Posts by Godfrey

I see that I was sloppy in my wording!

The Canon and choices and avoidances are not the point of EP but are instrumental. Being instrumental, they are necessary to maximize pleasure (unless one lives a charmed life) with pleasure being the goal. To my understanding if you remove the opportunity to choose, you remove the opportunity to maximize pleasure. Elayne you're correct that this isn't what is spelled out in PD.

Regarding the example of buying a condo: this may reduce the opportunity for choice, but in no way eliminates it. Even after making the purchase there can be continual evaluation as to what might bring the most pleasure or pain: sell it for a profit and buy a more pleasant home, keep it to avoid the pain of moving, remodel it to increase pleasure, sell it because of a more pleasant job opportunity elsewhere, etc etc.

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Without the Canon - the use of one's senses, reactions, and prolepses - there can be no application of Epicurean philosophy in one's life. There is no choice and avoidance. The is no way to determine if you are or are headed in the direction of living a pleasurable life.

This quote of Don's seems like a good summary to me. It addresses hypotheticals and also provides grounds for evaluating a life of "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll."

Though I can't comment on the Greek, I find this a very refreshing translation! Very down to earth in terms of gods and such.

To the extent that this forum is social media, Epicurus would definitely use a smartphone/tablet/computer.

I agree with Elayne's post #22 above. However the definitive term for pleasure/happiness, per the synonyms link in post #21, is actually "cock-a-hoop."

Could happiness be another name for continuous pleasure? Maybe that depends on how one defines happiness. But happiness is quite pleasant. Anyway this would make happiness a feeling and not a concept.

Playing catch-up and digressing to post #4:

Quote from Don

Our cosmos is just a piece of the infinite. So, our cosmos could be both infinite and bounded. Wrap your brain around this one: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/8897…ite-and-bounded

Infinite and bounded, I think, can only be a mathematical abstraction. In my understanding, in order to get an infinite number of atoms (or anything else) into a bounded space you would need infinite divisibility, which Epicurus discounted. Looking at the 0-1 examples in the link, the way they achieve infinity is through infinite divisibility. Epicurus may have been saying that infinite divisibility exists only in the abstract but physically is an absurdity.

Is happiness considered a "state," whereas pleasure can be considered both an "instance" or a "state?" This drifts into the territory of katastematic and kinetic pleasure....

Wouldn't that end or general purpose be pleasure?

Happy New Year!

This is most interesting for me the bigger the time gap: a way to imagine how much information Diogenes of O or Diogenes L may have had regarding Epicurus. Some sense can be had based on what we know of Columbus, etc. Of course there are lots of differences but it's a nice visualization tool.

This is a fairly recent discovery (2019 I think) that has been in the news lately. This link has the best photos that I've seen of it, as well as a video in Italian of the excavation.

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2020/12/food-stand-pompeii/

Don it turns out I've already got that article; guess I need to read it!

From pp 51-2 it appears Sedley is making a case for the idealist view.

I would think that one using the idealist view would need to abide by the idea that nature never furnishes only one thing of a kind, just as they would idealize the gods as blessed and incorruptible. But the suggestion of creating one's own concept of a particular personal god, as a means of practicing the idealist view (if I'm understanding that correctly), is intriguing and not something that I've encountered before.

Don that Sedley sounds worth reading! Any idea what it's titled or where to find it?

For those who are, like me, unfamiliar with apophatic theology, here's the Wikipedia article:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic…that%20is%20God.

Quote from Matt

Essentially Epicurus affirms that there is a God, this God is “immortal and happy” ....

Quote from Matt

...why is God immortal and happy? Why does he never get irritated? Why doesn’t he have any administration? Why doesn’t he interact with humankind?...

Matt, I might be nit-picking but I think there is an important point to make here. Epicurus never referred to "God," always to "the gods."

To my understanding there is never a single instance of one type of entity in the infinite Epicurean universe, so there can't be God, only gods. Missing this detail, even in apophatic theology, opens the door to a more mystical interpretation than what I think Epicurus had in mind.

Even if using the term "God" is force of habit I think it's important to treat it like certain descriptors that are avoided in the racial justice movement. That's probably a bad example: I'm not saying that saying God comes close to a racial slur! But refining one's vocabulary refines one's thinking.

From the middle of column 51 to the end brings to mind the discussion near the end of the Barrett podcast concerning humans being an integral part of a social network (this is only fractionally online ). She and the host discuss how you can contribute either positively or negatively to the network and, over time, you basically reap what you have sown. Epicurus appears to be exemplary in this regard.

As to the preceeding columns, there's quite a bit to digest. Some of it seems to be contradictory to my current understanding. Which makes it quite interesting!

The article by AA Long, "Aisthesis, Prolepsis and Linguistic Theory in Epicurus," makes a case for the repeated exposure theory and together with DeWitt's view makes a good presentation of both sides of the issue. I still haven't read her book but Barrett's work might bring the discussion into our current state of knowledge which seems very promising!

I'm only listening in bits and haven't got that far, but her whole line of research is quite intriguing when compared to the Epicurean perspective. I think I might read her book so I can consider these ideas more fully.

I agree with your take Don. It seems similar to Epicurus' physics in that he seems to have been on the right track, although modern science is fine tuning the details. Once again, it would be nice to have his elaboration on the prolepses to really understand how his canon fits together.

Of course this is the first I've heard of this modern line of inquiry, so it's premature to jump to conclusions. Lots to dig into!