Posts by Joshua

Here's an interesting thought; what do we actually know about this guy?

Judging from Mr. Jefferson's letter in reply, we may infer that William Short, like Jefferson, positively identified himself as an Epicurean. Cassius' recent reading of Frances Wright's other work has me thinking that there might be gems hidden here as well.

He was a talented, capable, brilliant protégé of Thomas Jefferson, and a deft hand at diplomacy. He forsook the dream of a high and polished political career in his pursuit of the love of a French Noblewoman. Despite his career disappointments, he was an accomplished businessman, and retired wealthy while Jefferson himself slipped into debt and penury at the end of his life. He was George Washington's first appointment to office. He loved the new American project, but preferred living in Europe.

Some of his correspondence with the married French Duchess survive. I haven't yet found the texts online, but they might be worth perusing.

Here's an interesting anecdote; one day while canoeing on the Seine with Rosalie (whose much older husband in a marriage of convenience evidently didn't object to their affair), William noticed a boy on the verge of drowning. He dove into the waves to save the boy, and nearly lost consciousness in the rescue. When the party returned to the Nobleman's Chateau, he was treated to a banquet and lauded as a hero. It's probably a coincidence, but the story bears remarkable similarities to Theon's rescue of Hedeia in A Few Days in Athens. (This happened in 1790; Wright published in 1822).

Sadly, my experience arguing with a flat-earther in the family—and bear in mind, I work in land-surveying—tells me that this project is likely to involve a lot of fruitless irritation.

But probably people are referring to the Loeb edition, which ought to be the gold standard. I'm probably guilty of misnaming it myself.

That's an excellent question, Susan! He is a translator in his own right, as well as the most recent editor of Rouse's translation.

Here is his translation available on Amazon;

https://www.amazon.com/Nature-Things-Lucretius/dp/0872205878

It was published in 1969, and Professor Smith is still alive. So the text is not in the public domain—unless he's made arrangements that I wouldn't know about.

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I found it interesting to look up the Latin for exactly what is being condemned, variously translated as Superstition, or Religion. It is actually "religio" which Martin Furguson Smith annotates as:

"false religion," not "religion,"... The Epicureans were opposed not to religion, but to the traditional religion which taught that the gods govern the world."

I believe that's from the Loeb edition?

I think there is strong tendency to put the cart before the horse with that word. Whether religio should be translated as religion or superstition is of secondary concern. What Lucretius meant for us, his readers, to actually understand by religio, he laid out for us in the surrounding lines and with the story of Iphigenia.

Religio is believing that:

-Humans are hemmed in, above and below,

-In a specially created world

-By supernatural, intervening gods,

-(And their oracles and priests),

-Whose natures are threatening and capricious, and

-Whose ultimate power is to torment us beyond the grave.

To follow Epicurus is to believe that:

-We are free agents,

-In one natural world among innumerable worlds

-(Where the gods, if they exist, do not create or intervene),

-who ignore the priests, choosing instead the philosopher

-whose foundation is material nature and whose end is pleasure,

-and for whom death is nothing.

I probably could have made that a little smoother, but I was aiming for symmetry.

Really great replies. Susan, I found your bagpipe story particularly interesting!

That is a really interesting angle, Don!

I particularly enjoyed this passage from the above article;

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When people judge video games to be a waste of time, what most people probably mean is that there are better, more useful ways to spend one's time. However, this is a value judgment. To me, knitting would be a waste of time. If I really want a quilt, I can always buy one on Amazon. But for all the people who love to knit, more power to you!

And the more immediate reason for me posting this thread was this article.

For an Epicurean, the question must obviously involve individual hedonic calculus. But I'm curious to know how others handle it. Do you structure your leisure time? Does binge-watching a television show, for example, leave you feeling guilty?

What does your ideal day look like? Your ideal retirement?

The Vatican Sayings are relevant here. Cyril Bailey;

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10

Remember that you are mortal and have a limited time to live and have devoted yourself to discussions on Nature for all time and eternity and have seen “things that are now and are to come and have been.”

11

For most men rest is stagnation and activity is madness.

14

We are born once and cannot be born twice, but for all time must be no more. But you, who are not master of tomorrow, postpone your happiness. Life is wasted in procrastination and each one of us dies without allowing himself leisure.

78

The noble soul occupies itself with wisdom and friendship; of these the one is a mortal good, the other immortal.

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I ask this question because it comes up quite a lot in places like reddit, where 'Getting Your Life Together' is a constant refrain.

The general implication is that by spending time more wisely or more productively, we'll be happier, healthier, richer, fitter, more attractive, better respected—all of those great traits that humans yearn for. (Most marketing, of course, is geared for the desire for those same traits).

I myself have this same nagging feeling sometimes; if not for video games, I could have really learned Latin or Greek, mastered an instrument, improved my drawing, made tons more friends, explored the natural world, written a book, read hundreds more books, gone to the gym everyday—and on it goes. The pleasure of something I enjoy, soured by the anxiety of leisure.

Those are good focusing questions, Cassius. I wanted to explore the question of whether video games in broad terms are a 'waste of time'. Let us assume that this means they are unconstructive—designed not for education, or for research, or anything like that, but for mere enjoyment. I actually left the thread title vague because I think that a lot of things fall into this category—television, popular fiction, pornography, watching sports, etc.

So let's put it like this;

Setting aside the moral aspects of the question, should an Epicurean spend large quantities of time in relatively passive content-consumption?

TL;DR—This post is a bit rambling. Skip to the next one for a discussion of the question, "Are video games a waste of time?"

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When I was a young boy—the middle child of three—my parents brought home a Nintendo Entertainment System. It had been an especially difficult pregnancy for my mother; she was often sick, and particularly struggled to keep down food. I was born with a significant deformity of the chest and nearly died. I was baptized at the hospital for fear that I wouldn't make it.

Based on these and other factors, my parents were informed of two probabilities. The first was that my poor prenatal nutrition predicted a lifelong struggle with overeating and weight gain, and the second was that my mental development and mind/body coordination would be slow and possibly foreshortened.

To help with the second problem, my dad convinced my mother that video games—then in their infancy—would help with developing coordination. I also did Hooked on Phonics, created the year before I was born, to help me keep up with my peers.

In fact I exceeded them. My senior year of high school, I took the ACT test and got a perfect score of 36 in Reading Comprehension. It was 2006, and I was bookish, with a high reputation among my teachers, and skinny as a rail.

And I still played video games. A LOT of video games. Like many young people, and especially boys, they became a part of my identity. They were the main focus of my peer group, the main use of my money from my first job, and the major use of my free time.

I am nearly 32 now, gainfully employed, and while I haven't owned a gaming console for several years, I still play them on my laptop. Sometimes I play for hours at a stretch, while new and unread books languish on the shelf.

The public conception among our elders that video games will turn us all into violent sociopaths seems to have abated in the intervening decades, but it's been supplanted by a milder one—we're lazy, and we're wasting our lives.

Let's explore the question!

Cassius, I think you are right—this was a strong episode. Thanks to all who participated!

I particularly enjoyed the discussion of Epicurus as leader, teacher and so forth. I'm sure that I'm as guilty as anyone of investing too much attachment into the figure himself; you can see it in some of my poems. Elayne's cautions are well taken, and she is a valuable voice.

I might add a few points to flesh out my own thinking; and to redeem, in a way, Lucretius and Lucian and others who have covered him with honor.

The first thing I would say is that we are shielded by the philosophy itself against the worst forms of hagiography. It will never be asserted—it couldn't be taken seriously if it were—that Epicurus was set apart in significance from other mortals. We will not, cannot, fall into the demeaning trap of thinking him heralded, prophecied, chosen, or marked by signs and portents. He performed no miracles; he was born to no god; he ascended into no paradise.

He was a mammal—like other mammals, born of a natural sexual union (how absurd that we have to say that out loud!), and kin to the beasts of the field, and did not disgrace himself by claiming otherwise. What little there was of nobility in his painful, animalistic and ignoble death, was nobility of mind and philosophy. He claimed no other.

Nor did he claim to heal; but taught us only, perhaps, how we might find health ourselves. He could not make the deaf to hear or the blind see. He gave no voice to the mute—the voice he gave was to pleasure itself, in a world that did not want to hear it.

Of his temperament even some of his enemies could speak well. In his school, Diogenes Laertius tells us that he declined the perils of communal property—for he foresaw that greed and mistrust were bitter poison to wholesome fellowship. His easy grace, his mild manner and simple bearing showed how ill-fitted was the bacchanalian mask that his slanderers put upon him.

Elayne is right; what could be more obvious than that pleasure is the proper end of life? It was a pearl richer than all the rest of ancient philosophy—so much muck. And yet it took an Epicurus to pry out that pearl, and bring it up into sunlight.

If I believed that a job done once was done forever, and that so worthy a truth as this would stand itself apparent for all coming time, then we could leave off honoring him.

But the agora of ideas isn't getting less absurd and obscure; it's growing muckier by the day! And for as long as we are confronted with an endless parade of charlatans, we shall have need of Epicurus.

Welcome, Susan! It seems like ages since the Bhagavat Gita and the Upanishads were part of my regular reading 🤔.

I do come from a background of intense interest in Buddhism. That was—to borrow a term—in another life, so I don't know how helpful I'll be. I expect you will have things to teach us!

As a student of Vedanta, you are already trained to understand a few of the most important Epicurean conclusions about consciousness. The first is that human consciousness cannot reasonably be unique. The Śramaṇas of India understood this well; any theory of consciousness that attempts to explain the human mind must also account for the mind of the rat in the sewers. It won't do to say that we are special; Epicurus believed that we are all sprung from celestial seed. Our minds emerge spontaneously from indestructible matter. Since matter is thought to be infinite, the number of conscious beings is thought to be infinite as well.

The second conclusion we share with Vedanta is that other minds are worth studying as a healthful practice for our own minds. There are minds as far exceeding ours in capability as ours exceed other mammals. The gods, if such exist, must be fully natural—not so far unlike ourselves. And if they pass their days in deepest happiness, as Epicurus reasoned they must, then they are a fit subject for human contemplation. Life is a long struggle in the dark, said Lucretius; and yet with philosophy, we may learn to rival Zeus in happiness. We also benefit from the honor we bestow on the wise.

There are many other comparisons to be made, and the disagreements between Epicurus and the schools of the East are broad as well as deep. But it is a promising position to start from!

Joshua

A good find Cassius, but rather sad—it seems to confirm DeWitt; "It was the fate of Epicurus to be named if condemned, unnamed if approved."

Henry David Thoreau rode the 19th century lecture circuit as well. I am absolutely convinced from a comprehensive reading of his published works and private letters that he did not believe in a personal god, or in any hell or paradise, and yet he sometimes evokes this theme in his lectures—as when arguing against slavery, or pleading for the life of John Brown. A case of tailoring his message to his audience, I suppose. The Reform movement had strong ties to the Romantic movement in Europe and the Transcendentalists in America, as well as the Quaker and Unitarian churches.

Tell an audience of nineteenth century men and women that you are going to educate children on the model of the best philosophers in Europe, and they might applaud you. Tell them that the foundation stones of that philosophy were laid by Epicurus as a bulwark against Plato and religion, and the same audience might balk to hear it.

Pestalozzi, by contrast, was a Christian humanist trained for the clergy.

This would be a subject worthy of a monograph; in lieu of such at present, I will take the thesis in defense of her authorship here.

I haven't read any of her other works at full length, but the evidence I've seen so far fairly convinced me.

Like Diogenes of Oenoanda, Wright was cosmopolitan. Born in Scotland and orphaned, she lived throughout her life in England and America, and for brief interludes in France. She traveled even more widely; through Europe, through the United States and the frontier, south as far as Haiti, north into Canada. It might properly be said that she lived on the road.

In this capacity she was both writer and orator, and was the first woman in the country to lecture mixed company in public on subjects of morality and politics. She was in this respect a new Leontion, and suffered similar calumnies. She was also the first woman in America to edit a published journal.

She befriended Lafayette and Jefferson, Bentham and Mill. She attempted a utopian community for the betterment of African slaves, which failed. Even so, she supported other communities throughout her life. On her career she had this to say, in a letter to Lafayette:

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Trust me, my beloved friend, the mind has no sex but what habit and education give it, and I who was thrown in infancy upon the world like a wreck upon the waters have learned, as well to struggle with the elements as any male child of Adam.

The biblical reference is superficial; more subtle is the allusion to Lucretius, whom she surely read. From Cyril Bailey's translation;

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Then again, the child, like a sailor tossed ashore by the cruel waves, lies naked on the ground, dumb, lacking all help for life, when first nature has cast him forth by travail from his mother’s womb into the coasts of light, and he fills the place with woful wailing, as is but right for one for whom it remains in life to pass through so much trouble.

Her allusion to this passage precedes Alfred Tennyson's (In Memoriam) by over twenty years.

Like Epicurus she was critical of superstition, critical of priests and clergy, and critical of the institution of marriage—and yet like Metrodorus she did marry, and bore a child.

It might rightly be said that she wrote out her Epicurean philosophy once (and rather completely), and gave the rest of her life to living it.

I agree with Cassius' concluding thoughts—more reading of her other works is in order!

I see Cassius has a write-up here, I haven't read through it yet.

The recent thread on Julius Caesar has me thinking about Trajan, Hadrian and Plotina. There are, I think, two letters of Plotina (one to Hadrian and one to the Epicurean community in Athens [?]), and then Hadrian's reply/decree. Do we have these somewhere? I don't see much on Plotina here.

Thank you, Don! Your voice was sorely missed in some of these older threads on translation. My study of Ancient Greek is haphazard at the very best of times.

That's quite a breadth of possibilities.