Posts by Joshua

Stoic Stories: Stoicism by Its Best Stories (Ancient Wisdom)

Stoic Stories: Stoicism by Its Best Stories (Ancient Wisdom)

www.amazon.com

His book on Stoicism.

Meet the Ultimate Hedonist

Aristippus was far more radical than the more famous Epicurus.

www.psychologytoday.com

It probably makes sense to keep tabs on this sort of thing, especially when mention of Hegesias the "Death-Persuader" is mentioned in line with our somewhat recent discussions on that subject.

A thread on that is Here. This new article isn't going to break any new ground, and little common ground either since the author is a psychiatrist who has also written a book on Stoicism.

His article on Epicureanism is Here.

Thoreau on the subject:

Quote

Yet the New Testament treats of man and man’s so-called spiritual affairs too exclusively, and is too constantly moral and personal, to alone content me, who am not interested solely in man’s religious or moral nature, or in man even. I have not the most definite designs on the future. Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you, is by no means a golden rule, but the best of current silver. An honest man would have but little occasion for it. It is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case. The book has never been written which is to be accepted without any allowance.

-A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

From the Wikipedia page;

Quote

Ancient Greece

The Golden Rule in its prohibitive (negative) form was a common principle in ancient Greek philosophy. Examples of the general concept include:

"Avoid doing what you would blame others for doing." – Thales[17] (c. 624 – c. 546 BCE)

"What you do not want to happen to you, do not do it yourself either." – Sextus the Pythagorean.[18] The oldest extant reference to Sextus is by Origen in the third century of the common era.[19]

"Ideally, no one should touch my property or tamper with it, unless I have given him some sort of permission, and, if I am sensible I shall treat the property of others with the same respect." – Plato[20] (c. 420 – c. 347 BCE)

"Do not do to others that which angers you when they do it to you." – Isocrates[21] (436–338 BCE)

"It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly, and it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living pleasantly." – Epicurus (341–270 BC) where "justly" refers to "an agreement made in reciprocal association ... against the infliction or suffering of harm."[22]

Display More

That is excellent, Bryan, thank you! I really like how you use color and font to denote the most important parts of speech!

Lucretius, proem to Book III

Quote

I see what is going on in all the void,

the majesty and calm habitations

of the gods reveal themselves in places

where no winds disturb, no clouds bring showers,

no white snow falls, congealed with bitter frost, [20]

to harm them, the always cloudless aether 30

vaults above, and they smile, as far and wide

the light spreads out.

Display More

Seven Heavens:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_hea…20An%20and%20Ki.

Monty Python:

Thank you Cassius for another fine example of your editing wizardry!

I will join as well!

There are little differences in tone and emphasis even within languages, and certainly between them.

In American English we often mark a question with rising intonation toward the end of the sentence. Somewhere in the 80's to mid-90's it began to be observed that young Australians were using rising intonation in non-question sentences.

This is called High Rising Terminal or "uptalk" and is getting more prominent in English speaking countries around the world.

There is also a fourth line often added: "Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"

We finished this chapter on Sunday and it's only occurring to me now that we never addressed the alleged Paradox of Epicurus. David Hume summarizes the passage from Lactantius:

Quote

Epicurus’s old questions are yet unanswered. Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?

It's probably worth mentioning that the reason we never talk about this trilemma is that nothing similar to it survives in any ancient text prior to Lactantius in Late Antiquity. Scholars have also debated whether the paradox as expressed is even consistent with the texts that do survive.

Quote

Augustine says against the Manichees [Cf. De Civ. Dei xviii, 1]: "In Christ's Church, those are heretics, who hold mischievous and erroneous opinions, and when rebuked that they may think soundly and rightly, offer a stubborn resistance, and, refusing to mend their pernicious and deadly doctrines, persist in defending them."

Quote

I answer that, With regard to heretics two points must be observed: one, on their own side; the other, on the side of the Church. On their own side there is the sin, whereby they deserve not only to be separated from the Church by excommunication, but also to be severed from the world by death. For it is a much graver matter to corrupt the faith which quickens the soul, than to forge money, which supports temporal life. Wherefore if forgers of money and other evil-doers are forthwith condemned to death by the secular authority, much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death.

On the part of the Church, however, there is mercy which looks to the conversion of the wanderer, wherefore she condemns not at once, but "after the first and second admonition," as the Apostle directs: after that, if he is yet stubborn, the Church no longer hoping for his conversion, looks to the salvation of others, by excommunicating him and separating him from the Church, and furthermore delivers him to the secular tribunal to be exterminated thereby from the world by death.

-Thomas Aquinas

That's one of the more frustrating aspects of the response to Greenblatt's book. They downplay self-flagellation, which admittedly probably was restricted to the real hardliners, but take no account of the persecution of Heretical sects, the torture and murder of apostates, the relish of punishment of the damned in hell, the culture of fear and inquisition, the conversion of "heathens" at the point of a sword, the anti-Jewish pogroms, the hunting and burning of accused witches, and the infamous Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

One reviewer actually wrote this with a straight face;

Quote

Indeed the Middle Ages are considered Europe’s most bookish era, a time when books — Christian, Greek and Roman alike — were accorded near totemic authority. Medieval readers and writers (not just clergy — lay culture was widely influenced by texts and documents, especially following the 10th century) were apt to believe anything they read in an old book just because it was old and from a book.

As if to say that that were a sign of literacy. Well I'm sorry, but a literate and literary society does not believe something just because they read it in a book. A literate society knows enough about books not to take them blindly or at face value. It is only credulity and ignorance and illiteracy that views books as 'totemic'.

But imagine someone saying or writing that in the middle ages--and about one book in particular--and then try pretending that we don't all know what would be done to them.

Well wide of the mark, Bishop.

Quote

His aversion to religion, in the sense usually attached to the term, was of the same kind with that of Lucretius: he regarded it with the feelings due not to a mere mental delusion, but to a great moral evil. He looked upon it as the greatest enemy of morality: first, by setting up factitious excellencies - belief in creeds, devotional feelings, and ceremonies, not connected with the good of human kind - and causing these to be accepted as substitutes for genuine virtue: but above all, by radically vitiating the standard of morals; making it consist in doing the will of a being, on whom it lavishes indeed all the phrases of adulation, but whom in sober truth it depicts as eminently hateful.

-John Stuart Mill, on his father

I had almost forgotten that Bishop Barron did a video on The Swerve several years ago:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_cha…20to%20minerals.

The Wikipedia page for the Scala naturae or "Great Chain of Being" is worth glancing at as we continue to talk about the place of the gods in Epicurus' universe.

Quote

So he,

The master, then by his truth-speaking words,

Purged the breasts of men, and set the bounds

Of lust and terror, and exhibited

The supreme good whither we all endeavour,

And showed the path whereby we might arrive

Thereunto by a little cross-cut straight,

And what of ills in all affairs of mortals

Upsprang and flitted deviously about

(Whether by chance or force), since Nature thus

Had destined.

Display More

I guess the problem at least in Lucretius is that "life itself" does not answer the question of "whither [do] we all endeavor?" Whither? To pleasure.

And (why not?) Edward Abbey, from his journal;

Quote

My loyalties will not be bound by national borders, or confined in time by one nation's history, or limited in the spiritual dimension by one language and culture. I pledge my allegiance to the damned human race, and my everlasting love to the green hills of Earth, and my intimations of glory to the singing stars, to the very end of space and time.

He writes at length about this in his essay On Fairy Stories.

I also quite like George R. R. Martin on fantasy:

On Fantasy | George R.R. Martin

See page two of my Interlinear Lucretius thread for that conversation.

Danish scholar Marcus Meibomius