Posts by Joshua

Here it is, as quoted in Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve and translated by Ingrid D. Rowland;

I've quoted a long passage on the forum before from Bruno which directly challenges the idea that God 'numbers the hairs on our heads' or 'has His hand even in the fall of a sparrow'. I'll have to find it, it's excellent--my favorite thing of his that I've read.

By the way, the poet Fulke Greville mentioned above has enjoyed a moderate revival of interest over these four lines;

O wearisome condition of humanity!

Born under one law, to another bound;

Vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity;

Created sick, commanded to be sound.

Chorus Sacerdotum by Baron Brooke Fulke Greville | Poetry Foundation

O wearisome condition of humanity!

www.poetryfoundation.org

Yes, he wrote a text entitled De l'Infinito Universo et Mondi, On the Infinity of the Universe and Worlds, which I have not read, and also touches upon the subject in other writings. I'll have more time for this later though!

Francis Bacon; Of Truth; 1625; an essay from a collection in which Bacon paraphrases Lucretius, while at the same time condemning Epicureanism.

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The poet that beautified the sect that was otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well, "It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below; but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth (a hill not to be commanded [that is, by higher ground], and where the air is always clear and serene), and to see the errors and wanderings and mists and tempests in the vale below"

Thread; An Essay by Francis Bacon "Of Truth"

Source; https://www.thoughtco.com/of-truth-by-francis-bacon-1690073

Note; This essay was published as part of a collection by Francis Bacon in 1625 titled "Essays and Councils, Civil and Moral. He paraphrases Lucretius, but does not name him.

"What is truth?" said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. Certainly, there be that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief, affecting free-will in thinking as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them as was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labor which men take in finding out of truth, nor again that when it is found it imposeth upon men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor, but a natural though corrupt love of the lie itself. One of the later school of the Grecians examineth the matter, and is at a stand to think what should be in it, that men should love lies where neither they make for pleasure, as with poets, nor for advantage, as with the merchant; but for the lie's sake. But I cannot tell: this same truth is a naked and open daylight that doth not show the masques and mummeries and triumphs of the world half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt that if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves? One of the fathers, in great severity, called poesy vinum daemonum [the wine of devils] because it filleth the imagination, and yet it is but with the shadow of a lie. But it is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it that doth the hurt, such as we spake of before. But howsoever these things are thus in men's depraved judgments and affections, yet truth, which only doth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making or wooing of it; the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it; and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.

The first creature of God in the works of the days was the light of the sense; the last was the light of reason; and his Sabbath work ever since is the illumination of his spirit. First he breathed light upon the face of the matter, or chaos; then he breathed light into the face of man; and still he breatheth and inspireth light into the face of his chosen. The poet that beautified the sect that was otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well, "It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below; but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth (a hill not to be commanded [that is, by higher ground], and where the air is always clear and serene), and to see the errors and wanderings and mists and tempests in the vale below"; so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.

To pass from theological and philosophical truth to the truth of civil business: it will be acknowledged, even by those that practice it not, that clear and round dealing is the honor of man's nature, and that mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it. For these winding and crooked courses are the goings of the serpent, which goeth basely upon the belly and not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious; and therefore Montaigne saith prettily, when he inquired the reason why the word of the lie should be such a disgrace and such an odious charge. Saith he, "If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much as to say that he is brave towards God, and a coward towards man." For a lie faces God, and shrinks from man. Surely the wickedness of falsehood and breach of faith cannot possibly be so highly expressed as in that it shall be the last peal to call the judgments of God upon the generations of men: it being foretold that when Christ cometh, "He shall not find faith upon the earth."

Francis Bacon's Classic Essay, "Of Truth"

Is anyone capable of finding truth and offering it to the world in the clear light of day? That is the question explored by Francis Bacon in "Of Truth."

www.thoughtco.com

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And we have to decide what if anything to read, and if we do read anything, I suspect we should start with section V

That's a good question. Maybe throw it open to the forum? I don't have a strong opinion either way.

Does anyone who listens to the podcast have an opinion as to whether we should read the section of text before we start the discussion, as we did before DeWitt? Or should we just quote as needed, as we have been doing recently?

One thing I noticed while typing was how repetitive he can be. But his defense of writing high literature in Latin is worth mentioning, because of its parallels with Epicurean writers like Amafinius, Rabirius, and of course Lucretius, and also because of our recent discussions on the Catholic Church's resistance to publishing in the vernacular.

I should not be surprised to note that DeWitt mentions the temple in one of his articles, which is also useful for understanding the decline of Roman-era Epicureanism;

https://www.jstor.org/stable/283212?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

He points to Syncretism as the reason the school in Rome collapsed.

Here's something far-fetched for you; in 54 BC, plans were made and construction began on a temple dedicated to Venus in the Forum of Caesar in Rome. Then in 46 BC Julius Caesar himself vowed the temple to Venus Victrix on the eve of the Battle of Pharsalus. However, two years later he re-dedicated it;

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He eventually decided to dedicate the temple to Venus Genetrix, the mother of Aeneas, and thus the mythical ancestress of the Julian family. The Temple was dedicated on 26 September 46 BC, the last day of Caesar's triumph. The forum and temple were eventually completed by Octavian.

It is thought that Lucretius must have died sometime in the late 50's BC. At any rate a letter from Cicero to his brother from February of 54 BC mentions Lucretius' poem. Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, and Piso died in 43 BC.

I'm suggesting that there is a remote possibility that Caesar's Epicurean friends and relations (like Piso) might have helped to sway the decision. I would also observe that to vow a temple to a goddess of victory on the eve of battle, and then dedicate the temple differently after the battle was won would seem to suggest a somewhat lax approach to religion.

The temple itself was damage by fire twice, and restored and rededicated for the last time by Diocletian c. 283 AD. The three columns that still stand date from this restoration.

Ha! We should communicate better, that was about as far as I get in my transcription on Saturday.

We didn't discuss this, but 8th and 9th century Benedictine Abbot Rabanus Maurus wrote an encyclopedic treatise titled De Rerum Naturas, "On the Natures of Things", at the monastery of Fulda where it is believed that Lucretius' poem was rediscovered in 1417 by Poggio Bracciolini.

Farinata degli Uberti

Farinata degli Uberti - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Quote from Boccaccio

He was of the opinion of Epicurus, that the soul dies with the body, and maintained that human happiness consisted in temporal pleasures; but he did not follow these in the way that Epicurus did, that is by making long fasts to have afterwards pleasure in eating dry bread; but was fond of good and delicate viands, and ate them without waiting to be hungry; and for this sin he is damned as a Heretic in this place.

Cosma Raimondi, Letter

Cosma Raimondi – NewEpicurean

Cosma Raimondi (Chapter 22) - Cambridge Translations of Renaissance Philosophical Texts

Cambridge Translations of Renaissance Philosophical Texts - August 1997

www.cambridge.org

Lorenzo Valla

Lorenzo Valla - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Michael Marullus

Michael Tarchaniota Marullus - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Printer and Bookmaker Aldus Manutius

Aldus Manutius - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

John Evelyn

John Evelyn - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Don's Letter to Menoikeus

Letter To Menoikeus: A New Translation With Commentary : Don Boozer : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

A new translation of the Letter to Menoikeus (Menoeceus) by Epicurus with commentary.

archive.org

Lucy Hutchinson, Letter to the Earl of Anglesey

Full text | Lucy Hutchinson's letter to Lord Anglesey (1675)

Giordano Bruno

Giordano Bruno - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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“The greatest barrier I have met is the almost total absence from the minds of my audience of any sense of sin... The early Christian preachers could assume in their hearers, whether Jews, Metuentes, or Pagans, a sense of guilt. (That this was common among Pagans is shown by the fact that both Epicureanism and the mystery religions both claimed, though in different ways, to assuage it.) Thus the Christian message was in those days unmistakably the Evangelium, the Good News. It promised healing to those who knew they were sick. We have to convince our hearers of the unwelcome diagnosis before we can expect them to welcome the news of the remedy.

The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man, the roles are quite reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge; if God should have a reasonable defense for being the god who permits war, poverty, and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God’s acquittal. But the important thing is that man is on the bench and God is in the dock.”

― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics

Came across this quote this evening, and I am completely unimpressed by Lewis' argument-in-parentheses. The Greeks were not, to my mind, overly burdened by the feeling guilt, and Epicureanism did not spare much time in trying to assuage it. Actually, I more than half suspect that Lewis is basing that claim almost entirely on the so-called Riddle of Epicurus, which really does place God in the dock, but let that pass. Here are several reasons why I think that the Hebrew/Christian concept of sin is totally foreign to the pagan Greeks;

• The idea of fate was with Greek culture from the beginning. "Sin" requires absolute free will, it is meaningless where fate is concerned.
  • The story of the Iliad is the story of Achilles, a warlord with a line of ambiguity running crossing his fate--if he stays home, he will live a long life and father many descendants. But when they die his name will be forgotten. If he sails to Troy he will die in battle, but his name will echo through eternity. But hey, at least Achilles gets to know his fate ahead of time. If only Oedipus had been granted similar foresight!
• "Sin" is meaningless under polytheism. While it's possible to aggravate one or more gods, the gods themselves are also at cross purposes. To offend one god was very often to find yourself in the good graces of another. The Iliad again offers the prime example, with all of Olympus divided over the progress of the war. In fact, where the gods disagreed it would be impossible not to "sin" against one or more of them. Sin fundamentally requires monotheism--a single ultimate source of moral authority. No one could possibly take seriously the idea that Zeus was a great moral authority. His authority derived from his power, not from his goodness.
• The Greek afterlife was not generally a place either of punishment or reward. Those were the outliers; for the great mass of humanity there was one fate for the whole of them-mere mindless continuation.
• At the outset of his project to weigh and balance the claims of the different philosophical schools, Cicero explains his reason for undertaking the debate--There are as many opinions as there are men. What has Jerusalem to do with Athens? In this respect, nothing; for the Greeks, the project of philosophy demanded consideration of many viewpoints. The freedom of choice is implicit in the whole business. The Christians took the Greek word for choice and twisted it into something heinous-heresy.

According to Dr. Henk S. Versnel, University of Leiden, in the Oxford Classical Dictionary, "The modern term [sin] has no equivalent in either Greek or Latin. The Christian concept of sin accommodates two basic and coherent senses: offence against moral codes, and action against the laws or the will of God. It presupposes conscious voluntariness, while remorse may be associated with its consequences, interpreted as an expression of estrangement from God. Although some of these characteristics can be found in the archaic and classical religions of Greece and Rome, as a whole this complex is not clearly represented."

I like where you're going with this!

You also have to situate DeWitt's book in its time and place--North America during the early years of the Cold War. In fact, Joseph McCarthy was censured by the Senate the same year DeWitt published. I presume his endless perceived connections between Christianity and Epicureanism were an attempt to get his Christian contemporaries to take another look at Epicurus.

It is nevertheless rather overbearing!

Regarding Epicureanism as a missionary philosophy, there are a number of issues at play. Since the Epicureans were barred by the Gymnasiarchs from teaching in the Gymnesium, the usual place for philosophy, they were bound by necessity to pursue alternatives; writing letters, teaching in private, and placing statues where passers-by might see them and become curious.

Epicurus was also nearly unique in the ancient world for thinking that philosophy should not be relegated to the high born and their sons, but could be studied profitably by everyone. Then there is the issue of dogma, which I am out of time on break to address!

Julian the Apostate, his condemnation of Epicureans and Pyrrhonists;

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Let us not admit discourses by Epicureans or Pyrrhonists – though indeed the gods have already in their wisdom destroyed their works, so that most of their books are no longer available. Nevertheless, there is no reason why I should not, by way of example, mention these works too, to show what sort of discourses priests must especially avoid; and if such discourses, then much more must they avoid such thoughts.

Fragmentum Epistulae 288a-305d

Tertullian, anticipating the varied pleasures of Judgment Day;

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What a panorama of spectacle on that day! Which sight shall excite my wonder? Which, my laughter? Where shall I rejoice, where exult--as I see so many and so mighty kings, whose ascent to heaven used to be made known by public announcement, now along with Jupiter himself, along with the very witnesses of their ascent, groaning in the depths of darkness? Governors of provinces, too, who persecuted the name of the Lord, melting in flames fiercer than those they themselves kindled in their rage against the Christians braving them with contempt?

Whom else shall I behold? Those wise philosophers blushing before their followers as they burn together, the followers whom they taught that the world is no concern of God's whom they assured that either they had no souls at all or that what souls they had would never return to their former bodies? The poets also, trembling, not before the judgment seat of Rhadamanthus or of Minos, but of Christ whom they did not expect to meet.

Then will the tragic actors be worth hearing, more vocal in their own catastrophe; then the comic actors will be worth watching, more lither of limb in the fire; then the charioteer will be worth seeing, red all over on his fiery wheel; then the athletes will be worth observing, not in their gymnasiums, but thrown about by fire--unless I might not wish to look at them even then but would prefer to turn an insatiable gaze on those who vented their rage on the Lord.

"This is He," I will say, "the son of the carpenter and the harlot, the sabbath-breaker, the Samaritan who had a devil. This is He whom you purchased from Judas, this is He who was struck with reed and fist, defiled with spittle, given gall and vinegar to drink. This is He whom the disciples secretly stole away to spread the story of His resurrection, or whom the gardener removed lest his lettuces be trampled by the throng of curious idlers."

What praetor or consul or quaestor or priest with all his munificence will ever bestow on you the favor of beholding and exulting in such sights? Yet, such scenes as these are in a measure already ours by faith in the vision of the spirit. But what are those things which "eye has not seen nor ear heard and which have not entered into the heart of man"? Things of greater delight, I believe, than circus, both kinds of theater, and any stadium.

This was brought home to me at work today when a young women from Ecuador who has asked me to help her with her English pronunciation told me that she struggles with words like prepared because the "erred" sound we make at the end has us "swallowing our tongues".

Now for a calculated move to draw Don into the conversation...