Posts by Joshua

Thank you all for the chat! I'm glad finally to have taken part. I have to apologize again for the technical issues. Looking forward to next time!

Happy Twentieth!

Fragment, Sept. 20th

Raise to Epicurus then a glass--

For though this be the Autumn of our school,

Yet take heart! Many a bleak midwinter

Cold assails the hapless acorn: but it

Hath no need of luck; for it wraps itself

In woody dreams, and holds the coming warmth

Of May¹ in usufruct. Such our doctrine

Holds, but more; it waits not for warmth or light.

Warmth it bears in fair aspect, and light

In all the truth and wisdom of its words.

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¹May, and not March (Mars); for as Ovid tells it, "June is the month of the young (iuvenes); the preceding is the month of the old (maiores)." And it is fitting to honor such in a toast for the Twentieth.

That is a powerful speech, Nate. Thank you for posting it! I think the success of the Apollo Program was a key moment for the idea of cosmopolitanism. It was a good day to be, not just an American, but a "citizen of the world".

It occurs to me--and I think we're finally off topic now ;)--that the first translation of Lucretius I ever read was by A. E. Stallings from 2007. She attempted to capture the flow of the hexameter by casting it into Iambic Heptameter, a very unusually long line for English. In addition she employed modern idiom ("hot off the presses", in one example) and direct quotation from English Poets like Tennyson and Keats.

I recall finding it very jarring. That copy must have disappeared in the downsizing from my apartment to my truck.

I don't have a copy of that one other than on Audible, Cassius, but I agree with your assessment.

But the translation I use has its own problems (W. H. D. Rouse, from the Loeb Classical Library with facing Latin text). For example, Rouse's translation of that line runs thus; "So potent was Superstition in persuading to evil deeds."

He explains the substitution of Superstition for religio in a footnote, but I don't think it adequate.

I like this analogy! You've also used my favorite translation of that line in Lucretius. It's less literal, but with the change from passive to active voice the final clause hits harder.

And thank you Cassius! I see we crossed while typing.

Thank you, Godfrey! This is what I'm trying to nail down here. It was Cassius' post in another thread that got me thinking about the question;

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The reason O'Keefe finds the relationship between nature and goodness "far from straightforward" is because O'Keefe refuses to follow Epicurus to his conclusions. Nature gives us only pleasure as the guide to what is desirable, and there is nothing "good" other than pleasure.

Possibly I'm wrong in my interpretation, but I don't think that eating and drinking are intrinsic goods. In so far as there is a desire to drink water, it is natural (not intrinsically good; just natural). The satisfaction of the desire is necessary, at least in the long run. But the only intrinsic good worth pursuing as an end in itself is pleasure.

Maybe the whole concept of "good" just muddies the water. DeWitt believed that there was a fault with the Romans who translated telos as summum bonum. In his view, the "good" is life itself, and the "end" of life is pleasure.

I'm really just thinking through this out loud

We often say as a kind of shorthand that pleasure is the only good. This isn't wrong, but like all shorthands, it may be open to misconstruction. What I think we mean by this is: "Pleasure is the only [intrinsic] good [in life]." This is merely a way of speaking about value; pleasure is good because it has intrinsic value. Pizza (like the slice of Sbarro I'm eating as I type this) seems to be good, but it's only good by virtue of utility; the value of pizza is extrinsic, deriving only from the net pleasure it can deliver. "But does it not have value as nourishment?" Yes, but the value of nourishment is likewise extrinsic. It provides the energy we need for life, and the end or goal of life is the only intrinsic good; pleasure.

Great to have you, Todd!

From a VERY pleasant night here on Beale St. in Memphis!

I was totally obsessed with Tolkien when I was a teenager. Middle Earth is in many ways my "first language" when it comes to things like mortality, beauty, friendship, wisdom, and struggle. It's a world I still slip into whenever I walk in quiet woods.

There are chanted versions of The Song of Durin to be found. A very haunting hymn.

I became rather taken with this idea, Cassius! This and your other thread on the destruction of Rome seemed to plant a seed in my head.

Song of the Sage

In imitation of Tolkien

The world was old, and ruined walls

Had told the tale of countless falls,

Unnumbered tears, and silent bones

In buried graves and catacombs

Of cities dead when Rome was young;

When Troy was lost, and poets sung.

Alone the Evening Star gave light

When Epicurus rose by night.

Alone he trod on grassy leas

And scanned for Law in changing seas;

He grappled Chaos to the hilt

And knew it for the lies it built;

He wrung the truth from every blade

That turned beneath his mental spade;

The secret, deep and unalloyed,

Of atoms bound in endless void!

And when he raised at last his eyes

Upon the splendid starlit skies,

He laughed to think of Plato's chimes

And probed the deeps of space and time.

And where the priests saw godly powers

He saw ten thousand earths like ours!

Nor could the courage of his soul

Be daunted by its mortal toll.

The light that rose upon that morn

For seven centuries was borne;

Does it rest too beneath the hill?

I cannot tell; I cannot tell.

On Turkish shores the carven stone

Still whispers in a dulcet tone,

And Roman scrolls in Vulcan's cache

Still slumber in the mountain ash.

But there, outshining all the rest,

Still Venus lingers in the West.

This is great stuff! I love that farm picture with the straw boater hat! Thanks again

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I have tried to contact them and I know that he has a grandson, who was very nice by email. I asked him if there were surviving family papers and he indicated that there were not - anything that is left is at the University of Toronto.

Oh, that's awesome, Cassius! So much gets "lost in the aether" these days. One of the things I don't like about the nomad life is the impossibility of a physical archive. Just earlier today I was searching for an article I once read that was critical of Lucian's essay on Alexander; the writer had suggested that if Lucian had lived long enough to read the gospels he would have burned his anti-supernatural works in shame. I was keen to post it with a rebuttal, but alas! Not to be found.

For the "beginning student" those are excellent choices. For a curious but less committed person, I might start them on Frances Wright. If they bite, they'll be well-primed for the real stuff. If not, they can console themselves with having enjoyed a pleasant novel meanwhile.

DeWitt we must always regard as essential. I sometimes wonder if he has family alive who knew him, and whether they know how grateful many of us are for his work.

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In addition to acknowledging that quote, we must dispel the fear that we will not accomplish what we have wanted prior to dying.

I like the echo of Montaigne here;

"I want death to find me planting my cabbages, but careless of death, and still less of my unfinished garden."

Montaigne was a brilliant Latinist (it was his first language, due to an unusual education prepared for him by his father), and was an early Renaissance figure to not only read Lucretius but praise him highly, and quote him liberally in his own essays.

Very nice, Charles! It'll be great to have your perspective here. I especially love your mention of Hume. It is worth remembering that the celebrated and notorious Scottish agnostic was born in Edinburgh just 14 years after the last British heretic was executed in the same city (Thomas Aikenhead; a lad of 20 and a student at the university, hanged for blasphemy). We owe them a great deal, and others like them.

I'm a northwest Iowa boy myself.

Hiram had posted a good research paper on Epicurean theory of mind contrasted with Cartesian dualism. I only mention it because we so rarely see Epicurus portrayed faithfully in research papers around here

Michele also posted updates on the festival they recently celebrated. Attendance was rather impressive!

Other than that, thanks to Cassius and the mods for enduring these tech hiccups and keeping things running!

Rome is a strange city to visit. One feels that every important historical structure was either a.) Destroyed piecemeal so the stones could be reused in churches, or b.) Preserved by being made into a church.

The Colloseum saw both sides of this. It had been pillaged for centuries for stone when a scholarly cleric (and by all accounts a good man) titled Pope Benedict XIV declared it a sacred site of martyrdom.

As for Elayne's post; well, I sighed with comfort just reading it! The kind of sigh that comes from walking into a light, airy and well-ordered room.

My friend is section hiking the Superior Hiking Trail in Minnesota. He'll be tackling the AT one of these years, I have no doubt. Me...well, I'll stick to reading Bill Bryson for now!