Posts by Joshua

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I also recall that one of the analogies or issues you have quoted before is something to do with the ability to infer or predict all the possibilities of various oceans from knowing the characteristics of s a single drop of water. Do you recall the source for that one?

"From a drop of water,' said the writer, 'a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other. So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a single link of it."

-A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle (from the Sherlock Holmes stories)

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Should we conclude that after a thing has happened once, that in an infinite and eternal universe it will happen an infinite number of times, but that it is impossible and in fact improper to predict with any confidence after huge numbers of monkeys are born that there will ever be any more intelligent beings born anywhere in the universe?

Oh, I was only speaking about this Earth. In an infinite and eternal cosmos anything that is possible within that cosmos should be expected to exist an infinite number of times. If you assign each letter in the Latin alphabet to a number (a->1, b->2, etc) somewhere in the infinity of digits behind the decimal point in the number Pi one would expect to find a sequence of numbers that happens to spell out the collected works of William Shakespeare. This particular supposition is currently theoretical, and awaiting formal proof.

Q: Since pi is infinite, do its digits contain all finite sequences of numbers?

Mathematician: As it turns out, mathematicians do not yet know whether the digits of pi contains every single finite sequence of numbers. That being said, many…

www.askamathematician.com

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There is no necessity either way in a particular circumstance, but is not a process with has been observed to be in operation is limited by nature rather than by necessity (?)

You may have to rewrite that last clause for me....

Another passage from that Hitchens book;

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Our own solipsism, often expressed in diagram or cartoon form, usually
represents evolution as a kind of ladder or progression, with a fish gasping
on the shore in the first frame, hunched and prognathous figures in the
succeeding ones, and then, by slow degrees, an erect man in a suit waving
his umbrella and shouting “Taxi!” Even those who have observed the
“sawtooth” pattern of fluctuation between emergence and destruction,
further emergence and still further destruction, and who have already
charted the eventual end of the universe, are half agreed that there is a
stubborn tendency toward an upward progression. This is no great surprise:
inefficient creatures will either die out or be destroyed by more successful
ones. But progress does not negate the idea of randomness, and when he
came to examine the Burgess shale, the great paleontologist Stephen Jay
Gould arrived at the most disquieting and unsettling conclusion of all. He
examined the fossils and their development with minute care and realized
that if this tree could be replanted or this soup set boiling again, it would
very probably not reproduce the same results that we now “know.”

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It depends on precisely what we mean by 'gradations'. Here is a passage from God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens, discussing the gradations evident in modern biology which demonstrate the pathway by which light-sensitive cells developed over millions of generations into the complex eyes found in modern humans;

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Evolution also posits that modern organisms should show a variety of structures from simple to complex, reflecting an evolutionary history rather than an instantaneous creation. The human eye, for example, is the result of a long and complex pathway that goes back hundreds of millions of years. Initially a simple eyespot with a handful of light-sensitive cells that provided information to the organism about an important source of the light; it developed into a recessed eyespot, where a small surface indentation filled with light-sensitive cells provided additional data on the direction of light; then into a deep recession eyespot, where additional cells at greater depth provide more accurate information about the environment; then into a pinhole camera eye that is able to focus an image on the back of a deeply-recessed layer of light-sensitive cells; then into a pinhole lens eye that is able to focus the image; then into a complex eye found in such modern mammals as humans.

All the intermediate stages of this process have been located in other creatures, and sophisticated computer models have been developed which have tested the theory and shown that it actually “works.”

However, the popular conception of evolutionary biology--that organisms get successively bigger, stronger, faster, and smarter in the course of generations--is descriptively accurate in some cases but wholly wrong when considered as prescription of nature. Mutation and selection may give rise to faster organisms when those faster organisms are better fit for their environment than their slower counterparts, but when the metabolic expense of speed does not make a species more fit to survive in its environment then members of that species who do not 'pay' that metabolic cost will be better fit than those that do. This is why populations of antibiotic-resistant bacteria lose their resistance when that antibiotic is no longer used; individuals with the genetic resistance lose the benefit but still suffer the cost, and those individuals are out-competed by individuals without resistant genes.

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Was it predictable from the existence of monkeys that humans would arise?

There was always some chance that humans could arise--we know this because we exist--but no, I do not think we can safely say that this outcome was ever likely. It seems likely to us because it happened, and we're living the outcome. This is the very definition of Hindsight bias. If an asteroid hadn't cratered into the Yucatán Peninsula at the K-Pg boundary, and a new language-using species had arisen from the non-avian dinosaurs that are now extinct, it might seem to that species that their existence was predictable. We have excellent reasons to suspect otherwise.

This post is copied from another thread on teleology;

[other thread]

OK, I am off work. You have raised a number of excellent points and I agree that we need to refine this mass of material down to something digestible.

Relevant Texts

[All citations in this section are to translations by Cyril Bailey]

Epicurus, Letter to Pythocles, sections 115-116;

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The signs of the weather which are given by certain animals result from mere coincidence of occasion. For the animals do not exert any compulsion for winter to come to an end, nor is there some divine nature which sits and watches the outgoings of these animals and then fulfills the signs they give.

[116] For not even the lowest animal, although ‘a small thing gives the greater pleasure,’ would be seized by such foolishness, much less one who was possessed of perfect happiness.

All these things, Pythocles, you must bear in mind; for thus you will escape in most things from superstition and will be enabled to understand what is akin to them. And most of all give yourself up to the study of the beginnings and of infinity and of the things akin to them, and also of the criteria of truth and of the feelings, and of the purpose for which we reason out these things. For these points when they are thoroughly studied will most easily enable you to understand the causes of the details. But those who have not thoroughly taken these things to heart could not rightly study them in themselves, nor have they made their own the reason for observing them.

• The animals do not migrate for the purpose of changing the seasons,
• The seasons do not change for the purpose of moving the animals,
• And no divine mind has set these things into motion.

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus, section 64;

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[64] Further, you must grasp that the soul possesses the chief cause of sensation: yet it could not have acquired sensation, unless it were in some way enclosed by the rest of the structure. And this in its turn having afforded the soul this cause of sensation acquires itself too a share in this contingent capacity from the soul. Yet it does not acquire all the capacities which the soul possesses: and therefore when the soul is released from the body, the body no longer has sensation. For it never possessed this power in itself, but used to afford opportunity for it to another existence, brought into being at the same time with itself: and this existence, owing to the power now consummated within itself as a result of motion, used spontaneously to produce for itself the capacity of sensation and then to communicate it to the body as well, in virtue of its contact and correspondence of movement, as I have already said.

This passage (and the subsequent passages as well, to some extant) is relevant because of the pains Epicurus goes to to avoid teleological language;

• The body, having come into existence with the soul, affords opportunity to the soul to experience sensation.
• The body, having afforded this opportunity to the soul, acquires its own share in this "contingent capacity" from the soul - that is, the body acquires its share in sensation.
• We can summarize this ateleological view in the following way: the use of any natural thing is afforded by its existence, not the other way around.
• By contrast, the existence of any artificial thing could be said to be afforded by its planned use. A table is brought into being for the purpose of dining. The human hand is pressed into service (say, of transferring food from the table to the mouth) only after it is found to exist.

The most important text, as cited by Cassius above, is Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Book 5;

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[823] Herein you must eagerly desire to shun this fault, and with foresighted fear to avoid this error; do not think that the bright light of the eyes was created in order that we may be able to look before us, or that, in order that we may have power to plant long paces, therefore the tops of shanks and thighs, based upon the feet, are able to bend; or again, that the forearms are jointed to the strong upper arms and hands given us to serve us on either side, in order that we might be able to do what was needful for life. All other ideas of this sort, which men proclaim, by distorted reasoning set effect for cause, since nothing at all was born in the body that we might be able to use it, but what is born creates its own use. Nor did sight exist before the light of the eyes was born, nor pleading in words before the tongue was created, but rather the birth of the tongue came long before discourse, and the ears were created much before sound was heard, and in short all the limbs, I trow, existed before their use came about: they cannot then have grown for the purpose of using them.

[843] But, on the other side, to join hands in the strife of battle, to mangle limbs and befoul the body with gore; these things were known long before gleaming darts flew abroad, and nature constrained men to avoid a wounding blow, before the left arm, trained by art, held up the defence of a shield. And of a surety to trust the tired body to rest was a habit far older than the soft-spread bed, and the slaking of the thirst was born before cups. These things, then, which are invented to suit the needs of life, might well be thought to have been discovered for the purpose of using them. But all those other things lie apart, which were first born themselves, and thereafter revealed the concept of their usefulness. In this class first of all we see the senses and the limbs; wherefore, again and again, it cannot be that you should believe that they could have been created for the purpose of useful service.

[858] This, likewise, is no cause for wonder, that the nature of the body of every living thing of itself seeks food. For verily I have shown that many bodies ebb and pass away from things in many ways, but most are bound to pass from living creatures. For because they are sorely tried by motion and many bodies by sweating are squeezed and pass out from deep beneath, many are breathed out through their mouths, when they pant in weariness; by these means then the body grows rare, and all the nature is undermined; and on this follows pain. Therefore food is taken to support the limbs and renew strength when it passes within, and to muzzle the gaping desire for eating through all the limbs and veins. Likewise, moisture spreads into all the spots which demand moisture; and the many gathered bodies of heat, which furnish the fires to our stomach, are scattered by the incoming moisture, and quenched like a flame, that the dry heat may no longer be able to burn our body. Thus then the panting thirst is washed away from our body, thus the hungry yearning is satisfied.

• "All other ideas of this sort, which men proclaim, by distorted reasoning set effect for cause, since nothing at all was born in the body that we might be able to use it, but what is born creates its own use."

Further Reading

Norman DeWitt, Epicurus and His Philosophy, page 67;

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The limited teleology at which Epicurus finally arrived had nothing to do either with creationism or adaptation of organ to function. It had nothing to do with the universe at large, which was ruled by natural laws. It had nothing to do even with animals, although animal behavior afforded evidence that pleasure was the end or telos of living. It was recognized, to be sure, that animals possess volition and that certain kinds of animals are actuated by innate ideas to organize themselves into herds for mutual protection, but only the rational human being was believed capable of intelligent planning for living and for keeping steadily in view the fact that pleasure is the end or telos ordained by Nature. This amounts to saying that a nonpurposive Nature had produced a purposive creature, for whom alone an end or goal of living could have a meaning. This is teleology at a minimum. For such a belief no teacher had set a precedent.

Ian Johnston, Lecture on Lucretius;

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The poem’s influence, according to Stuart Gillespie and Donald Mackenzie, can be linked to a range of twentieth-century poets and philosophers. So pervasive is its presence in the intellectual climate that for one critic at least (Stuart Gillespie) Charles Darwin’s claim that he had not read Lucretius is rather like Milton’s claiming that he had not read Genesis.

John Tyndall, Address at Belfast;

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Trace the line of life backwards, and see it approaching more and more to what we call the purely physical [54/55] 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 wrings 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 terrestrial Life.

I think part of the reason Epicureanism remained unchanged is because it treated with clear finality certain of its basic premises, and it did so in a way that rendered any further dispute rather pointless among those that accepted the premise. Consider such premises as there is no life after death, and Nature was not created, but has always existed.

Any school of philosophy proposing that there is life after death has not ended a dispute but begun one; what is the afterlife like? Is it eternal or finite? Is it the same for everyone, or will people experience different afterlives depending on their respective portions of fame, virtue, nobility, or piety? How long does the soul linger in the body, and where does it go after? Is there any hope of return from the afterlife? Can people still living contact those who are dead, and vice versa?

Christianity has shattered into a million tiny fragments over questions like these, but for the Epicurean every one of these points of argument is utterly meaningless. There is no life after death, so there's no point in speculating about what that non-existent 'life' might be like. Such speculations, which are not even of academic interest, will certainly never have the power to bring about schism, or mutual recrimination, or factional infighting. And quite a lot of Epicurean philosophy is like that; once you accept the premise that nature was not created by a god, or that the substrate of everything that exists in nature is mere matter, or that the senses are fundamentally reliable, you slam the door shut forever on all of the speculation that does not take its point of departure from that premise.

When we examine the things that did change and develop in ancient Epicureanism, they are quite minor. Epicurus preferred to transmit his ideas in uninterrupted discourse and in plain dress, but that did not prevent Lucretius from casting them in verse, or Lucian from engaging with them in dialectic.

Cicero develops an argument around this claim in Book 2 of On Ends, we'll need to find that section. The basic argument he makes is something like this;

• Epicurus holds that pain/fear/mental disturbance is an evil.
• It is not possible to be confident that one will avoid this evil in perpetuity.
• If the Epicurean cannot be confident of this, he cannot guarantee his continuing happiness, and as a result present happiness will be impossible.
• The Epicurean can never be happy.

Might not hurt to add an announcement at the top about how to 'mark all as read'.

Meno asks Socrates:[20][21]

• "And how will you enquire, Socrates, into that which you do not know? What will you put forth as the subject of enquiry? And if you find what you want, how will you ever know that this is the thing which you did not know?"

Socrates rephrases the question, which has come to be the canonical statement of Meno's paradox or the paradox of inquiry:[20][22]

• "[A] man cannot enquire either about that which he knows, or about that which he does not know; for if he knows, he has no need to enquire; and if not, he cannot; for he does not know the very subject about which he is to enquire."

— translated by Benjamin Jowett, 1871

_______________

From Wikipedia ^

Summary of the above:

• Lucretius poetically adopted for his own poem the Empedoclean struggle between the moral forces of Love and Strife [wikipedia]
  • However, in an atomistic understanding of Nature these forces are not moral. Through an endless process of combination and dissolution, the atoms form and reform all compound bodies.
  • Venus and Mars are complex figures in the poem.
    • Venus represents:
      • the formation of complex systems like our world.
      • the promise that pleasure is attainable even in a cosmos where 'destruction' nips at the heels of 'creation' - though of course matter is never actually created or destroyed
      • the mythical mother of the line of Aeneas, and therefore of the Roman people
      • the poet's Muse - a patron goddess appropriate for an Epicurean writing a philosophical poem
        • I'm thinking out loud here, so take this with a grain of salt: In Greek mythology, Aphrodite is a much more primordial being than the nine Muses - more ancient even than Zeus himself. She was born of the union between sea-foam and the discarded genitals of Ouranos - a daughter of the first order of divine beings. The Muses are the daughters of the second order (the Titans) on their mother's [Mnemosyne] side, and the third order (the Olympians) on their father's [Zeus himself]. She quite literally fell from heaven; 'Ouranos' is still the Greek word for 'sky' to this day.
    • Mars, less complex, represents:
      • Whole world systems hurtling into ruin
      • Death, pain, strife, war, disease (like the plague with which Lucretius ends his poem), and so on

I ought to have included John Tyndall's Belfast Address in the quoted passages above. Here it is;

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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 wrings 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 terrestrial Life.

George Santayana discusses this question in his essay on Lucretius from Three Philosophical Poets;

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To a fortunate conjunction of atoms, a child owes his first being. To a propitious season and atmosphere, a poet owes his inspiration and his success. Conscious that his undertaking hangs upon these chance conjunctions, Lucretius begins by invoking the powers he is about to describe, that they may give him breath and genius enough to describe them. And at once these powers send him a happy inspiration, perhaps a happy reminiscence of Empedocles. There are two great perspectives which the moralist may distinguish in the universal drift of atoms,—a creative movement, producing what the moralist values, and a destructive movement, abolishing the same. Lucretius knows very well that this distinction is moral only, or as people now say, subjective. No one else has pointed out so often and so clearly as he that nothing arises in this world not helped to life by the death of some other thing; so that the destructive movement creates and the creative movement destroys. Yet from the point of view of any particular life or interest, the distinction between a creative force and a destructive force is real and all-important. To make it is not to deny the mechanical structure of nature, but only to show how this mechanical structure is fruitful morally, how the outlying parts of it are friendly or hostile to me or to you, its local and living products.

This double colouring of things is supremely interesting to the philosopher; so much so that before his physical science has reached the mechanical stage, he will doubtless regard the double aspect which things present to him as a dual principle in these things themselves. So Empedocles had spoken of Love and Strife as two forces which respectively gathered and disrupted the elements, so as to carry on between them the Penelope’s labour of the world, the one perpetually weaving fresh forms of life, and the other perpetually undoing them.

It needed but a slight concession to traditional rhetoric in order to exchange these names, Love and Strife, which designated divine powers in Empedocles, into the names of Venus and Mars, which designated the same influences in Roman mythology. The Mars and Venus of Lucretius are not moral forces, incompatible with the mechanism of atoms; they are this mechanism itself, in so far as it now produces and now destroys life, or any precious enterprise, like this of Lucretius in composing his saving poem. Mars and Venus, linked in each other’s arms, rule the universe together; nothing arises save by the death of some other thing. Yet when what arises is happier in itself, or more congenial to us, than what is destroyed, the poet says that Venus prevails, that she woos her captive lover to suspend his unprofitable raging. At such times it is spring on earth; the storms recede (I paraphrase the opening passage),[5] the fields are covered with flowers, the sunshine floods the serene sky, and all the tribes of animals feel the mighty impulse of Venus in their hearts.

The corn ripens in the plains, and even the sea bears in safety the fleets that traverse it.

Not least, however, of these works of Venus is the Roman people. Never was the formative power of nature better illustrated than in the vitality of this race, which conquered so many other races, or than in its assimilative power, which civilized and pacified them. Legend had made Venus the mother of Aeneas, and Aeneas the progenitor of the Romans. Lucretius seizes on this happy accident and identifies the Venus of fable with the true Venus, the propitious power in all nature, of which Rome was indeed a crowning work. But the poet’s work, also, if it is to be accomplished worthily, must look to the same propitious movement for its happy issue and for its power to persuade. Venus must be the patron of his art and philosophy. She must keep Memmius from the wars, that he may read, and be weaned from frivolous ambitions; and she must stop the tumult of constant sedition, that Lucretius may lend his undivided mind to the precepts of Epicurus, and his whole heart to a sublime friendship, which prompts him to devote to intense study all the watches of the starry night, plotting the course of each invisible atom, and mounting almost to the seat of the gods.[6]

This impersonation in the figure of Venus of whatever makes for life would not be legitimate—it would really contradict a mechanical view of nature—if it were not balanced by a figure representing the opposite tendency, the no less universal tendency towards death.

The Mars of the opening passage, subdued for a moment by the blandishments of love, is raging in all the rest of the poem in his irrepressible fury. These are the two sides of every transmutation, that in creating, one thing destroys another; and this transmutation being perpetual,—nothing being durable except the void, the atoms, and their motion,—it follows that the tendency towards death is, for any particular thing, the final and victorious tendency. The names of Venus and Mars, not being essential to the poet’s thought, are allowed to drop out, and the actual processes they stand for are described nakedly; yet, if the poem had ever been finished, and Lucretius had wished to make the end chime with the beginning, and represent, as it were, one great cycle of the world, it is conceivable that he might have placed at the close a mythical passage to match that at the beginning; and we might have seen Mars aroused from his luxurious lethargy, reasserting his immortal nature, and rushing, firebrand in hand, from the palace of love to spread destruction throughout the universe, till all things should burn fiercely, and be consumed together. Yet not quite all; for the goddess herself would remain, more divine and desirable than ever in her averted beauty. Instinctively into her bosom the God of War would sink again, when weary and drunk with slaughter; and a new world would arise from the scattered atoms of the old.

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And Stephen Greenblatt in The Swerve argues a similar case;

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Human beings, Lucretius thought, must not drink in the poisonous belief that their souls are only part of the world temporarily and that they are heading somewhere else. That belief will only spawn in them a destructive relation to the environment in which they live the only lives that they have. These lives, like all other existing forms in the universe, are contingent and vulnerable; all things, including the earth itself, will eventually disintegrate and return to the constituent atoms from which they were composed and out of which other things will form in the perpetual dance of matter. But while we are alive, we should be filled with the deepest pleasure, for we are a small part of a vast process of world-making that Lucretius celebrated as essentially erotic.

Hence it is that, as a poet, a maker of metaphors, Lucretius could do something very strange, something that appears to violate his conviction that the gods are deaf to human petitions.

* * *

Neither creation nor destruction ever has the upper hand; the sum total of matter remains the same, and the balance between the living and the dead is always restored:

• And so the destructive motions cannot hold sway eternally and bury existence forever; nor again can the motions that cause life and growth preserve created things eternally. Thus, in this war that has been waged from time everlasting, the contest between the elements is an equal one: now here, now there, the vital forces conquer and, in turn, are conquered; with the funeral dirge mingles the wail that babies raise when they reach the shores of light; no night has followed day, and no dawn has followed night, which has not heard mingled with those woeful wails the lamentations that accompany death and the black funeral. (DRN 2.569–80 [Side-by-Side])

The Spanish-born Harvard philosopher George Santayana called this idea —the ceaseless mutation of forms composed of indestructible substances —“the greatest thought that mankind has ever hit upon.”

Glad you asked! Charlton Griffin on Audible reads the Humphries version. It is excellent.

μουσοφιλὴς, "beloved of the Muses", or something similar.

ἕταρος means companion.

I would say the translation is good; Philodemus is emphasizing his work as a poet: that is, a 'darling of the Muses'.

Thread

Epigram on the Twentieth

Book XI - Convivial and Satirical Epigrams

No. 44 - Philodemus

[…]

Translated W. R. Paton

epicureanfriends.com/wcf/attachment/1565/

epicureanfriends.com/wcf/attachment/1566/

Joshua

December 10, 2020 at 10:11 PM

Edit; I had no idea I just linked to this thread, sorry about that!

Loeb edition by Rouse, and revised by Smith, is great for the Latin facing text alone.

Verse translation? Rolfe Humphries.

I should make a tier list one of these days.

Raimondi certainly had access to Diogenes Laertius, but knowledge of Greek was still rare even among the great Italian humanist of the Quattrocento. He probably only knew it in a Latin translation, if at all. He clearly had either DL, or Cicero, or both.

Part II is live. I'll try to finish today, but I do need a break for some good old-fashioned acediosus.

Prof. Dewitt cites the scriptures of the Christians many times in Epicurus and His Philosophy, but a longer and more focused treatment is in another work entitled St. Paul and Epicurus. Both were published in 1954, and, while a thorough critique of either text is well outside the scope of this investigation, it is clear that he must have had the latter text in mind while researching the former. His study of the 'Peace and Safety' question is in the section of that text entitled Thessalonians. The plain fact is that he does not substantiate his claim anywhere in these books; nevertheless, I include this here for those who wish to read further into his thoughts. Here is the passage in which he again asserts that Peace and Safety were catchwords;

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By good luck [Epicurus] arrived safely at the refuge of his choice, the city of Lampsacus on the Hellespont, now the Dardanelles; but on the way he was in danger of death by exposure or of capture by pirates, and he narrowly escaped shipwreck. This painful experience was taken to heart. Never again did he invite persecution.

Instead he took the determination to confine himself to peaceful methods and even prescribed rules of safety for his followers in his Authorized Doctrines. Thus the words Peace and Safety became catchwords of his sect and unless we are aware of this fact we shall fail to recognize the meaning of Paul in First Thessalonians 5:3: "For when they shall say Peace and Safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them." This version, however, leaves something to be desired; it would be more accurate to read: "For at the very time that the words Peace and Safety are on their lips, sudden destruction is hanging over them."

And here, a further claim is used to justify his work to 'correct the translation'. If you read St. Paul and Epicurus, you will find a lot of correcting, emending, and substituting. I leave it to others to judge his translations of the New Testament; I pause only to note that there is again no evidence furnished to support the claim that Peace and Safety were catchwords.

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No person of ordinary intelligence at the date when the letter was written would have been ignorant that peace and safety were objectives of the Epicurean way of life. Recognition of this fact will enable us to correct the translation. To this end it must be remembered that the second coming and the destruction of unbelievers are events in the future but the threat is present and perpetual. With this knowledge kept well in mind we shall be able to set the tenses to rights: "At the very moment that they are saying 'peace and safety' sudden destruction is hanging over them."

Five of the ten endnotes cited above reference the New Testament, and three of the five cite St. Paul's First Epistle to the Thessalonians, chapter 5, verse 3:

Εἰρήνη καὶ ἀσφάλεια, pax et securitas, peace and safety. This is the verse on which Dewitt hangs his argument, and it is worth seeing where it leads. The Epistle does not contain any mention of Epicureanism, though there are references which might be taken as allusions; Dewitt has his own list, but these are mine. Chapter 2, verse 4 has Paul writing "not as trying to please human beings, but rather God, who judges our hearts." Chapter 4, verses 3-5 constitutes an exhortation for the readers to be chaste and take a wife, "not in the passion of lust like heathen." Verse 11 in the same chapter instructs the readers to "aspire to live a tranquil life [ἡσυχάζειν], to mind your own affairs, and to work with your [own] hands, as we instructed you," and verse 12, "conduct yourselves properly toward outsiders and not depend on anyone."

The problem with trying to connect any one of these to Epicureanism is that they are commonplaces in the writings of St. Paul, and only one of them (4:11, live quietly) is remotely specific enough even to explore further. Here is that full passage:

As you will perceive, there are superficial similarities between Paul's injunction to 'live quietly (ἡσυχάζειν)' and the Epicurean dictum 'live unknown (λάθε βιώσας)', as salvaged for us by Plutarch in fragment U551. The really striking thing about Dewitt's commentary on this verse is the total absence of any commentary on this verse. In St. Paul and Epicurus he writes the following, not in connection with this citation, but in general;

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The courts of law, [Epicurus] well knew, though ostensibly existing for the sake of justice, were only too often employed as an agency of envy to rob the rich of their wealth, politicians of their power, and famous men of their prestige. The obscure citizen was the safest. It was consequently his general advice "to live and die unknown," and in particular "to shun the political career."

So Dewitt does not claim that St. Paul instructed his readers to 'live unknown', and the reason, I think, is clear. Had St. Paul done so, it would seem to have been advised in open contradiction of the Great Commission, enshrined in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 28, verses 16-20;

Is the advice of Epicurus to 'live unknown' in open contradiction of his own desire to bring the fruits of the philosophy to others? That question, too, is outside the scope of this investigation.

It will be enough to say here that neither Vatican Saying 67, nor Lucian's Alexander the Oracle-Monger, nor the remaining scriptural citations are of any real relevance to our main question. Cicero's Tusculan Disputations and Plutarch's Adversus Colotem are quoted by Dewitt. Cicero he uses to demonstrate that even hostile critics of Epicureanism could not, with reason or justice, admonish the behavior of the Epicureans, though they admonished the philosophy. Cicero is a reliable authority on this question, and he speaks against self-interest; I have no quarrel with Dewitt on this point.

His citation to Plutarch on forgiveness is confirmed by the Loeb edition of Adversus Colotem, edited and translated by Benedict Einarson and Philip Howard De Lacy, where a footnote in that text on page 259 in volume XIV suggests that Plutarch is indeed echoing Epicurus himself. The citation there is to Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, book 10, 118. This passage in Lives is on forgiving or excusing the mistakes or trespasses of slaves.

There is, I think, only one of the remaining endnotes meriting detailed exposition, and that is endnote 68 in Chapter IV. Here is the passage again:

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It was from this time that the word Safety, asphaleia [ἀσφάλεια] in Greek, attained the status of a watchword. Eventually it conferred a new vogue upon securitas [sēcūritās] in Latin,⁶⁸ as also upon praesidium [praesidium]. When the poet Horace in his first ode hails Maecenas as his praesidium, he recognizes him as the assurance of his safety from attacks by enemies.

It may be observed in passing that St. Paul quoted the words Peace and Safety as catchwords of the Epicureans, to whom he refused the honor of mention by name.⁶⁹ In this collocation Peace signified harmonious relations with neighbors while Safety meant the security of the man as a citizen, the sort of safety that Paul himself enjoyed by virtue of Roman citizenship.

* * *

⁶⁸ It may denote akedia [ἀκηδία, acēdia], freedom from a feeling of responsibility; aponia [ἀπονῐ́ᾱ], exemption from responsibility; or ataraxy, freedom from turmoil of soul. See Latin lexicon.

I claim the following insight as original, but concede that without Stephen Greenblatt's work in his book The Swerve I would not have hit upon it. Acedia, a kind of cabin fever, sometimes described as a state of listlessness or torpor, is a sin in the Christian religion, and connected with the sin of sloth. Why is Dewitt mentioning it here, as if it were a synonym of securitas or ἀσφάλεια? My answer; he is calling to mind this word specifically because it serves his purpose of delineating the boundary between Epicureanism and Christianity on the subject of safety, and between Epicureanism and Stoicism on the use of the word ataraxia (ἀταραξία). In acedia, he finds a word, in both Greek and Latin, that no one else will ever claim. This is not the eternal peace of the Christians which they claim is only found in Christ. It is not the apatheia of the Stoics, who will never tolerate idleness, nor is it the otium of the Roman elite, a kind of healthful leisure focused on restorative cultural pursuits. Neither does Dewitt mean to remind us of the negative meaning of acedia; he doesn't even mention that there is any other meaning.

Greenblatt touches on acedia in chapter 2 of The Swerve, which I think is worth quoting at length:

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Though in the most influential of all the monastic rules, written in the sixth century, St. Benedict did not similarly specify an explicit literacy requirement, he provided the equivalent of one by including a period each day for reading—“prayerful reading,” as he put it—as well as manual labor. “Idleness is the enemy of the soul,” the saint wrote, and he made certain that the hours would be filled up. Monks would be permitted to read at certain other times as well, though such voluntary reading would have to be conducted in strict silence. (In Benedict’s time, as throughout antiquity, reading was ordinarily performed audibly.) But about the prescribed reading times there was nothing voluntary.

The monks were to read, whether they felt like it or not, and the Rule called for careful supervision:

• Above all, one or two seniors must surely be deputed to make the rounds of the monastery while the brothers are reading. Their duty is to see that no brother is so acediosus as to waste time or engage in idle talk to the neglect of his reading, and so not only harm himself but also distract others. (49:17–18)

Acediosus, sometimes translated as “apathetic,” refers to an illness, specific to monastic communities, which had already been brilliantly diagnosed in the late fourth century by the Desert Father John Cassian. The monk in the grip of acedia would find it difficult or impossible to read. Looking away from his book, he might try to distract himself with gossip but would more likely glance in disgust at his surroundings and at his fellow monks. He would feel that things were better somewhere else, that he was wasting his life, that everything was stale and pointless, that he was suffocating.

• He looks about anxiously this way and that, and sighs that none of the brethren come to see him, and often goes in and out of his cell, and frequently gazes up at the sun, as if it was too slow in setting, and so a kind of unreasonable confusion of mind takes possession of him like some foul darkness.

Such a monk—and there were evidently many of them—had succumbed to what we would call a clinical state of depression.

Cassian called the disease “the noonday demon,” and the Benedictine Rule set a careful watch, especially at reading times, to detect anyone manifesting its symptoms.

• If such a monk is found—God forbid—he should be reproved a first and a second time. If he does not amend, he must be subjected to the punishment of the rule so that the others may have fear.

A refusal to read at the prescribed time—whether because of distraction, boredom, or despair—would thus be visited first by public criticism and then, if the refusal continued, by blows. The symptoms of psychic pain would be driven out by physical pain. And, suitably chastened, the distressed monk would return—in principle at least—to his “prayerful reading.”

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There is another passage which is of interest here, and it comes from the rediscovered library of Philodemus in Herculaneum. On a charred papyrus scroll, PHerc. 1005 Col. 4.2-18, he writes;

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He who claims to know us and to be instructed by us, who claims to be a genuine reader of various writings and of complete books, even if he says something correctly, he has only memorized various quotations and does not know the multitude of our thoughts. What he has to do, he looks up in summeries, like people who believe that they [can learn to be] steersman from books and [can cross every ocean].

In Dewitt's translation of acedia, it is a virtue, not a vice or sin. It becomes a state of mind and body uniquely Epicurean, where freedom from responsibility gives one time enough, room enough, and leisure enough to pursue pleasure and happiness according to the vera ratio or true philosophy, and where the best mode of life is most assuredly available to us.

So much for the endnotes. There is one mountain still unmined in the Bibliography to Dewitt's book, and after that I will present my own discoveries and, at last, reach a verdict and conclusion.

Item number 6 on the Getting Started page here at the forum reads as follows;

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Read The Two Books We Most Recommend - Epicurus and His Philosophy by Norman DeWitt, and Living For Pleasure: An Epicurean Guide to Life by Emily Austin. Austin's book provides an attractive and practical introduction geared toward those who are just starting with the philosophy, and DeWitt's book provides a sweeping overview of the philosophy with many additional details.

We continue to recommend Norman Dewitt's book on Epicurus for many reasons, not least among them being, first, his comprehensive, well-ordered, and systematic treatment of the subject at both the macroscopic and microscopic levels, and, second, his rare, early, sustained defense of Epicurean philosophy against a parade of hostile critics stretching back into antiquity. That he achieves this while remaining both accessible and insightful is something to be remarked upon, and he has earned a small but devoted readership among us.

Nevertheless, the text does have weaknesses.

"You are too timid in drawing your inferences," says the scolding Sherlock Holmes to friend Watson. This is a charge that will never be laid at the feet of Prof. Dewitt. I said that his work was insightful; the truth is that his work is insightful in part because he is not timid in drawing his inferences. This is a problem in places, and the problem is compounded when his endnotes are less fulsomely thorough than we might hope, which, for some of us, is frequently. One area of particular contention is on the question of 'Peace and Safety'.

Epicurus and His Philosophy contains 18 mentions of the phrase 'Peace and Safety', with salient examples on pages 85, 189, 190, 194, 285, 304, and 338. Here is the passage (and associated endnotes) from page 85 in Chapter IV, Mytilene and Lampsacus:

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It was the mature judgment of Epicurus after his escape to Lampsacus that Peace and Safety were essential conditions not only for the tranquillity of the individual but also for the successful promulgation of a new philosophy. It was from this time that the word Safety, asphaleia [ᾰ̓σφᾰ́λειᾰ] in Greek, attained the status of a watchword. Eventually it conferred a new vogue upon securitas [sēcūritās] in Latin,⁶⁸ as also upon praesidium [praesidium]. When the poet Horace in his first ode hails Maecenas as his praesidium, he recognizes him as the assurance of his safety from attacks by enemies.

It may be observed in passing that St. Paul quoted the words Peace and Safety as catchwords of the Epicureans, to whom he refused the honor of mention by name.⁶⁹ In this collocation Peace signified harmonious relations with neighbors while Safety meant the security of the man as a citizen, the sort of safety that Paul himself enjoyed by virtue of Roman citizenship.

* * *

⁶⁸ It may denote akedia [ἀκηδία, acēdia], freedom from a feeling of responsibility; aponia [ἀπονῐ́ᾱ], exemption from responsibility; or ataraxy, freedom from turmoil of soul. See Latin lexicon.

⁶⁹ I Thess. 5:3. [I link to the USCCB only because it is the least user-hostile Bible reference website I can find.]

For the sake of completeness, I will include the following passages with their endnotes. First, page 190 in Chapter X, The New Freedom.

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It is also manifest that he looked chiefly to friendly diplomacy to keep the environment in control. Good will is a catchword of his creed no less than Peace and Safety. It is a precondition of Peace and Safety. He wrote, for instance: "A life of freedom cannot amass great wealth because of success in this being difficult apart from servitude to mobs or monarchs but it does enjoy all things in uninterrupted abundance; if, however, now and then great wealth does fall to its lot, it would gladly disburse this to win the good will of the neighbor." ⁵³

^{* * *}

⁵³ Ibid. 67. [Ibid here refers back to "SV", Sententiae Vaticanae - That is, the Vatican Sayings, number 67]

Next, page 194 in the same chapter.

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It is easy also to find place in this context for the calculus of advantage. Anger is a turmoil in the soul and as such is destructive of serenity or ataraxy. There is more to be said, however: angry reprisals invite reprisals and would be destructive of that peace and safety which Epicureans raised to the rank of a practical objective. As a sect, Cicero informs us, "they were to the least degree malicious." ⁶⁸ They were not revengeful; even while attacking them Plutarch ascribes to them the saying "Let this too meet with forgiveness." ⁶⁹

* * *

⁶⁸ Tusc. Disp. 3.21.50.

⁶⁹ Adv. Colot. 1118e.

Page 285 in Chapter XIII, The True Piety:

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The followers of Epicurus after his death, though diligent cultivators of peace and safety, continued to display the same belligerency as their founder. According to Lucian it was chiefly the Epicureans who summoned up courage to defy Alexander the False Prophet, and the only man to accuse him to his face on a specific charge was an Epicurean, who almost paid for his daring by his life.¹¹⁷ Upward of a century before the date of this alleged occurrence it was the Epicureans in Thessalonica who by their derision aroused the indignation of St. Paul, then prophesying the second coming of Christ. In his retort he denied them the honor of mention by name but identified them adequately by those catchwords of their creed, "Peace and Safety."¹¹⁸ It may be added that the Epicureans, as usual, were in the right; the prophecy was not fulfilled.

* * *

¹¹⁷ Alexander 25,44-46.

¹¹⁸ 1 Thess. 5:3.

Page 304 in Chapter XIV, The New Virtues:

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While this conjunction of faith in doctrine with faith in the leader introduces a dynamic emotional element, it still falls short of making a complete picture. The disciple cannot live to himself. Epicurus thought of his oracular teachings as "beneficial for all men," and he planned coherence for all the local brotherhoods in which his disciples were enrolled. All members depended upon one another for what St. Paul referred to as Peace and Safety. This means that the Epicurean must not only feel faith in doctrine and leader but also in friends and friendship. The authority for this is Vatican Saying 34, which exhibits a play upon words that is characteristic of the master's style: "We do not so much have need of help from friends in time of need as faith in help in time of need." This is an excellent commentary upon the words of St. Paul, "faith which worketh by love."⁴⁷

* * *

⁴⁷ Gal. 5:6.

Page 338 in Chapter XV, Extension, Submergence, and Revival:

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Both Thessalonica and Corinth must have been strongholds of Epicureanism. We must learn to read between the lines. Paul had been preaching at Thessalonica about the second coming of Christ, and prophecy always aroused the scorn of the Epicureans, who denied all participation of the gods in the affairs of man. The answer of Paul to these scoffers is to condemn them to instant annihilation: "For when they shall say Peace and Safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape."³⁶ The Epicureans were not accorded the honor of mention by name, but Peace and Safety were catchwords of their sect. It was part of their ethics to live a retired life apart from the turmoil of the courts and the market place and so to seek security from the malice and injury of other men. Paul follows up the quarrel and predicts the coming of Antichrist, the model for which was Antiochus Epiphanes, the archenemy of his race and the patron of the hated Epicureans.³⁷

* * *

³⁶ I Thess. 5:3.

³⁷ II Thess. 2:3-4.

It will be shown that none of the texts cited in the endnotes are sufficient to satisfy the claim that 'Peace and Safety' were watchwords or catchwords among Epicureans, and that Dewitt does not offer substantial evidence in support of this claim.

However, as we move forward in this analysis we will explore sources hitherto unexamined in connection with this question, and these sources might give us a hint as to why Dewitt makes this claim - and why we should dismiss it.