Posts by Joshua

Quote from Usener Fragment 67

"For I at least do not even know what I should conceive the good to be, if I eliminate the pleasures of taste, and eliminate the pleasures of sex, and eliminate the pleasures of listening, and eliminate the pleasant motions caused in our vision by a visible form."

Whenever we discuss the Letter to Menoikeus, I feel it's important to contrast it with what Epicurus wrote in the above surviving fragment from a lost work Peri Telos, "On the End". For this and other reasons, I am unwilling to cede the word pleasure to the naysayers. We lose far more than we stand to gain. Lucretius sets the tone for me: dux vitae dia voluptas; Divine Pleasure, the guide of life.

If people hear 'pleasure' and think 'bodily pleasure', I do not regard that as a problem - mainly because I think those people are probably motivated to this misinterpretation by religion or politics or culture or upbringing, and they would reject Epicureanism no matter how thoroughly it was explained to them.

We tested the Zoom to YouTube process this evening.

On the day of the livestream, navigate to the EpicureanFriends YouTube Channel and click on the logo shown here;

While the livestream is active this logo will have a red ring around it.

After the livestream ends, YouTube will put the recording under the live tab;

This is the link for the EpicureanFriends YouTube Channel.

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CASSIUS

I know that virtue to be in you, Brutus,
As well as I do know your outward favor.
Well, honor is the subject of my story.
I cannot tell what you and other men
Think of this life; but, for my single self,
I had as lief not be as live to be
In awe of such a thing as I myself.
I was born free as Caesar; so were you;
We both have fed as well, and we can both
Endure the winter’s cold as well as he.
For once, upon a raw and gusty day,
The troubled Tiber chafing with her shores,
Caesar said to me “Dar’st thou, Cassius, now
Leap in with me into this angry flood
And swim to yonder point?” Upon the word,
Accoutered as I was, I plungèd in
And bade him follow; so indeed he did.
The torrent roared, and we did buffet it
With lusty sinews, throwing it aside
And stemming it with hearts of controversy.
But ere we could arrive the point proposed,
Caesar cried “Help me, Cassius, or I sink!”
I, as Aeneas, our great ancestor,
Did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulder
The old Anchises bear, so from the waves of Tiber
Did I the tired Caesar. And this man
Is now become a god, and Cassius is
A wretched creature and must bend his body
If Caesar carelessly but nod on him.
He had a fever when he was in Spain,
And when the fit was on him, I did mark
How he did shake. ’Tis true, this god did shake.
His coward lips did from their color fly,
And that same eye whose bend doth awe the world
Did lose his luster. I did hear him groan.
Ay, and that tongue of his that bade the Romans
Mark him and write his speeches in their books,
“Alas,” it cried “Give me some drink, Titinius”
As a sick girl. You gods, it doth amaze me
A man of such a feeble temper should
So get the start of the majestic world
And bear the palm alone.

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Another drowning story, again with an Epicurean as the rescuer. I don't know how I missed it before!

That is the plan, Godfrey!

I was vegetarian for nearly a year. I stopped when I started driving truck, and since I had to have a physical done to get a CDL, I also had bloodwork and my vision tested. Both of them had actually improved after just under twelve months.

The plural of anecdote is not data, but I was surprised by the changes!

He repeatedly cheated Death (Thanatos, one of the psychompomps who escorted souls to the afterlife.)

We can start by categorizing ancient languages based on three factors;

• The quantity of surviving texts
• The transmission of the language and its script from antiquity to modernity
• The modern languages descended from or influenced by them
• Surviving grammars and lexicons and other commentaries on the language itself written by native speakers

For example, the Linear A script of the ancient Minoan language (which has not yet been deciphered) presents several major challenges to scholars. One challenge is the very small body of surviving texts, only ~1400 inscriptions. Latin, by contrast, is thought to survive in more than half a million inscriptions (to say nothing of the massive corpus of literary works). The number of surving Linear A inscriptions is then less than 28 hundredths of 1 percent of the number of Latin inscriptions. Linear A is itself an ancestor of Linear B, the script of Mycenaean Greek, the oldest form of Ancient Greek which we know about.

At the other extreme are Classical Latin and Ancient Greek. In both cases, we can rely on the following lines of evidence;

• Large quantities of surving texts

  Literary texts, political and legal documents and decrees, private letters, inscriptions, funeral epitaphs, graffiti, surviving papyrus scrolls, and place names that are still in use after 1500 years

• Alphabets that have been in use continuously since antiquity
• Well studied living descendant languages (although Ancient and Modern Greek are considered sets of dialects of the same evolving language, much like Old, Middle, and Modern English)
• Commentaries on the language written by native speakers from the ancient world
• An unbroken succession of native speakers (Greek) or non-native learners (Latin). There was never any point in time within the last two thousand years when no one living could read Latin.

If I was getting a tattoo in Latin or Greek, and a friend asked me how I could be sure what the text of the tattoo really said, this is the kind of information I would present to them.

One final note; we cannot really discuss levels of confidence with regard to an entire language system. There will always be uncertainty around the edges, what with words that only appear once in the entire surviving corpus (hapax legomenon), a particular morphology of a known word that never appears at all (like the pluperfect of a verb that only survives in the present active infinitive, for example), gaps (lacunae) in surviving texts, and so on.

The point here is that we can be resoundingly confident in the meaning of the word aqua, while at the same time being less certain about the etymology of the word mentula as used in the erotica poems of Catullus.

I don't have an answer, but I would like to point out that there is good reason to think that Hermarchus was the first friend and scholar to join Epicurus apart from the latter's own brothers.

Epicurus' course brought him through the following places:

Born on Samos -> Colophon -> Mytilene -> Lampsacus -> Died in Athens

--His brothers may have gone with him, or they may have joined him later.

--Hermarchus was from Mytilene.

--Metrodorus, Polyaenus, Colotes, Idomeneus, Batis, Leonteus, and Themista were all, if the meagre evidence is to be relied upon, from Lampsacus.

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An Account of my last interview with David Hume, Esq.
Partly recorded in my Journal, partly enlarged from my memory, 3 March 1777

James Boswell

On Sunday forenoon the 7 of July 1776, being too late for church, I went to see Mr David Hume, who was returned from London and Bath, just dying. I found him alone, in a reclining posture in his drawing-room. He was lean, ghastly, and quite of an earthy appearance. He was dressed in a suit of grey cloth with white metal buttons, and a kind of scratch wig. He was quite different from the plump figure which he used to present. He had before him Dr. Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric. He seemed to be placid and even cheerful. He said he was just approaching to his end. I think these were his words. I know not how I contrived to get the subject of immortality introduced. He said he never had entertained any belief in religion since he began to read Locke and Clarke. I asked him if he was not religious when he was young. He said he was, and he used to read The Whole Duty of Man; that he made an abstract from the catalogue of vices at the end of it, and examined himself by this, leaving out murder and theft and such vices as he had no chance of committing, having no inclination to commit them. This, he said, was strange work; for instance, to try if, notwithstanding his excelling his schoolfellows, he had no pride or vanity. He smiled in ridicule of this as absurd and contrary to fixed principles and necessary consequences, not adverting that religious discipline does not mean to extinguish, but to moderate, the passions; and certainly an excess of pride or vanity is dangerous and generally hurtful. He then said flatly that the morality of every religion was bad, and, I really thought, was not jocular when he said that when he heard a man was religious, he concluded he was a rascal, though he had known some instances of very good men being religious. This was just an extravagant reverse of the common remark as to infidels.

I had a strong curiosity to be satisfied if he persisted in disbelieving a future state even when he had death before his eyes. I was persuaded from what he now said, and from his manner of saying it, that he did persist. I asked him if it was not possible that there might be a future state. He answered it was possible that a piece of coal put upon the fire would not burn; and he added that it was a most unreasonable fancy that we should exist for ever. That immorality, if it were at all, must be general; that a great proportion of the human race has hardly any intellectual qualities; that a great proportion dies in infancy before being possessed of reason; yet all these must be immortal; that a porter who gets drunk by ten o'clock with gin must be immortal; that the trash of every age must be preserved, and that new universes must be created to contain such infinite numbers. This appeared to me an unphilosophical objection, and I said, 'Mr. Hume, you know spirit does not take up space'.

***

I asked him if the thought of annihilation never gave him any uneasiness. He said not the least; no more than the thought that he had not been, as Lucretius observes. 'Well,' said I, 'Mr Hume, I hope to triumph over you when I meet you in a future state; and remember you are not to pretend that you was joking with all this infidelity.' 'No, no,' said he. 'But I shall have been so long there before you come that it will be nothing new.' In this style of good humour and levity did I conduct the conversation. Perhaps it was wrong on so awful a subject. But as nobody was present, I thought it could have no bad effect. I however felt a degree of horror, mixed with a sort of wild, strange, hurrying recollection of my excellent mother's pious instructions, of Dr. Johnson's noble lessons, and of my religious sentiments and affections during the course of my life. I was like a man in sudden danger eagerly seeking his defensive arms; and I could not but be assailed by momentary doubts while I had actually before me a man of such strong abilities and extensive inquiry dying in the persuasion of being annihilated. But I maintained my faith.

***

He had once said to me, on a forenoon while the sun was shining bright, that he did not wish to be immortal. This was a most wonderful thought. The reason he gave was that he was very well in this state of being, and that the chances were very much against his being so well in another state; and he would rather not be more than be worse. I answered that it was reasonable to hope he would be better; that there would be a progressive improvement. I tried him at this interview with that topic, saying that a future state was surely a pleasing idea. He said no, for that it was always seen through a gloomy medium; there was always a Phlegethon or a hell. 'But,' said I, 'would it not be agreeable to have hopes of seeing our friends again?' and I mentioned three men lately deceased, for whom I knew he had a high value: Ambassador Keith, Lord Alemoor, and Baron Mure. He owned it would be agreeable, but added that none of them entertained such a notion. I believe he said, such a foolish, or such an absurd, notion; for he was indecently and impolitely positive in incredulity.

***

I said, 'If I were you, I should regret annihilation. Had I written such an admirable history, I should be sorry to leave it.' He said, 'I shall leave that history, of which you are pleased to speak so favourably, as perfect as I can.' He said, too, that all the great abilities with which men had ever been endowed were relative to this world. He said he became a greater friend to the Stuart family as he advanced in studying for his history; and he hoped he had vindicated the two first of them so effectually that they would never again be attacked.

Mr. Lauder, his surgeon, came in for a little, and Mr. Mure, the Baron's son, for another small interval. He was, as far as I could judge, quite easy with both. He said he had no pain, but was wasting away. I left him with impressions which disturbed me for some time.

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Immortality: Hume and Boswell

I thought Philosophy Talk listeners might enjoy Hume’s last thoughts on immortality, as recorded by James Boswell, who visited Hume hoping for a deathbed…

www.philosophytalk.org

https://understandinghumanism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/The-death-of-David-Hume.pdf

Thomas More, Utopia

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[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.

John Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration

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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.

πρεσερυες

I can't believe it took me so long to realize there's no 'v' sound in the Greek alphabet. Wikipedia has it that the shift of beta from b to v may have started in the Koine period.

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Beati hispani, quibus vivere bibere est.

Translation: Fortunate are the Hispani, for whom living is drinking.

I found an interesting reference to Vitruvius' de Architectura in an essay by Montesquiue. Here is the passage from Vitruvius;

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1. Aristippus, the Socratic philosopher, shipwrecked on the coast of Rhodes, perceiving some diagrams [geometrica schemata] thereon, is reported to have exclaimed to his companions, "Be of good courage, I see marks of civilization": and straightaway making for the city of Rhodes, he arrived at the Gymnasium; where, disputing on philosophical subjects, he obtained such honours, that he not only provided for himself, but furnished clothing and food to his companions. When his companions had completed their arrangements for returning home, and asked what message he wished to send to his friends, he desired them to say: that the possessions and provision to be made for children should be those which can be preserved in case of shipwreck;

Reminds me of a scene in Robinson Crusoe when the title character finds a single human footprint on what he thought was a desert island.

Another thread on time was started by Don here.

https://pages.uoregon.edu/jschombe/cosmo…venly%20spheres.

I haven't read through this yet but it starts with a summary of different ancient views of time, and is relevant to our recent conversations about Parmenides and Zeno of Elea.

We also have this webpage from Kansas State University on Parmenides.

( Cassius and Kalosyni, I posted this quickly and I didn't search very long for a proper subforum, so we may need to relocate it)

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In his book The Sand Reckoner, Archimedes set out to demonstrate
methods for dealing mathematically with extremely large numbers, such as
the number of grains of sand which would fill the universe (hence the title
of his book). Of course to arrive at the largest number possible, he had to
find a description of the largest theoretical universe known in which to
place his grains, and for that he turned to Aristarchus. Having explained to
his patron, King Gelon, that most astronomers believed the earth to be the
center of the universe, around which everything else rotated, he added
almost as an aside:

But Aristarchus has brought out a book consisting of certain hypotheses,
wherein it appears, as a consequence of the assumptions made, that the
universe is many times greater than the “universe” just mentioned. His
hypotheses are that the fixed stars and the sun remain unmoved, that the
earth revolves about the sun on the circumference of a circle, the sun lying
in the middle of the orbit, and that the sphere of fixed stars, situated about
the same centre as the sun, is so great that the circle in which he supposes
the earth to revolve bears such a proportion to the distance of the fixed
stars as the centre of the sphere bears to its surface.
--Archimedes, The Sand Reckoner, chapter 1:4-5

Here then was Aristarchus’s great thought, preserved only as a reference in
another book. Archimedes for his part did not even believe it to be true,
only being interested in the sheer scale of the model he proposed.
The response to Aristarchus’s hypothesis of a heliocentric solar system
was perhaps to be predicted and may in itself help to explain why so few of
his own works survive. Contemporaries were horror-struck by the new role
this Alexandrian astronomer gave to the earth and, by implication, to the
people on it. How dare he take away their special position at the very heart
of creation? One of them, by the name of Cleanthes, wrote a treatise entitled
simply Against Aristarchus. This has since been lost, so we don’t know on
what grounds he attacked Aristarchus, but Plutarch would later comment
that Cleanthes

thought it was the duty of the Greeks to indict Aristarchus of Samos on
charges of impiety for putting in motion the Hearth of the Universe (i.e. the
Earth), this being the effect of his attempt to save the phenomena by
supposing heaven to remain at rest and the Earth to revolve in an oblique
circle, while it rotates at the same time, about its own axis.
--Plutarch, On the Face Which Appears on the Orb of the Moon, book 6

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--The Rise and Fall of Alexandria, by Justin Pollard and Howard Reid

Edited to say five full years! January 2020 to January 2025.

John Tyndall, Belfast Address

Address Delivered Before the British Association Assembled at Belfast, With Additions (1874)

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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?

----

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!