Posts by Charles

Here's a better close-up of its face, with detail.

Quote from Cassius

And as for this photo, how does she know it is an Epicurean philosopher?

That definitely looks like Metrodorus, but I've never seen that statue before and she offers no citation below it.

Doc Version: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_q…dit?usp=sharing

Published Version: https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d…X_f1-bax7T9/pub

After a delay yesterday that prevented me from finishing this, I completed it today. I recommend the online doc, pdf or rtf version as the formatting was tricky and won't show the correct numbers in the Published Doc version.

A misinterpretation on my part today led me to realize that his magnum opus: Discour sur bonheur, or "On Happiness" is another title for his "Anti-Seneca", I'm not done transcribing it onto a doc just yet, but I can provide the link where you can view my progress.

Quote from Cassius

Do we know if he called himself an Epicurean?

Yes, in Paragraph 10 in System of Epicurus he calls out "modern anti-Epicureans", and in Paragraph 41, there are other references but these are the most outward without going any deeper into his work.

10

"If humans have not always existed as we see them today, (what? How could we accept the idea that they sprang into the world fully grown: fathers and mothers, ready to procreate from the get-go!) the Earth must have been a uterus for humans; it must have opened its depths to receive the prepared human seeds so that this superb animal, given certain laws, could be hatched out. Why, modern anti-Epicureans, should the Earth, the common mother and wet-nurse of all bodies, deny to the seeds of animals, the favor she grants to the most deformed and harmful of plants? They always find fertility in her inner parts, and this womb can’t be all that different, in the end, than what women have." (I've seen this translated and translated it myself as "Why, I ask you modern anti-Epicureans")

41

"So many philosophers have supported Epicurus' views that I've dared to mingle my own weak voice with theirs; besides, like them, I'm only offering a system; which shows us what an enormous task we're really taking on when, hoping to pierce the night of time, we cast our presumptuous glance on things that offer them no clues: for, whether you believe in creation or reject it, the same mystery remains; the same incomprehensibility holds on all sides. How was this Earth, where I live, formed? Is it the only inhabited planet? Where did I come from? Where am I? What is the nature of everything I see? What about all these brilliant phantoms whose illusions I love? Did I exist, before the time when I was nothing? Will I be, when I am no more? What state came before I was aware of my existence? What state will follow the loss of sensation? These are questions that the greatest geniuses can never answer; they will philosophically fight the battle as I have done, will set off the bigots' alarm bells, and we'll learn nothing at all."

I'd put a lot less thought into 41, as he more frequently cites Lucretius than Epicurus at least in this book, but perhaps the remaining sections of Anti-Seneca will be more forthcoming, as it appears to be.

I plan on finishing a transcription of The System of Epicurus tonight to share with everyone, I have guests coming over in about half an hour, so it won't be until much later. But to answer your question Cassius, yes he does, he denies life after death and only mentions god in the sense of figure of speech and expression. Though he refers to the universe as "nature" and personifies nature as a woman (Mother Nature, but not "Earth" with a following grammatical gender, an important distinction), but I think this is due to his slight poetic flair or method of describing the laws of movement in an easy and frank manner to his readers.

There are a few works that missed the inclusion in the collected works that I recently purchased. I'll continue to search, but so far I have only identified two: "The Avenged Faculty: A Comedy in Three Parts" and "The Penelope Works". I have the first in French in a pdf, and the latter is only found in a 1923 reconstruction format that I believe was published by Knopf, but is rather pricey given how much I spent for everything else in one package.

Quote from Hiram

So I wonder to what extent a transfer of ideas from La Mettrie - to Jefferson - to Wright took place.

I don't have the time to get into a large wall of text explaining Mettrie at the moment, but he was heavily censored and faced constant backlash, he was "kicked" out of France during the War of Austrian Secession to escape punishment at the hands of the clergy, prompting him to the more tolerant Netherlands - in which he was later evicted and he was practically saved by his friend "Pierre Louis Maupertuis" who secured him a spot in Fredericks Court (I've yet to read the letters between the two).

Back to Mettrie, his works were so controversial that other materialists had to tone down the ideas of Mettrie that they had incorporated, and much of his ideas live on in the legacy of psychology, specifically behavioralism in the works of other, lesser known thinkers.

However, I mentioned this once very briefly and haven't had the chance or opportunity to look into it further, since Mettrie's introduction to Epicurean Physics was *not* from Gassendi, it was from Guillaume Lamy who said of Gassendi's Epicurean-Christian atomism that it was "watered-down". If that means that Mettrie had not been exposed to Laertius, I cannot say yet as there's still quite a large number of works I haven't delved into yet, as for context with Epicurus as he mentions him by name quite a few times in the three works I've been studying (Anti-Seneca, System of Epicurus, & School of Volup.).

Regardless, it's absolutely clear that Mettrie has an extremely heavy and prolific reader of: history, poetry, and scientific works; having very keen and astute knowledge of all the leading theories and popular poets of his day (he drops the names of his contemporary poets left and right in School of Volup.). But the nature of his works has less to do with acknowledging history, than it does with speculating & hypothesizing and stating his beliefs on various subjects or findings.

I think the view is less of death being painful than it is about the fear of death and the actions that fear leads to. The reasons why we shouldn't fear death stem from and come as a result of the observations and explanations behind the physics of Epicurean Philosophy, namely the monistic and materialist nature of the universe, and the lack of an afterlife and immortality of the soul, which having established that basis it then becomes natural that death itself is a painless experience, but of course the process in which somebody dies is up to circumstance in a given time and area, and nobody will deny that being bashed over the head with a rock a few times is painful, its the concept of death that acts as nothing to us. Here are a few quotes from Julien Offray de la Mettrie, who I believe is outwardly Epicurean:

"Those who defined cold as a "privation of fire" said what cold was not and not

what it was. Death is not the same; to say what it is not, to say that it is a

privation of air which makes all movement, all heat and all feeling stop, is to

declare well enough what it is. Nothing positive. Nothing. Less than nothing, if

that could be imagined. No, nothing real, nothing that concerns us, nothing that

belongs to us, as Lucretius said very well. Death in the nature of things is only

what zero is in arithmetic." (Paragraph 55 in The System of Epicurus)

"I saw thousands of soldiers die (a sorry sight!) in those great military hospitals of

which I was in charge in Flanders during the last war. Pleasant deaths such as those

I have just depicted seemed to me much rarer than painful deaths. The most

frequent ones happen unawares. We leave the world as we come into it, without

realising it." (Paragraph 70)

Quote from Elayne

Material monist. Dualism requires "something" that is not material. Void is not a "something".

That's what I thought. Any sort of "properties" within Dualism usually invoke some abstract or mental property that is immaterial. I was caught up on the specifics and semantics of substance dualism.

Just a quick question. Is EP monistic for holding the sole substance of matter and its absence: void? Or dualistic for recognizing matter and void? I feel like I knew the answer at one point but Im failing to recall it.

Mike Anyayahan

The indifference of Stoicism has a hard time keeping up with the Swerve of Epicurean Philosophy

Oh, and something to bear in mind when reading about Mettrie, he used the words "pleasure" and "voluptuousness" in the exact same regards, sometimes using both in the same sentence. Kirk Watson also denotes that "voluptuousness" can be translated as "pleasure"

Here's the opening statement to Anti-Seneca, its quite wordy but already so pleasing and promising.

"The Philosophers have come to no more agreement about happiness than about anything else. Some of them see it in the dirtiest and most brazen deeds; these are recognizable by their unblushing Cynical faces. Others would have it consist of voluptuousness, understood in various ways--whether the refined voluptuousness of love, or the same voluptuousness but tempered, rational, and tamed: not as dictated by the lusty whims of a fevered imagination, but only by the needs of nature: here we have the voluptuousness of the mind that is either addicted to the pursuit of truth, or entranced by its possession; there, finally, you have peace of mind, the grounding and aim of all we do, which Epicurus called “voluptuousness”: a is [sic.] dangerously ambiguous word, which led his disciples to carry home a fruit that is quite different from what this great personality had intended. Others have seen the highest good in the possession of every perfection of mind and body. In Zeno’s conception, it is found in honor and virtue. Seneca, the most illustrious Stock of all, said it could be found in knowing the truth, but he didn’t specify what truths he meant.

To live in tranquility, without ambitions, without desire; to use wealth, but not enjoy it; to keep all of it without anxiety, to lose it without regret, to be its master instead of its slave; to remain undisturbed and unmoved by any passion whatsoever or, even better, not to experience any passions at all; to be equally content with poverty or opulence: with pain, as with pleasure; to have a soul that’s strong and sound, in a body thats weak and sickly; to feel neither fear nor terror; to strip away all anxiety, to scorn pleasure and voluptuousness; to consent to have pleasure in the same way as to be rich, without reaching for these comforts; to despise even life: finally, to achieve virtue by knowing the truth; here we have the highest good, as per Seneca and the Stoics generally speaking, with the perfect beatitude that follows.

How Anti-Stoical will we be, then! These philosophers are severe, sad, and hardened--we’ll be pleasant, cheerful, and indulgent. They are all soul, ignoring their bodies; let’s be all body, ignoring our souls. They act like they don’t care about pleasure and pain; we’ll stride ourselves on feeling anything whatsoever. Striving for the sublime, they rise above all events, and they only call themselves to be men to the extent they cease to be human. As for us, we will not presume to regulate that which governs us; we will not command our sensations; confessing their authority and our slavery, we will try to make them pleasant for us, as persuaded as we are that that is where happiness in life is to be found: finally, we will think ourselves happier to the extent that we are human, or worthy to be such; how much of a feeling will we have for nature, humanity, and all the social virtues; we will accept no others, nor any life aside from this one only. So we see that the chain of truths that are necessary for happiness is shorter than those forged by Hegesias, Descartes, and many other philosophers; that to explain the mechanism of happiness we need only consult nature and reason--the only two stars that can shine the way and guide us; but we must open our souls to their rays and seal all access to it against those poisoned miasmas that create, as it were, the atmosphere of fanaticism and prejudice. Let’s begin."

I came across "Ίφιάνασσα" or "Iphianassa" in "Ancient Greek", which means "strong queen".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iphianass…er_of_Agamemnon)

Maybe this sheds some light on it?

Joshua I have no proof on hand, but wasn't there some revision done by Cicero?

Kirk Watson's: "A Hazardous Materialist", italics denote titles from Watson, quotations mark sub-headings of letters and entries that are primary sources, also named by Watson.

Includes:

Introduction

La Mettrie's Chronology
Eulogized by a King
- "A Eulogy for La Mettrie"

In His Own Words: La Mettrie's Autobiographies

- "Preliminary Discourse"
- "A Response to a Libel Against the Author"
- "Pleasure is Prophylactic"
- "Writings Home from Exile"

A "Persecuted Philosopher" In The Prussian Court

- "From the King to Maupertuis"
- "From Maupertius to the King"
- "From the King to Maupertuis"
- "La Mettrie's Letter of Introduction at the Prussian Court"
- "From the King to Maupertuis"
- "From Maupertius to the King"
- "La Mettrie in Voltaire's Correspondence"

Dissecting the Late La Mettrie: Post-Mortem Depositions

- "A Letter from King Frederick to His Sister Wilhemine"
- "The Haller-Maupertuis Exchange"
- "Letter from Mr. Haller,"
- "Maupertuis's Response to the Preceding Letter"
- "A Sympathetic Letter from a Friend at Court"
- "Diderot Attacks La Mettrie"
- "D'Argens 'Sacrifices' La Mettrie"
  
An Anecdotal Atheist

- "At Ease with The King"
- "A Ridiculous Materialist in the Court"
- "Anecdotes from The Court"
- "Further Late Anecdotes from The Court"

I'll edit this thread later as I have a violin lesson very shortly from the time of this entry. But my library of Mettrie's works came in today after much delay. Much like my glossary thread, I will detail the smallest of details regarding Mettrie here as well as provide pdf's, citations, and quotes that are of importance.

Quote from Cassius

Thanks to Charles for this research on Iphianassa:

It was Elayne, not me.

Quote from Cassius

Charles: Do you know yet, in outline, the basis for saying how he deviated from Gassendi?

The only evidence for a claim is that Lamy was very much interested in the Physics of Epicurean Philosophy and applied the physics to his medical & chemical work, including the soul. He was frustrated over how Gassendi had "watered-down" Epicurus' Atomism and tried to bring it back to its original form, despite being Christian in the same way Gassendi was, I can't say whether or not (yet) he looked to Lucretius like Mettrie did, though the latter was also taught by Herman Boerhaave, who took a mechanistic approach to medicine.

No, I've only found footnotes and citations. But my English copy arrives tomorrow, in addition to just about everything he wrote (all translated in English). I'd like to write them out on a google doc or pdf and share them here.

Edit: that also includes Discourse on Happiness, which he considered his masterpiece