Posts by Joshua

  • Cassius Longinus' Letters to and From Cicero

    Per usual, Cassius, you are five years ahead of me. I have just read the whole packet straight through on Attalus, following my most recent re-listen of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and I must say these letters get quite harrowing in the run-up to Philippi.

  • Did Epicurus Commit Suicide Due To His Disease? (Merger of Two Threads On When Voluntary Death Makes Sense)

    I see we have discussed some of these questions at length in a thread from 2022;

    edit; see @Martin's comment  #61 in that thread.

  • Did Epicurus Commit Suicide Due To His Disease? (Merger of Two Threads On When Voluntary Death Makes Sense)

    Quote

    How could Epicurus know that it was the last day and why he called it blissful? To me, it sounds a bit like: "There's nothing much to be done, so I feel relief as I made a decision to pull the plug today and end the suffering".

    It's difficult to separate the fact from the wish-thinking. I knew three different people to whom this kind of foreknowledge has been ascribed. A husband who sent flowers to his wife at work on the morning of his death. A woman who worked tirelessly to repeal a law she believed was immoral, and died in her bed with her hands clasped over her abdomen the day that law was repealed. A man who requested blackberry brandy and died after draining the glass.

    I do not accept these uncritically, and would not suggest a cause outside of nature even if I did, but I don't think it's impossible for a person to know that the moment of their death is at hand. Maybe they feel that death is coming on in the same way that we feel a sneeze is coming on. Maybe they can even choose a time to stop struggling for life and let go. Fifty years after signing the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on the 4th of July, the last living members of the committee that had produced that document.

    Jefferson's Last Words
    What did Jefferson say shortly before he died on July 4, 1826.
    www.monticello.org

  • Did Epicurus Commit Suicide Due To His Disease? (Merger of Two Threads On When Voluntary Death Makes Sense)

    Methanol (as opposed to ethanol) is lethal in concentration. This is why moonshine is dangerous. Wine has methanol in very low concentrations, but wine-making is as much science as art, and I suppose it's possible there were genuine mishaps.

    On the other hand, ethanol is a competitive enzyme inhibitor for methanol, so it ought to have reduced the risk...

    I learned all of this from an episode of House M.D., so take it with a bezoar.

    Edit; this is almost certainly not the answer.

  • Preconceptions and PD24

    I think David Glidden discusses some of this in his article "Epicurean Prolepsis";

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    If we could determine how prolepseis arise, we might be in a position to determine their range. As I understand prolepsis, it cannot be the work of any particular sense organ, but it is a perceptual recognition of the mind as a result of the work of the separate sense organs. But if we assume it is the work of dianoia, it is still something we perceive in the world, not a rational reconstruction or hypothesis. Here the case of the gods is instructive. The mind, operating as a sixth sense sensitive to especially fine eidola, perceives the gods, just as it perceives phantoms in dreams. I suggest that this same apprehension of the mind, epibole tes dianoias, can perceive persistent characteristics characterizing the things it or the other sense faculties perceive, the sorts of things these things are. And so we have a prolepsis that the gods are blessed and immortal, over and above having a vision of them. Presumably these prolepseis are formed in the mind as a result of repeated experiences, allowing us to get acquainted with the persistent characters of things. As accumulated information, these prolepseis would be common to all familiar with the same sorts of experiences.

    -Dr. David Glidden, "Epicurean Prolepsis", pp. 11-12

  • Episode 278 - TD08 - Two Opposite Views On When We Might Be Better Off Dead

    It seems to me that we could pick up the pace in the coming sections if we wanted to. The overarching argument in sections XXXII and after is this; They are wrong who think that the soul dies with the body, but even if they were right death still would not be an evil.

    Here is a rough outline of the sections to come.

    • XXXII
      • Even if we allow that the soul is not immortal, death is not an evil.
        • We can dismiss the Stoic view entirely, because they allow what is difficult to believe ( i.e. that the soul can exist apart from the body) - but deny what is easy to believe (i.e. that the soul, if it can exist apart from the body, can be immortal)
        • Should we then consider the views of Panætius the Platonist? who;
          • "maintains what nobody denies, that everything which has been generated will perish; and that even souls are generated, which he thinks appears from their resemblance to those of the men who begot them; for that likeness is as apparent in the turn of their minds as in their bodies. But he brings another reason; that there is nothing which is sensible of pain which is not also liable to disease; but whatever is liable to disease must be liable to death; the soul is sensible of pain, therefore it is liable to perish."
    • XXXIII
      • His arguments are easily refuted.
        • He does not know that he is confusing the intellect with "those parts of the mind in which those disorders, anger and lust, have their seat"
        • He also does not acknowledge that there are many sons of great Romans who are lazy and indolent, and do not resemble their fathers in their "turn of mind"
      • However, we have sufficiently spoken of the immortality of the soul, and must now "prove that, even if the soul did perish, there would be, even then, no evil in death."
    • XXXIV Note: We covered this section in episode 271
      • I am in hopes that our fate is to "mount up to heaven", but if the soul should perish with the body, there would be no pain or feeling of any kind in the body after death. And "though Epicurus charges Democritus with saying [that the body feels pain after death]; the disciples of Democritus deny it"
        • Death is not an evil because;
          • The moment of death is instantaneous, and pain in dying is slight
          • When we die we do not leave mostly good things behind; rather most of what we leave behind is evil
    • XXXV
      • Even when life seems to be mostly good for some, the caprices of fortune frequently changes good with evil. It is an evil to be tied to these changes, where even blessings are uncertain.
      • It would have been better for men like Priam and Pompey to die sooner than they did.
    • XXXVI
      • "These calamities are avoided by death, for even though they should never happen, there is a possibility that they may; but it never occurs to a man, that such a disaster may befall him himself."
      • "But should we grant them even this, that men are by death deprived of good things, would it follow that the dead are therefore in need of the good things of life, and are miserable on that account?"
        • No. "These considerations apply to the living, but the dead are neither in need of the blessings of life, nor of life itself."
      • Do living people want wings or horns? Certainly not. But why not?
        • Because "not to have what neither custom nor nature has fitted you for, would not imply a want of them, even though you were sensible that you had them not."
          • "To want, then, signifies this; to be without that which you would be glad to have: for inclination for a thing is implied in the word want"
            • " “To want,” then, is an expression which you cannot apply to the dead, nor is the mere fact of wanting something necessarily lamentable. "
              • "For to want, implies to be sensible; but the dead are insensible; therefore the dead can be in no want."
    • XXXVII
      • Besides, this is hardly a question for philosophy when generals and whole armies have rushed into death without fear.
        • "But are any of these miserable now? nay, they were not so even at the first moment after they had breathed their last: nor can any one be miserable after he has lost all sensation. Oh, but the mere circumstance of being without sensation is miserable. It might be so if being without sensation were the same thing as wanting it; but as it is evident there can be nothing of any kind in that which has no existence, what can there be afflicting to that which can neither feel want, nor be sensible of anything?"
        • The death of soul and body together means complete destruction, and "there is no difference between a Hippocentaur, which never had existence, and king Agamemnon [who no longer exists]"
        • "M. Camillus [who died centuries before Cicero] is no more concerned about this present civil war, than I was at the sacking of Rome [which happened centuries before Cicero was born]"
    • XXXVIII
      • "Why, then, should Camillus be affected with the thoughts of these things happening three hundred and fifty years after his time? And why should I be uneasy if I were to expect that some nation might possess itself of this city, ten thousand years hence?" It is not because we regard ourselves, but because we have such high regard for our country.
        • Thus death "does not deter a wise man from making such provision for his country and his family, as he hopes may last for ever; and from regarding posterity, of which he can never have any real perception, as belonging to himself."
      • "just in the same manner as our birth was the beginning of things with us, so death will be the end; and as we were no ways concerned with anything before we were born, so neither shall we be after we are dead; and in this state of things where can the evil be? since death has no connexion with either the living or the dead; the one have no existence at all, the other are not yet affected by it."
        • [note; this is Lucretius' argument from symmetry]
      • Furthermore, death is in some ways like sleep. There is no sensation in sleep, and there cannot be any in death.
    • XXXIX
      • Is it miserable to die 'before our time'? How can it be? Our time of life has been loaned to us by nature, and we cannot complain when she who has given it out recalls it back.
      • "They that complain thus, allow, that if a young child dies the survivors ought to bear his loss with equanimity; [but] that if an infant in the cradle dies, they ought not even to utter a complaint; and yet nature has been more severe with [the infants] in demanding back what she gave. They answer by saying, that such [infants] have not tasted the sweets of life; while the [older children] had begun to conceive hopes of great happiness, and indeed had begun to realize them. Men judge better in other things, and allow a part to be preferable to none; why do they not admit the same estimate in life?"
      • I don't think anyone would be happier if a longer life were granted to them. Even if old age gives us prudence, who is to say what constitutes old age? "But because there is nothing beyond old age, we call that long; all these things are said to be long or short, according to the proportion of time they were given us for"
      • Compare the longest life of a man with the length of eternity, and by such comparison our lives will seem shorter than the life of an insect.
    • XL through XLIX; [Note; I'll get around to these sections eventually.]

  • Epicurean philosophy skewing toward elements of Stoicism in the time of Lucretius??

    These lines come from the proem to Book V, and should be understand in that context. The proems of each book show Lucretius at his most poetical, and here in the fifth book he is draping Epicurus with plaudits - the labors of Epicurus in philosophy should be compared with labors of Hercules, and Epicurus himself should be regarded with the reverence due to a god.

    Indeed, the labors of Hercules were as nothing compared with the things that Epicurus has saved us from. The Lernaen Hydra, Nemeaean Lion, and Calydonian Boar could have been easily avoided. Just don't go near those wild places and you'll be safe. But who will save us from the dangers that are so near us that we cannot flee them?

    Epicurus. His philosophy was a gift far greater than any given in the old stories, because he gave us the clarity and strength of mind to confront these dangers ourselves - there is no longer any need to cower behind the club of Hercules, or the shields of Ajax, Achilles, or the Aegis of Athena.

    The vera ratio or 'true philosophy' does all this and more. And so we honor him above all the rest.

  • Episode 277 - TD07 - Platonism Says This World Is Darkness But The Next World Is Light - Epicurus Disagrees!

    Here are the lines from Julius Caesar that I paraphrased. It seems probable that Shakespeare was alluding to Tusculan Disputations in this dialogue.

    Is Cassius Longinus exploiting his knowledge of Platonism to persuade Brutus to rise against Caesar?

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    The soul has not sufficient capacity to comprehend itself; yet, the soul, like the eye, though it has no distinct view of itself, sees other things: it does not see (which is of least consequence) its own shape; perhaps not, though it possibly may; but we will pass that by: but it certainly sees that it has vigour, sagacity, memory, motion, and velocity; these are all great, divine, eternal properties. What its appearance is, or where it dwells, it is not necessary even to inquire.

  • New Article in 'Nature' - April 23rd, 2025

    The text of dozens of burnt Herculaneum scrolls could soon be revealed
    Scans of 18 ancient papyri that were buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius look ‘very promising’, and there are plans to digitally unroll many more.
    www.nature.com

    "Scans of 18 ancient papyri that were buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius look ‘very promising’, and there are plans to digitally unroll many more."

    Quote

    Until now, only five of the scrolls had been imaged at high resolution, so an important first step was to gather more scans. Nicolardi selected the 18 papyri for this phase, prioritizing intact scrolls that might contain complete texts, as well as scrolls with a range of shapes — some are flattened, others compressed along their length like a spring — to test how the machine-learning algorithms cope with different patterns of distortion.

  • Image Sharing Alternatives

    Re: Imgur

    "On April 19, 2023, Imgur changed their terms of service and announced that they would delete inactive content that was not tied to an account.

    ...

    The new terms went into effect on May 15, 2023.[10] The move drew significant criticism, as removing archived images would compound the challenge of link rot that other photo services have also faced. The move also followed a similar move by Tumblr in late 2018.[11]"


    I only vaguely remember this controversy.

  • Episode 277 - TD07 - Platonism Says This World Is Darkness But The Next World Is Light - Epicurus Disagrees!

    I think these are the passages I quoted from Christopher Hitchens' God is not Great;

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    There is one more charge to be added to the bill of indictment. With a necessary part of its collective mind, religion looks forward to the destruction of the world. By this I do not mean it “looks forward” in the purely eschatological sense of anticipating the end. I mean, rather, that it openly or covertly wishes that end to occur. Perhaps half aware that its unsupported arguments are not entirely persuasive, and perhaps uneasy about its own greedy accumulation of temporal power and wealth, religion has never ceased to proclaim the Apocalypse and the day of judgment. This has been a constant trope, ever since the first witch doctors and shamans learned to predict eclipses and to use their half-baked celestial knowledge to terrify the ignorant.

    ***

    One of the very many connections between religious belief and the sinister, spoiled, selfish childhood of our species is the repressed desire to see everything smashed up and ruined and brought to naught. This tantrum-need is coupled with two other sorts of “guilty joy,” or, as the Germans say, schadenfreude. First, one’s own death is canceled—or perhaps repaid or compensated—by the obliteration of all others. Second, it can always be egotistically hoped that one will be personally spared, gathered contentedly to the bosom of the mass exterminator, and from a safe place observe the sufferings of those less fortunate. Tertullian, one of the many church fathers who found it difficult to give a persuasive account of paradise, was perhaps clever in going for the lowest possible common denominator and promising that one of the most intense pleasures of the afterlife would be endless contemplation of the tortures of the damned. He spoke more truly than he knew in evoking the man-made character of faith.

    And here is Tertullian being being predictably revolting. Note the glancing reference to Epicureanism;

    Every aspect of Greek and Roman culture is brought before his creepy, leering and 'insatiable gaze', every expression of it is condemned to everlasting torment, and the witness of that torment is one of the keenest pleasures of paradise.

  • Must an Epicurean believe in gods?

    For the six years I've been active here, I've always tried to hold myself to the following two precepts:

    • For as long as I stand under Epicurus' banner, I will make a good-faith attempt (given the surviving material) to understand his philosophy as it was understood by his successors.
    • When I present his philosophy, I will make a good-faith effort to present it as best as I can understand it. When I am offering my own opinion, I will try to make it clear that that is what I am doing.

    I am confident that Epicurus really did accept the existence of 'natural gods', and that he rejected the claim that there were gods (or anything else, for that matter) outside of nature. My understanding is that he believed that gods existed in nature, and as physical beings made of matter. This is what we call the "realist view" of the gods. There is a competing theory, the "idealist view", which holds (again, to my understanding) that Epicurus spoke of the gods as useful thought constructs; images of the good life that we can call to mind, in the same way that we can call the image of Epicurus himself to mind as a goal to strive for.

    The idealist view is probably a minority interpretation, but it has distinguished defenders. I believe David Sedley is the chief living proponent of this view. I might be mistaken! Don might have more to say about this.

    We do have a fragment (collected by Usener in his Epicurea) in which Epicurus is said to have rejected Atheism;

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    [ U152 ] (link to the Attalus site)

    Philodemus, On Frank Criticism, Vol. Herc. 1, V.2, fragment VI: he will be frank with the one who has erred and even with him who responds with bitterness. Therefore, Epicurus too, when Leonteus, because of Pythocles, did not admit belief in gods, reproached Pythocles in moderation, and wrote to him {i.e., Leonteus, though Usener renders "Mys"} the so-called "famous letter," taking his point of departure from Pythocles...

    With all of that said, my own view is that a good-faith effort to a.) understand the information, and b.) present the information accurately, does not amount to a requirement to accept everything in it. I do not think the gods exist. It pleases me to think of the Earth itself as a second mother (alma mater, "nurturing mother", a phrase first appearing in Lucretius), and the idealist view of the gods likewise appeals to me. But that's as far as I can get.

    Quote from Rolf

    Do we disregard this as a mere product of its time or does it play some vital role within epicurean philosophy?

    The major problem with casting the gods aside is that doing so challenges Epicurus' view of the anticipations (prolepsis) as a canonic or epistemological faculty parallel to the senses (aisthesis) and feelings (pathe). These three are (for Epicurus) how we acquire knowledge about nature, including human nature, with confidence.

    The gods also play a role in our understanding of isonomia, the equitable distribution of things in nature. The fact that the atoms can come together to bring this world into existence means that there is no bar to them bringing other worlds into existence, and the fact that there living beings on this world means we should expect to find them elsewhere as well. I'll let Norman Dewitt take it from here so that I don't misstate the case;

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    It was from this principle [i.e. of the infinity of the universe in matter and space] that Epicurus deduced his chief theoretical confirmation of belief in the existence of gods. It was from this that he arrived at knowledge of their number and by secondary deduction at knowledge of their abode. He so interpreted the significance of infinity as to extend it from matter and space to the sphere of values, that is, to perfection and imperfection. In brief, if the universe were thought to be imperfect throughout its infinite extent, it could no longer be called infinite. This necessity of thought impelled him to promulgate a subsidiary principle, which he called isonomia, a sort of cosmic justice, according to which the imperfection in particular parts of the universe is offset by the perfection of the whole. Cicero rendered it aequabilis tributio, "equitable apportionment." The mistake of rendering it as "equilibrium" must be avoided.

    Epicurus and His Philosophy, page 271

    Edit; it seems I cross-posted with Godfrey, I agree with what he said!

  • Episode 276 - TD06 - Is Memory Evidence For The Divinity Of The Soul?

    While recording this episode we discussed Plato's view on learning and recollection, as described by Cicero here in section XXIV;

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    Besides, if desires and aversions were all that belonged to the soul, it would have them only in common with the beasts; but it has, in the first place, memory, and that, too, so infinite, as to recollect an absolute countless number of circumstances, which Plato will have to be a recollection of a former life; for in that book which is inscribed Menon, Socrates asks a child some questions in geometry, with reference to measuring a square; his answers are such as a child would make, and yet the questions are so easy, that while answering them, one by one, he comes to the same point as if he had learned geometry.

    I made a connection between this passage and books about "Near-death experiences" - books like Heaven is for Real, which tells the story of a young boy's appendectomy and his alleged experience of journeying to heaven after losing consciousness.

    In the book, the father (Todd) of the boy (Colton) claims to be 'initially skeptical' about the experience, and he questions his son on what he saw. He claims that he refrained from asking leading questions.

    Now, while kids are not omniscient, they are smarter than we give them credit for. In the late 19th and early 20th century there was a horse in Germany named Clever Hans, and during public demonstrations this horse would give the appearance of performing arithmetic - literally counting with a hoofbeat. Wikipedia gives this summary;

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    Hans was a horse owned by Wilhelm von Osten, who was a gymnasium mathematics teacher, an amateur horse trainer and phrenologist and was considered to be a mystic.[1] Hans was said to have been taught to add, subtract, multiply, divide, work with fractions, tell the time, keep track of the calendar, differentiate between musical tones, and read, spell, and understand German. Von Osten would ask Hans, "If the eighth day of the month comes on a Tuesday, what is the date of the following Friday?" Hans would answer by tapping his hoof eleven times. Questions could be asked both orally and in written form. Von Osten exhibited Hans throughout Germany and never charged admission. Hans' abilities were reported in The New York Times in 1904.

    The problem of how this horse could give the appearance of doing these things was answered in 1907, when

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    psychologist Oskar Pfungst demonstrated that the horse was not actually performing these mental tasks, but was watching the reactions of his trainer. The horse was responding directly to involuntary cues in the body language of the human trainer, who was entirely unaware that he was providing such cues.

    On the one hand, we are asked to believe uncritically that a horse can understand fractions, and that a little boy went to heaven and came back, and that a child can explain geometry without having learned it - and from all this we should infer, for example, the eternality of the soul, the reality of Paradise after death, and the innate knowledge of everything at birth.

    On the other hand, we can choose to approach these claims critically. Perhaps Todd Burpo, a Christian pastor himself, had filled his son's head with claims about heaven, and then heard those claims restated under questioning. Perhaps horses as well as humans are shrewd observers, and derived information from these observations that other baffled humans did not even know that they were themselves providing.

    Perhaps the mind is a better and more sagacious judge when calm and sober, and that when undergoing traumatic experiences the mind is less reliable and not more so.

    And perhaps that is why Lucian of Samosata in his Alexander the Oracle-Monger suggests that these apparent prodigies provide

    Quote

    an occasion for a Democritus, nay, for an Epicurus or a Metrodorus, perhaps, a man whose intelligence was steeled against such assaults by scepticism and insight, one who, if he could not detect the precise imposture, would at any rate have been perfectly certain that, though this escaped him, the whole thing was a lie and an impossibility.

  • References on Motion in Lucretius and Diogenes Laertius

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    Given that there is never in any of these statements that there is "something else" pulling the atoms "down," I presume a good case can be made that regardless of the terminology, Epicurus was clear that this force of "weight" was something within the atoms themselves, not a force that is separate and apart from the atoms themselves.

    Exactly, and to put it in Aristotelian terms the atoms are 'originitive of motion'.

    The word Lucretius uses in that passage is ponderibus[que]. Ponderibus is the dative and ablatative plural of pondus.

  • Why Everything Turns More Complex

    That is a very interesting article, Martin, thank you!


    Quote

    Kauffman argues that biological evolution is thus constantly creating not just new types of organisms but new possibilities for organisms, ones that not only did not exist at an earlier stage of evolution but could not possibly have existed. From the soup of single-celled organisms that constituted life on Earth 3 billion years ago, no elephant could have suddenly emerged — this required a whole host of preceding, contingent but specific innovations.

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