Posts by Joshua

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  • Episode 196 - The Epicurean Arguments In Cicero's On Ends - Book Two - Part 06

    I'm not sure you can say that 6 is a logical deduction of 1 and 2 absent a definition of 'experience', and an explanation of how that word relates to 'feeling'.

    If 6 held that "Any non-painful feeling is a pleasure" it would be a deductive conclusion of 1 and 2.

    That feelings are discrete does not necessarily mean that experiences are; they could be composites of multiple feelings. I just think the word experience is over-broad for this kind of thing.

    "How was your week in Paris?"

    "Oh, it was a wonderful experience!"

  • Welcome SeqStrat

    Welcome! Former Land Surveyor here (crew chief, not licensed). I'm now using CAD and scanning software in a dental lab for 3D printing, which keeps me out of the elements.

    Let me know if you have any interesting book recommendations from your field!

  • Episode 195 - Cicero's On Ends - Book Two - Part 05

    Quote

    That sounds to me like an echo of the Stoic "if you're not 100% virtuous all the time, you're crap." I seem to remember they say you can still drown an inch below the surface of the water. Maybe people are mapping a Stoic perspective on an Epicurean idea?

    This claim about Stoicism comes from Cicero; I didn't look very hard, but I didn't find the same claim in other Stoic texts from the ancient world.

    Quote

    “For just as a drowning man is no more able to breathe if he be not far from the surface of the water, so that he might at any moment emerge, than if he were actually at the bottom already … similarly a man that has made some progress towards the state of virtue is none the less in misery than he that has made no progress at all.” (De Finibus, IV.48)

  • Episode 195 - Cicero's On Ends - Book Two - Part 05

    As I listen to the episode, I begin to realize that we were very nearly describing the hedons and dolors of Utilitarianism--units of unmixed pleasure and pain. While in any given moment one can experience both pleasure and pain, a particular feeling is either pleasureable or painful.

    I'm not sure this is a useful path to go down, but it's probably worth addressing because I can see this being a source of confusion given the differences between Epicurean philosophy and Utilitarianism.

  • Episode 195 - Cicero's On Ends - Book Two - Part 05

    In coming to terms with Cicero's loathing for pleasure, I thought of another reason beyond the ones that we have already discussed. We could probably make a list;

    • Pleasure directly challenges the Virtues for pride of place among human pursuits. The Virtues are orderly feminine personifications, reinforcing social structure, political security, justice in human affairs, and the goodness in the Roman state religion--Pleasure is the "harlot" as Cicero says, the thief in the night, the enemy at the gates, and the frenzied chaotic Bacchanalia set against the quite life of sedate Otium, the useful, healthful, restorative leisure of the learned Roman aristocrat.
    • The pursuit of pleasure signifies weakness, swinishness, and moral decay. Those who pursue it are intellectual eunuchs.

    Another reason that occurred to me;

    • The pleasure-pain diad, which, its adherents claim, is sufficient to contain all human pathos, is offensively reductionist. For Cicero, who sees himself as a dedicated statesman, a skilled rhetorician, a model prose stylist, an adept philosopher, a careful biographer, and a virtuous friend, the reduction of human experience to mere pleasure and pain represents a direct challenge to his own view of himself--he is a polymath; a many-sided man, the prototypical Renaissance man, whose motives are complex. And will you claim that I, Cicero, am driven by desires and impulses no better than those of an animal!?

  • If Death Is Nothing To Us, Then Life Is Everything to Us

    How do we square these considerations with VS47?

    "47. I have anticipated you, Fortune, and entrenched myself against all your secret attacks. And we will not give ourselves up as captives to you or to any other circumstance; but when it is time for us to go, spitting contempt on life and on those who here vainly cling to it, we will leave life crying aloud in a glorious triumph-song that we have lived well."

  • Moderation Notice

    Good evening!

    As many have noticed, the forum was spammed by what was probably a bot at around 11:30 PM Eastern. I have attempted to delete all of the offending material. If anything is still showing up on your end please let me know. Site Administrator Cassius and Coordinator Kalosyni will proceed with a ban when they log on.

    Thank you for your patience!

    Joshua

  • Epicureanism as the spiritual essence or 'religion' of an entire community

    I suspect that Paul wrote letters because he was responding to the same social and political pressures that the Epicureans were responding to, whether or not there was any connection between the two traditions--both groups were barred from teaching in the Gymnasia, the Agora, and the Roman Forum. So they found recourse in one of the only options left to them. This was a stroke of great luck for us, as Zeno's whole output from the Stoa is lost except in fragments while Epicurus' letters survive.

    In the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, a similar phenomenon developed called the Republic of Letters, a complex web of private correspondence for the transmission of ideas. Ironically, the term was first used by Francesco Barbaro in a letter to Poggio Bracciolini, and in the very same year--1417--that saw the rediscovery of Lucretius by the latter. In one surviving letter, a friend of Poggio pleads with him to be more guarded in his writing--a letter stops being private if it falls into the wrong hands, after all.

    Poggio's letter written in admiration of Jerome of Prague, a heretic murdered by the Church at the Council of Constance, is here.

  • Article: The Ethical Implications of Epicurus' Theology by Stefano Mecci

    Unfortunately the subject of the gods is the one about which we have the greatest lack of source material. DeWitt (the Great Hypothesizer?) suggested that Lucretius' "lost" seventh book dealt with the gods at length. Epicurus wrote a scroll on the same, which really is lost, and we have two books from Philodemus on the Epicurean gods.

    Diogenes Laertius does not record that Metrodorus wrote on the question specifically, but he did write a response to Plato's Euthyphro, a dialogue in which Socrates attempts to understand the meaning of Piety.

    Lucretius, meanwhile, does give us in Book V a definition of Pietas which he contrasts with the Religio of Agamemnon in Book I;

  • The Description of Epicurean Philosophy on Reddit

    Quote

    Theism is broadly defined as the belief in the existence of at least one deity.[1][2] In common parlance, or when contrasted with deism, the term often describes the classical conception of God that is found in monotheism (also referred to as classical theism) — or gods found in polytheistic religions — a belief in God or in gods without the rejection of revelation as is characteristic of deism.

    Deity:

    Quote


    A deity or god is a supernatural being who is considered divine or sacred.

    I suppose you could argue about definitions, but not without wholly muddying the waters. Epicureanism in non-theistic.

  • Horace and Epicurean Philosophy; Will They Won't They?

    In another thread I made a post in which I compared a timeline of the Late Republic with Horace's literary output, and traced the inferred influence of politics on his Epicureanism;

    Post

    RE: Let's Make a List of 1) Major Causes of the Decline of Epicurean Philosophy after Lucretius and 2) The Obstacles to its Revival Through Today

    […]

    Horace is devilishly difficult to pin down, unfortunately. But first, a chronology;

    [Assassination of Caesar, 44 BC]

    [Battle of Philippi, 42 BC]

    [Lepidus Exiled, 36 BC]

    Satires 1 (c. 35–34 BC)

    [Battle of Actium, 31 BC]

    Satires 2 (c. 30 BC)

    Epodes (30 BC)

    [Reign of Augustus Begins, 27 BC, followed by military adventuring. Returns to Rome 24 BC]

    Odes 1–3 (c. 23 BC)

    Epistles 1 (c. 21 BC)

    Carmen Saeculare (17 BC)

    Epistles 2 (c. 11 BC)

    Odes 4 (c. 11 BC)

    Ars Poetica (c. 10–8 BC)

    Now then. Between Philippi and…
    Joshua
    August 21, 2023 at 8:40 PM

    Since the post is very relevant to this subforum, I am linking to it here.

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