Posts by Don

Quote from Eikadistes

I'd like to get one and experiment, but it's not in my cards at the moment.

Try your local public library. They'll often have them in their maker spaces and print files for patrons.

Quote from DaveT

First, not too many people are going to read this book. On Amazon, it has 27 reader reviews, and it’s been out since last January.

Good perspective... albeit still aggravating they get away with it. Discussing in a wider forum could just call more attention to it.

Quote from Rolf

it’s a shame because it represents the vast majority of discourse around Epicurus.

Agreed.

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, φεύγω

This is the word the Epicureans used, including Epicurus:

φεύγω • (pheúgō)

(intransitive) to flee, run off, go a certain direction with haste (often with prepositions)

(transitive) to flee, escape, avoid, get away from (danger or trouble)

(transitive or intransitive) to leave the country, go into exile

(intransitive) to be exiled, banished, driven out of the country [with ὑπό (hupó, + genitive) ‘by someone’]

(intransitive, present and imperfect) to be in exile, live in banishment

(perfect) to have escaped, be safe from

(law, chiefly present and imperfect) to be accused of a crime; often with δίκην (díkēn) and genitive of the crime

Usage notes

The present and imperfect often have a conative reading: to try to get away, intend to leave.

Quote from Cassius

It's not reason that is to be distrusted, but Stoicism.

I would even say that it's not even "but Stoicism" it is" but reliance on reason alone separate from the physical material world experienced by your senses."

Quote from Cassius

Just FLEE from pain with as much speed and abandon as you can!

Well, they're word choice is correct but in the wrong place. The old "choice and avoidance" is better translated as "choose and flee" but we aren't encouraged to flee from pain. We're instructed to choose the path that leads to the most pleasure, and sometimes that means experiencing some pain.

The whole chapter is a trainwreck from beginning to end.

As is my usual practice, I reference Dr. Austin's article:

If you go to the Google link, you can click the link in the table of contents to the Epicurean section. The "living like an Epicurean" is teeth-clenchingly bad

Beyond Stoicism: A Guide to the Good Life with Stoics, Skeptics, Epicureans, and Other Ancient Philosophers
By Massimo Pigliucci, Gregory Lopez, Meredith Alexander Kunz · 2025

(Preview)

Beyond Stoicism

books.google.com

Same old, same old regurgitated nonsense regarding the Garden. "Beautiful obscurity"

It seems to me that "universals" is simply a high falutin' way of recognizing patterns across disparate individual entities, physical or abstract. To me, that sounds like the faculty of prolepsis and not some complicated philosophical construct. The fact that I can see a red barn and a red tractor and then a red leaf in Fall doesn't in any way make me believe in some universal "red-ness." It's my physical senses interacting with the physical world eliciting a response in my mind. That's extrapolating to other patterns across innumerable sensations and experiences.

Quote from Cassius

Quote from Pacatus

(Bertrand Russell notwithstanding).

Pacatus what are you referring to there? I know Russell is a major figure but I am not familiar with the details of his works.

The problems of philosophy : Russell, Bertrand, 1872-1970 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Includes bibliographical references and index

archive.org

Disclaimer: I know very little about Russell's philosophy. I'm googling around, the work linked above was cited as a source for his views on universals, specifically chapter X (and it looks like chapter IX).

Quote from Cassius

Epicurus - Letter to Herodotus 45 (Bailey)

These brief sayings, if all these points are borne in mind, afford a sufficient outline for our understanding of the nature of existing things. Furthermore, there are infinite worlds both like and unlike this world of ours. For the atoms being infinite in number, as was proved already, are borne on far out into space. For those atoms, which are of such nature that a world could be created out of them or made by them, have not been used up either on one world or on a limited number of worlds, nor again on all the worlds which are alike, or on those which are different from these. So that there nowhere exists an obstacle to the infinite number of the worlds.

[45 My own translation/emendation of Hicks | Perseus Project] "The repetition at such length of all that we are now recalling to mind furnishes an adequate outline for our conception of the nature of things.

"Moreover, there is an infinite number of cosmoi (κόσμοι ἄπειροί "infinite kosmoi"), some like this one, others unlike it. For the atoms (being infinite in number (ἄτομοι ἄπειροι οὖσαι "atoms are infinite"), as has just been proved, are borne ever further in their course. For the atoms out of which a cosmos might arise or by which a world might be formed (ἐξ ὧν ἂν γένοιτο κόσμος ἢ ὑφ᾽ ὧν ἂν ποιηθείη) have not all been expended on one or a finite number whether like or unlike this one. Hence there will be nothing to hinder an infinity of cosmoi ( ὥστε οὐδὲν τὸ ἐμποδοστατῆσόν ἐστι πρὸς τὴν ἀπειρίαν τῶν κόσμων.).

κόσμος = "order; an ordered pocket of the universe (The All). The All is that in which these cosmoi which Epicurus posits exist without end.

One of the definitions in LSJ of κόσμος is : Herm. ap. Stob.1.49.44; of the sphere whose centre is the earth's centre and radius the straight line joining earth and sun, Archim.Aren.4; of the sphere containing the fixed stars"

ἄπειρος = translated "infinite"; From ἀ- (a-, “not”) +‎ πεῖραρ (peîrar), πέρας (péras, “end, limit”). so, "with no limit; with no end"

I am the broken record when I emphasize when translators use "world" for Greek kosmos or Latin mundus (a calque of Ancient Greek κόσμος), we need to see that not as talking about Earth or Mars or any of the 5,972 confirmed exoplanets discovered by NASA. The conception of the cosmos that Epicurus was working under was the sphere containing Earth at its center with the fixed and wandering stars (what we call "planets" now) circling around it. Epicurus is positing an unlimited number of world-systems like the one we inhabit. You would have to travel through the metakosmos "the between-world-systems" (more familiar as the Latin translation intermundia "between the mundī) to get to another cosmos.

I agree wholeheartedly with Joshua 's sentiments that Cicero, of all people, had Peri Telos sitting on his desk to read in full!

In his letter to Idomeneus, Epicurus calls his last day "blessed" (makarion). And "But the cheerfulness (χαῖρον khairon) of my mind, which arises from the recollection of all our philosophical contemplations, counterbalances all these afflictions." (Yonge's translation with amending "our" instead of "my philosopical...") khairon is a form of the word used for the kinetic pleasure of "joy" khara. And Epicurus doesn't say the "joy" outweighs or conquers the pain of his condition. The word used is Ἀντιπαρατάσσομαι (antiparatassomai) which conveys "holding one's ground against, and in drawing up troops in battle order, side by side, ready to do battle against an enemy." He can do battle with the physical pain with the kinetic "joy" he can experience.

I just wanted to emphasize that the pain never goes away. Epicurus experiences every bit of the pain, but he can do battle with it by recollections of the good times he had and the satisfaction of how he lived his life.

Welcome aboard! Thank you for sharing your story. There are several forum members that have an interest in Nietzsche (as Cassius commented for himself).

Following up on Cassius note about the location of the Garden in Athens:

File

Where was the Garden of Epicurus? The Evidence from the Ancient Sources and Archaeology

While we will probably never know the exact location of Epicurus’s Garden in ancient Athens, we can take a number of educated guesses.

Don

April 19, 2023 at 11:10 PM

Quote from Kalosyni

Quote from Don

I still maintain that ἐν ἀθανάτοις ἀγαθοῖς is "among undying goods" means "among undying pleasures" as in good=pleasure.

I am curious if it is the same word for "goods" that Aristotle uses when he talks about instrumental, intrinsic, and external "goods"?

Then Aristotle moves onto looking closer at good things in general. He says they are divided into three classes:

1. External goods τῶν ἐκτὸς (ektos)

2. Goods of the soul τῶν δὲ περὶ ψυχὴν (psykhe)

3. Goods of the body καὶ σῶμα (soma)

However, he says unequivocably that those of the “soul” are the κυριώτατα and μάλιστα ἀγαθά “the highest and best goods.” However, he also stresses that he’s talking about the soul’s “actions and activities” or energeia (Refer back to our discussion of that word back near the beginning of this text.)

A couple notes on some of the pivotal words in this paragraph.

διαταραχθήσῃ (diatarakhthese)

Note the the breakdown: dia-tarakhthese. That second component is directly related to tarakhe and it's opposite ataraxia (ataraksia)

From διαταράσσω, to throw into great confusion, confound utterly. I'm taking the dia- to convey confusion throughout oneself, from one end to the other (i.e., consider English "diameter" measure across)

So, by using this word, Epicurus is referring back to the ataraxia that comes from contemplating the points in this letter and, from that contemplation and study, having a firm, unshakable knowledge of how the world works; a firm foundation upon which to fully experience every pleasure you choose to partake of and to weather every pain that comes your way. That unshakable foundation once firmly in place in your mind will be a part of you, whether sleeping or awake, day or night.

ἐν ἀθανάτοις ἀγαθοῖς. (en athanatois agathois)

Kalosyni is right to ask about these "immortal goods." It is a tricky concept, and one I'm still wrestling with myself. Here's one take I've come up with.

athanatos (a + thanatos) does mean "un-dying" but it has a wider connotation. LSJ has some citations that are worth looking at, including Lysias, Funeral Oration. There the term used is ἀθάνατον μνήμην "have left behind an immortal memory arising from their valor. " So, what is left behind after someone dies is "undying," including the memories others have of you, the legacy you "leave behind" doesn't die with you. This idea seems relevant to me in that the friends and loved ones we leave behind allow us to "live on" to be "undying" (as long as our memory lives one... it's not technically immortal). The effect we have on people while alive is undying.

I still maintain that ἐν ἀθανάτοις ἀγαθοῖς is "among undying goods" means "among undying pleasures" as in good=pleasure. Thinking of other "undying pleasures" is a good exercise. What lives on after we die? What is it about our lives that, in the words of Maximus in Gladiator, "echo through eternity"?

135c. Ταῦτα οὖν καὶ τὰ τούτοις συγγενῆ μελέτα πρὸς σεαυτὸν ἡμέρας καὶ νυκτὸς πρός <τε> τὸν ὅμοιον σεαυτῷ,

Meditate (μελέτα) then on this and similar things with yourself day and night as well as together with those like yourself."

ἡμέρας καὶ νυκτὸς literally "day and night" (i.e., all the time)

135d. καὶ οὐδέποτε οὔθ᾽ ὕπαρ οὔτ᾽ ὄναρ διαταραχθήσῃ, ζήσεις δὲ ὡς θεὸς ἐν ἀνθρώποις.

"And never, neither awake nor in sleep, throw oneself into confusion, and you will live as a god among humans."

135e. οὐθὲν γὰρ ἔοικε θνητῷ ζῴῳ ζῶν ἄνθρωπος ἐν ἀθανάτοις ἀγαθοῖς.

οὐθὲν γὰρ "because no one …

ἔοικε "to be like; seems…"

θνητῷ ζῴῳ "for a mortal being (living thing)"

ζῴῳ is the dative form of ζώον which we met way back in 123 when talking about the gods.

ἐν ἀθανάτοις ἀγαθοῖς "in the midst of everlasting good things (pleasure)."

ἀθανάτοις (< αθάνατος (athanatos)) means literally a- "un-, not" + thanatos "dying" so immortal and eternal are one sense; however, it also conveys perpetual or everlasting which seems more appropriate in this context.

"Because no person who lives among eternal good things (pleasure) is like a mortal being."

VS9 is a clever bit of writing from Epicurus. The original Greek reads "κακὸν ἀνάγκη, ἀλλʼ οὐδεμία ἀνάγκη ζῆν μετὰ ἀνάγκης." Note those three occurrences of ἀνάγκη/ἀνάγκης. The word itself means force, constraint, or necessity; so a literal translation would be something like "An evil, necessity (is); but (there is) no necessity to live in the midst of necessity." This retains the clever wordplay but is honestly a little clunky in English. To get the import of the statement, a paraphrase may be better. Consider what he is saying. Being constrained in your choices is an evil. If you have only one choice - or feel you only have one choice - that is an evil. However, we have free will, so we are not required to live having our choices curtailed and constrained. Even if we make choices we don't want to make, we are exercising our free will. "I don't want to go to work today, but I have to." No, you don't. You could quit. But are you ready to face the consequences of quitting your job? You can consciously decide today is not the day I quit. I make the decision to get up and do the work. Likewise, maybe getting a new job is the right decision. Weigh your options. Exercise your faculty of choice and rejection. You are not forced to be forced to do something. Make your choices and rejections wisely.

Agreed. Very solid episode. Thanks for everything y'all do week in week out.

Quote from Sam_Qwerty

are there any modern books that explain this philosophy simply that have a correct understanding?

Emily Austin's Living for Pleasure.

In my opinion, THE best accessible introduction to the philosophy for the interested general reader.