Posts by Joshua

Don, I said Erasmus, but it was Plutarch, Moralia.

Essays and Miscellanies, by Plutarch

Go here and scroll past the table of contents!

Not Erasmus, but Plutarch:

Moralia - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

I was way off!

I would agree that ataraxia is not equal to pleasure, and I would formulate it like this; pleasure is a class of experiences (feelings?), and "peace of mind" is a species within that class.

Otherwise we fall on the horns of a dilemma prompted by the identity property; if pleasure equals ataraxia, then pleasure cannot also equal 'eating a sandwich' unless 'eating a sandwich' itself equals ataraxia.

I suspect that it was precisely this realization that so disturbed Dante in the writing of his Inferno; hence the punishment for Epicurus and his school, as they burn in unclosed tombs but are unaware of their torment. On the day of judgment, the tombs will close, and the soul trapped within will be reunited with the rotting corpse it left above on Earth.

There is no publication date as far as I can see, but the Lucretian scholar David Butterfield is "finishing" the new Oxford Classical Latin text of Lucretius. His previous book is a textual history of the poem;

The Early Textual History of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)

The current Oxford Classical Text is the 2nd edition of Cyril Bailey's from 1922. David Butterfield's edition will not be an 'update' or revision of Bailey's text, but rather a complete rework starting from his deep knowledge of the manuscripts...or so I gather.

A recent critical edition was published in Germany in 2019 by the scholar Marcus Deufert; Butterfield's English-language commentary will be welcome and timely.

Don posted something about mindfulness in another thread recently; as I've been reflecting on it, I have come to the conclusion that I can certainly see it as another useful tool in the Epicurean toolkit; to "occupy serene heights, well fortified by the teachings of the wise", as Lucretius has put it.

If Elayne were still around, she might caution against 'going too deep', for medical and mental health reasons, as it can have unintended consequences. Some people report feeling more lonely, more anxious, more depressed, etc.

Don might read that paragraph and conclude that he and I are still talking about different things! 😄

And by the by, Cleveland Okie, if you ever run short of reading material, The Rise and Fall of Alexandria has become far and away my favorite history book on Hellenistic thought. The near-total lack of any material on Epicurus or on Buddhism will not satisfy as an answer to your question, but there's a good deal of interesting stuff on Alexander the Great, the Ptolemaic dynasty, and the Great Library.

Quote

As I've been invited to submit questions, I did have one: Has anyone seen any evidence that Epicurus might have been influenced by Buddhism?

Good question! This is rather complicated, but the short answer is "probably not". This could be a long post...

Alexander the Great

Epicurus was living and working in the late fourth century and early 3rd century BCE. Gautama Buddha lived somewhere between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE.

There was a very gradual inter-fluence of Greek and Indian thought starting possibly with the Presocratics (more on that in a bit), but not coming to a head until Alexander the Great's Indian Campaign in 327 BCE, 14 years after Epicurus' birth. Epicurus did muster for the mandatory two-year Athenian military training at his coming of age, but he never campaigned as a soldier.

Bactria

When I say that the Greco-Indian exchange of ideas was gradual, I do mean that in every sense. Bactria in Central Asia (Afghanistan and other parts of the present-day Middle East) was on the far-flung limits of the frontier of Greek civilization. Even to get that far, you had to cover the whole breadth of Persia.

Having gotten that far, there was even more trouble ahead; between Bactria and India there still lay the formidable barrier of the towering peaks of the Hindu Kush mountains. There was no direct sea-route to India from the Mediterranean until the construction of the Suez Canal in the 1860s. There was, in Antiquity, an overland route over this same land-bridge, and one of Alexander's dreams in founding Alexandria was to fully exploit it. This did happen eventually, for a few hundred years, but not in a systematic way until well after Epicurus' death. Egypt before the Ptolemies was a civilization in what appeared to be terminal decline–a mere vassal of the Persians.

King Ashoka

Nor did Buddhism even spread throughout India until quite late in Antiquity; the key figure in its spread was King Ashoka of the Mauryan Empire, who didn't come to power until 2 years before Epicurus died. Ashoka, in a spirit of innovation prefiguring Constantine, took the unusual step of establishing Buddhism as the Imperial State Religion.

The earliest surviving artefacts of Greco-Buddhist art date from the 1st to 3rd centuries CE. Now, to be fair, very little Greek art in general survives from the time of Epicurus. Most of what we know about it comes from the Roman copies that were made starting sometime around the late 2nd/1st centuries BCE, and on through the Imperial Period.

The Ionian School

I mentioned the Presocratics earlier. I will lay the groundwork here by talking a little bit about the philosophical tradition that Epicureanism stems from. Epicurus himself was an Athenian citizen by birth, but not a resident; he was born on Samos at the Eastern extent of the Aegean. This cluster of islands off the Greek mainland (known collectively as Ionia) experienced a cultural flourishing in the centuries preceding Epicurus' birth, a flourishing that predated the flowering of Athens, and that had its center in the city of Miletus on the Greek coast of Asia Minor.

The 'Ionian School', as it is sometimes called, was quite unusual in its approach to philosophy—particularly when compared with the later Platonic style. Where logic and dialectic would come to rule in Athens, the Ionians tended (though not universally) to prefer the direct experience of nature, and to make inferences about the physical laws that governed it. If Socrates and Plato are the fathers of Dialectic Philosophy, it was the Ionians who took the first faltering steps toward physical science.

There was Anaximander, who drew the first map of the world and concluded that it was spherical; Xenophanes, an early agnostic; Heraclitus, who intuited that all things in nature are in motion; Anaxagoras, who supposed that the sun was not divine at all, but simply a huge, burning stone; Empedocles, who thought that the Cosmos was uncreated and eternal; and, most importantly for us, Democritus and Leucippus, who posited that all bodies are made of indivisible atoms suspended in void.

Democritus

Quote

By convention sweet, by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention colour; in reality atoms and void.

Of these last, Democritus is better attested. He was said to have been born into a wealthy family. Rather than building on that legacy, he chose instead to use his inheritance to fund his particular avocation–the pursuit of philosophy, wherever on Earth that might lead him.

He traveled far and wide; Assyria, Babylon, Egypt–even, it is rumored, as far away as Ethiopia on the east coast of Africa, and, yes, to India.

Since Democritus was Epicurus' most important source (despite the latter's protestations), it would do well to dwell on this Indian connection.

Unfortunately, we cannot! There is but a hint that Democritus ever made it that far. Even if he had, the topic on which Epicurus most seriously diverges from Democritus is precisely Ethics, the subject we are reviewing now. Had Epicurus stuck with Democritean atomic-determinism, it might be interesting to address Indian concepts like Karma in light of that. But Epicurus forged his own path; a radical embrace of free-will.

That's a lot for now. I will try to return to this thread in a day or two and outline what I think are key differences between Epicurean and Buddhist thought.

(I have no qualifications to do so, by the way, except that I was once a Secular Buddhist and am now an Epicurean.)

-josh

Martin makes an excellent (and very Epicurean) point! Usefully analyzing pleasureable experiences with a view toward improving them in the future is very practical, and hence very much worth doing.

There are probably a lot of semantic kinks in that poem that we could work out if we bothered to do so, but the conclusion for me is basically what I've said in this episode and what I've jotted off there; that there's a charm or agreebleness inherent to pleasure that is lost to me the instant I attempt to analyze or categorize it.

Quote

We insist on precision around here , though it bends the poesy a little out of shape.

-Edward Abbey

With apologies to Ogden Nash;

Two Kinds of Pleasure

There are, according to Epicurus-

's letter,

Two kinds (if I understand the schematic)

Of pleasure;

The first kind is kinetic, and happens-

(It'd better!)

When it happens to you. That's one, and

The other

Happens, or rather doesn't (it's katastematic);

Like atar-

Axia, it's something of a state or condition.

Think eta 'r

Epsilon: for the difference, by his verdict

Is pleasure

Active or pleasure passive. If this all seems drastic,

Or you forget 'er,

Then maybe you can just try to be phlegmatic.

But what I have found

Is that the pleasure you seize and treasure

Is better

Than the pleasure you seek to measure.

Yes; and I almost think those posts should be moved out of this thread into their own, but I'll leave that up to you.

Quote

As for this particular writer/prisoner, what else do we know about him? Was he sympathetic to slaveholding? Did I read something about him being a northerner, or was he just in a northern prison?

Born and educated in Ohio. Moved to Mississippi as an educator, joined the Confederate army, imprisoned (ironically) in Ohio, offered his freedom in exchange for a renunciation of the Confederate cause; refused, and after the war returned to Mississippi where he died.

Quote

So probably the same observation about the Roman Civil War applies to the American version. You had people on both sides who were moral absolutists appealing to divine right (the South's Deo Vindice and the North's "Battle Hymn")

I see upon rereading my post that I never got around to stating this point, but ^this is where I was going with that.

I don't think Caldwell is going to revolutionize our understanding of anything, but here's another point I neglected to make; if not for the war, his interest in Lucretius would likely not even be remembered. He's a fragment from the wreckage, swept up with the tide of a particular moment in history. It will take more work to dig up the references that are even more obscure.

Quote

I got the impression while I was scanning that this would be more of a curiosity than anything. He certainly didn't seem to have any great insights, just wanted to read the poem.

^This is reasonable appraisal, and I'm not certain I wholly disagree with it.

However, if I can be permitted to step out onto a limb or two, I do see a few features of interest.

First, this quote;

Is it not somewhat remarkable how closely this opinion maps onto Thomas Jefferson's? To wit:

Quote

I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing every thing rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.

Perhaps more than coincidence? I wonder when Jefferson's letters became public.

I also personally find it fascinating that he was a staggeringly voracious reader, with a clear and powerful intellect, who gave in his diary the impression of total devotion to the Confederate cause. Cassius has made the point elsewhere that there were Epicureans on both sides of the Roman civil war; it's unclear to me from these fragments how deep Caldwell's interest was in Epicurean philosophy, but he does represent an interesting, if uncertain, data point here.

Thoreau was one of the great abolitionists of the antebellum period; like Caldwell, he also kept a journal. Like Caldwell, he approached Lucretius in the Latin text.

But unlike Caldwell, he stopped reading after the first hundred lines—he had absorbed the image of Epicurus 'traversing the flaming ramparts of the world' and returning with a boon for mankind, but he curiously identifies him not as Epicurus, but as Prometheus!

This strikes me as hugely important—is there something about the Epicurean conception of justice (as not morally absolute) that appeals to the slaveholder, but repulses the abolitionist?

As I suggested, I'm out on limb.

And while Don was very helpful with his scans, I think he missed this one;

High praise here—but "Poet of the Garden"?

Caldwell must have read Cicero, and possibly even the Torquatus; he read Bulwer, who evidently wrote on the subject (put a pin in that thought...).

I begin to suspect that Mr. Caldwell knew rather more than his diary lets on.

The Belfast Address should be required reading around here!

And I'd like to read that diary in general.

The Belfast Address should be required reading around here!

And I'd like to read that diary in general.

NOTE FROM CASSIUS --- This post is where Joshua introduced us to John Tyndall's "Belfast Address" which is a remarkable document with much discussion of Epicurus and materialism. This thread is now devoted to that topic. A version here at the forum is located here: Tyndall - Address at Belfast If you would like a pure text version to run through a text-to-speech engine, a version is located here: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/wcf/filebase/i…lfast/#versions

See this post below for an audio MP3 version: RE: John Tyndall - Address Delivered Before the British Association Assembled At Belfast - 1874

George Santayana; Three Philosophical Poets;1910. Contrasts Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe.

John Tyndall; The Belfast Address; 1874. A history of atomism, and an argument against the 'God of the Gaps'.

James Parks Caldwell; Diary; 1863-1864. Prison diary of a Confederate soldier, praises Lucretius.

George Santayana; Three Philosophical Poets;1910. Contrasts Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe.

John Tyndall; The Belfast Address; 1874. A history of atomism, and an argument against the 'God of the Gaps'.

James Parks Caldwell; Diary; 1863-1864. Prison diary of a Confederate soldier, praises Lucretius.

My phone is dying, but I will have more to say! You are certainly right that she separated mindfulness from the apparatus of Eastern spirituality, and that is worth talking about.

Early on she mentions Thich Nhat Hanh; if I had a "guru" when I was deep in Buddhism, it was certainly him. I loved his books, sought his dharma talks, and followed the goings-on at his Plum Village retreat in France. There actually was a Buddhist temple in home town, which I enjoyed going by but would never have considered going in—theirs was a cultural emphasis, and my interest was solely on the 'dhamma'.

My memory of Thich Naht Hanh's mindfulness is best represented by the dish-washing she mentions on the podcast. When you're washing the dishes, you're not thinking about Cicero's De Finibus; you're not thinking about work, or an interesting podcast. You're not listening to an audiobook—you're really not even thinking about the dishes! Your whole attention is trained on to the motions, sensations, the experience of dishwasher.

A thought will arise; you will acknowledge it, and then let it go. There will follow a moment of mental 'blankness', but inevitably, another thought will arise.

You will acknowledge it, and let it go. Your project is to clear your mind of the whole process of cognition. Your mind does not want to be clear—it has aeons of natural selection and a whole lifetime of habit driving it toward this singular purpose—it wants to think! But you are going for mindfulness, so you clear it again. You are trying to be in the present, fully awake to experience and sensation, but not to thought. Thought is a distraction from the present moment, and you are trying to be present.

Here's the thing; after a few thousand hours, or tens of thousands of hours, this training will result in a few empirically verifiable changes in the brain. The brains of long-practicing monks look different under brain imaging scans, and function differently; they've aged better, have more activation in the "good" areas (happiness, altruism) and less activation in the "bad" areas (fear, selfishness, anxiety).

Mindfulness in the early attempts can be really frustrating, and most people give up. In some individuals, where the mind is especially troubled, mindfulness can exacerbate existing mental health problems. But the biggest problem for me is the discipline required, and the colossal time-sink involved.

Personally, I got to a point where I chose to rely on the hope that there exist other pathways to happiness, and I abandoned that one. I'll never have the brain of a master meditator; but I like to think I've still got a fair crack at long-term happiness.

But you know what? For the sake of experiment, I may give it another try!