Posts by Joshua

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But can it not ALSO be used in a way that is entirely positive and pleasurable, in which the pleasure of anticipation and preparation for the experience are every bit as enjoyable as the experience itself?

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Being elated by the anticipation of something seems to me to be part and parcel of "desiring" it.

Anticipating the fulfillment of a desire can be pleasureable, in the same way that anticipating the removal of a pain can be pleasureable. You wouldn't call a headache pleasant simply because you know relief is at hand.

In the case of romantic desire, the one who feels that desire (the sting of Cupid's arrow, if you will) may indulge in fantasizing about getting the person they want. The fantasy might be pleasureable, but when that person comes down from that high they are left with the bare pain of desire.

The fantasy which brings pleasure might actually postpone their joy;

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VS18. If sight, association, and intercourse are all removed, the πάθος (pathos) of love is ended.

I am not willing to cede ground to the Buddhists who wish to demonstrate that life is bitter; they can make that argument themselves. My argument is that life is sweet, because the pain of desire has its happy resolution, not in renunciation, or in mortification, but in pleasure. Some desires we should satisfy. Some we should consider carefully before satisfying. Some we should recognize as unsatisfiable, and cast them off.

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Some men say to themselves:

“No more shall my house admit me with glad welcome, nor a virtuous wife and sweet children run to be the first to snatch kisses and touch my heart with joy. No more may I be prosperous in my doings, a safeguard to my own. One disastrous day has taken from me, luckless man, all the many prizes of life.”

But these men do not add:

“And now no longer does any craving for these things beset me either.”

-Lucretius, Book III

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Is there anything that is ALWAYS Pleasurable except PLEASURE? I would say no.

Is there anything that is ALWAYS painful except PAIN? Again I would say no.

At this very high level it seems to me like *everything* else, including desire, is going to be contextual, and needs to be seen as a tool for achieving pleasure or avoiding pain.

What I am suggesting is that 'desire' is a word that we use to describe one particular kind of pain, just as 'headache' is a word used to describe another particular kind of pain.

I may be alone in this, but I continue to think that desire is a kind of pain. We feel it as pain because we feel it as dissatisfaction, and dissatisfaction is a kind of pain.

This is not an argument for asceticism; it is sometimes used as a premise in arguments for asceticism, but there is no reason to think that the one follows from the other.

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In order that Idomeneus may not be introduced free of charge into my letter, he shall make up the indebtedness from his own account. It was to him that Epicurus addressed the well-known saying urging him to make Pythocles rich, but not rich in the vulgar and equivocal way. "If you wish," said he, "to make Pythocles rich, do not add to his store of money, but subtract from his desires."

Event Date: 60 LA
§ 21.8 This idea is too clear to need explanation, and too clever to need reinforcement. There is, however, one point on which I would warn you, – not to consider that this statement applies only to riches; its value will be the same, no matter how you apply it. "If you wish to make Pythocles honourable, do not add to his honours, but subtract from his desires"; "if you wish Pythocles to have pleasure for ever, do not add to his pleasures, but subtract from his desires"; "if you wish to make Pythocles an old man, filling his life to the full, do not add to his years, but subtract from his desires."

Event Date: 60 LA
§ 21.9 There is no reason why you should hold that these words belong to Epicurus alone; they are public property. I think we ought to do in philosophy as they are wont to do in the Senate: when someone has made a motion, of which I approve to a certain extent, I ask him to make his motion in two parts, and I vote for the part which I approve. So I am all the more glad to repeat the distinguished words of Epicurus, in order that I may prove to those who have recourse to him through a bad motive, thinking that they will have in him a screen for their own vices, that they must live honourably, no matter what school they follow.

Event Date: 60 LA
§ 21.10 Go to his Garden and read the motto carved there: 'Stranger, here you will do well to tarry; here our highest good is pleasure.' The care-taker of that abode, a kindly host, will be ready for you; he will welcome you with barley-meal and serve you water also in abundance, with these words: "Have you not been well entertained?" "This garden," he says, "does not whet your appetite; it quenches it. Nor does it make you more thirsty with every drink; it slakes the thirst by a natural cure, a cure that demands no fee. This is the 'pleasure' in which I have grown old."

-Seneca, Letters to Lucilius

I'm quite happy to endorse Epicurus as quoted. Seneca will have to answer for his own additions in section 21.8: at any rate, I should say that 'if you wish Pythocles to have pleasure for ever, add to his pleasures AND subtract from his desires.'

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Have you not been well entertained?

Maybe Ridley Scott is a fan after all!

The reference to the mythical Hyperboreans is somewhat strange. It reads like an allusion to this passage from Herodotus;

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But the persons who have by far the most to say on this subject are
the Delians. They declare that certain offerings, packed in wheaten
straw, were brought from the country of the Hyperboreans into Scythia,
and that the Scythians received them and passed them on to their neighbours
upon the west, who continued to pass them on until at last they reached
the Adriatic. From hence they were sent southward, and when they came
to Greece, were received first of all by the Dodonaeans. Thence they
descended to the Maliac Gulf, from which they were carried across
into Euboea, where the people handed them on from city to city, till
they came at length to Carystus. The Carystians took them over to
Tenos, without stopping at Andros; and the Tenians brought them finally
to Delos. Such, according to their own account, was the road by which
the offerings reached the Delians. Two damsels, they say, named Hyperoche
and Laodice, brought the first offerings from the Hyperboreans; and
with them the Hyperboreans sent five men to keep them from all harm
by the way; these are the persons whom the Delians call "Perpherees,"
and to whom great honours are paid at Delos. Afterwards the Hyperboreans,
when they found that their messengers did not return, thinking it
would be a grievous thing always to be liable to lose the envoys they
should send, adopted the following plan:- they wrapped their offerings
in the wheaten straw, and bearing them to their borders, charged their
neighbours to send them forward from one nation to another, which
was done accordingly, and in this way the offerings reached Delos.

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Bailey doesn't have much to add;

Cyril Bailey, Epicurus; The Extant Remains endnote on page 405

Alexander Ross; Arcana Microcosmi, Book II, Chapter 16; 1652; A rather choleric response to Gassendi's reception of Epicureanism. The text is of no use at all, but the footnotes by James Eason of the University of Chicago elevate the reading experience to high art.

Ross was in an ongoing literary and intellectual feud with this man;

Sir Thomas Browne; Hydriotaphia, Chapter 4; 1658; A curious meditation on life and death, with a few lingering paragraphs on Epicurus entombed in the sixth circle of Dante's Inferno:

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Pythagoras escapes in the fabulous hell of Dante, among that swarm of Philosophers, wherein whilest we meet with Plato and Socrates, Cato is to be found in no lower place then Purgatory. Among all the set, Epicurus is most considerable, whom men make honest without an Elyzium, who contemned life without encouragement of immortality, and making nothing after death, yet made nothing of the King of terrours.

Were the happinesse of the next world as closely apprehended as the felicities of this, it were a martyrdome to live; and unto such as consider none hereafter, it must be more then death to dye, which makes us amazed at those audacities, that durst be nothing, and return into their Chaos again. Certainly such spirits as could contemn death, when they expected no better being after, would have scorned to live had they known any. And therefore we applaud not the judgment of Machiavel, that Christianity makes men cowards, or that with the confidence of but half dying, the despised virtues of patience and humility, have abased the spirits of men, which Pagan principles exalted, but rather regulated the wildenesse of audacities, in the attempts, grounds, and eternall sequels of death; wherein men of the boldest spirits are often prodigiously temerarious. Nor can we extenuate the valour of ancient Martyrs, who contemned death in the uncomfortable scene of their lives, and in their decrepit Martyrdomes did probably lose not many moneths of their dayes, or parted with life when it was scarce worth the living. For (beside that long time past holds no consideration unto a slender time to come) they had no small disadvantage from the constitution of old age, which naturally makes men fearfull; And complexionally superannuated from the bold and couragious thoughts of youth and fervent years. But the contempt of death from corporall animosity, promoteth not our felicity. They may sit in the Orchestra, and noblest Seats of Heaven, who have held up shaking hands in the fire, and humanely contended for glory.

Mean while Epicurus lyes deep in Dante’s hell, wherein we meet with Tombs enclosing souls which denied their immortalities. But whether the virtuous heathen, who lived better then he spake, or erring in the principles of himself, yet lived above Philosophers of more specious Maximes, lye so deep as he is placed; at least so low as not to rise against Christians, who beleeving or knowing that truth, have lastingly denied it in their practise and conversation, were a quæry too sad to insist on.

File:Pech Merle main.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

commons.wikimedia.org

This image of a human hand was done in ochre ~27,000 years ago, which I think makes it more interesting than the article linked to above!

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Under these circumstances the multitude turned their thoughts towards Marcus Brutus, who was thought to be a descendant of the elder Brutus on his father's side, on his mother's side belonged to the Servilii, another illustrious house, and was a son-in‑law and nephew of Cato. 2 The desires which Brutus felt to attempt of his own accord the abolition of the monarchy were blunted by the favours and honours that he had received from Caesar. 3 For not only had his life been spared at Pharsalus after Pompey's flight, and the lives of many of his friends at his entreaty, but also he had great credit with Caesar. 4 He had received the most honourable of the praetor­ships for the current year, and was to be consul three years later, having been preferred to Cassius, who was a rival candidate. 5 For Caesar, as we are told, said that Cassius urged the juster claims to the office, but that for his own part he could not pass Brutus by.105 6 Once, too, when certain persons were actually accusing Brutus to him, the conspiracy being already on foot, Caesar would not heed them, but laying his hand upon his body said to the accusers: "Brutus will wait for this shrivelled skin,"106 implying that Brutus was worthy to rule because of his virtue, but that for the sake of ruling he would not become a thankless villain. 7 Those, however, who p589 were eager for the change, and fixed their eyes on Brutus alone, or on him first, did not venture to talk with him directly, but by night they covered his praetorial tribune and chair with writings, most of which were of this sort: "Thou art asleep, Brutus," or, "Thou art not Brutus."107 8 When Cassius perceived that the ambition of Brutus was somewhat stirred by these things, he was more urgent with him than before, and pricked him on, having himself also some private grounds for hating Caesar; these I have mentioned in the Life of Brutus.107 9 Moreover, Caesar actually suspected him, so that he once said to his friends: "What, think ye, doth Cassius want? I like him not over much, for he is much too pale." 10 And again, we are told that when Antony and Dolabella were accused to him of plotting revolution, Caesar said: "I am not much in fear of these fat, long-haired fellows, but rather of those pale, thin ones," meaning Brutus and Cassius.

Plutarch, in Parallel Lives

Greek text at Persius;

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[5] εἶχε μέντοι καί δι᾽ ὑποψίας ὁ Καῖσαρ αὐτὸν, ὥστε καί πρὸς τοὺς φίλους εἰπεῖν ποτε: ‘τί φαίνεται βουλόμενος ὑμῖν Κάσσιος; ἐμοὶ μὲν γὰρ οὐ λίαν ἀρέσκει λίαν ὠχρὸς ὤν.’ πάλιν δὲ λέγεται, περὶ Ἀντωνίου καί Δολοβέλλα διαβολῆς πρὸς αὐτὸν, ὡς νεωτερίζοιεν, ἐλθούσης, ‘οὐ πάνυ,’ φάναι, ‘τούτους δέδοικα τοὺς παχεῖς καί κομήτας, μᾶλλον δὲ τοὺς ὠχροὺς καί λεπτοὺς ἐκείνους’ Κάσσιον λέγων καί Βροῦτον.

ὠχροὺς

edit: you may recognize the Greek word as it has come into English; ochre

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: see footnote appended below;

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CAESAR Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o' nights:
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous. 195
ANTONY Fear him not, Caesar; he's not dangerous;
He is a noble Roman and well given.
CAESAR Would he were fatter! But I fear him not:
Yet if my name were liable to fear,
I do not know the man I should avoid 200
So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much;
He is a great observer and he looks
Quite through the deeds of men: he loves no plays,
As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music;
Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort 205
As if he mock'd himself and scorn'd his spirit
That could be moved to smile at any thing.
Such men as he be never at heart's ease
Whiles they behold a greater than themselves,
And therefore are they very dangerous. 210
I rather tell thee what is to be fear'd
Than what I fear; for always I am Caesar.
Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf,
And tell me truly what thou think'st of him.

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193. Sleek-headed men. According to Plutarch, Caesar once said to friends who "complained unto him of Antonius and Dolabella, that they pretended some mischief towards him, 'As for those fat men and smooth-combed heads, I never reckon of them; but these pale-visaged and carrion lean people, I fear them most,' meaning Brutus and Cassius." (citation)

I use wormhole for transferring large files, if that helps.

I think you're right about Philodemus' relevance to the question, Pacatus , but I'll have to look for it after work!

"Clinically dead".

So, not dead then. It still surprises me that our use of language concerning something as important as death is so reckless.

My phone battery died mid-call, sorry to have missed the end!

The story of Michael Marullus drowning in a river with a copy of Lucretius in his pocket will be familiar to many here. I learned recently that one of France's preeminent poets (Pierre de Ronsard) wrote an epitaph in his honor. It took me ages to track down even the French text of this epitaph, and I'm posting it here against the day I decide to learn French.

The source of the epitaph is a book of verse called Le Bocage (The Grove), published 1554. Marullus was also a poet, and there are probably fertile fields for exploring his reception of Lucretius. This book might be a good place to start.

Very good Eikadistes !

Clerical note; The footnotes are out of their running starting at VS45, where footnote 10 is repeated from VS44. Everything after that is one off.

Good work!

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How unfortunate for men that they they charged the gods with control of the universe and coupled with that power bitter wrath! What groanings did they then beget for themselves, what wounds for us, what tears for our children’s children! It is no act of piety to be seen with veiled head, turning to a stone and approaching every altar, falling prostrate on the ground, spreading out the palms before the statues of the gods, sprinkling the altars with the blood of beasts, and linking vow on to vow. Rather, true piety is to be able to look on all things with a mind at peace.

-Lucretius

Here's my understanding of things;

Quote from John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration

All the life and power of true religion consist in the inward and full persuasion of the mind; and faith is not faith without believing. Whatever profession we make, to whatever outward worship we conform, if we are not fully satisfied in our own mind that the one is true and the other well pleasing unto God, such profession and such practice, far from being any furtherance, are indeed great obstacles to our salvation.

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No way whatsoever that I shall walk in against the dictates of my conscience will ever bring me to the mansions of the blessed. I may grow rich by an art that I take not delight in; I may be cured of some disease by remedies that I have not faith in; but I cannot be saved by a religion that I distrust and by a worship that I abhor.

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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. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all; besides also, those that by their atheism undermine and destroy all religion, can have no pretence of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege of a toleration. As for other practical opinions, though not absolutely free from all error, if they do not tend to establish domination over others, or civil impunity to the Church in which they are taught, there can be no reason why they should not be tolerated.

Quote from Thomas More, Utopia

[Utopus] 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.

Thomas More and his "Utopia"

The Pythoclean alternative of proposing one or more plausible explanations solves one aspect of the problem. We don't have to know everything to know something rather than nothing!

Lactantius lived c.250-c.325

Origen of Caesarea (c.185-c.253), in his work Contra Celsus (Celsus being possibly though not certainly an Epicurean (see highlight below)), touches on the 'able but not willing' formulation. Celsus' book does not survive except as quoted by Origen.

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Now in our judgment God can do everything which it is possible for Him to do without ceasing to be God, and good, and wise. But Celsus asserts — not comprehending the meaning of the expression God can do all things — that He will not desire to do anything wicked, admitting that He has the power, but not the will, to commit evil. We, on the contrary, maintain that as that which by nature possesses the property of sweetening other things through its own inherent sweetness cannot produce bitterness contrary to its own peculiar nature, nor that whose nature it is to produce light through its being light can cause darkness; so neither is God able to commit wickedness, for the power of doing evil is contrary to His deity and its omnipotence. Whereas if any one among existing things is able to commit wickedness from being inclined to wickedness by nature, it does so from not having in its nature the ability not to do evil.

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The argument which Celsus employs against us and the Jews will be turned against himself thus: My good sir, does the God who is over all things know what takes place among men, or does He not know? Now if you admit the existence of a God and of providence, as your treatise indicates, He must of necessity know. And if He does know, why does He not make (men) better? Is it obligatory, then, on us to defend God's procedure in not making men better, although He knows their state, but not equally binding on you, who do not distinctly show by your treatise that you are an Epicurean, but pretend to recognise a providence, to explain why God, although knowing all that takes place among men, does not make them better, nor by divine power liberate all men from evil?

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But as he asserts that the Mosaic narrative most impiously represents God as in a state of weakness from the very commencement (of things), and as unable to gain over (to obedience) even one single man whom He Himself had formed, we say in answer that the objection is much the same as if one were to find fault with the existence of evil, which God has not been able to prevent even in the case of a single individual, so that one man might be found from the very beginning of things who was born into the world untainted by sin.