Posts by Joshua

That is excellent, Eugenios. I should like to see you bring Vatican Saying 46 into your analysis; it seems (to an English reader) to support your conclusions!

It has been too long, Cassius!

The meditation on death has still a further use; that of overcoming lust or longing. The idea is to visualize the person to whom you are attached, and to "watch" them (in your mind) go through the various stages of sickness, aging, death, decay, and finally decomposition.

Whatever there may be gained by way of perspective in all of this, I can't see the pleasure in it—and I have an indistinct dislike for the morbidities involved. This was the version of death-meditation I employed myself.

Didn't work.

And upon reflection, I'm saddened to think I hoped for it.

It has been too long, Cassius!

The meditation on death has still a further use; that of overcoming lust or longing. The idea is to visualize the person to whom you are attached, and to "watch" them (in your mind) go through the various stages of sickness, aging, death, decay, and finally decomposition.

Whatever there may be gained by way of perspective in all of this, I can't see the pleasure in it—and I have an indistinct dislike for the morbidities involved. This was the version of death-meditation I employed myself.

Didn't work.

And upon reflection, I'm saddened to think I hoped for it.

The Buddhist reflects on death in order to escape the mortal world.

An Epicurean reflects on death in order to, in the words of W. H. Auden, "Find the mortal world enough."

Hello, all

It's been a time, but I still have an eye here—and a voice that I don't use enough!

Some may recall that I came to the Epicurean way through Buddhism. Indeed, I have used the Meditation on Death myself. Here's what I have to say;

To hear modern Buddhists speak of the Meditation on Death is generally to hear them mischaracterize it. I confess to not having listened to the linked podcast, Eugenios, but I want to clarify the point. What a Buddhist meditates on is precisely the death of the body. It's good so far as that goes—but before you get very far into it, you arrive at the problem.

The problem is that the deep, underlying structure of Buddhism precludes the possibility of genuine death. In fact, that's rather the whole point. They meditate on death in order to dismiss the claims of the body (which really does die) and focus all their earthly energy on the mind or spirit. How do I know this? Because; if Buddhists genuinely believed that death meant extinction, then death would encompass their definition of nibbana. And are we to believe that the shortest road thither is to kill one's self? Obviously not. And so we may discern that when the early buddhists spoke of rebirth, they meant it literally. The idea that rebirth is metaphorical, or poetic, or only by analogy, is a modern fiction.

What Thomas Jefferson said of the trinity is equally true of rebirth; An idea must be distinct before reason can act upon it, and no one ever had a distinct idea of rebirth, or of nirvana.

As an Epicurean, what do I think of all this?

First: that the claims of the body are not to be dismissed or denied, but are wholly justified, in and of themselves. I believe this because pleasure is the self-evident good.

Second: there is a sense of urgency in the shortness of human life, but it's source is altogether different from an Epicurean viewpoint. The Pali Canon teaches that nirvana is only possible in a human rebirth, and that a human rebirth is as rare as a sea turtle surfacing inside a golden ring in the middle of the ocean. A buddhist better get it right in this life or they'll surf through the six realms of existence waiting for another chance. The urgency for an Epicurean, by contrast, is that one will squander his only life in pain and suffering because he hasn't learned how to optimize for pleasure effectively.

Third: that there is certainly value in reflecting on death. Specifically; we should do as Epicurus instructed, and reflect on how Death is Nothing to us!

Well, I have to go back to work...it's an excellent topic though!

Josh

There's an interesting story about his library. After the British burned the Capitol in the War of 1812, Jefferson offered to sell his collection to the government as replacement, under one condition; they had to buy the WHOLE collection, and they had to keep them together.

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Jefferson's offer was met by warm support from many in the House and Senate; still, the bill introduced to authorize the purchase of Jefferson's library faced congressional opposition, particularly from the Federalists, such as Cyrus King, who argued that Jefferson's books would help disseminate his "infidel philosophy" and were "good, bad, and indifferent ... in languages which many can not read, and most ought not."

Source

Does anyone really think that Cicero and Seneca were the kinds of books Cyrus King was worried about?

Happy (now belated) birthday, Elayne!

Jefferson's reading is an interesting place to start, but the library of a voracious reader may be misleading. Nevertheless, the fact that he owned five different editions of Lucretius in Latin as well as translations in English and French is illustrative.

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Yes - and that reminds me too that we should compare this with the story of Torquatus' ancestor, who had his son executed for disobeying orders in a war, and how that compares / differs from the Iphanessa story

On a probably unrelated note, I turned up something the other day in my reading. It was Frontinus' Aqueducts of Rome (Frontinus being a military and civil engineer who was put in charge of the system), and he made mention of the Torquatian Gardens, or maybe Gardens of Torquatus. No other extant Latin text mentions them. It was a large family in Rome though, there's probably no connection. But it did strike me as a feature of interest.

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It's modern, and highly critiqued by modern Epicureans like Michel Onfray.

Excellent! I still haven't read Onfray.

I've looked into the Greek.

The translations posted above are correct; Epicurus wrote against "The Physicists". This is fitting, since physics was the grounding of his whole system.

To Metrodorus he gave the task of writing against "The Physicians";

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From Ancient Greek ἰατρεία (iatreia, “healing, medical treatment”), from ἰατρός (iatros, “doctor”).

NB: This word is the root of the ending -iatry; psychiatry, podiatry, etc. See Cassius' fourth post in this thread for the Greek, under "Metrodorus' books", first line in the list.

So we are definitely dealing with three books by Metrodorus against physicians, as in doctors or healers.

I also think Cassius is on to something; without having looked into the Greek, is it possible we're dealing with works Against Physicians, and works Against Physicists? We use the term "pre-Socratics" to refer to Democritus, Thales, Anaxagoras, Anaximander, etc. Is that a modern convention (as I presume), or a Roman one, or something else? Because all of them developed competing physical theories.

Lucian may be relied on here for a further insight;

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The fellow had no conception of the blessings conferred by that book upon its readers, of the peace, tranquility, and independence of mind it produces, [...] of its true purging of the spirit, not with torches and squills and such rubbish, but with right reason, truth, and frankness.

"Torches and squills" must refer here to some kind of traditional sham medicine?

The physicians (if by that we mean 'doctors') of Ancient Greece were informed by the cultural belief that ailments could generally be referred to the supernatural—either a curse, or the dissatisfaction of the gods, or the machinations of fate. They may have been sincere, but it's not difficult to imagine that in such an environment many of these were outright charlatans. I'll look later through some of their writings. Excellent topic!

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The Iphigenia story is very significant for how repulsive it shows religion to be. For us the Abraham / Isaac story us more well known. Are there others?

Well, there's a rather important one for Christians!

Of course, an alternative consideration is that the translations are correct and that Diogenes Laertius got something wrong.

I read Frontinus yesterday on The Aqueducts of Rome. The early portions of the text are badly preserved; I continue to marvel that we were so lucky with what survived, and above all with Lucretius.

There are other threads in which we've discussed this that Mike might find interesting. I don't have time this morning to go find them, but I can briefly outline my own argument:

1. The confusion between translations arises because of a wholly reasonable confusion among the translators over the Greek system of conjunctions. It's interesting that a language capable of such nuances as Ancient Greek also has such a poverty of conjunctions. We have a thread somewhere where I explain this problem in depth.

2. The weight of the biographical evidence suggests to me that the Bailey translation is less accurate. It's true that Metrodorus married and had kids. But did Epicurus? Hermarchus? Polyaenus?

3. Whichever translation one prefers, the qualifying clause in the following sentence renders the two translations nearly equivalent logically. Sometimes it is wise to marry; and sometimes it is not.

Yes, Cassius, I hadn't seen that thread. That probably makes this one redundant!

Interesting! I had not read this thread before I posted the other one.

Cassius already covered it, but I consider the proem to Book IV (repeated from book I) to be essential. It contains the essence of his missionary zeal, the pride and pleasure of his work, an encapsulation of the pioneering spirit of the philosophy, his sense of the therapeutic quality of his verse, and the finest indication of what he might have achieved in lyrical (rather than Epic) poetry had he applied himself to it.

Some of the most influential lines are rather pithy, and may not work well in this format;

"Life is one long struggle in the dark."

"So potent was religion [or superstition] in persuading to evil deeds."

An infant thrown up onto the shores of light, etc.

More on the statue:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/ancient-…-lamp-stand/amp

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection….-A.D.+1&pos=21