Posts by Joshua

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„The Swerve“ I haven‘t read yet. It is a little bit older or ? Is its content still intetresting and has valid ideas/ views about Epicurean Philosophy ? Would you recommend it ? Maybe I would read it next.

I'm not very good about keeping up with the secondary literature, but The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt was my main introduction to Epicureanism and I am always happy to write in his defense.

I first encountered Greenblatt's work as an under-graduate English/History major. He was (is?) the editor of the magisterial Norton Anthology of English Literature in many volumes, and this venerable anthology formed the backbone of the English Literature curriculum. This was a rather impersonal introduction, but we also read his biography of William Shakespeare (Will in the World), which a friend of mine thought was one of the better supplementary texts we studied that semester. So I graduated with at least a sense of Greenblatt's work, and recognized the name a few years later on the front of a paperback while I was looking for something new to read on my upcoming travels.

I have since listened many times to the audiobook narrated by Edoardo Ballerini (a great help with the pronunciation of the Italian names), and always with pleasure.

The Swerve does contain a chapter dedicated to an outline of Epicurean philosophy, which, though I might quibble here and there, I don't find at all objectionable. But that's not really what this book is about. It is a study of the loss, submergence, survival, and rediscovery of the literature, language, and culture of classical antiquity, as seen through the eyes of a group of Italian Humanists of the Quattrocento who were trying to save what was left of the ancient past.

It tells of the lives, livelihoods, rivalries, vanities, and ambitions of men like Poggio Bracciolini, Leonardo Bruni, Lorenzo Valla, Marsilio Ficino, Coluccio Salutati, Niccolò de' Niccoli, Pier Paolo Vergerio, and many others.

Since several of these figures were prominent and learned scribes of the Papal Curia at the Vatican, the book also dwells on the faith and politics of the 15th century, the executions of Giordano Bruno, Jerome of Prague, and Jan Hus; and the trial of Antipope John XXIII, the schism of the church, as well as the Council of Constance that brought many of these matters to a head.

Since the common thread that runs through all of this is the rediscovery and recirculation of Lucretius' grand Epicurean poem, I certainly think Greenblatt's book is worth reading!

Great to hear from you, Onenski!

Words relevant to consciousness:

Greek;

ψυχή (psyche) Life, breath, soul, mind

νόος (nous) Mind, perception, thought

διάνοια (dianoia) Intention, purpose, the process of thinking, the capacity for thought

ἐπιβολή (epibole) The act of direct apprehension, intuition

αἴσθησις (aisthesis) Perception by the senses or by the intellect, the ability to perceive

Latin;

animus

Here is the the university webpage I was reading from, and I notice at the bottom it says 'adapted from Plato's Apology', so I hope it isn't too much different from the actual text.

No Apologies Plato’s The Apology of Socrates – The Philosophy Teaching Library

In Greek mythology, Hypnos (sleep) is the twin brother of Thanatos (death).

And to be fair, the failure rate for sea journeys in ancient Greece was also abysmal. Protagoras, Zeno of Citium, and Aristippus were all shipwrecked, and a young Julius Caesar was captured by pirates. I'm sure there are many more such stories!

These are very useful! It did occur to me just now, though, that part is generally a higher order of classification than section--book -> part -> chapter -> section -> subsection--but I don't know if it's really worth fixing. As always Cassius thank you for the work you put into this stuff!

And on the the subject of the trickery employed by the priests of pagan antiquity, the following may be of interest:

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The illusion might begin even before worshippers entered the building, in the form of a machine [Hero of Alexandria] describes in Pneumatica:

Temple Doors opened by Fire on an Altar.

The construction of a small temple such that, on lighting a fire, the doors shall open spontaneously, and shut again when the fire is extinguished. Let the proposed temple stand on a pedestal, ABCD.

-Hero of Alexandria, Pneumatica, machine 37

As the priest and congregation approached they would be faced with the huge, closed doors of the temple. Stepping forward, a priest would light a fire on an altar and, as though the god were pleased with the offering, the doors would swing open of their own accord, accompanied by a fanfare of trumpets. Behind the scenes, where only Hero and the priests ever went, a complex series of air- and water-filled tubes connected the altar to large bucket counterweights attached to the temple doors by pulleys. As the fire heated the air it expanded, forcing water in another tube into the buckets, which would then open the doors when there was enough water to weigh them down and set the pulley train in motion. When the fire was extinguished, the air in the pipes cooled and sucked the water back out of the buckets. As the weight in the buckets lessened, so the doors slowly closed under their own weight. It was all just advanced hydraulics, a subject first studied by another Alexandrian, Ctesibius, whose works Hero must have pored over in the library.

-The Rise and Fall of Alexandria; Birthplace of the Modern World

by Justin Pollard and Howard Reid

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Epicurus on the nature of the soul in the Letter to Herodotus;

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[63] Next, referring always to the sensations and the feelings, for in this way you will obtain the most trustworthy ground of belief, you must consider that the soul is a body of fine particles distributed throughout the whole structure, and most resembling wind with a certain admixture of heat, and in some respects like to one of these and in some to the other. There is also the part which is many degrees more advanced even than these in fineness of composition, and for this reason is more capable of feeling in harmony with the rest of the structure as well. Now all this is made manifest by the activities of the soul and the feelings and the readiness of its movements and its processes of thought and by what we lose at the moment of death.

[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.

[65] Therefore, so long as the soul remains in the body, even though some other part of the body be lost, it will never lose sensation; nay more, whatever portions of the soul may perish too, when that which enclosed it is removed either in whole or in part, if the soul continues to exist at all, it will retain sensation. On the other hand the rest of the structure, though it continues to exist either as a whole or in part, does not retain sensation, if it has once lost that sum of atoms, however small it be, which together goes to produce the nature of the soul. Moreover, if the whole structure is dissolved, the soul is dispersed and no longer has the same powers nor performs its movements, so that it does not possess sensation either.

[66] For it is impossible to imagine it with sensation, if it is not in this organism and cannot effect these movements, when what encloses and surrounds it is no longer the same as the surroundings in which it now exists and performs these movements.

[67] Furthermore, we must clearly comprehend as well, that the incorporeal in the general acceptation of the term is applied to that which could be thought of as such as an independent existence. Now it is impossible to conceive the incorporeal as a separate existence, except the void: and the void can neither act nor be acted upon, but only provides opportunity of motion through itself to bodies. So that those who say that the soul is incorporeal are talking idly. For it would not be able to act or be acted on in any respect, if it were of this nature. But as it is, both these occurrences are clearly distinguished in respect of the soul.

[68] Now if one refers all these reasonings about the soul to the standards of feeling and sensation and remembers what was said at the outset, he will see that they are sufficiently embraced in these general formulae to enable him to work out with certainty on this basis the details of the system as well.

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Welcome! Love the username, by the way!

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If you think, following the dictionary definition of essentialism, that the essence of rabbitness is "prior to" the existence of rabbits (whatever "prior to" might mean, and that’s a nonsense in itself) evolution is not an idea that will spring readily to your mind, and you may resist when somebody else suggests it.

I don't remember if we discussed this on Sunday, but the question of whether essence is prior to existence or, to put it in Platonic terms, being is prior to becoming, is also related to Aristotle's teleology. Aristotle proposed that everything that begins to exist has four causes; the material cause describes the matter that makes up the thing, the efficient cause describes how it was made, the formal cause describes what shape it was made to take, and the final cause describes why it was made, or what purpose or telos it was made to serve.

With artificial objects it makes sense to speak of final causes, but Lucretius insists that such is not the case with natural objects like the eye. Book 4, line 823;

EpicureanFriends Side-By-Side Lucretius

Multi-column side-by-side Lucretius text comparison tool featuring Munro, Bailey, Dunster, and Condensed editions.

handbook.epicureanfriends.com

Epicurus relies on a similar understanding of the relationship between existence and use in his Letter to Herodotus:

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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 [the body] 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.

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τότε γὰρ ἡδονῆς χρείαν ἔχομεν, ὅταν ἐκ τοῦ μὴ παρεῖναι τὴν ἡδονὴν ἀλγῶμεν· <ὅταν δὲ μὴ ἀλγῶμεν> οὐκέτι τῆς ἡδονῆς δεόμεθα.

For it is then that we have need of pleasure, when we feel pain owing to the absence of pleasure; (but when we do not feel pain), we no longer need pleasure.

δεόμεθα (δέω) can have the meaning of need, but it can also mean lack, which is more in keeping with Epicurean ethics; when we are not in pain, we no longer lack pleasure because we are already experiencing the fullest possible pleasure (as described in Principle Doctrine 3).

As usual, I invite Bryan, Don, and Eikadistes to review my handling of the Greek.

In the meantime, I recommend reviewing page 61 of Don's Translation with Commentary.

Sage advice for the holidays, Kalosyni, which many of us will no doubt consider applying come...January!

Here is a good start:

Land reform in Athens - Wikipedia

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Already in the 8th century BC, Hesiod referred to land shortage related to the problems of dividing inheritance. In the Odyssey it is mentioned that the worst fate of a man, other than death, is to remain without land and thus have to serve another person. People with no land had to leave Athens and settle in colonies in the west (Sicily and Italy) and east (Asia Minor).

I'll keep looking for information relating to the 4th century when Epicurus was born.

I'll try to remember where I first read about land inheritance in ancient Athens so I can give you a source, but it was a few years ago when I worked in land-surveying so it may take time!

Epicurus' status was clearly low by birth, and that he was derided for this in antiquity is a matter of record. But that he was born in the colonies is a symptom of his low status rather than the cause of it.

The real problem was wealth. Athens was democratic not only in its politics but in its outlook, at least so far as male citizens were concerned, and inheritance was divided equally rather than by primogeniture.

This caused problems, because the largest heritable asset in a family was commonly land, and land only grows by acquisition. Successful landowners could buy more, but unsuccessful ones could only sell what they had, or bequeath it to their heirs; heirs who would each receive an equal portion. If the father had only enough land to support a family, and that land was divided among four sons upon his death, the sons obviously could not each produce enough to support families of their own. Over time, plots got smaller and smaller, and families poorer and poorer.

You see the same problem at work on American Indian reservations today. The solution to this problem in antiquity was to bundle the poorest families onto ships, and send them off to a distant shore to found a colony. The whole project of colonization was the project of thinning out an underclass; not unlike the modern story of the British settlement of Australia as a penal colony.

Epicurus' parents were very probably 'transported' or 'removed' in this way, and on Samos took up whatever work they could find--pedagogy for his father, always a dismal line of work in antiquity, and some kind of low folk magic for his mother, according to the rumors.

There is an interesting epitaph in the Greek Anthology which bears slightly on this question;

Book XI - Convivial and Satirical Epigrams

No. 249 - Lucilius

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"Menophanes bought a field, and from hunger hanged himself on another man's oak. When he was dead they had no earth to throw over him from above, but he was buried for payment in the ground of one of his neighbors. If Epicurus had known of Menophanes' field he would have said that everything is full of fields, not of atoms."

This may at least hint at the problem of land shortages and poverty in Greece at the time.

Ironically, Menophanes deserves some credit because the Standard Model in physics suggests that everything is full of fields! Only kidding.

Aristotle was the private tutor of a whole new generation of rulers (Alexander the Great and Ptolemy I chief among them), and the Academy and the Lyceum attracted the sons of the wealthiest families in Athens. We can expect a certain amount of sneering. I still haven't read Pamela Gordon's book.

This book has a chapter on Lucretius and his use of Latin.

Iphigenia at Aulis by Euripides has more background on the events described in today's reading, here presented by Agamemnon in dialogue:

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But after the army was gathered and come together, we still remained at Aulis weather-bound; and Calchas, the seer, bade us in our perplexity sacrifice my own begotten child Iphigenia to Artemis, whose home is in this land, declaring that if we offered her, we should sail and sack the Phrygians' capital, but if we forbore, this was not for us. When I heard this, I commanded Talthybius with loud proclamation to disband the whole host, as I could never bear to slay daughter of mine. Whereupon my brother, bringing every argument to bear, persuaded me at last to face the crime; so I wrote in a folded scroll and sent to my wife, bidding her despatch our daughter to me on the pretence of wedding Achilles, it the same time magnifying his exalted rank and saying that he refused to sail with the Achaeans, unless a bride of our lineage should go to Phthia. Yes, this was the inducement I offered my wife, inventing, as I did, a sham marriage for the maiden. Of all the Achaeans we alone know the real truth, Calchas, Odysseus, Menelaus and myself; but that which I then decided wrongly, I now rightly countermand again in this scroll, which thou, old man, hast found me opening and resealing beneath the shade of night. Up now and away with this missive to Argos, and I will tell thee by word of mouth all that is written herein, the contents of the folded scroll, for thou art loyal to my wife and house.

We learn moments later that Achilles has no knowledge of this sham marriage.

And here is a thread on William Short, in which I recounted the anecdote where he saved a boy from drowning:

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The Long Neglect of William Short

Here's an interesting thought; what do we actually know about this guy?

Judging from Mr. Jefferson's letter in reply, we may infer that William Short, like Jefferson, positively identified himself as an Epicurean. Cassius' recent reading of Frances Wright's other work has me thinking that there might be gems hidden here as well.

He was a talented, capable, brilliant protégé of Thomas Jefferson, and a deft hand at diplomacy. He forsook the dream of a high and polished political career in his…

Joshua

October 5, 2020 at 6:48 PM

Here is that passage from Lorenzo Valla's De Voluptate:

And of course all of this is to forget the other side of the ledger, which Stephen Greenblatt cites here from Lorenzo Valla's De Voluptate:

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At the center of his dialogue, Valla constructs a remarkably vigorous and sustained defense of key Epicurean principles: the wisdom of withdrawing from competitive striving into the tranquil garden of philosophy (“From the shore you shall laugh in safety at the waves, or rather at those who are wave-tossed”), the primacy of bodily pleasure, the advantages of moderation, the perverse unnaturalness of sexual abstinence, the denial of any afterlife. “It is plain,” the Epicurean states, “that there are no rewards for the dead, certainly there are no punishments either.” And lest this formulation allow an ambiguity, still setting human souls apart from all other created things, he returns to the point to render it unequivocal:

• According to my Epicurus . . . nothing remains after the dissolution of the living being, and in the term “living being” he included man just as much as he did the lion, the wolf, the dog, and all other things that breathe. With all this I agree. They eat, we eat; they drink, we drink; they sleep, and so do we. They engender, conceive, give birth, and nourish their young in no way different from ours. They possess some part of reason and memory, some more than others, and we a little more than they. We are like them in almost everything; finally, they die and we die—both of us completely.

If we grasp this end clearly—“finally, they die and we die—both of us completely”—then our determination should be equally clear: “Therefore, for as long as possible (would that it were longer!) let us not allow those bodily pleasures to slip away that cannot be doubted and cannot be recovered in another life.”

He is speaking here about death, but the real point is that there is nothing which marks humans out as special in comparison to other living beings (animantem in Valla's Latin). It did not require circular reasoning for Lucretius to notice the symptoms of grief and loss in the mother cow whose calf has been selected for sacrifice, and we don't actually need it now to observe in these lower animals the signs of the same feelings of joy, gladness, and pleasure that we feel ourselves.

Phaedrus was a Scholarch of the Garden, a successor in a long line of leaders of the school of Epicurus. Philodemus was also a devoted member of the school, having studied under the Scholarch Zeno of Sidon.

Lucretius is probably the outlier here--a Roman among Greeks, as it were. He held orthodox beliefs about the gods, and was not an atheist, but he was more critical of cultural religious devotions than Epicurus was.