Posts by Joshua

More Notes;

Two more threads that are highly relevant;

Episode Thirty-Eight: Epicurus as father-figure

Reverence and Awe in Epicurean Philosophy

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I laugh when I think I had originally thought when I was involved in the Cicero portion of the podcast that that Torquatus material could be all covered in six weeks.

Oh, you'll love this episode!

Show Notes:

Because we are looking at a passage that has Torquatus speaking extensively about "the wise man", we took the opportunity to discuss---and at great length---two recent questions raised by @smoothiekiwi.

Was Epicurus a cult-like figure? And,

Was Epicurus arrogant?

The first thing we want to do is thank smoothiekiwi for participating in the forum, for reading Norman Dewitt's book, and most of all for raising these excellent and fair questions. We spoke for an hour and a half about these two threads, but I don't want anyone to think that ours is the last word on these subjects. I hope to see more activity in those threads, and I have more to add myself.

On Epicurus' Portrait;

The best resource for this is The Sculpted Word, by Bernard Frischer, who writes extensively on the statues, frescoes and portrait-rings of Epicurus, and how they relate to his philosophy.

On rings;

A few threads on the subject at this forum.

On Cults;

A checklist

Inscription of Diogenes of Oenoanda, translated by Martin Ferguson Smith

Alexander the Oracle Monger, by Lucian

On the character of Epicurus, by Diogenes Laertius;

It is an open question how reliable Diogenes Laertius is as a biographer of Epicurus. It is widely agreed by scholars that his biography of Epicurus is the best one he wrote, and this does indicate some sympathy or partisanship on the biographers' part. It is an absolutely key surviving text for our school.

On the Pythagoreans;

This website is very spammy with ads, but it does explore the cultlike behavior of the Pythagorean school. If someone finds a better resource, we can replace this one.

A Few Days in Athens, by Frances Wright

This book, written by an extraordinary woman in the nineteenth century and highly praised by Thomas Jefferson, is great "light-reading" on Epicurean philosophy. It is written as a novel, and is perhaps not thoroughly accurate--but it is very engaging.

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We had a very pleasant conversation today, and I hope others will enjoy it as well. I once again thank @smoothiekiwi for raising some very important questions!

My grandmother has two birthdays--the day that the government of the United States insists she was born on, and the day that her parents insisted she was born while they were alive!

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In contrast to that, the Stoics were right in the centre of the social life, inviting everyone to attend these events.

That's easily done, when one is celebrating virtue and proclaiming their attainment of it; when the civil authorities are on your side; when the prevailing culture has been pre-conditioned to accept what you're saying.

By the time Epicurus had emerged in Athens with his garden, he had already been driven out of Mytilene---a city that was once the crown jewel of Greek thought---and had settled for a time in Lampsacus.

By the time he got to Athens he had learned a few hard truths. There could be no question of teaching in the Gymnasia or the Agora, he had learned that by experience. Athens was a city of philosophers, true enough; but it was the city that condemned Socrates to death.

So he opted for an alternative. He would discourse in the relative privacy of the Garden, not in the city square. But how to reach people outside the garden?

He wrote. He wrote scroll after scroll, laying down thoughts so subversive that even his opponents would circulate them.

Diogenes Laertius calls him the most prolific writer of his age. He was, as DeWitt calls him, a pamphleteer; and three hundred years later men were still burning his books. It would not have been safe for him or for his students, to teach in public.

I must correct myself; Plotina was wife of Trajan, not Hadrian. I do rather admire Hadrian, but he doesn't enter into it!

Edit; wrong again! She was Hadrian's adoptive guardian. I need to stop typing and go find some coffee!

Ironically, I was trying to determine the other day which architectural order would be proper for Epicureans. I settled on Ionic; there is a temple very near to Samos dedicated to Aphrodite done in Ionic capitals, and Ionia was the birthplace of both atomism and Epicurus.

Temple of Aphrodite

Built within 20 miles of Samos, dedicated to Aphrodite, done in the Ionic style, and completed during the reign of Hadrian, husband of Plotina, patron of Epicureans—rather fits the bill!

Have you looked into the connection with "Apollo Epicurius", that is, Apollo the Helper?

Temple of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae

This famous temple to the god of healing and the sun was built towards the middle of the 5th century B.C. in the lonely heights of the Arcadian mountains. The…

whc.unesco.org

There are several scenes in the HBO series Rome

that deal with this historical question...for whatever that is worth! It plays out over a series of deliberations like the one shown here.

I see that in myself particularly with video games. {...New game -> binge -> tolerance -> increased need -> new variation -> binge...}, and so on. I think 'hijacked' is a fair term.

The pecuniary cost for me is quite small because of the modding community and its infinite variation, but the timesink is considerable.

I don't know if I'll have time for this one, but I think you are absolutely right about its application.

I'm curious whether Dr. Lembke goes into the other 4 major hormones/neurotransmitters of serotonin (mood, sleep, digestion), endorphins (mitigation of stress and pain), cortisol (increase of stress, and activation of "fight or flight" response) and oxytocin (associated with empathy, relationships and sex). Probably I do need to make time for this!

The Good Place has a great arc, if anyone does decide to watch it I'd at least see it through to the end of the first season

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56–57. The wise man feels no more pain when being tortured himself than when his friend tortured, and will die for him; for if he betrays his friend, his whole life will be confounded by distrust and completely upset.

This shows up in the Vatican Sayings on the torture question. To be honest, I barely remember talking about this!

There is also that strange passage in the Hippocratic Oath enjoining its reader not to cut those who "labour beneath the stone". This is generally interpreted as being a kidney stone (which, incidentally, Epicurus suffered from).

Apparently Hippocrates felt that kidney stones were the domain of surgeons, not of the physicians he was instructing. It is possible that Hippocrates really was as high-minded as all of that, but to my juvenile ear upon first hearing or reading those words, the "stone" seemed in context more like a punishment from the gods which it was forbidden to treat. And further, that there was something effeminate in dying of this "labor".

It is indeed curious the emphasis (or sometimes invention) which the biographers have placed upon the death of philosophers--often written as if they had 'gotten their due'.

So it was that Empedocles (who thought he was a god) died by leaping into a volcano; Socrates, the wisest man (in his own estimation), in all of Greece, died by his own hand; Archimedes was slain by a blunt instrument of the Roman soldiery while himself distracted by the higher mathematics; Lucretius was offed after he quaffed, allegedly, a love potion; Zeno the Stoic died of holding his breathe to suppress the pain of a broken toe; Julius Caesar suffered epilepsy and, in spite of controlling the Roman empire could not control even his own body (much less the governing body of the Senate); Protagoras had held that 'man was the measure of all things', but found by experience that he did not measure up against the sea in storm (he died of shipwreck). And on it goes.

Lucretius and Pindar mention the stone, but without explaining it. In both cases they are describing a fate narrowly avoided.

Show Notes:

The House of Atreus;

https://www2.classics.upenn.edu/myth/content/tragedy/media/atreustree.gif

Tantalus;

In the third book of Lucretius

Referenced In the 8th Isthmian Ode of Pindar

In the plays of Aeschylus;

Of which the Oresteia contains the following;

The Agamemnon (Text of the play)

[See also The Browning Version]

The Libation Bearers

The Eumenides

Iphigenia;

In Lucretius (he calls her Iphianassa)

And also;

Don's translation and commentary on The Letter to Menoikeus

Nates compilation of The Principle Doctrines

My recording of The Torquatus (with thanks to Cassius)

And finally,

Why we chose the Reid translation

Cassius, let me know if I left anything out!

Happy New Year!

On an evening that asks us to gaze into an uncertain future, the words that come to my mind rise up from an impenetrably deep and distant past. They are the words of Diogenes of Oenoanda, which he inscribed in stone.

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But if we assume it to be possible, then truly the life of the gods will pass to men. For everything will be full of justice and mutual love, and there will come to be no need of fortifications or laws and all the things which we contrive on account of one another. As for the necessities derived from agriculture, since we shall have no slaves at that time (for indeed [we ourselves shall plough] and dig and tend [the plants] and [divert] rivers and watch over [the crops), we shall] ... such things as ... not ... time ..., and such activities, [in accordance with what is] needful, will interrupt the continuity of the [shared] study of philosophy; for [the] farming operations [will provide what our] nature wants.

They are words, in part, that make me shake my head and smile; is there a charming naiveté about them? Yes, perhaps. But there is cold, steely prescience as well---the kind of sound cultural critique, a foresight born of wisdom, that would make the quack oracles of Delphi bristle with envy.

There is also, etched in that ancient stone, a strain of hope; a yearning for a better and wiser age---and that not selfishly, but altruistically wished for. His hope was not that he should live to see it, but that you and I, and those who follow, should live to see such an age; and I like to think we've seen a measure of it.

"That things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

-George Eliot

I was once reading the comments under a YouTube video when I came across one that I thought very clever. I actually laughed out loud, not something I do often, only to discover upon looking at the name that it was my own comment I was laughing at. This is precisely the kind of thing we can and should expect, in view of our two or three pound mammalian brains. 😄

Cassius , meet Cassius!

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As I interpret the argument, the theory was that if something is perfect then why would it increase? Sort of like adding an extra note or phrase to a musical composition can ruin the "perfect" composition. Hence the limit of pleasure as specified by Epicurus.

I wanted to flesh out my question more fully, particularly in light of what Godfrey has written here.

I can accept the basic argument that the hypothetically "perfect" can want (i.e. lack) nothing. What I cannot quite grasp is why an imperfect being (the human), arising from imperfect beginnings and employing imperfect means, must necessarily have as its aim something perfect. I think that Epicurus' solution to this Pythagorean/Platonic problem is a clever one, but at my current level of understanding I slightly wish that he had cut down that argument instead of trying to supply an adequate solution.

Nevertheless, I'm quite happy to acknowledge that this was actually the course he chose to take. Now I'm trying to better understand why he chose to take it. Since it recurs in almost all of the core texts, he must have felt that it was important.

I suspect that the answer has something to do with his conception of the gods; in paraphrase, 'they do not trouble us because their perfect happiness prevents them from wanting or needing to trouble us'.

Although here too, I confess that I am somewhat wistful about yet another missed chance...

Come to think of it, almost all of the parts of Epicurean Philosophy that are controversial even among Epicureans, from tranquility to his view of the size of the sun, hinge on these two premises of perfection and limitation.

Am I overstating that case? (Probably! )

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"The ability to increase is proof that a thing is imperfect."

In my recent reading of Philebus, I found myself wondering why the interlocutors so readily agreed with Socrates on that point: why is it so necessary for the telos to be perfect, and admitting of no increase? It comes from the same school of thought that held that the Heroic past was Golden or, as we imply by it's grammatical tense, "perfect". John Keats gave ironic expression to this idea in his Ode on a Grecian Urn, where he found the vessel's artistic engraving enchanting, perfect even, but lifeless in its perfection; so still was that still-life that it was still-born.

"Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!"

-John Keats

I suppose I struggle to agree with Epicurus on this point; all that mindless numb tranquility, all that confusion about pleasure and pain---we could have avoided the whole troubling mess!

But it's questions like these that keep me going back to the texts, though too infrequently.