicurus responding to Plato (also to Aristotle) and about the other passages in LM; I'm just having a go at it from another angle to see if there's any more clarity. But it's not like I'm the first to do that, so there's probably a limited payoff, particularly in parsing passages!

Don thanks for compiling those quotes! My bad with the zafu example, you make an excellent point. To put it more clearly, I was attempting to illustrate that absence of pain can be active and is not necessarily passive. But of course meditation is quite active, so point taken.

Quote from Don

548. **Happiness** and bliss# are produced not by great riches nor vast possessions nor exalted occupations nor positions of power, but rather by peace of mind, freedom from pain, and a disposition of the soul that sets its limits in accordance with nature.

Ruminating some more... regarding the "Rorschach test" I think the phrase "a disposition of the soul that sets its limits in accordance with nature" sums up part of it quite well. Is nature governed by a logos and ideal forms or is it atoms and void doing what they do? Are there gods that affect our lives? When we die, is that it for us? Does a person fully accepts Epicurean physics and its implications? Even if they do, the extant texts can be confusing.

Quote from Don

Therefore, you *must* study and meditate on those things which produce **eudaimonia!** For if that is present, we truly have everything; but if that is not present, we will do everything to have it.

I guess that, to me, the problem we face is elevating absence of pain to "the goal," and the problem is twofold. First, it can lead to asceticism. Second, reacting against this can lead to minimizing absence of pain in relation to pleasure as part of the toolkit for choices and avoidances. Understanding both the positive and negative attributes of pleasure can lead to a deeper, fuller and more pleasurable life.

And sometimes the practice of sitting on a zafu can aid in this understanding, particularly by revealing pathe of which one wasn't even aware

Quote

"...and of the necessary [desires], some are necessary for happiness and some for freeing the body from troubles and some for life itself." Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus 127

I was surprised to find this quote which exactly expressed my thoughts concerning the relatively ascetic existence during the pandemic restrictions and fulfilled my curiosity as to what Epicurus might have to say about it. Thinking of asceticism inevitably led me as well to thoughts of the absence of pain.

Firstly, it seems that the “absence of pain” proponents are ignoring the first desire in this quote and focusing on the last two. I can see how this might lead one to asceticism. But the desires that are necessary for happiness are what Epicurus places in the position of importance in this quote. Personally, I had either missed this or forgotten it and so was quite pleasantly surprised to read it! (For clarity, I wasn’t thinking of becoming an ascetic )

Thinking further on the practicalities of the absence of pain, hopefully without provoking any rants:

The fears that Epicurus addresses in LM and in the PDs are “macro” fears, those of death and the gods. But there are and always have been “micro” fears that I don't recall reading about in the surviving literature. To me, for Epicurus to posit a complete therapeutic philosophy he would need to address these “micro” fears, and I assume that he did so through frank speech in the garden, one person at a time or perhaps in small groups. These micro, everyday fears are more personal fears, specific to everyday situations, although there are common threads to them. And I’m mentioning them partly because they don’t lead to asceticism but to immediate pleasures of the non-fancy type. Nothing mystical here! (Is mystical related to “mystified?”)

An example that comes to mind is from my early childhood, learning to swim. After I had become proficient at swimming and at diving off the diving board, my teacher tried to get me to jump off of the high dive. I was scared out of my wits! I stood up there, looking down and trembling… climbed down off the board, climbed back up… it took quite a long time and lots of encouragement, but finally I went up and jumped off. It was so exhilarating that I spent the rest of the afternoon repeatedly experiencing the sheer joy of climbing up and jumping off: the removal of pain (fear) was definitely pleasure!

Another example might be of a mythical land surveyor working in alligator country. He might be terrified of alligators as evil spirit animals, or afraid of being attacked. Either of these could be addressed through reason: thinking through the implications of a material universe for the first, learning about proper safety protocols in alligator country for the second. Removing the pain of fear in these ways would allow for the pleasure of doing his job and enjoying being out in nature; it wouldn’t lead him to avoid his work and sit in his room on a zafu cushion.

Could/should the pain/pleasure dichotomy be used in this way as an Epicurean “exercise” or "practice" to maximize one’s pleasure? At the very least, to me, thinking in this way is a useful and direct tool for understanding the relationship between pleasure and the absence of pain.

Actually I never go to the home page; I've set the forum to open in "unread posts" on all of my devices. Guess I should look around more! This is good to know though for quick and easy posting.

I like Stallings as well, it's an attempt to make DRN more relatable to us modern folks. Which of course has pros and cons.

Latham, I think, is a similar attempt in prose as I gather, released I think in the 50s.

Leonard is bundled with Munro and a Latin version in an inexpensive Delphi Kindle edition, which is what made me curious about it.

Anyone have any thoughts on the W.E. Leonard verse translation or the R.E. Latham prose translation? Not for interlinear use, just as general translations.

Another little gem from David Sedley, in which he discusses how Epicurus' exposition of ethics is related to his exposition of physics.

(I'm not sure where best to post this....)

In DL book 10, paragraph 28 is the list of Epicurus' books; seventh in the list is Chief Maxims (Mensch translation).

Sure wish we had some of the books in that list!

This seemed much less "formal" than something we might do... almost like if someone wanted to read a paper they were working on during our monthly Skype call. I don't know anything about the Forum that put this on: was it a regular meeting of some sort?

I think, at a minimum, for a "presentation" it would be better for the speaker to put their script next to their camera so they at least seem to be more engaged; kind of like a low tech teleprompter.

Pardon my tardiness in posting: I attended the presentation but am only now able to weigh in.

I got the impression that this was not a finished paper but a work in progress. She seemed to be working with athroa epibole versus kata meros epibole in order to draw some conclusions. Basically, is there a difference between a "big picture" epibole and an epibole of a detail or details? Is memory involved in one but not the other? Is memory involved at all in an epibole? Is attention?

Also she was examining whether epibole are projections from outside things, projections outward from the mind, or projections inward into the mind.

Again, my impression is that she's still grappling with all of this. I think at one point she said that at this point her main goal was to catalog the occurrences of epibole being mentioned in the sources. She also mentioned that grammar doesn't seem to be the main guide, theory is.

In the Q&A she or somebody said that one needs to attend to epibolai in order to do epistemology. This would be different from "attending" being part of an epibole.

Tony Long pointed out that epibolai are not acts of the mind, but how it's being affected. At least as he grasps the idea

From Googling "apprehension:"

understanding; grasp, "the pure apprehension of the work of art." Similar: comprehension, realization, recognition, appreciation, discernment

This sounds like "getting it" as opposed to the process (thinking, logic, reasoning, etc) that leads to "getting it."

I just registered and the confirmation email includes a link to a handout of excerpts of the relevant texts, fwiw.

As an aside, it just occurred to me that the architectural setting is Roman, not Greek. As far as I'm aware the Greeks didn't build with arches but with posts and lintels, developed through the classical orders.

If this has any relevance to the discussion at hand, it may indicate that Raphael wasn't taking a literal view as to who was who and had another, overarching (pardon the pun) agenda.

Hicks and Yonge both use "rebound," as does Mensch, although she seems to arrange the passage differently:

Quote

44 The atoms are in constant motion for eternity. [He says later on that they also move with equal velocity, the void yielding equally to the lightest and the heaviest.] Some travel great distances from one another, while others continue to oscillate in place when they find themselves entangled or enclosed in a mesh of atoms. 45 This is because each atom is separated from the rest by void, which cannot provide any resistance; and the atom’s solidity makes it rebound after any collision, no matter how distant, whereupon it finds itself entangled in a mesh of atoms. Of these motions there is no beginning, since they are caused by the atoms and the void.

This idea of continuous motion and vibration, to me, makes much more sense than the swerve!

Also from Herodotus:

Quote

60. Further, one must not assert that the unlimited has an up and a down in the sense of an [absolutely] highest and lowest point. We know, however, that what is over our heads from wherever we stand, or what is below any point which we think of—it being possible to project both indefinitely—will never appear to us as being at the same time and in the same respect both up and down. For it is impossible to conceive of this. Consequently, it is possible to grasp as one motion the one conceived of as indefinitely [extended] upwards and the one conceived of as indefinitely [extended] downwards, even if a thousand times over a thing moving from us towards the places over our heads should arrive at the feet of those above us or a thing moving from us downwards should arrive at the head of those below us.

This article was of interest to me because of it's overall theme and how Sellars related to Lucretius. Lucretius doesn't show up until the end but is considered to be a good example of living philosophy. I like the approach because it doesn't rely on "spiritual exercises" or specific daily practices but is more of an approach to integrating philosophy into one's life.

Beware! He does say that Lucretius' goal was tranquility, but aside from that I found it to be a quick and worthwhile read.

That's a good question! I've been using Kindle for books and Google Play Books for pdfs. I haven't checked to see how well GPB syncs as I read most e-stuff on my tablet. GPB seems to be limited in the file size that it will accept, so I downloaded ReadEra pdf reader on my tablet to read and bookmark the Epicurean Friends version of Lucretius. ReadEra only works on Android though as far as I know.

It would be nice to find a reader for pdfs and epub that works as well as Kindle does for mobi! Plus there's my love/hate feelings toward Amazon....

Here's my two cents:

Sedley at his finest: he discusses how the proem to book 1 is a direct response to Empedocles' poem On Nature and a transition from Empedocles philosophy to that of Epicurus. Then he constructs the contents of Epicurus' On Nature and has a couple of charts showing how this correlates to Lucretius DRN. Later he posits that the final book or two of DRN correlates to the Peripatetic Theophrastus via Epicurus.

He further posits that Lucretius was in the process of a rewrite at the time of his death, and that he had only completed books 1-3. His theory is that Lucretius first put Epicurus On Nature into verse, then was reworking the structure of his poem to fit his goal of persuasion as opposed to Epicurus' goal of exposition. He describes Epicurus' books as the contents of a series of lectures, btw.

As to the plague of Athens, Sedley's theory is that it was Lucretius' initial pass, to be reworked. He presents the overall DRN as a cycle of books beginning with pleasure and ending with pain, and posits that the plague of Athens portion would probably have been reworked to show how an Epicurean deals with pain, similar to Epicurus on his deathbed.

He's kind enough to translate 99% of the Greek and Latin; overall it reads quite well for a layman such as me.

Makes me want to read DRN yet again!