Posts by Joshua

We saw a bit when we went north of town, these are from a three or four second exposure.

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Maybe! The problem is I remember so little--only the rough outline of a passing vignette...

I think;

-That it was a poem (rough start, I know!)

-The poem was written by a British man.

-And was written in the Victorian period or earlier.

-The speaker of the poem is intoxicated, possibly by opium or laudanum, or maybe by absinthe or wine. In any case, there's delirium.

-The speaker meets an 'exotic' man, and tries to speak to him.

-When English fails, the speaker switches to ancient Greek, possibly by recitating a few lines from Homer.

That's all I've got! I thought it was Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859), who wrote Confessions of an English Opium Eater, but he was an essayist. His Greek, however, was very good.

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I finally found it, and it was in De Quincey's book.

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My knowledge of the Oriental tongues is not remarkably extensive, being indeed confined to two words—the Arabic word for barley and the Turkish for opium (madjoon), which I have learned from Anastasius; and as I had neither a Malay dictionary nor even Adelung’s Mithridates, which might have helped me to a few words, I addressed him in some lines from the Iliad, considering that, of such languages as I possessed, Greek, in point of longitude, came geographically nearest to an Oriental one. He worshipped me in a most devout manner, and replied in what I suppose was Malay. In this way I saved my reputation with my neighbours, for the Malay had no means of betraying the secret.

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CASSIUS: Be thou my witness that against my will, | As Pompey was, am I compell'd to set | Upon one battle all our liberties. | You know that I held Epicurus strong | And his opinion: now I change my mind, | And partly credit things that do presage

This apparent change of heart at witnessing the allegedly supernatural also echoes Horace's repudiation of Epicureanism;

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A remiss and irregular worshiper of the gods, while I professed the errors of a senseless philosophy, I am now obliged to set sail back again, and to renew the course that I had deserted. For Jupiter, who usually cleaves the clouds with his gleaming lightning, lately drove his thundering horses and rapid chariot through the clear serene; which the sluggish earth, and wandering rivers; at which Styx, and the horrid seat of detested Tænarus, and the utmost boundary of Atlas were shaken. The Deity is able to make exchange between the highest and the lowest, and diminishes the exalted, bringing to light the obscure; rapacious fortune, with a shrill whizzing, has borne off the plume from one head, and delights in having placed it on another.

-Odes, Book I Ode 34

Samuel Butler's translation of The Iliad, of Vulcan forging a shield for Achilles in imitation of creation;

Compare the language used by Homer with that of Velleius;

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For with what eyes of the mind was your Plato able to see that workhouse of such stupendous toil, in which he makes the world to be modelled and built by God? What materials, what tools, what bars, what machines, what servants, were employed in so vast a work? How could the air, fire, water, and earth pay obedience and submit to the will of the architect? From whence arose those five forms, of which the rest were composed, so aptly contributing to frame the mind and produce the senses? It is tedious to go through all, as they are of such a sort that they look more like things to be desired than to be discovered.

But, what is more remarkable, he gives us a world which has been not only created, but, if I may so say, in a manner formed with hands, and yet he says it is eternal. Do you conceive him to have the least skill in natural philosophy who is capable of thinking anything to be everlasting that had a beginning? For what can possibly ever have been put together which cannot be dissolved again? Or what is there that had a beginning which will not have an end? If your Providence, Lucilius, is the same as Plato’s God, I ask you, as before, who were the assistants, what were the engines, what was the plan and preparation of the whole work? If it is not the same, then why did she make the world mortal, and not everlasting, like Plato’s God?

The nature of things: a didactic poem : Lucretius Carus, Titus : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

In blank verse

archive.org

This is John Mason Good's introduction to his translation of Lucretius, where he expresses on page lxv the view that the Epicureans believed in a First Cause or Prime Mover, and that it was this deity that created the lower order of gods that dwell in the intermundia.

I can also recommend Mitchell and Webb for sketch comedy!

Regarding Plato's forms, Fry and Laurie have an amusing take on it near the end of this video.

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Did Epicurus structure the Garden as a cult to himself? Well... He did institute the celebration of his birthday during his lifetime. He did institute the 20th celebration each month as a celebration of himself and Metrodorus... like the other monthly celebrations of the gods like Apollo, Aphrodite, etc. The question would have to be asked if he instituted those celebrations at the request of his students or did his student request to celebrate him and he provided a structure for them.

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A quick thought prompted by Don's post: did Epicurus create a cult around himself?

Did Plato? Aristotle? Epictetus? (&c) They were all the commanding personalities of their schools. Was Epicurus perhaps making his school friendlier, less intimidating? One way of doing that may have been the practice of monthly celebrations. In other words, practices that may seem cultish today may have served functions of which we are completely unaware.

I was somewhat interested to learn, after reading Cicero's condemnation on this point, that Plotinus--the founder of Neoplatonism in the 3rd century AD--was adamant that his birthday not be celebrated, and that his portrait not be carved or painted;

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Plotinus, the philosopher our contemporary, seemed ashamed of being in the body.

So deeply rooted was this feeling that he could never be induced to tell of his ancestry, his parentage, or his birthplace.

He showed, too, an unconquerable reluctance to sit to a painter of a sculptor, and when Amelius persisted in urging him to allow of a portrait being made he asked him, 'Is it not enough to carry about this image in which nature has enclosed us? Do you really think I must also consent to leave, as a desired spectacle to posterity, an image of the image?'

In view of this determined refusal Amelius brought his friend Carterius, the best artist of the day, to the Conferences, which were open to every comer, and saw to it that by long observation of the philosopher he caught his most striking personal traits. From the impressions thus stored in mind the artist drew a first sketch; Amelius made various suggestions towards bringing our the resemblance, and in this way, without the knowledge of Plotinus, the genius of Carterius gave us a lifelike portrait. [...] Counting sixty-six years back from the second year of Claudius, we can fix Plotinus' birth at the thirteenth year of Severus (A.D. 204-5); but he never disclosed the month or day. This was because he did not desire any birthday sacrifice or feast; yet he himself sacrificed on the traditional birthdays of Plato and of Socrates, afterwards giving a banquet at which every member of the circle who was able was expected to deliver an address.

--Porphyry, De Vita Plotini

Jehovah's Witnesses also refrain from the celebration of birthdays, and this includes declining to celebrate Christmas.

Another thing I'd like to discuss during this series is John Mason Good's introduction to his translation of Lucretius. He genuinely makes the claim that Lucretius believed in an intelligent creator, someone who set the atoms into motion. I'll post more on that after work.

Siege of Athens and Piraeus (87–86 BC) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

He encircled the city and the port. This would involve constructing a defensible palisade out of local timber, stone, brick, and whatever else was at hand.

Caesar's seige of Alesia is a well-attested example--there he used a double-encirclement, with the inner palisade protecting against sallies from the city itself and the outer palisade protecting against sympathetic armies that might try to lift the seige.

So Sulla's destruction of the Academy may have been incidental to his larger engineering project; he needed the trees and the rubble. I don't know one way or the other.

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Why don't you ever discuss "meaningfulness" because I've been convinced that's what I should want out of life?

The phrase "meaning of life" first appears in the record of the English language in 1834. 18 years after the invention of the heliotype, 3 years earlier than the invention of the telegraph.

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"Temptations in the Wilderness!" exclaims Teufelsdrockh, "Have we not all to be tried with such? Not so easily can the old Adam, lodged in us by birth, be dispossessed. Our Life is compassed round with Necessity; yet is the meaning of Life itself no other than Freedom, than Voluntary Force: thus have we a warfare; in the beginning, especially, a hard-fought battle. For the God-given mandate, Work thou in Well-doing, lies mysteriously written, in Promethean Prophetic Characters, in our hearts; and leaves us no rest, night or day, till it be deciphered and obeyed; till it burn forth, in our conduct, a visible, acted Gospel of Freedom. And as the clay-given mandate, Eat thou and be filled, at the same time persuasively proclaims itself through every nerve,—must not there be a confusion, a contest, before the better Influence can become the upper?

"To me nothing seems more natural than that the Son of Man, when such God-given mandate first prophetically stirs within him, and the Clay must now be vanquished or vanquish,—should be carried of the spirit into grim Solitudes, and there fronting the Tempter do grimmest battle with him; defiantly setting him at naught till he yield and fly. Name it as we choose: with or without visible Devil, whether in the natural Desert of rocks and sands, or in the populous moral Desert of selfishness and baseness,—to such Temptation are we all called. Unhappy if we are not! Unhappy if we are but Half-men, in whom that divine handwriting has never blazed forth, all-subduing, in true sun-splendor; but quivers dubiously amid meaner lights: or smoulders, in dull pain, in darkness, under earthly vapors!—Our Wilderness is the wide World in an Atheistic Century; our Forty Days are long years of suffering and fasting: nevertheless, to these also comes an end. Yes, to me also was given, if not Victory, yet the consciousness of Battle, and the resolve to persevere therein while life or faculty is left. To me also, entangled in the enchanted forests, demon-peopled, doleful of sight and of sound, it was given, after weariest wanderings, to work out my way into the higher sunlit slopes—of that Mountain which has no summit, or whose summit is in Heaven only!"

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there is in man a HIGHER than Love of Happiness: he can do without Happiness, and instead thereof find Blessedness! Was it not to preach forth this same HIGHER that sages and martyrs, the Poet and the Priest, in all times, have spoken and suffered; bearing testimony, through life and through death, of the Godlike that is in Man, and how in the Godlike only has he Strength and Freedom? Which God-inspiredd Doctrine art thou also honored to be taught; O Heavens! and broken with manifold merciful Afflictions, even till thou become contrite and learn it! Oh, thank thy Destiny for these; thankfully bear what yet remain: thou hadst need of them; the Self in thee needed to be annihilated. By benignant fever-paroxysms is Life rooting out the deep-seated chronic Disease, and triumphs over Death. On the roaring billows of Time, thou art not engulfed, but borne aloft into the azure of Eternity. Love not Pleasure; love God. This is the EVERLASTING YEA, wherein all contradiction is solved: wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him."

--Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus

The meaning of this 'meaning of life' is as elusive as the claims of the snake-oil salesman, because that's exactly what it is; an imaginary cure to what is not, in fact, a disease. The 'disease' is explicitly atheism and hedonism, and to sell the cure one must first sell the idea that the disease is real and shameful. When they tell you that your life without gods is without meaning, they are you telling you to feel ashamed.

Don't.

In response to Cicero's question--'what happens to a society when everyone pursues pleasure as the goal'--I quoted the following from Christopher Hitchens;

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You find me a state or a society that threw off theocracy, and threw off religion. And said: ‘we adopt the teachings of Lucretius, and Democritus, and Galileo, and Spinoza, and Darwin, and Russell, and Jefferson, and Thomas Paine; and we make those what we teach our children. And we make that, scientific and rational humanism, our teaching.’ And you find me that state that did that and fell into tyranny, and slavery, and famine, and torture, and then we’ll be on a level playing field.

Since today (April 19th) is the anniversary of Lord Byron's death, I thought to include here several of his passages on pleasure and Epicureanism, which are mostly hostile;

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Thou mak’st philosophers; there’s Epicurus
And Aristippus, a material crew!
Who to immoral courses would allure us
By theories quite practicable too;
If only from the devil they would insure us,
How pleasant were the maxim (not quite new),
‘Eat, drink, and love, what can the rest avail us?’
So said the royal sage Sardanapalus.

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His classic studies made a little puzzle,
Because of filthy loves of gods and goddesses,
Who in the earlier ages raised a bustle,
But never put on pantaloons or bodices;
His reverend tutors had at times a tussle,
And for their Aeneids, Iliads, and Odysseys,
Were forced to make an odd sort of apology,
For Donna Inez dreaded the Mythology.

Ovid’s a rake, as half his verses show him,
Anacreon’s morals are a still worse sample,
Catullus scarcely has a decent poem,
I don’t think Sappho’s Ode a good example,
Although Longinus tells us there is no hymn
Where the sublime soars forth on wings more ample:
But Virgil’s songs are pure, except that horrid one
Beginning with ‘Formosum Pastor Corydon.’

Lucretius’ irreligion is too strong,
For early stomachs, to prove wholesome food;
I can’t help thinking Juvenal was wrong,
Although no doubt his real intent was good,
For speaking out so plainly in his song,
So much indeed as to be downright rude;
And then what proper person can be partial
To all those nauseous epigrams of Martial?

* * *

Man ’s a phenomenon, one knows not what,
And wonderful beyond all wondrous measure;
’Tis pity though, in this sublime world, that
Pleasure’s a sin, and sometimes sin’s a pleasure;
Few mortals know what end they would be at,
But whether glory, power, or love, or treasure,
The path is through perplexing ways, and when
The goal is gain’d, we die, you know—and then—

What then?—I do not know, no more do you—
And so good night.

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Daniel C. Dennett, Widely Read and Fiercely Debated Philosopher, Dies at 82

Espousing his ideas in best sellers, he insisted that religion was an illusion, free will was a fantasy and evolution could only be explained by natural…

www.nytimes.com

One of the less well-known among the so-called New Atheists, prof. Dennett has had a rich career working on problems relating to free will, evolutionary biology, and the origin of consciousness.

I actually haven't read any of his books, but I do pause to note his passing. When I was around the age of 16 and Youtube was then brand new, videos of him and others helped me navigate my way out of Catholicism.

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Ὁ θάνατος οὐδὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς· τὸ γὰρ διαλυθὲν ἀναισθητεῖ· τὸ δ’ ἀναισθητοῦν οὐδὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς.

I have used that in English as well. I once locked myself out of my apartment wearing shorts and flip flops in chilly weather, and had to walk fourteen blocks at night to my sister's place to get the spare key. I spent the time explaining the Tetrapharmakos to an imaginary audience in my head, and passed the time pleasantly enough.

I memorized it in Latin, and Latin Per Diem on YouTube is a great place to start. I do NOT read Latin. I can read this particular short section of this one text in Latin because I've worked on it, just like your average Catholic in the days before Vatican II could read the Nicene creed in Latin--engaged repitition and familiarity over time lends itself to understanding.

However, memorizing English texts is also helpful; in college I spent a good deal of time committing literature to memory, so that 15 years later I can still recall several pages of Tennyson, Keats, Frost, Burns and Shakespeare, among others. If you think about the hours and hours of song lyrics that most dedicated listeners can call upon, 75 lines of Lucretius is small potatoes, yet very rewarding.

My favorite verse translation is Rolfe Humphries. I'm less picky when it comes to prose.

The other question is one of risk; if I take risk x, it may provide both mild immediate pleasure and mild immediate pain, but the rest of the calculus is marked by an unavoidable ambiguity. The risk could either result in pleasureable success y, or painful failure z. Unlike a hangover, neither eventuality is easily predictable.

Looks great, thank you Cassius!

I think the linked article is quite good. I haven't read the whole series, but it's a promising start, heavy on quotations to the relevant source texts.

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Before we start exploring this conception of divinity and how it leads to the Epicurean ideal of friendship, we should clarify a few things: the object of this article is not to defend the existence of the Epicurean gods, for which there is obviously no evidence, nor point out any potential inconsistencies in their arguments concerning the gods.[4] In order to move forward, we can simply think of these gods as part of an ethical thought experiment that will lead to practical results on how we think about and experience our lives and our relationships.[5]

We start with a tentatively idealist approach to the question of the gods, which I think is more than fair. I know, for example, that a marble bust of Epicurus is of course not Epicurus himself, but it is nevertheless useful as a stimulant to thought and introspection. I'm happy to engage with the gods on this ground, and happy also to acknowledge that this is, for me, as far as it goes. The Iliad is a penetrating and insightful epic, resplendent with pride and pathos, even if every word of it is fiction; and I would be a beggarly wretch indeed if robbed of this and other literary majesties.

After some further comment, we get on to the bit about deconstructing our previous conceptions of the divine--and here I think there is a fork in the road. People are not all the same, and what works for one may be of little use to another; I think I am that kind of person for whom theory is more elemental, and even more real and tangible, than practice. This is paradox, of course, but I can summon to my defense in this case no other than the renowned Anglican apologist C. S. Lewis:

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I believe that many who find that "nothing happens" when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.

-On the Incarnation

As it happens, every word of this, right down to my former use of the tobacco pipe, is true to my experience.

Now I do not say that this is the best way to deconstruct one's former faith, but it is the one that works best for me. What we really need is an increased appreciation for the fact that people suffer and heal differently, stress and thrive differently, and that in the matter of a living philosophy one outline or summary or presentation rarely fits all.

All that being said, I think the article and the exercises are both good. (Again, I haven't read past the first linked page in the 5-part series.)