Posts by Joshua

Ok, I found the passage from Utopia that I was looking for: [Edit; See my post above]

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[...] He made a solemn and severe law against such as should so far degenerate from the dignity of human nature, as to think that our souls died with our bodies, or that the world was governed by chance, without a wise overruling Providence: for they all formerly believed that there was a state of rewards and punishments to the good and bad after this life; and they now look on those that think otherwise as scarce fit to be counted men, since they degrade so noble a being as the soul, and reckon it no better than a beast’s: thus they are far from looking on such men as fit for human society, or to be citizens of a well-ordered commonwealth; since a man of such principles must needs, as oft as he dares do it, despise all their laws and customs: for there is no doubt to be made, that a man who is afraid of nothing but the law, and apprehends nothing after death, will not scruple to break through all the laws of his country, either by fraud or force, when by this means he may satisfy his appetites.

A more recent take, from a sitting Supreme Court Justice;

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"If you’re an atheist, what does an oath mean?" -Clarence Thomas

Cassius , you can read this long passage to see whether I've portrayed Thomas More correctly. The quote at the bottom from John Locke gets to the real heart of what I was talking about. [Edit; See my next post]

From Utopia, by Thomas More;

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“These are their religious principles:—That the soul of man is immortal, and that God of His goodness has designed that it should be happy; and that He has, therefore, appointed rewards for good and virtuous actions, and punishments for vice, to be distributed after this life. Though these principles of religion are conveyed down among them by tradition, they think that even reason itself determines a man to believe and acknowledge them; and freely confess that if these were taken away, no man would be so insensible as not to seek after pleasure by all possible means, lawful or unlawful, using only this caution—that a lesser pleasure might not stand in the way of a greater, and that no pleasure ought to be pursued that should draw a great deal of pain after it; for they think it the maddest thing in the world to pursue virtue, that is a sour and difficult thing, and not only to renounce the pleasures of life, but willingly to undergo much pain and trouble, if a man has no prospect of a reward. And what reward can there be for one that has passed his whole life, not only without pleasure, but in pain, if there is nothing to be expected after death? Yet they do not place happiness in all sorts of pleasures, but only in those that in themselves are good and honest. There is a party among them who place happiness in bare virtue; others think that our natures are conducted by virtue to happiness, as that which is the chief good of man. They define virtue thus—that it is a living according to Nature, and think that we are made by God for that end; they believe that a man then follows the dictates of Nature when he pursues or avoids things according to the direction of reason. They say that the first dictate of reason is the kindling in us a love and reverence for the Divine Majesty, to whom we owe both all that we have and, all that we can ever hope for. In the next place, reason directs us to keep our minds as free from passion and as cheerful as we can, and that we should consider ourselves as bound by the ties of good-nature and humanity to use our utmost endeavours to help forward the happiness of all other persons; for there never was any man such a morose and severe pursuer of virtue, such an enemy to pleasure, that though he set hard rules for men to undergo, much pain, many watchings, and other rigors, yet did not at the same time advise them to do all they could in order to relieve and ease the miserable, and who did not represent gentleness and good-nature as amiable dispositions. And from thence they infer that if a man ought to advance the welfare and comfort of the rest of mankind (there being no virtue more proper and peculiar to our nature than to ease the miseries of others, to free from trouble and anxiety, in furnishing them with the comforts of life, in which pleasure consists) Nature much more vigorously leads them to do all this for himself. A life of pleasure is either a real evil, and in that case we ought not to assist others in their pursuit of it, but, on the contrary, to keep them from it all we can, as from that which is most hurtful and deadly; or if it is a good thing, so that we not only may but ought to help others to it, why, then, ought not a man to begin with himself? since no man can be more bound to look after the good of another than after his own; for Nature cannot direct us to be good and kind to others, and yet at the same time to be unmerciful and cruel to ourselves. Thus as they define virtue to be living according to Nature, so they imagine that Nature prompts all people on to seek after pleasure as the end of all they do. They also observe that in order to our supporting the pleasures of life, Nature inclines us to enter into society; for there is no man so much raised above the rest of mankind as to be the only favourite of Nature, who, on the contrary, seems to have placed on a level all those that belong to the same species. Upon this they infer that no man ought to seek his own conveniences so eagerly as to prejudice others; and therefore they think that not only all agreements between private persons ought to be observed, but likewise that all those laws ought to be kept which either a good prince has published in due form, or to which a people that is neither oppressed with tyranny nor circumvented by fraud has consented, for distributing those conveniences of life which afford us all our pleasures.

“They think it is an evidence of true wisdom for a man to pursue his own advantage as far as the laws allow it, they account it piety to prefer the public good to one’s private concerns, but they think it unjust for a man to seek for pleasure by snatching another man’s pleasures from him; and, on the contrary, they think it a sign of a gentle and good soul for a man to dispense with his own advantage for the good of others, and that by this means a good man finds as much pleasure one way as he parts with another; for as he may expect the like from others when he may come to need it, so, if that should fail him, yet the sense of a good action, and the reflections that he makes on the love and gratitude of those whom he has so obliged, gives the mind more pleasure than the body could have found in that from which it had restrained itself. They are also persuaded that God will make up the loss of those small pleasures with a vast and endless joy, of which religion easily convinces a good soul.

“Thus, upon an inquiry into the whole matter, they reckon that all our actions, and even all our virtues, terminate in pleasure, as in our chief end and greatest happiness; and they call every motion or state, either of body or mind, in which Nature teaches us to delight, a pleasure. Thus they cautiously limit pleasure only to those appetites to which Nature leads us; for they say that Nature leads us only to those delights to which reason, as well as sense, carries us, and by which we neither injure any other person nor lose the possession of greater pleasures, and of such as draw no troubles after them. But they look upon those delights which men by a foolish, though common, mistake call pleasure, as if they could change as easily the nature of things as the use of words, as things that greatly obstruct their real happiness, instead of advancing it, because they so entirely possess the minds of those that are once captivated by them with a false notion of pleasure that there is no room left for pleasures of a truer or purer kind.

“There are many things that in themselves have nothing that is truly delightful; on the contrary, they have a good deal of bitterness in them; and yet, from our perverse appetites after forbidden objects, are not only ranked among the pleasures, but are made even the greatest designs, of life. Among those who pursue these sophisticated pleasures they reckon such as I mentioned before, who think themselves really the better for having fine clothes; in which they think they are doubly mistaken, both in the opinion they have of their clothes, and in that they have of themselves. For if you consider the use of clothes, why should a fine thread be thought better than a coarse one? And yet these men, as if they had some real advantages beyond others, and did not owe them wholly to their mistakes, look big, seem to fancy themselves to be more valuable, and imagine that a respect is due to them for the sake of a rich garment, to which they would not have pretended if they had been more meanly clothed, and even resent it as an affront if that respect is not paid them. It is also a great folly to be taken with outward marks of respect, which signify nothing; for what true or real pleasure can one man find in another’s standing bare or making legs to him? Will the bending another man’s knees give ease to yours? and will the head’s being bare cure the madness of yours? And yet it is wonderful to see how this false notion of pleasure bewitches many who delight themselves with the fancy of their nobility, and are pleased with this conceit—that they are descended from ancestors who have been held for some successions rich, and who have had great possessions; for this is all that makes nobility at present. Yet they do not think themselves a whit the less noble, though their immediate parents have left none of this wealth to them, or though they themselves have squandered it away. The Utopians have no better opinion of those who are much taken with gems and precious stones, and who account it a degree of happiness next to a divine one if they can purchase one that is very extraordinary, especially if it be of that sort of stones that is then in greatest request, for the same sort is not at all times universally of the same value, nor will men buy it unless it be dismounted and taken out of the gold. The jeweller is then made to give good security, and required solemnly to swear that the stone is true, that, by such an exact caution, a false one might not be bought instead of a true; though, if you were to examine it, your eye could find no difference between the counterfeit and that which is true; so that they are all one to you, as much as if you were blind. Or can it be thought that they who heap up a useless mass of wealth, not for any use that it is to bring them, but merely to please themselves with the contemplation of it, enjoy any true pleasure in it? The delight they find is only a false shadow of joy. Those are no better whose error is somewhat different from the former, and who hide it out of their fear of losing it; for what other name can fit the hiding it in the earth, or, rather, the restoring it to it again, it being thus cut off from being useful either to its owner or to the rest of mankind? And yet the owner, having hid it carefully, is glad, because he thinks he is now sure of it. If it should be stole, the owner, though he might live perhaps ten years after the theft, of which he knew nothing, would find no difference between his having or losing it, for both ways it was equally useless to him.

“Among those foolish pursuers of pleasure they reckon all that delight in hunting, in fowling, or gaming, of whose madness they have only heard, for they have no such things among them. But they have asked us, ‘What sort of pleasure is it that men can find in throwing the dice?’ (for if there were any pleasure in it, they think the doing it so often should give one a surfeit of it); ‘and what pleasure can one find in hearing the barking and howling of dogs, which seem rather odious than pleasant sounds?’ Nor can they comprehend the pleasure of seeing dogs run after a hare, more than of seeing one dog run after another; for if the seeing them run is that which gives the pleasure, you have the same entertainment to the eye on both these occasions, since that is the same in both cases. But if the pleasure lies in seeing the hare killed and torn by the dogs, this ought rather to stir pity, that a weak, harmless, and fearful hare should be devoured by strong, fierce, and cruel dogs. Therefore all this business of hunting is, among the Utopians, turned over to their butchers, and those, as has been already said, are all slaves, and they look on hunting as one of the basest parts of a butcher’s work, for they account it both more profitable and more decent to kill those beasts that are more necessary and useful to mankind, whereas the killing and tearing of so small and miserable an animal can only attract the huntsman with a false show of pleasure, from which he can reap but small advantage. They look on the desire of the bloodshed, even of beasts, as a mark of a mind that is already corrupted with cruelty, or that at least, by too frequent returns of so brutal a pleasure, must degenerate into it.

“Thus though the rabble of mankind look upon these, and on innumerable other things of the same nature, as pleasures, the Utopians, on the contrary, observing that there is nothing in them truly pleasant, conclude that they are not to be reckoned among pleasures; for though these things may create some tickling in the senses (which seems to be a true notion of pleasure), yet they imagine that this does not arise from the thing itself, but from a depraved custom, which may so vitiate a man’s taste that bitter things may pass for sweet, as women with child think pitch or tallow taste sweeter than honey; but as a man’s sense, when corrupted either by a disease or some ill habit, does not change the nature of other things, so neither can it change the nature of pleasure.

“They reckon up several sorts of pleasures, which they call true ones; some belong to the body, and others to the mind. The pleasures of the mind lie in knowledge, and in that delight which the contemplation of truth carries with it; to which they add the joyful reflections on a well-spent life, and the assured hopes of a future happiness. They divide the pleasures of the body into two sorts—the one is that which gives our senses some real delight, and is performed either by recruiting Nature and supplying those parts which feed the internal heat of life by eating and drinking, or when Nature is eased of any surcharge that oppresses it, when we are relieved from sudden pain, or that which arises from satisfying the appetite which Nature has wisely given to lead us to the propagation of the species. There is another kind of pleasure that arises neither from our receiving what the body requires, nor its being relieved when overcharged, and yet, by a secret unseen virtue, affects the senses, raises the passions, and strikes the mind with generous impressions—this is, the pleasure that arises from music. Another kind of bodily pleasure is that which results from an undisturbed and vigorous constitution of body, when life and active spirits seem to actuate every part. This lively health, when entirely free from all mixture of pain, of itself gives an inward pleasure, independent of all external objects of delight; and though this pleasure does not so powerfully affect us, nor act so strongly on the senses as some of the others, yet it may be esteemed as the greatest of all pleasures; and almost all the Utopians reckon it the foundation and basis of all the other joys of life, since this alone makes the state of life easy and desirable, and when this is wanting, a man is really capable of no other pleasure. They look upon freedom from pain, if it does not rise from perfect health, to be a state of stupidity rather than of pleasure. This subject has been very narrowly canvassed among them, and it has been debated whether a firm and entire health could be called a pleasure or not. Some have thought that there was no pleasure but what was ‘excited’ by some sensible motion in the body. But this opinion has been long ago excluded from among them; so that now they almost universally agree that health is the greatest of all bodily pleasures; and that as there is a pain in sickness which is as opposite in its nature to pleasure as sickness itself is to health, so they hold that health is accompanied with pleasure. And if any should say that sickness is not really pain, but that it only carries pain along with it, they look upon that as a fetch of subtlety that does not much alter the matter. It is all one, in their opinion, whether it be said that health is in itself a pleasure, or that it begets a pleasure, as fire gives heat, so it be granted that all those whose health is entire have a true pleasure in the enjoyment of it. And they reason thus:—‘What is the pleasure of eating, but that a man’s health, which had been weakened, does, with the assistance of food, drive away hunger, and so recruiting itself, recovers its former vigour? And being thus refreshed it finds a pleasure in that conflict; and if the conflict is pleasure, the victory must yet breed a greater pleasure, except we fancy that it becomes stupid as soon as it has obtained that which it pursued, and so neither knows nor rejoices in its own welfare.’ If it is said that health cannot be felt, they absolutely deny it; for what man is in health, that does not perceive it when he is awake? Is there any man that is so dull and stupid as not to acknowledge that he feels a delight in health? And what is delight but another name for pleasure?

“But, of all pleasures, they esteem those to be most valuable that lie in the mind, the chief of which arise out of true virtue and the witness of a good conscience. They account health the chief pleasure that belongs to the body; for they think that the pleasure of eating and drinking, and all the other delights of sense, are only so far desirable as they give or maintain health; but they are not pleasant in themselves otherwise than as they resist those impressions that our natural infirmities are still making upon us. For as a wise man desires rather to avoid diseases than to take physic, and to be freed from pain rather than to find ease by remedies, so it is more desirable not to need this sort of pleasure than to be obliged to indulge it. If any man imagines that there is a real happiness in these enjoyments, he must then confess that he would be the happiest of all men if he were to lead his life in perpetual hunger, thirst, and itching, and, by consequence, in perpetual eating, drinking, and scratching himself; which any one may easily see would be not only a base, but a miserable, state of a life. These are, indeed, the lowest of pleasures, and the least pure, for we can never relish them but when they are mixed with the contrary pains. The pain of hunger must give us the pleasure of eating, and here the pain out-balances the pleasure. And as the pain is more vehement, so it lasts much longer; for as it begins before the pleasure, so it does not cease but with the pleasure that extinguishes it, and both expire together. They think, therefore, none of those pleasures are to be valued any further than as they are necessary; yet they rejoice in them, and with due gratitude acknowledge the tenderness of the great Author of Nature, who has planted in us appetites, by which those things that are necessary for our preservation are likewise made pleasant to us. For how miserable a thing would life be if those daily diseases of hunger and thirst were to be carried off by such bitter drugs as we must use for those diseases that return seldomer upon us! And thus these pleasant, as well as proper, gifts of Nature maintain the strength and the sprightliness of our bodies.

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From Letter Concerning Toleration, by John Locke

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Lastly, those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist.

I certainly hadn't seen that, thank you!

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Edit:. Ok now maybe *everyone* can access the link!

Still no!

...unless this is a cache problem. Let me try a different way:

Edit: nope.

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I get this when I click your link:

Insufficient Permissions

You and I must not be very important, Don!

I brought up Boccaccio and his De Mulieribus Claris, or Concerning Famous Women. In one chapter he talks about the life of the Epicurean Leontion, where he chastises her for demonstrating a perfect lack of "feminine virtues".

I earlier wrote a reply to Boccaccio, which I will copy here:

To Boccaccio: A Rebuke

I mark it, sir, and wonder at it dully,

To find the lady's name maligned so fully

On evidence begot anecdotálly;

A pond'rous load to hang by such a pulley!

Was our Leontium so fierce a bully,

Who sent him off peripateticálly

Pouting, old Theophrastus; when her volley

Charmed a grudging kindness out of Tully?

And have you, sir, the gall to say she sullied?

Who scattered bastards all across Itály!

I am officially upgrading my response from "fascinating" to AMAZING!

In addition to not believing in any gods and not being convinced by his claims about Jesus, they also apparently don't think the world was 'created', and they're not afraid of death.

And somehow, in spite of all that, they still manage to be happy!

This is just fascinating! A limited-contact tribe in the Amazon rainforest managed to de-convert a Christian Missionary.

Just to give an update; I have finished my recording of the Torquatus. I'll try to get it edited and up tomorrow evening (that part is generally much easier!)

If someone cares to trace the quotation back to the source, I see it attributed to this;

The Epicurean: A colloquy between Hedonius and Spudaeus, by Desiderius Erasmus [1466-1536]

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"There are no people more Epicurean than godly Christians."

It seems that the rumors of my fallibility were greatly exaggerated! It was Erasmus.

Plutarch claimed that Epicurus made the pleasant life impossible.

Erasmus claimed that only Christians were truly Epicureans.

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.

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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

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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.