Posts by Godfrey

During the political wackiness in the month of July 2024 in the United States, I was giving some thought to how an Epicurean might best apply the philosophy to their life when the world around them seems to be spinning out of control. But times of upheaval are many and varied: they can include political hostility or uncertainty, natural disasters, personal or family tragedies and many similar events. Following is a loose list of thoughts to hopefully stimulate thought and discussion on how the categories of desire can be useful, perhaps therapeutic, in confronting chaos. At the moment, I haven’t got much further than compiling this list. And of course many of the questions will only apply to a particular type of upheaval, and the answers will be different for everyone and in each situation.

SYNOPSIS OF THE CATEGORIES OF DESIRE:

Natural and necessary desires: a) some for happiness; b) some for physical health; c) some for life itself

Natural and unnecessary desires: a) due to groundless opinion; b) don’t bring pain if unfulfilled; c) require intense exertion

Unnatural and unnecessary desires: a) due to groundless opinion; b) don’t bring pain if unfulfilled; c) hard to achieve; 4) seem to produce harm

EPICUREAN EXERCISES - CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS, EACH AS A SEPARATE EXERCISE:

What type of desire is it to wish for my favorite sports team to win? How can I most fruitfully respond to this desire?

What type of desire is it to wish for my preferred political candidate or party to win? How can I most fruitfully respond to this desire?

What type of desire is it to wish for safety in the event of a natural disaster? How can I most fruitfully respond to this desire?

What type of desire is it to wish for the health of a loved one? How can I most fruitfully respond to this desire?

What type of desire is it to wish to live to the ripe old age of 150? How can I most fruitfully respond to this desire?

What type of desire is it to wish for a loved one to live to the ripe old age of 150? How can I most fruitfully respond to this desire?

MISCELLANEOUS QUESTIONS:

How much of the upheaval is hostile to me as belonging to a particular group?

What are the potential fruits and harms of looking out for the interests and/or safety of people or communities outside of my particular “tribe?”

At what point does engagement cause harm? To whom? What kind of harm: mental, physical, economic or other?

At what point does lack of engagement cause harm? To whom? What kind of harm: mental, physical, economic or other?

At what point may the upheaval affect my safety or the safety of my loved ones?

Is it natural and necessary to assure the health, safety and well-being of those who are important to me?

How can I maintain my ataraxia while still being concerned about the health and well-being of your loved one(s)? Is this the objective of Epicurean practice?

How can I maintain a balance of pleasure over pain during a particular crisis? Is this the objective of Epicurean practice?

Is my goal to maintain ataraxia, or a balance of pleasure over pain during the particular time of upheaval, or is to survive in the most prudent manner to maintain a balance of pleasure over pain over time? Or both?

What does PD04 have to say about this, if anything? "Pain does not last continuously in the flesh; instead, the sharpest pain lasts the shortest time, a pain that exceeds bodily pleasure lasts only a few days, and diseases that last a long time involve delights that exceed their pains." (St-Andre translation). Does this apply to mental pain as well, or does this imply that I can have a stable mental state in times of adversity?

I'm realizing that this has become fairly wide ranging.... In the event that any discussion comes of this, it might be best to manage it in various new threads which link back to this one. Anyway, that's all I've got!

Coincidentally I've begun reading The Longevity Diet by Valter Longo from the USC Longevity Center. Although I'm not sure what to make of the diet, the first two chapters struck me as interesting when considering the Epicurean gods and theories as to how they might maintain their incorruptibility.

Unfortunately I'm not able to provide a more detailed analysis at this time, but it's worth a look in this regard.

What is a good Epicurean exercise that you can do using a smartwatch? Simple!

Stop wearing your smartwatch for 1 week. Notice and respond to your sensations and feelings. And your preconceptions.

Enjoy!

So if I'm reading correctly Eikadistes , you're saying that "amount" isn't a part of the original Greek? Am I understanding that correctly?

(Shouldn't the big jar be pouring into the little jar?)

I agree with Cassius ' conclusion in post #3. The way I think of PD19 is: a life consists of a finite amount of time. For an individual, the amount of pleasure in their life will be limited by the length of their life. Infinite time is therefore irrelevant to calculating the amount of pleasure in a particular life. This interpretation, to me, is confirmed by reading the PD in context as Don has provided.

The same limit would apply to pain: one needn't fear an eternity of pain in the sixth circle of hell. Your lifetime is finite, and all of your pleasure and pain will be contained within that finite lifetime.

Happy Twentieth, all!

It's said that young Epicurus wrestled with the problem of Chaos. This would naturally have lead him to the study of infinity and beginnings, and perhaps limits.

I vote for (1) and (2), although I don't think that even modern physicists agree on the answer to this! I'm curious as to what others have to say on the matter!

It seems to me that Epicurus would have noted that you don't see any naturally occurring exact duplications and factored that into his thinking. He would have been aware of identical twins, however, so that begs the question as to the depth of his knowledge of them. Even then, I think that he would have considered identical twins as a class, meaning that there would be infinite examples of identical twins and not of a specific twin or set of twins.

For an entertaining and sometimes amusing look at (3) in particular, and possibly (4), I recommend watching the last few Spider-Man films, both live action and animated. Also, Marvel's Doctor Strange movies. In fact, Marvel has been exploring the "multiverse" idea in several of their franchises.

Then there's Nietzche's eternal recurrence. I'm not too familiar with it, but it seems to me that this was just a thought experiment and not a serious proposal of the way things are. But I could be wrong on that.

Quote from Cassius

I don't really know if it adds anything to talk about "dichotomies" if that is all the word means. It's the details behind that which will need to be examined

That is exactly my point: the only reason to mention dichotomies is that "mortal" and "immortal" are seemingly set up as opposites (what I'm calling dichotomous) by Cicero. I guess the point I would make is that, after reasoning it out, setting them up in that way is meaningless and therefore, to me, Cicero is setting his argument up in a way that is basically irrelevant. However, if there's textual evidence that Epicurus set up his argument in the same way, then I'd wonder whether I'm missing something.

As for the possible immortality of the gods, isn't it stated somewhere that Epicurus proposed that the gods are made of a different type of matter? I'm again exposing my ignorance here: I can't point to a source of this idea, and it's not something that I would posit. But I can see how someone who was developing atomic theory more or less from scratch might consider such an idea if they were convinced of the existence of material, immortal (and blissful) beings with no beginning and no end, in the same way that atoms have no beginning or end. These beings would have all of the characteristics that we commonly attribute to them in our discussions, but they would at the same time individually have no beginning or end due to the type of matter from which they're made. So my question is whether there is any credible textual evidence that Epicurus considered this to be a valid possibility. 2300 years ago this may have seemed reasonable, even if it doesn't seem so to us moderns.

At any rate, I'm not espousing this idea, I'm just trying to flesh out the arguments and the associated reasoning.

Since my mind is spiraling like a balloon spewing air....

Could it be that Epicurus believed in beings which are immortal, not just imperturbable or incorruptible as we interpret them? We think in terms of a Big Bang and an expanding universe whereas he was doing some of the original reasoning regarding infinity. I seem to recall that he s the gods as being made of something special, in addition to living in the intermundia. Thinking as someone living 2000 years ago, why wouldn't this have existed infinitely into the past as well as the future?

OK, I need a nap now.

Quote from Cassius

Right now my best guesstimate on that is that of things that are possible, in an infinite and eternal universe, though in any locality some things are more common than others, there is -- at once or over time -- an infinite number of each and every possible thing, and "infinite number" is equal to "infinite number."

To paraphrase, for anything that is possible in an infinite and eternal universe, there is an infinite number of that thing. From that it can be said that anything that exists, exists in the same quantity as any other thing spread throughout the universe. Infinite bananas, infinite 1965 Mustangs, infinite deathless beings....

I just had to type this in order to wrap my head around it.

So, although it's presented as a dichotomy, an equal number of perishable and imperishable beings really isn't a dichotomy. It's not even a spectrum. We know that there are perishable beings, and we can posit that there are imperishable beings by reasoning about a spectrum of beings with varying perishability. Assuming from this that there are imperishable beings, the number of them will be infinite, just like the number of perishable beings or the number of pencils. Put another way, the number of bananas cannot be less than the number of monkeys. The fact that monkeys eat bananas means nothing in this regard.

Another question regards "two alternatives equally possible." What are the relative quantities of two alternatives that are not equally possible? Wouldn't they still be equal as both are infinite in number? As long as one of a thing exists, there are an infinite number of that thing since there is never just one of any thing. Is this correct? The degree of possibility shouldn't enter into it. This in fact would be a potential dichotomy: either something exists, or it doesn't. If it doesn't there are none of it, if it does there are the same number of it as there are of any other thing, which is an infinite number.

Quote

By this Velleius seems to mean a law of averages or chances; the law, namely, that of two alternatives equally possible, each will occur with equal frequency if an infinite number of cases be taken.

I finally realized what it is that I can't reconcile about isonomia, at least as presented by the great deceiver Cicero. As presented, it appears to depend on examining dichotomies. But, in general, I don't think that infinity implies dichotomies other than as described in Newton's laws. Take the gods, for example: I think that we all agree that there is the possibility of a spectrum of beings, some of which may be considered to be lower and some higher. But lower how? Higher how? And how do you compare theoretical quantities in a spectrum? Because Cicero (as Vellius) is comparing "an equal number" of mortals and immortals. How do you split a spectrum into a dichotomy?

Even thinking of "mortal" and "immortal" as possibilities sets up a logical fallacy. Since there is nothing immortal other than atoms and void (and you can't even accurately say that there is an equal quantity of atoms and void), using the word immortal is inaccurate as we've often discussed on the forum. So we're left with living things: how do you split living things into two categories? The only operation that seems to make sense is to chunk the spectrum into several categories, then say that there is an equal possibility of each category occurring. And one or more of those categories may have figured out how to live forever (give or take). But that isn't at all what Cicero (as Vellius) is saying. He's saying that for every mortal there is an immortal. More logically, I suspect that what he's really saying is that for everything natural there is something supernatural. That's his agenda here, that there's an earthly realm and a supernatural realm. And we have few if any other sources to compare his take on isonomia with, so as so often with Cicero, we're sent down a rabbit hole trying to make sense of his words.

In terms of isonomia, comparing forces such as creation and destruction makes intuitive sense to me. But comparing quantities of things does not, at least in the way that Cicero has done. And it must always be remembered that Cicero has an agenda, and that his agenda is not favorable to Epicurus.

Quote from Cassius

We could probably go on and on with textual citations, but if "the production of harm of any kind to any person" were considered to be an ironclad Epicurean rule I cannot see the rest of the philosophy making consistent sense.

That certainly wouldn't be an ironclad rule: we don't even have that rule against harming ourselves! (PD10) I'm seeing the phrasing as just not placing a limit on the desire being evaluated in terms of who or what one might use in their evaluation. On one level it implies that we might wish to evaluate how any "collateral damage" might come back to bite us. On another level it works along with PD05 in including the instrumental use of virtues.

OK. So. To expose my ignorance, I'm stuck on one thing regarding isonomia:

It's evident that there is a hierarchy of beings (unless there are things we don't know about "lower" creatures which make them godlike to us ). It's also evident (I think) that there is no such thing as "perfect" in a material universe. Given these, and infinite time, how is there even a "best" of a given thing, or an apex of a hierarchy? Accepting that the quantity of forms is limited (per Lucretius' quoted above), then perhaps at a given time there may be something that might possibly be considered an apex of a given set. But as time continues infinitely, how does that remain at the apex? First, the thing would have to be immortal; this would seem to be a logical consequence in order for something to have even a chance of remaining at the top. But as other things evolve, it would seem that odds are that the former apex would eventually not be at the apex anymore.

A sports analogy: sports leagues are fixed quantities, at least for a time. Or the same thing with countries... No team or country ever has remained at the top of the heap for more than a relatively short time.

Anyway, I'm trying to reason this out as I type and my mind is melting. So I'll consider this my limit for now. But for clarity, this is not an attempt to argue against the gods, this is an attempt to make sense of this one (limited) aspect of isonomia and infinity.

PD26: The desires that do not bring pain when they go unfulfilled are not necessary; indeed they are easy to reject if they are hard to achieve or if they seem to produce harm. (St-Andre translation)

This PD consistently ends with “seems to produce harm” in all translations included in @Nate 's compilation (as always, thanks Nate!). To me, this implies personal responsibility beyond oneself as it doesn't have wording to limit the potential harm produced to the particular individual or limit it in any other way. We often discuss the effect of the pleasure/pain of our friends on our own pleasure/pain but, if I'm reading this correctly, this goes way beyond that. In so doing, it implies a sense of responsibility to "do no harm" that extends well beyond the self-centered hedonism described by the opponents of Epicurus.

Beckwith has another book titled Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia. I don't know if this covers your specific topic but it might be of interest.

"Apperception" is an intriguing word that I've not given much attention to. Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia:

In psychology, apperception is "the process by which new experience is assimilated to and transformed by the residuum of past experience of an individual to form a new whole".^[2] In short, it is to perceive new experience in relation to past experience. The term is found in the early psychologies of Herbert Spencer, Hermann Lotze, and Wilhelm Wundt. It originally means passing the threshold into consciousness, i.e., to perceive. But the percept is changed when reaching consciousness due to its entry into an already present interpretive context; thus it is not perceived but apperceived.

According to Johann Friedrich Herbart, apperception is that process by which an aggregate or "mass" of presentations becomes systematized (apperceptions-system) by the accretion of new elements, either sense-given or as a product of the inner workings of the mind. He thus emphasizes in apperception the connection with the self as resulting from the sum of antecedent experience. Hence in education the teacher should fully acquaint himself with the mental development of the pupil, in order that he may make full use of what the pupil already knows.^[1]

Alfred Adler used the notion of apperception to explain certain principles of perception in child psychology. A child perceives different situations not as they actually exist, but by means of the biases prism of their personal interests, in other words, according to their personal apperception scheme.^[5]

Apperception is thus a general term for all mental processes in which a presentation is brought into connection with an already existent and systematized mental conception, and thereby is classified, explained or, in a word, understood; e.g. a new scientific phenomenon is explained in the light of phenomena already analysed and classified. The whole intelligent life of man is, consciously or unconsciously, a process of apperception, in as much as every act of attention involves the appercipient process.

It seems to have some potential overlap with pattern recognition, although some (such as Wundt) think of it as a conscious process. I'm not sure if it's helpful or not to examine the word further, but it does seem to at least have some of the same issues as prolepsis in terms of pinning down a definition.

Good tidings!

Quote from UnPaid_Landlord

Epicurean said “death is nothing to us “ but he also said “think on death”

So always keep in mind these 5 remembrances, not to feel fear but to always remind you that this life is all you have, and to make best use of it :-

I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.

I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health.

I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.

All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change

My actions are my only true belongings and I can't escape their consequences.

(not a divine law like karma but mental anxiety, the fear of getting caught, the guilt etc )

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I've posted a potentially more Epicurean take on this here:

Post

Epicurean contemplation of death: write a will

This can be thought of as a different type of memento mori and a much more pleasant way to consider death than some Eastern methods, in particular the contemplation of the body in various stages of decay. Further, we have textual evidence that Epicurus went through this exercise, although that evidence doesn’t provide particular context as I recall.

Writing a will isn’t a one-and-done thing: it should be periodically updated as one’s circumstances change. And it may involve the more…

Godfrey

July 5, 2024 at 4:36 PM

This can be thought of as a different type of memento mori and a much more pleasant way to consider death than some Eastern methods, in particular the contemplation of the body in various stages of decay. Further, we have textual evidence that Epicurus went through this exercise, although that evidence doesn’t provide particular context as I recall.

Writing a will isn’t a one-and-done thing: it should be periodically updated as one’s circumstances change. And it may involve the more elaborate exercise of putting together or revising an estate plan, depending on one’s circumstances.

There’s more to this than just thinking about one’s demise. It can also extend, say, to the consideration of the categories of desire. What is natural and necessary, natural and unnecessary, and/or unnatural when thinking about one’s length and quality of life? All three categories come into play, and in contemplating this one can also gain a greater appreciation and understanding of the three categories and how they many apply to one’s life. For instance, to what lengths would one go to improve one’s health or to prolong one’s life? At what point might doing so involve an inordinate amount of mental and/or physical distress, and at what point might this distress interfere with one’s well-being?

Since this exercise, by its nature, involves thinking about spouses, children, and what may remain when one is no more, it also touches on the controversy as to whether or not Epicurus espoused (as it were) marriage and having children. The textual evidence isn’t clear but, as with all things, one must apply the philosophy to one’s own life in order to get a fuller understanding of it and to make it useful. Knowing that at some point either one’s spouse or oneself is going to die, how do the categories of desire apply to that knowledge? Likewise, knowing that one can only be as happy as one’s unhappiest child, and that one only has limited control over such happiness, how do the categories of desire apply?

Or consider the Stoic treatment of what’s in one’s control or not in one’s control. Is that similar to what is being thought about in this exercise? What is the end result of each approach? Which brings the most complete happiness?

For reference:

PD21. One who perceives the limits of life knows how easy it is to expel the pain produced by a lack of something and to make one's entire life complete; so that there is no need for the things that are achieved through struggle. [Peter St-Andre note: The word ἀγών, translated here as "struggle", originally referred to the contests pursued by athletes at public festivals such as the Olympic games; Epicurus is not necessarily counselling against personal discipline (such as that involved in learning true philosophy), but against the trials and dangers of action in the public arena.]

PD29. Among desires, some are natural and necessary, some are natural and unnecessary, and some are unnatural and unnecessary (arising instead from groundless opinion).

PD26. The desires that do not bring pain when they go unfulfilled are not necessary; indeed they are easy to reject if they are hard to achieve or if they seem to produce harm.

PD30. Among natural desires, those that do not bring pain when unfulfilled and that require intense exertion arise from groundless opinion; and such desires fail to be stamped out not by nature but because of the groundless opinions of humankind.

LM127-128 ...keep in mind that some desires are natural whereas others are groundless; that among the natural desires some are natural and necessary whereas others are merely natural; and that among the necessary desires some are necessary for happiness, some for physical health, and some for life itself. The steady contemplation of these facts enables you to understand everything that you accept or reject in terms of the health of the body and the serenity of the soul — since that is the goal of a completely happy life.

Here I’ve just been thinking about this in terms of the categories of desire, but the subject obviously doesn’t stop there! For starters, much more of the Letter to Menoikeus applies, as do other PDs.