Posts by Joshua

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!

A Christian once defined his religion to me thus;

Salvation;

By Grace alone,

Through Faith alone,

In Christ alone.

Brevity invites problems, as we well know. But were I to aim for that level of terseness it would go something like this:

Happiness;

In just one natural life--

In one uncreated, everlasting

And endless cosmos--

Through pleasure, friendship,

And fearless inquiry

Into the nature of things.

This one will be hit or miss for me, as I am at a receiving dock right now; but I'll download Skype just in case. In any event I hope we're all having a pleasant time! (A rainy morning here in east central Ohio for me).

-joshua

Huh.

Either I seriously misunderstand 'desire' in Epicurean philosophy, or this author is totally misapplying the concept.

Here's what I mean. When we talk about desire with regards to it being natural and necessary, surely what we mean is that the experience of a desire is natural (or not), while the satisfaction of a desire is necessary (or not). [Am I wrong here!?]

Is enjoying food natural? The question doesn't really make sense. The desire to eat is natural. The satisfaction of that desire is necessary. But the enjoyment of the food itself is just a feeling of pleasure. That's the confusion this paper continually suffers.

Is it natural to desire to HAVE children? I could make a case either way. But the pleasure of loving those children if you DO have them is, 1.) An involuntary feeling, like all pleasures; and 2.) always a good in itself.

What a bizarre paper to read! "Should I love my children?"

This is really good stuff, guys! Thank you.

So regardless which translation one favors, there are said to be occasions when it is proper for the wise to marry, and occasions when it is proper for the wise not to marry. As I said above, I personally think the caution is against marriage and child-rearing in general.

Here's a few reasons why that might be the case--that is, why marriage and child-rearing might threaten the hedonic calculus.

It Changes Friendship from a Virtue to an Obligation

Friendship is great! The more we share it, the better it becomes. It's a hedonist's force multiplier, and you can't really have too much of it. Marriage, on the other hand, is structurally disposed toward jealousy and possessiveness. Not all marriages will succumb! But by laying claim to a person, we instantly invite suspicion towards others who share their time. Moreover, a marriage entails responsibilities that friendships don't have. Sure, marriages are enriched by joys like sex, financial stability and domestic teamwork in compensation, but by complicating the friendship in these ways we invite a huge liability exposure. Their debt is your debt. Their sickness is yours to tend. Their mistakes are yours to correct.

Grief was the Historical Norm

Nowadays children are likely to outlive their parents. This is as it should be! But historically this has not been so reliable. How many Greek sons did Alexander the Great send to their graves? How many orphans did he make? How many widows? How many plagues, shipwrecks, murders, arsons, etc. did 4th Century BC Athens endure? It was Tennyson, in his great elegy for a deceased friend, who concluded that "t'was better to have loved and lost/ then never to have loved at all". But this could not stop his long-protracted grief.

Greek Inheritance Law Caused a lot of Problems

The Greeks were a liberal (in the classical sense) and forward-thinking society. Unlike Medieval Europe, where primogeniture was the order of the day, and the first son inherited the title and estate, the Greeks divided their inheritance among all their children. Unfortunately they did this literally; the land was parceled out into smaller units generation after generation. The same problem is currently plaguing America's Native American Reservations, where the parcels become too small to use and exacerbate existing poverty.

The Greeks took a novel approach to this problem; every so often, the city-state would buy out the peasants and ship them off to a distant coastline. This they ambitiously called Colonization. The family of Neocles were of such a kind; their ancestors bundled up and sent from Athens to Samos. Sometime later (while Epicurus served his mandatory military duty) they were bundled up again and sent to Lampsacus. A family man had a much harder time of it.

When Marriage Goes Bad, it Goes Really Bad

I've seen one sibling through a divorce. Another is going through one now. Their gender and personality are very different, but it has affected both of them the same. It's been awful. The constant stress, the uncertainty, the sense of loss, shame, depression, and failure...it all really piles on. They both lost weight to an unhealthy degree. They had no stomach for food--for weeks, and months! They lost friends. They struggled to keep the plates wobbling at work. It's an ugly, painful process.

But Sometimes it's Great!

My parents are still together after 30+ years. They are still each the others' best friend, and most reliable support system.

Conclusion

What it really comes down to for the Epicurean sage is this; "Do not spoil what you have by yearning for what you have not." I already know that I'm capable of living a happy, blessed life while single. Marriage...well, it's a huge risk. I'm not saying don't take it! But walk in with eyes wide open.

At my brother's wedding and after my sister was already engaged, my father asked me if the occasion was "giving me any ideas". After witnessing two nasty divorces, the philosopher in me is getting closer to an answer.

Good evening! I read your post earlier in the day, but had not the time to respond properly.

First, to begin with the Greek. The translations seem not to disagree, really, but the lack of clarity comes from the original language (which is highly unusual; Greek is an excellent language for drawing clear distinctions, and derives subtlety from a massive lexicon, which is why Lucretius laments the poverty of Latin.)

But in this passage, the Greek problem of conjunctions is a real stumbling-block. Here's the relevant clause (no accent marks);

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και μηδε και γαμησειν και τεκνοποιησειν τον σοφον...

The words και and μηδε are conjunctions. If you're counting, that's half of the words! here's the problem; Ancient Greek uses και indiscriminately. It can mean and, but, nor, or, either, or neither. Which variation is meant depends on context.

In this case, we have three important context clues. First is the word μηδε; it provides the negative. So the words και μηδε here mean something like and nor. Following this reading, the second και most sensibly means either. The third και then means or. So a literal word for word transliteration would run something like this;

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And | nor | either | will marry | or | will bear children | the | sage

The second clue is the preceding paragraph, where Diogenes is listing other things a wise man shouldn't do. This item is clearly meant to add to that list.

The third context clue is the sentence that follows. This is the sentence that mentions 'occasional circumstances' when marriage might be advisable. This sentence qualifies the clause we've been looking at, and it lacks a negative. Which is good, because the sentence it qualifies already has a negative!

My (amateur) conclusion is that the Hicks translation in the Loeb edition is accurate;

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Nor, again, will the wise man marry and rear a family...Occasionally he may marry owing to special circumstances in his life.

Thanks to the Perseus Project for that bit of pencil-work. My own reply to follow...

I'm somewhat disappointed there's no audiobook for Blanning's biography, I was hoping to have a listen!

Frederick the Great figured prominently in some of the European History courses I took, but I had no idea of this side of him.