Desiderius Erasmus; "The Epicurean"; 1545; Dialogue by the famous Dutch Christian Humanist, arguing that Christianity is the only way to a life of real pleasure.
Robert Burns; "Contented wi' Little and Cantie wi' Mair"; 1795; Poem in Scottish dialect blending Epicurean and Stoic themes.
Robert Frost; "Lucretius Versus the Lake Poets"; 1947; A poem on the meaning of the word nature, contrasting Lucretius with the British Romantics
Rome is a crime scene.
This is the feeling that was building in me by degrees, as I was led from one crumbling monument to another. To the Forum, laid in ruins; to the Colloseum, quarried for stone or stripped of marble to make lime; to the Pantheon, where the bronze ceiling of the portico was pillaged to be melted down for cannon by a warlike imperialist pope. And in the Sistine Chapel, where a guide explained that a fervor over nudity arising from the Council of Trent resulted in a commission for the painter Daniele da Volterra, who in 1565 scraped away the work of Michelangelo and painted loincloths where there had been genitals.
I have not been to Rome in years; but I thought of da Volterra again today, as I was reading a dialogue by the Dutch Humanist Erasmus called "The Epicurean".
[...] If they are Epicureans that live pleasantly, none are more truly Epicureans, than those that live holily and religiously. And if we are taken with Names, no Body more deserves the Name of an Epicurean, than that adorable Prince of Christian Philosophers; for Ἐπίκουρος in Greek signifies as much as an Helper. Therefor when the Law of Nature was almost erased by Vice; and the Law of Moses rather incited than than cured Lusts, when the Tyrant Satan ruled without Controul in the World, he alone afforded present Help to perishing Mankind. So that they are mightily mistaken that foolishly represent Christ, as by Nature, to be a rigid melancholick Person, and that he invited us to an unpleasant Life; when he alone show'd the Way to the most comfortable Life in the World [...].
You can almost hear the paint-scraper as you read. It is Epicurean philosophy neutered of its physics. Gouged of its decisive rejection of religion and fear of death. Excised, and painted over again with an implausible and alien veneer of "Natural Law" and ridiculous, childish fable.
And yet for all that, Erasmus and the learned men like him were essential to the birth of modernity. He argued against the death penalty for heretics. He subtly questioned many Catholic traditions that had no basis in scripture. He and his fellow Humanists were scholars of the antiquities, and provided a crucial link in the chain of textual preservation and criticism that allowed these books to survive.
In our ongoing project of fostering an authentic Epicurean tradition, we're going to continue to encounter these scholars. I don't have any feelings about them that aren't mixed; all I can do is remain wary of the paint-scraper.
I hadn't seen this post when I wrote that, Cassius, so I didn't realize you had already delved into the etymology.
I wouldn't have recognized the Greek term in the first place if Greenblatt had not discussed it in the Getty lecture, at the 15:00 mark in this video. So that's a good place to start.
I notice from your post that it was used in that sense in the book of Ecclesiastes. That's earlier than I would have supposed.
Very good! George Santayana put it this way;
This double experience of mutation and recurrence, an experience at once sentimental and scientific, soon brought with it a very great thought, perhaps the greatest thought that mankind has ever hit upon, and which was the chief inspiration of Lucretius. It is that all we observe about us, and ourselves also, may be so many passing forms of a permanent substance.
"The greatest thought mankind has ever hit upon."
It can be difficult to appreciate from this distance what a revolution in human thought this was.
DeWitt on page 12 holds up the letter to Menoeceus as (alone of the extant letters) "composed according to the rules of rhythmical prose". Epicurus in this one letter is writing artfully. Perhaps that includes eschewing his customary synoptic introduction?
Regarding the same letter on page 46-47 he says this;
"Were it not for the survival of this piece we could not be so sure of his ability to write artfully, but possessing this we are justified in believing that other writings of similar merit existed."
So there's something about this letter in Greek that sets it apart stylistically, though if course it surpasses my power to say what that is exactly.
No, I haven't. I was reading about Byron for reasons mentioned in the other thread, and this one turned up. He was Byron's literary executor. Apparently he is regarded as the National Bard of Ireland, so it's somewhat surprising that he's never crossed my radar (possibly his memory is eclipsed by James Joyce).
Thomas Moore (no, not THE Thomas More); "The Epicurean"; 1827; Irish novel about a fictional Epicurean scholarch converting to Christian monasticism.
I came across something that might interest you, Charles; although it's likely you've already found it yourself.
In a footnote to the Loeb edition of Lucretius there was mention of an influence upon Byron's Childe Harold, which I went to read. (We read passages from this work in college, but I could remember nothing). Byron adapts Lucretius' description of Mars vanquished by Venus (IV:LI), and then goes on to panegyrize several Italian renaissance figures—Angelo, Alfieri, Galileo, Machiavelli, Dante, and Petrarch. He then praises the "bard of prose...he of the Hundred Tales of Love".
This turns out to have been a reference to Boccaccio and his Decameron. I knew the title but had never read it. Upon reading the wikipedia article I found reference to your Guido Cavalcanti!
This is a roundabout way of saying that the ninth story of the Decameron touches on Cavalcanti, and is worth a look.
Mr. Hogg was lifelong friends with one of the pre-eminent English poets of the Romantic Period, and must have moved in circles that included Mary Shelley (Frankenstein) and Lord Byron. We know for certain that Percy Shelley read Lucretius, and that may be the materialist author Hogg is referring to.
I think it's clear from the broader context of the passage that he regards materialists, atheists, and Epicureans as ultimately benign, but also selfish, insensible, and out of touch. The last sentence is meant to be read as a summation of legacy; Plato and Aristotle didn't literally feed thousands, but their intellectual legacy was taken up by Christians, Deists, Spinozoans, etc. And the idea is that while adherents of these sects held charity to be a virtue and a duty, the heirs of Epicurus cared only for themselves.
Their narrow sect cannot possibly flourish; we cannot live upon this world alone.
But this is the stand-out sentiment for me. What does the second "cannot" mean? Does it mean that it cannot be possible that we live alone? Or that we cannot possibly tolerate the truth of living alone, and that's why we need comforting lies about Providence or Godhead? Hard to say.
Later in the book he has this (and much else) to say about medical doctors of his time;
[They are] too frequently epicureans, obtruding and thrusting in men's faces a
low, offensive, and shallow materialism.
These excursions are amazingly common in the text. It's as if he wrote a biography about his more-famous friend just so that he could fill up the pages by getting his own ideas into circulation under the name.
I've had rather enough of Mr. T. J. Hogg, and will be happy to leave this selection here and never revisit his book! What Epicurus taught was never shallow; but it was clear, so that you could see right down to the bottom. Plato by contrast is so muddled and murky you can't see an inch into him. They see this obscurantism, and foolishly call it depth.
The world is deeply indebted also to epicureans and materialists; it is a great benefit to mankind, that in every generation a small body of innocent, estimable, and apathetical men should be found ready to demonstrate practically, that their narrow sect cannot possibly flourish; that we cannot live upon this world alone.
Plato and Aristotle have fed thousands, but to whom did Epicurus ever give a morsel of bread?
I wasn't sure where to put this one, but I found it interesting. This is Thomas Jefferson Hogg, an English barrister, writing in his biography of lifelong friend Percy Bysshe Shelley. He had mentioned Shelley's reading of materialist authors, and then tossed out this gem.
The really interesting thing is that Shelley and Hogg were both expelled from Oxford for their joint authorship of a pamphlet called The Necessity of Atheism, a text that argued against special creation while at the same time allowing Spinozoan Pantheism.
There's a book out by Michael Vicario on Shelley's Intellectual System and its Epicurean Background. I don't have it, but I think I'll try to get a copy.
[I should just note that Shelley's family were outraged by Hogg's biography, so we should keep that in mind. The above quote appears to be all Hogg.]
Just handheld. All credit to the phone manufacturers! I never do anything more serious than zooming and cropping. (I also take a lot of bad or disappointing photos...it helps to have a lot of options to choose from!)
This is as far as I'm willing to walk for a picture today!
They were all taken with a smartphone, Cassius. All but one—the high mountain lake at Quandary Peak in Colorado—were taken with my current phone, a Samsung Galaxy s9+. I have been thinking about getting something like a go-pro to mount at the passenger-side window for especially scenic drives.
(The shot of the road with a faint rainbow was taken while I was still in training. No photography while driving!)
Road trips are great, Godfrey! My main complaint is that I get so close to places I want to see, but not close enough to actually see them. I need about 8 daylight hours to spare in a city before I can justify the Uber!
I still have three states I've never been to; Rhode Island, Vermont, and Alaska. I'll be meeting my family in Nashville in June. Finally going to go check out that Parthenon. But first I'm looking forward to a lazy 8 days off in Florida come January!
Haha oh I have pictures...
Northeast of El Paso
Somewhere out west
Iowa
Maine
Arkansas
Colorado
Michigan
Salt Lake City
West Virginia
And one very regrettable night in Memphis
And you want more ? If you say Epicurean-ism without the word as << philosophy>> it is right then, people to think : Ah, this is a mainstream with kitchens with good food and wine!
Ok, this is an excellent point! Those people have almost completely ruined search engine utility re: "Epicurean"
You've put that extremely well, Cassius!
I'll be out moving and shaking as normal! The western plains and the Rockies have just been buried under a foot of snow. Hopefully all are doing well! I shut down the truck yesterday and won't start again until this evening or tomorrow morning. No sense getting stranded in Wyoming!
Oh, I don't mean to imply that I am finding this discussion tedious. I continue to think Nate and Elli are making fair points.
But to say, for example, that Christianity is a relationship, not a religion, is to fortress one's opinion with something like an inverse Kafka-trap; they want to control the terms so that definitionally they can't be argued against—and I find that tedious.
Furthermore, while we may all sincerely admire the person of Epicurus, and delight in the historical texts that resulted from the activity of his Garden, our path to wisdom – unlike every other -ismic school of thought – is neither dependent upon allegiance to a centralizing leader, nor upon a golden age of history, nor upon a doctrinal institution.
We should ask those schools; they have a different opinion. There is not one of them that wouldn't plead the same or a similar case. Or the same case couched in different terms. I know for a certainty from personal experience that in Buddhism the argument is identical; that instead of Buddhism, many would prefer Buddhadharma (Sanskrit) or -dhamma (Pali).
"Stop calling [my belief] an -ism!"
Sometimes it goes the other way. Taking a word, and weaponizing the -ism.
And, what is for me the most droll article of piffle to have made my acquaintance; I hate religion, but love Jesus
Anti-ismism is a cottage industry! Ironically, the only school I searched but can't find an example in is Stoicism. This, despite the fact that Stoicism 1.) Also comes from Greek, and therefore enjoys the blessings of our own etymological arguments, and 2.) Is one of the only schools not to have been named after a person.
I don't know about all of you, but I find this sort of thing tedious. I suspect that Lucian, for one—an equal opportunity lampooner of pretense—would have seen right through it.
It pleases me inordinately to hear in DeWitt, as an example, of the "spread of Epicureanism". If it was the "spread of Epicurean philosophy", I wouldn't know what that meant; does that mean that the books are spread, like Gideon bibles, with no one reading them? But "Epicureanism" is unmistakable. It doesn't mean scrolls or sages; it means people. An Attic potter molding a krater. A Roman soldier marching in Gaul. A Corinthian fisherman taking in the morning catch from the Aegean; and all bound in brotherhood by devotion to the school of Epicurus.
And in the same spirit...I'll leave it there! Candor has its place, but so does good humor and good nature. I once witnessed an exchange with a believer in Young-Earth Creationism. The interlocutor replied that "no, [he] believed in Old-Earth Accretionism". I laughed so hard I almost fell off the chair!
Good stuff, Charles! That whole scene from the tenth canto is simply bizarre. Actually that reminds me of one of my favorite specimen of "famous last words";
"All right, then, I'll say it: Dante makes me sick." — Lope Félix de Vega Carpio (1562—1635), Spanish dramatist and poet. On being informed he was about to die.
