Posts by Joshua

What Todd says about pleasure is something I mentioned on the podcast, I think in the first episode of the Torquatus material or near it.

Since I'm certain I did a poor job of explaining it then, I'll summarize a variation of the same idea.

1. Epicurus uses the example of infants and newborn animals to demonstrate the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain descriptively.

2. He proceeds by noticing that the condition of the infant is one unburdened by culture, education, sophistication, bias, social expectation, rationalization and so on.

3. The unwritten premise: that infancy, free from all of those, and directed in its pursuits only by nature itself, is the best guide to uncovering the proper end of life.

4. The normative conclusion: that the proper end of life is the pursuit of pleasure, and the avoidance of pain.

The descriptive premise (that pleasure is pursued as the goal) and the normative conclusion (that pleasure should be pursued as the goal) are connected, and I think inextricably so.

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The "abolished by law" is what I have heard but have not researched. I thought I had read that Augustus closed all the schools, not just the Epicurean, and that would predate the Christian issue. Presumably this would have hurt all the schools, but if the Epicureans were "taking Italy by storm" as Cicero complained, then this would have been especially damaging to the Epicureans.

The closing of the schools of philosophy did not happen until much, much later, under Justinian in 529. But Constantine converted the Empire in the 4th century, and then Julian the Apostate deconverted--but his paganism was not less authoritarian for that, as you may read in his own words here.

In attempting to resurrect the piety of old Rome, he singled out the Epicureans and the Pyrrhonists as being against his project. Himerius was a secretary of Justinian's, and the Encyclopedia Brittanica of 1911 says:

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Other declamations, only known from the excerpts in Photius, were imaginary orations put into the mouth of famous persons—Demosthenes advocating the recall of Aeschines from banishment, Hypereides supporting the policy of Demosthenes, Themistocles inveighing against the king of Persia, an orator unnamed attacking Epicurus for atheism before Julian at Constantinople.

Augustus' Political, Social, & Moral Reforms

Augustus is well known for being the first Emperor of Rome, but even more than that, for being a self-proclaimed “Restorer of the Republic.” He believed in…

www.worldhistory.org

This webpage seems to get to the heart of the matter.

I thought that one might get you!

This is John Dryden giving some of his opinion on the matter. I'll pull out a few excerpts;

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[Juvenal] treats tyranny, and all the vices attending it, as they deserve, with the utmost rigour; and consequently a noble soul is better pleased with a zealous vindicator of Roman liberty [i.e. Juvenal] than with a temporising poet, a well-mannered court slave, and a man who is often afraid of laughing in the right place [i.e. Horace]—who is ever decent, because he is naturally servile.

After all, Horace had the disadvantage of the times in which he lived; they were better for the man, but worse for the satirist. It is generally said that those enormous vices which were practised under the reign of Domitian were unknown in the time of Augustus Cæsar; that therefore Juvenal had a larger field than Horace. Little follies were out of doors when oppression was to be scourged instead of avarice; it was no longer time to turn into ridicule the false opinions of philosophers when the Roman liberty was to be asserted. There was more need of a Brutus in Domitian’s days to redeem or mend, than of a Horace, if he had then been living, to laugh at a fly-catcher.

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Herein, then, it is that [ Aulus Persius Flaccus, a Stoic] has excelled both Juvenal and Horace. He sticks to his own philosophy; he shifts not sides, like Horace (who is sometimes an Epicurean, sometimes a Stoic, sometimes an Eclectic, as his present humour leads him), nor declaims, like Juvenal, against vices more like an orator than a philosopher. Persius is everywhere the same—true to the dogmas of his master. What he has learnt, he teaches vehemently; and what he teaches, that he practises himself.

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Fame is in itself a real good, if we may believe Cicero, who was perhaps too fond of it; but even fame, as Virgil tells us, acquires strength by going forward. Let Epicurus give indolency as an attribute to his gods, and place in it the happiness of the blest: the Divinity which we worship has given us not only a precept against it [indolence], but His own example to the contrary [In the life of Christ].

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We who are better taught by our religion, yet own every wonderful accident which befalls us for the best, to be brought to pass by some special providence of Almighty God, and by the care of guardian angels; and from hence I might infer that no heroic poem can be writ on the Epicurean principles, which I could easily demonstrate if there were need to prove it or I had leisure.

I'm not sure on meteorites. The Letter to Pythocles mentions comets near the very end but only in passing.

"Once I wandered, an expert in crazy wisdom, a scant and infrequent adorer of gods, now I’m forced to set sail and return, to go back to the paths I abandoned. For Jupiter, Father of all of the gods, who generally splits the clouds with his lightning, flashing away, drove thundering horses, and his swift chariot, through the clear sky, till the dull earth, and the wandering rivers, and Styx, and dread Taenarus’ hateful headland, and Atlas’s mountain-summits shook. The god has the power to replace the highest with the lowest, bring down the famous, and raise the obscure to the heights. And greedy Fortune with her shrill whirring, carries away the crown and delights in setting it, there."

--Horace, Ode 1.34, Translated by A. S. Kline

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This, this it is, O Memmius, to see through

The very nature of fire-fraught thunderbolt;

O this it is to mark by what blind force

It maketh each effect, and not, O not

To unwind Etrurian scrolls oracular,

Inquiring tokens of occult will of gods,

Even as to whence the flying flame hath come,

Or to which half of heaven it turns, or how

Through walled places it hath wound its way,

Or, after proving its dominion there,

How it hath speeded forth from thence amain,

Or what the thunderstroke portends of ill

From out high heaven. But if Jupiter

And other gods shake those refulgent vaults

With dread reverberations and hurl fire

Whither it pleases each, why smite they not

Mortals of reckless and revolting crimes,

That such may pant from a transpierced breast

Forth flames of the red levin- unto men

A drastic lesson?- why is rather he-

O he self-conscious of no foul offence-

Involved in flames, though innocent, and clasped

Up-caught in skiey whirlwind and in fire?

Nay, why, then, aim they at eternal wastes,

And spend themselves in vain?- perchance, even so

To exercise their arms and strengthen shoulders?

Why suffer they the Father's javelin

To be so blunted on the earth? And why

Doth he himself allow it, nor spare the same

Even for his enemies? O why most oft

Aims he at lofty places? Why behold we

Marks of his lightnings most on mountain tops?

Then for what reason shoots he at the sea?-

What sacrilege have waves and bulk of brine

And floating fields of foam been guilty of?

Besides, if 'tis his will that we beware

Against the lightning-stroke, why feareth he

To grant us power for to behold the shot?

And, contrariwise, if wills he to o'erwhelm us,

Quite off our guard, with fire, why thunders he

Off in yon quarter, so that we may shun?

Why rouseth he beforehand darkling air

And the far din and rumblings? And O how

Canst thou believe he shoots at one same time

Into diverse directions? Or darest thou

Contend that never hath it come to pass

That divers strokes have happened at one time?

But oft and often hath it come to pass,

And often still it must, that, even as showers

And rains o'er many regions fall, so too

Dart many thunderbolts at one same time.

Again, why never hurtles Jupiter

A bolt upon the lands nor pours abroad

Clap upon clap, when skies are cloudless all?

Or, say, doth he, so soon as ever the clouds

Have come thereunder, then into the same

Descend in person, and that from thence he may

Near-by decide upon the stroke of shaft?

And, lastly, why, with devastating bolt

Shakes he asunder holy shrines of gods

And his own thrones of splendour, and to-breaks

The well-wrought idols of divinities,

And robs of glory his own images

By wound of violence?

-Lucretius Book VI, transl. William Ellery Leonard

And while I'm strolling through my memories, this episode of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. One would think I had a very lonely upbringing!

This is also the time of the year for many mugs of Cinnamon Apple Spice tea, for port with dinner, and pipe tobacco on a cold walk, and for laying siege to the Latin language during long evenings indoors!

I have had a few personal literary traditions of long standing about this time of year, dating from my high school reading. Some books are inextricably linked in my mind with the mood of December--Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, and Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes were usual re-reading for me in this time of year.

New Years Eve I still read Ring out, wild bells from Tennyson's In Memoriam, and January is given over to Robert Burns. This December I have my own apartment again for the first time in ~4 years. Looking forward to that!

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48. Strangury and dysuria are cured by drinking pure wine, and venesection; open the vein on the inside.

--Hippocrates; Aphorisms, Section VII; transl. Francis Adams

The Internet Classics Archive | Aphorisms by Hippocrates

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As Nate has been mentioning lately, didn't the ancient Greeks have access to perhaps even hallucinogenic drugs that might also have been used for pain?

Opium and Cannabis at the very least.

Martin mentioned dysentery, but I was under the impression that it was known to have been strangury caused by kidney stones--in which case a warm bath is very commonly recommended to relieve pain related to swelling. And alcohol being a diuretic, meaning that it increases water loss through urine, might slightly increase the chance of flushing the stone. So not a terrible approach given the barbarous state of medicine at the time!

What Elli is saying here is very much in line with Lucretius' allowance for what we might call metaphorical gods--the grain as Ceres and the wine as Bacchus and so on. But there is a separate question as to whether there are personal gods with limited physical bodies and no involvement in human affairs--and it's clear to me at least that Epicurus accepted those as well. So the question is this--do those gods present themselves to our five senses, or do they not? The answer to that as I see it is no.

If they do exist, and yet do not present to our five senses, how do we know of them? If not sensation, and if not feeling, then the answer must be anticipation. To quote Lucretius;

And, Memmius, unless

From out thy mind thou spewest all of this

And casteth far from thee all thoughts which be

Unworthy gods and alien to their peace,

Then often will the holy majesties

Of the high gods be harmful unto thee,

As by thy thought degraded,- not, indeed,

That essence supreme of gods could be by this

So outraged as in wrath to thirst to seek

Revenges keen; but even because thyself

Thou plaguest with the notion that the gods,

Even they, the Calm Ones in serene repose,

Do roll the mighty waves of wrath on wrath;

Nor wilt thou enter with a serene breast

Shrines of the gods; nor wilt thou able be

In tranquil peace of mind to take and know

Those images which from their holy bodies

Are carried into intellects of men,

As the announcers of their form divine.

-Book VI, Leonard Translation

So it is the images or simulacra of the bodies of these gods that inform our knowledge of them, interfacing directly with our "intellects" and forming our preconceptions.

But soft! Did Lucretius in Book V not just make the point that our preconceptions that interpret and integrate these images can be very, very flawed? He says that a Centaur is what happens in our minds when the image of a horse and the image if a man get jumbled together. But we only think we know that Centaurs aren't real because we actually can use our senses to evaluate the horse, and the man, and because our reason can act on our sensory knowledge of them.

So under those constraints, how do we evaluate our preconceptions of the gods? We have no sensory information, and no means of getting any. We have nothing for reason to act on in assessing the images themselves.

I suspect that Don has translated it correctly, but it is certainly worth reminding ourselves that Epicurus' theology is possibly the most elusive and sinuous part of his philosophy--the preconceptions, the most difficult of his Canon of epistemology.

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If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.

And here's the quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson!

One thing we have not yet accounted for is the possibility that Eusebius' account of Lucretius' death, as reported later by Jerome, has a grain of historical truth to it. We simply know too little about Lucretius to have any certainty about how he died.

Edit--ok, clearly Cassius and I are of one mind!

My answer is a hard no.

There is no possible claim about what constitutes the proper end of life that meets a test of falsifiability, in part because of an observation made by David Hume.

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The is–ought problem...is the thesis that, if a reasoner only has access to non-moral and non-evaluative factual premises, the reasoner cannot logically infer the truth of moral statements.

Applying this to the pleasure principle, I might think I'm on solid ground by starting things out this way:

"Every living thing, as soon as it is born, seeks after pleasure and recoils from pain." Starting with that, what would it take for us to get to this? "We ought to live our own lives like this, pursuing pleasure as the goal of our lives and avoiding pain as much as we can."

What we're missing is at least one extra premise; something to go between those two statements to connect them in some logical way. But this doesn't give us an objective truth about the proper end of life--it just gives us another argument from logic. What Epicurus actually does with regard to the two statements above (adapted from the Torquatus material) is to offer a non-logical approach.

Epicurus sets out to show this as follows: Every living thing, as soon as it is born, seeks after pleasure, and delights in it as its chief good. It also recoils from pain as its chief evil, and avoids pain so far as is possible. Nature’s own unbiased and honest judgment leads every living thing to do this from birth, and it continues to do this as long as it remains uncorrupted. Epicurus refuses to admit any need for discussion to prove that pleasure is to be desired and pain is to be avoided, because these facts, he thinks, are perceived by the senses, in the same way that fire is hot, snow is white, and honey is sweet. None of these things need be proved by elaborate argument — it is enough merely to draw attention to them. For there is a difference, he holds, between a formal logical proof of a thing, and a mere notice or reminder. Logical proofs are the method for discovering abstract and difficult truths, but on the other hand a mere notice is all that is required for indicating facts that are obvious and evident.

[The passage from Lucretius, Book 1 (regarding a chorale performance at Notre Dame, 2017)]

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Stefan Girardet
(referring to Epicurus:)

Therefore the vivid power of his mind prevailed,
and forth he marched far beyond the flaming walls
of the world, as he traversed the immeasurable
universe in thought and imagination; whence
victorious he returns, bearing his prize: the
knowledge of what can come into being and what
cannot: how each thing has its powers limited
and its deep-set boundary mark. Therefore
Superstition is now in turn cast down and
trampled underfoot—a victory that exalts us
to heaven.
—Lucretius, De rerum natura I: 172-75 —after Loeb Classical Library

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Quote Therefore the lively power of his mind prevailed,

and forth he marched far beyond the flaming walls

of the world, as he traversed the immeasurable

universe in thought and imagination;

whence victorious he returns bearing his prize, the

knowledge what can come into being,

what can not, in a word, how each thing has its powers limited

and its deep-set boundary mark. Therefore

Superstition is now in her turn cast down and

trampled underfoot, whilst we by the victory are exalted

high as heaven.

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(The un-amended Loeb text, for comparison)

This passage is one that will come up on next week's podcast, so it's actually good to get a chance to address a few points here. There are three key issues that complicate a simple reading of the text. We know from Thoreau's journal that he read the first hundred lines of Lucretius and then moved on--his only comment on the text or the poet is in reference to this passage, which he cites as a good description of Prometheus. This is probably not obtuseness on his part--it's exactly the kind of layered texture and metaphorical posture--allowing for open interpretation--that poetry is known for, which is presumably why Epicurus has so little time for it. But it's worth mentioning because of what comes next.

After Epicurus seizes a boon for mankind, Lucretius says that with this new knowledge "Superstition" (religio) is "cast down" and "trampled underfoot". The word foot is appropriate, because it is primarily in the footnotes that competing scholars have offered their opinions on that word religio. Superstition? Religion? False religion?

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Lucretius seizes the opportunity of stating that men think things are done by divine power because they do not understand how they happen, whereas he will show how all things are done without the hand of the gods — a bold proposition truly, but one which, translated into modern language, means simply that natural phenomena are subject to definite laws, and are not unintelligible miracles. Lucretius fails to perceive that definite physical laws are consistent with the work of God and the difficulty of reconciling the two ideas, unreal as it seems to us, has been felt by able men even now-a- days, when the conception of divine power is very different from any present to the mind of Lucretius. To most of us the very conception of a law suggests a lawgiver, while he, to prove the existence of laws, thought it necessary to deny the action of beings who could set those laws at nought.

-Fleeming Jenkin, The Atomic Theory of Lucretius, 1868

There is an undercurrent in the western approach to Lucretius to view his rejection of the myths and worship of the pagan gods as containing an important doctrinal Christian truth, but only part of it. In much in the same way, certain Muslim apologists have noticed that the claim "there is no god" is simply the first part of the Shahada.

Then we have the final line: "we by the victory are exalted as high as heaven". This is where the largest shift takes place in the text above. The Notre Dame setting has it: "a victory that exalts us to heaven." Instead of 'as high as heaven', this victory exalts us 'to heaven'.

TL;DR

Maybe I'm splitting hairs here, but it would seem to be important to know how these passages can be so easily misread. If 1.) you leave out the preceding passage identifying Epicurus, and if 2.) you say that the problem is merely superstition or false religion, and if 3.) you further suggest that a victory over false religion exalts us "to" heaven, we're suddenly looking at a very different reading of a rather important passage.

Of course, I can have no idea what the actual thought process was at Notre Dame, and I have not listened to the piece itself.

I cannot recall the recent context when this came up, but here is that quote from Confessions of St. Augustine:

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To Thee be praise, glory to Thee, Fountain of mercies. I was becoming more miserable, and Thou nearer. Thy right hand was continually ready to pluck me out of the mire, and to wash me thoroughly, and I knew it not; nor did anything call me back from a yet deeper gulf of carnal pleasures, but the fear of death, and of Thy judgment to come; which amid all my changes, never departed from my breast. And in my disputes with my friends Alypius and Nebridius of the nature of good and evil, I held that Epicurus had in my mind won the palm, had I not believed that after death there remained a life for the soul, and places of requital according to men's deserts, which Epicurus would not believe. And I asked, “were we immortal, and to live in perpetual bodily pleasure, without fear of losing it, why should we not be happy, or what else should we seek?” not knowing that great misery was involved in this very thing, that, being thus sunk and blinded, I could not discern that light of excellence and beauty, to be embraced for its own sake, which the eye of flesh cannot see, and is seen by the inner man. Nor did I, unhappy, consider from what source it sprung, that even on these things, foul as they were, I with pleasure discoursed with my friends, nor could I, even according to the notions I then had of happiness, be happy without friends, amid what abundance soever of carnal pleasures. And yet these friends I loved for themselves only, and I felt that I was beloved of them again for myself only.

O crooked paths! Woe to the audacious soul, which hoped, by forsaking Thee, to gain some better thing! Turned it hath, and turned again, upon back, sides, and belly, yet all was painful; and Thou alone rest. And behold, Thou art at hand, and deliverest us from our wretched wanderings, and placest us in Thy way, and dost comfort us, and say, “Run; I will carry you; yea I will bring you through; there also will I carry you.”

Oh boy.... Cassius, you'll want to move that over to the thread on the subject!

I think we should preface this with some background on how the moral opinions on suicide are shaped by culture. Broadly speaking two major categories have been defined.

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Various sociologists and anthropologists have contrasted cultures of honour with cultures of law. A culture of law has a body of laws which all members of society must obey, with punishments for transgressors. This requires a society with the structures required to enact and enforce laws. A culture of law incorporates a social contract: members of society give up some aspects of their freedom to defend themselves and retaliate for injuries, on the understanding that society will apprehend and punish transgressors.

^Wikipedia page "honour"

Honor cultures would include Japan under the Shogunate, Rome under the republic, the American frontier West, etc. In all of these cases it is customary to hold one's honor dearer than one's life. Dueling, honor killing, and ritual suicide all have some portion in these societies. More anon...