Posts by Joshua

Quote

My rhetoric professor in grad school attributed Epicurus with moderation, which I can understand but I don’t see it as his actual point - more like being (reasonable*) and “sensible” in its classical definition of awareness and affectedness of the senses.

I probably wouldn't express it the following way normally, but since you have posed an interesting question and it can be helpful to think out loud sometimes, I might answer it this way:

I suggest that Epicurus advocated not moderation, but what modern philosophers following Max Weber call instrumental rationality; choices (and avoidances) are considered rational when they are expected to lead to a desired end, which for Epicurus is the end of increasing pleasure and reducing pain.

In any case, welcome!

Quote

First, I must distinguish between that which always is and never becomes and which is apprehended by reason and reflection, and that which always becomes and never is and is conceived by opinion with the help of sense. All that becomes and is created is the work of a cause, and that is fair which the artificer makes after an eternal pattern, but whatever is fashioned after a created pattern is not fair. Is the world created or uncreated?—that is the first question. Created, I reply, being visible and tangible and having a body, and therefore sensible; and if sensible, then created; and if created, made by a cause, and the cause is the ineffable father of all things, who had before him an eternal archetype. For to imagine that the archetype was created would be blasphemy, seeing that the world is the noblest of creations, and God is the best of causes. And the world being thus created according to the eternal pattern is the copy of something; and we may assume that words are akin to the matter of which they speak. What is spoken of the unchanging or intelligible must be certain and true; but what is spoken of the created image can only be probable; being is to becoming what truth is to belief. And amid the variety of opinions which have arisen about God and the nature of the world we must be content to take probability for our rule, considering that I, who am the speaker, and you, who are the judges, are only men; to probability we may attain but no further.

***

Why did the Creator make the world?...He was good, and therefore not jealous, and being free from jealousy he desired that all things should be like himself. Wherefore he set in order the visible world, which he found in disorder. Now he who is the best could only create the fairest; and reflecting that of visible things the intelligent is superior to the unintelligent, he put intelligence in soul and soul in body, and framed the universe to be the best and fairest work in the order of nature, and the world became a living soul through the providence of God.

-Timaeus, Plato, transl. Benjamin Jowett

Quote

So, is there some root Latin that makes this “watching over everything” such an active tense, vs the simple, passive knowing that everything in the universe operates according to its own sentient nature?

That is a good question! I will try to remember to look into this later today.

The thing is, even Aristotle's Physics could be described as a text on metaphysics according to the modern meaning of that term. Both words, physics and metaphysics, had each of them one meaning in antiquity, and have both of them quite another meaning now. In antiquity, both branches were viewed predominately through the lens of logic, and neither of them were subjected to the method of rigorous experimentation against the standards of reproducibility and falsifiability. In modern usage, that method has come to mark out the shifting boundaries between the scientific study of nature and the non-scientific, the latter of which includes both common pseudoscience (the claims of which are usually falsifiable and generally have been falsified) and what we call the philosophical branches of metaphysics, theology, eschatology, etc.--the claims of which are often not falsifiable.

I say 'usually falsifiable' and 'often not falsifiable' because most systems of thought straddle the boundary, the opinions of Stephen J. Gould notwithstanding. For example, the claim in alchemy that lead can be transmuted into gold through basic chemistry (rather than high-energy particle physics) can be tested, has been tested, and has not produced the desired result; however, the corresponding claim in Hermeticism that the divinely-natured human soul can make an analogous spiritual ascent cannot even be tested. This latter claim falls outside of what we would now call physics, but it did not necessarily fall outside of what the Greek philosophers called physics.

All of that is to say that I do not favor a change in nomenclature. Both Aristotle and Epicurus discussed whether motion was possible, and whether anything can come from nothing, and whether atoms and void or love and strife or the four classical elements were the building blocks of nature, and both Aristotle and Epicurus referred to their studies of these questions as physics. We should focus our attention instead on clarifying, when necessary, the distinction between the ancient and the modern meanings of that word.

That was well done, Cassius, and I only have one note; I would suggest replacing the reference to Christian 'inner peace' in section I with a citation instead to Philippians 4:7, and the peace of God, which passeth all understanding. Christianity does not really idealize inner peace, it idealizes obedience.

I think I mentioned this video in the episode;

Quote

Now all goes on without disturbance as far as regards each of those things which may be explained in several ways so as to harmonize with what we perceive, when one admits, as we are bound to do, probable theories about them. But when one accepts one theory and rejects another which harmonizes as well with the phenomenon, it is obvious that he altogether leaves the path of scientific inquiry and has recourse to myth.

***

But to assign a single cause for these occurrences, when phenomena demand several explanations, is madness, and is quite wrongly practiced by persons who are partisans of the foolish notions of astrology, by which they give futile explanations of the causes of certain occurrences, and all the time do not by any means free the divine nature from the burden of responsibilities.

-Epicurus, Letter To Pythocles

Quote

First, I must distinguish between that which always is and never becomes and which is apprehended by reason and reflection, and that which always becomes and never is and is conceived by opinion with the help of sense. All that becomes and is created is the work of a cause, and that is fair which the artificer makes after an eternal pattern, but whatever is fashioned after a created pattern is not fair. Is the world created or uncreated?—that is the first question. Created, I reply, being visible and tangible and having a body, and therefore sensible; and if sensible, then created; and if created, made by a cause, and the cause is the ineffable father of all things, who had before him an eternal archetype. For to imagine that the archetype was created would be blasphemy, seeing that the world is the noblest of creations, and God is the best of causes. And the world being thus created according to the eternal pattern is the copy of something; and we may assume that words are akin to the matter of which they speak. What is spoken of the unchanging or intelligible must be certain and true; but what is spoken of the created image can only be probable; being is to becoming what truth is to belief. And amid the variety of opinions which have arisen about God and the nature of the world we must be content to take probability for our rule, considering that I, who am the speaker, and you, who are the judges, are only men; to probability we may attain but no further.

-Timaeus from Timaeus, Plato

The Internet Classics Archive | The Republic by Plato

Plato's Republic, book VII

I agree with Cassius on pleasure, but I do want to add something relevant to joy. This comes from Julien Offray de la Mettrie's Anti-Seneca; many here will recognize this from Charles's work on the French materialists.

Quote

Nous sommes donc en droit de conclure que, si les joies puisées dans la nature & la raison, sont des crimes, le bonheur des hommes efs d’être criminels.

We are therefore entitled to conclude that, if the joys drawn from nature and reason are crimes, then the happiness of men is to be criminal.

Quote

Trace the line of life backwards, and see it approaching more and more to what we call the purely physical condition. We come at length to those organisms which I have compared to drops of oil suspended in a mixture of alcohol and water. We reach the protogenes of Haeckel, in which we have 'a type distinguishable from a fragment of albumen only by its finely granular character.' Can we pause here? We break a magnet and find two poles in each of its fragments. We continue the process of breaking, but, however small the parts, each carries with it, though enfeebled, the polarity of the whole. And when we can break no longer, we prolong the intellectual vision to the polar molecules. Are we not urged to do something similar in the case of life? Is there not a temptation to close to some extent with Lucretius, when he affirms that 'nature is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself without the meddling of the gods?' or with Bruno, when he declares that Matter is not 'that mere empty capacity which philosophers have pictured her to be, but the universal mother who brings forth all things as the fruit of her own womb?' Believing as I do in the continuity of Nature, I cannot stop abruptly where our microscopes cease to be of use. Here the vision of the mind authoritatively supplements the vision of the eye. By an intellectual necessity I cross the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in that Matter which we, in our ignorance of its latent powers, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of all terrestial Life.

-John Tyndall, Belfast Address, August 1874

Quote

It required some rudeness to disturb with our boat the mirror-like surface of the water, in which every twig and blade of grass was so faithfully reflected; too faithfully indeed for art to imitate, for only Nature may exaggerate herself. The shallowest still water is unfathomable. Wherever the trees and skies are reflected, there is more than Atlantic depth, and no danger of fancy running aground. We notice that it required a separate intention of the eye, a more free and abstracted vision, to see the reflected trees and the sky, than to see the river bottom merely; and so are there manifold visions in the direction of every object, and even the most opaque reflect the heavens from their surface. Some men have their eyes naturally intended to the one and some to the other object.

-Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

Quote

How familiar do you think More might have been with Epicurus?

Thomas More (1478-1535) published Utopia in 1516; for reference, here are some of the relevant texts from antiquity by first Latin translation, first Latin printing, and the first Aldine press edition of the Greek text:

And here is the editor of a 1964 edition [archive.org] of Utopia commenting on More's sources;

So to answer your question, he appears to have been quite familiar with the standard texts on Epicureanism!

Quote

Those two Joshua along with the material on Archimedes we need to come back to next week on the podcast

From the same work of Plutarch linked above:

Quote

And yet Archimedes possessed such a lofty spirit, so profound a soul, and such a wealth of scientific theory, that although his inventions had won for him a name and fame for superhuman sagacity, he would not consent to leave behind him any treatise on this subject, but regarding the work of an engineer and every art that ministers to the needs of life as ignoble and vulgar, he devoted his earnest efforts only to those studies the subtlety and charm of which are not affected by the claims of necessity. These studies, he thought, are not to be compared with any others; in them the subject matter vies with the demonstration, the former supplying grandeur and beauty, the latter precision and surpassing power. For it is not possible to find in geometry more profound and difficult questions treated in simpler and purer terms. Some attribute this success to his natural endowments; others think it due to excessive labour that everything he did seemed to have been performed without labour and with ease. For no one could by his own efforts discover the proof, and yet as soon as he learns it from him, he thinks he might have discovered it himself; so smooth and rapid is the path by which he leads one to the desired conclusion. 6 And therefore we may not disbelieve the stories told about him, how, under the lasting charm of some familiar and domestic Siren, he forgot even his food and neglected the care of his person; and how, when he was dragged by main force, as he often was, to the place for bathing and anointing his body, he would trace geometrical figures in the ashes, and draw lines with his finger in the oil with which his body was anointed, being possessed by a great delight, and in very truth a captive of the Muses. And although he made many excellent discoveries, he is said to have asked his kinsmen and friends to place over the grave where he should be buried a cylinder enclosing a sphere, with an inscription giving the proportion by which the containing solid exceeds the contained.

Robert From the Thread on Thomas More's Utopia:

Quote

[Utopus] made a solemn and severe law against such as should so far degenerate from the dignity of human nature, as to think that our souls died with our bodies, or that the world was governed by chance, without a wise overruling Providence: for they all formerly believed that there was a state of rewards and punishments to the good and bad after this life; and they now look on those that think otherwise as scarce fit to be counted men, since they degrade so noble a being as the soul, and reckon it no better than a beast’s: thus they are far from looking on such men as fit for human society, or to be citizens of a well-ordered commonwealth; since a man of such principles must needs, as oft as he dares do it, despise all their laws and customs: for there is no doubt to be made, that a man who is afraid of nothing but the law, and apprehends nothing after death, will not scruple to break through all the laws of his country, either by fraud or force, when by this means he may satisfy his appetites.

Robert From the Thread on Thomas More's Utopia:

Quote

[Utopus] made a solemn and severe law against such as should so far degenerate from the dignity of human nature, as to think that our souls died with our bodies, or that the world was governed by chance, without a wise overruling Providence: for they all formerly believed that there was a state of rewards and punishments to the good and bad after this life; and they now look on those that think otherwise as scarce fit to be counted men, since they degrade so noble a being as the soul, and reckon it no better than a beast’s: thus they are far from looking on such men as fit for human society, or to be citizens of a well-ordered commonwealth; since a man of such principles must needs, as oft as he dares do it, despise all their laws and customs: for there is no doubt to be made, that a man who is afraid of nothing but the law, and apprehends nothing after death, will not scruple to break through all the laws of his country, either by fraud or force, when by this means he may satisfy his appetites.

Quote

For the art of mechanics, now so celebrated and admired, was first originated by Eudoxus and Archytas, who embellished geometry with its subtleties, and gave to problems incapable of proof by word and diagram, a support derived from mechanical illustrations that were patent to the senses. For instance, in solving the problem of finding two mean proportional lines, a necessary requisite for many geometrical figures, both mathematicians had recourse to mechanical arrangements, adapting to their purposes certain intermediate portions of curved lines and sections. But Plato was incensed at this, and inveighed against them as corrupters and destroyers of the pure excellence of geometry, which thus turned her back upon the incorporeal things of abstract thought and descended to the things of sense, making use, moreover, of objects which required much mean and manual labour. For this reason mechanics was made entirely distinct from geometry, and being for a long time ignored by philosophers, came to be regarded as one of the military arts.

-Plutarch, Life of Marcellus

Quote

For the art of mechanics, now so celebrated and admired, was first originated by Eudoxus and Archytas, who embellished geometry with its subtleties, and gave to problems incapable of proof by word and diagram, a support derived from mechanical illustrations that were patent to the senses. For instance, in solving the problem of finding two mean proportional lines, a necessary requisite for many geometrical figures, both mathematicians had recourse to mechanical arrangements, adapting to their purposes certain intermediate portions of curved lines and sections. But Plato was incensed at this, and inveighed against them as corrupters and destroyers of the pure excellence of geometry, which thus turned her back upon the incorporeal things of abstract thought and descended to the things of sense, making use, moreover, of objects which required much mean and manual labour. For this reason mechanics was made entirely distinct from geometry, and being for a long time ignored by philosophers, came to be regarded as one of the military arts.

-Plutarch, Life of Marcellus

Quote

Do you mean Lucian's view as elsewhere stated? Because I was taking the thrust of his position as you stated to be applicable to Epicurus' school as well as other ones.

I was primarily thinking of this other letter, which is the most relevant and accessible of Lucian's works that I've read. His expressed admiration for Epicurus in this letter may be a courtesy to his Epicurean correspondent, but I personally think Lucian found Epicureanism less exasperating than some of the other schools.

Letter to Celsus, Alexander the Oracle-Monger:

Alexander, the Oracle-Monger, the False Prophet | Alexander [The Lucian of Samosata Project]

That one is a fun read, I definitely recommend it!

I'm not sure I succeeded in using "far fewer words", but here it is

I didn't listen to it, but I did finally read this dialogue yesterday for the first time, and I did find it interesting.

Dramatis Personae

Lycinus is generally regarded as an authorial self-insert for Lucian, and like the author he is satirical, skeptical, and sarcastic.

Hermotimus is a novice Stoic, full of admiration for the masters of that sect, but considering himself to be still toiling on the lower slopes of Mount Virtue while the leading lights he follows are enraptured with bliss at the summits.

The Argument

The dialogue takes its beginning from a problem suggested by Lycinus. This is the problem: suppose you want to get to Corinth, but have never been there yourself. There are many roads leading out of the city you are in now, but you do not know which of them, if any, lead on to Corinth. By each road there is a plausible-seeming, respectable-looking man who claims that this road, the one he stands by, is the one that will get you there.

However;

Quote

Lycinus: I find that each of them, as well as his guide, has tried one only [road], which he now recommends and will have to be the only one leading to the city. Whether he tells the truth I have no means of knowing; that he has attained some end, and seen some city, I may perhaps allow; but whether he saw the right one, or whether, Corinth being the real goal, he got to Babylon and thought he had seen Corinth—that is still undecided; for surely every one who has seen a city has not seen Corinth, unless Corinth is the only city there is. But my greatest difficulty of all is the absolute certainty that the true road is one; for Corinth is one, and the other roads lead anywhere but to Corinth, though there may be people deluded enough to suppose that the North road and the South road lead equally to Corinth.

Let Corinth be Wisdom; a thousand guides claim to show the way, and by a thousand different roads. Because you have not known Wisdom, and are not yet Wise, your search of it is vexed an intransigent difficulty; how can one who is not Wise find the right road that leads to Wisdom?

By what standard will he judge each road on offer? He cannot take them all; in the course of a whole human life, there isn't the time to follow every road to its end. He cannot ask a guide, because even if he assumes that they are not wilfully deceiving him, they all say different things and cannot all be right. It's really important he gets this right, because some roads lead on to disaster. Some might lead him farther away from Wisdom than he is even now.

An obvious comparison can be made to Matthew 7: 13-14;

Quote

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."

So what, do we just take this random guy at his word? Why? Because he said so? Or, rather, because he was reported to have said so by some other random guy, who only wrote this after his subject was dead?

Of course not. It's not a reasonable thing to ask. "I had rather be a dog, and bay the moon, / Than such a Roman" (Brutus, Julius Caesar)

Objections

Hermotimus does not immediately see the difficulty. He raises several objections:

You don't have to drink a whole jar of wine to know the quality; you only need a small taste. And so with Wisdom.

• But a jar of wine is all the same; but the schools of philosophy each make a variety of claims, and you cannot possible judge them all until you have heard them all.

Well, suppose you were to judge the school not by sampling its doctrines, but by the character of the man who leads the school.

• Two problems; first, the same problem as before. How does one who lacks Wisdom judge the character of the man who claims to possess it? Second; How do you know that your master is not of one character in your company, or in public, and of quite a different character entirely in private? You cannot study him at all times; he may seem virtuous before you, but behave with pettiness, anger, drunkenness, and jealousy in other circumstances.

And there are other objections that Hermotimus does not raise, but which might be raised:

For instance, one ought to be able to quickly rule out one school or one thinker if they were clearly wrong on an important point, or were shown to be inaccurate with regard to some fact or other, or were found to have employed a faulty syllogism. If someone tells me that in his system the Sun goes around the Earth, when I know it to be otherwise, I can disregard what he says without further explanation. He is unreliable.

• And yet, if you do not understand his system in general outline as well as in the particulars, it is possible that you have merely misunderstood him. Or that elsewhere he resolves the matter by another doctrine. For example, I do not believe that in the Catholic sacrament of the Eucharist wine really does become blood. But if it is further explained to me that only the underlying and undetectable substance of the wine turns to blood, and that the surface appearance, scent, and taste of the wine remains unchanged, I may find it challenging to refute this metaphysic.

Conclusion

Hermotimus is finally won over. Philosophy is a game for fools and liars and something worse.

Quote

Hermotimus. You are quite right. And now I will be off to metamorphose myself. When we next meet, there will be no long, shaggy beard, no artificial composure; I shall be natural, as a gentleman should. I may go as far as a fashionable coat, by way of publishing my renunciation of nonsense. I only wish there were an emetic that would purge out every doctrine they have instilled into me; I assure you, if I could reverse Chrysippus's plan with the hellebore, and drink forgetfulness, not of the world but of Stoicism, I would not think twice about it. Well, Lycinus, I owe you a debt indeed; I was being swept along in a rough turbid torrent, unresisting, drifting with the stream; when lo, you stood there and fished me out, a true deus ex machina. I have good enough reason, I think, to shave my head like the people who get clear off from a wreck; for I am to make votive offerings to-day for the dispersion of that thick cloud which was over my eyes. Henceforth, if I meet a philosopher on my walks (and it will not be with my will), I shall turn aside and avoid him as I would a mad dog.

My thoughts

I wanted you to have a normal life. That's something that you can't have when Rick shows up. Everything real turns fake, everything right is wrong, all you know is that you know nothing and he knows everything. And, well... well, he's not a villain, Summer, but he shouldn't be your hero. He's more like a demon, or a super fucked-up god.

-Morty Smith, Rick and Morty; The Rickshank Rickdemption

"Do they not Epicurise gloriously?" "Yes, if coming often to the powdering tub [for a syphilis remedy] be doing so."

-The Epicurean, Desiderius Erasmus

"ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. it is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus. if it could be understood it would not answer their purpose. their security is in their faculty of shedding darkness, like the cuttlefish, thro’ the element in which they move, and making it impenetrable to the eye of a pursuing enemy."

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp, 30 July 1816

Ok, now these are my thoughts;

Lucian achieved something remarkable. A Syrian boy, born in Mesopotamia, probably tutored in Greek as a second language, he went on to become one of the most successful and enduring writers in that tongue of his age. His influence, through devoted admirers like François Rabelais (Gargantua and Pantagruel), Desiderius Erasmus (In Praise of Folly), Thomas More (Utopia), and Jonathan Swift (A Modest Proposal), has set the standard for our conception of modern satire as a literary form.

He sparred with conmen, mountebanks, flatterers, and charlatans. His skepticism is not the tired, stale and rigidly syllogistic or geometric mental emptiness of the Xenos and Stilpos of centuries prior. It is a lively, vivacious, and penetrating spirit of genuine doubt and uncertainty that drives his work: he reminds me of Columbo raising two fingers and a cigarette as he is nearly out of the room, intoning almost as an afterthought;

"Just one more thing..."

Just one more thing; how can you be sure your philosopher isn't lying to your face? How can you be certain that the travelogue you just paid real money for in the marketplace isn't a pack of fables from beginning to end? How can you know that the oracle who appears to be flogging you for all the gold you can carry isn't prying open your seals, reading your secrets, inquiring after your confidants, and showering you with any line of bullshit he can think of just to keep you on the hook?

For me, the value of this dialogue is in the the following lesson; the very same arguments that I employ myself against claims of revealed religion can just as easily be turned against me. Indeed, they have been anticipated for use against me since long before I started using them myself.

Was Lucian an Epicurean? Well, probably not. I detect in him a sympathy for our school, and in this very dialogue he makes a very Epicurean point about the misuse of geometry by philosophers, a subject that I covered all too hastily in a video last January. In a letter to his friend Celsus on Alexander the false oracle, he speaks of Epicurus and Metrodorus with great admiration. This is probably because his correspondant was an Epicurean, but it may also have been genuine comraderie; the Epicureans at least saw right through many of the same scams he did. They were devoid of superstition, sought only causes in nature to explain phenomena in nature, and went for humble pleasure as their good rather than high-minded self-aggrandizing virtue.

Whatever else he was, Lucian offers an indispensable view into the Epicureanism of Asia Minor in the second century.