Welcome aboard and thank you for the fascinating initial post!
Posts by Don
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I looked at Brene Brown's "87 Emotions & Experiences" chart, and found it to be overly complicated, and would personally use different labels for things, and would classify things differently. But everyone finds things that resonate depending on their own framing.
I personally would recommend sticking with a smaller number of words and focusing on levels of intensity rather than trying to find fancy words for things.
Just for the record
I'm not a Brene Brown groupie or fan; however, I did find her idea (well, not her idea but the one she talked about) of emotional granularity interesting. This is another chart for honing in on emotional granularity - I would characterize it as identifying more precisely what one is feeling:I certainly see where you're coming from with "sticking with a smaller number of words and focusing on levels of intensity," but I can see how having a word for a specific feeling could be helpful. It sounds like you would advocate for maybe the 10 categories at the top of those boxes and then decide how intense they're being felt which would then lead to more focused appropriate reactions to those feelings. Anything that gets us to be more aware of what our feelings are (starting, of course, with pleasure and pain) can't be a bad thing in the end.
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Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett's work on "constructed emotion" may be applicable to bring up here as well:
How Emotions Are Made | Lisa Feldman BarrettThe groundbreaking book that has revolutionized our understanding of the human mind. Why do emotions feel automatic and uncontrollable? Does rational thought…lisafeldmanbarrett.com -
FWIW Brene Brown's Atlas of the Heart provides a look at emotional granularity:
Atlas of the Heart Read-Along ResourcesAs you read along with Atlas of the Heart, these companion resources are intended to help build your emotional vocabularies.brenebrown.comQuoteOur ability to accurately recognize and label emotions is often referred to as emotional granularity. In the words of Harvard psychologist Susan David, “Learning to label emotions with a more nuanced vocabulary can be absolutely transformative.”
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Remember, it's specifically stated in the letter to Herodotus by Epicurus:
"To begin with, nothing comes into being out of what is non-existent." πρῶτον μὲν ὅτι οὐδὲν γίνεται ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος
Whether it's atoms or quantum fields, those are still existent things. Things don't spring up out nothing by the will of the gods.
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The current dominant interpretation in theoretical physics is far closer to Heraclitus’ flux
Fascinating! Does this mean that we as Epicureans would be wise to align ourselves with modern scientific understanding, adopt this view as the most probable explanation, and ditch the Epicurean view on static atoms and void?
Both are true. Neither don't necessarily adequately fully describe our lived experience.
There certainly appear to be such things as atoms and subatomic particles.
There certainly appear to be such things as quantum fluctuations in quantum fields.
My take on the "Epicurean perspective" has always been simply: We live in a physical, natural, material universe governed by knowable laws (well, eventually knowable!) that needs no supernatural intervention to come into being or to function.
Whether one focuses on the quantum level or the atomic level or the biochemical level, the Epicurean perspective holds.
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And here's a dramatic performance of the poem from Thomas' fellow Welshman, Michael Sheen
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Dylan Thomas' poem is not that long, so here it is in its entirety:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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we are establishing that drinking unmixed wine was
knownthought to be very dangerousFixed it.
Epicurus would have known at the least that it might be fatal.
I'm not willing to agree to that.
At present I am mainly willing to say that there can come a time (mostly cases of clinically certain terminal highly painful disease combined with advanced age) when it can be a rational assessment to conclude that future pleasure is not worth the cost in pain.
I'm not arguing against that, but that's exactly what I'm trying to get across. My primary position is against taking "extraordinary" measures to preserve life "at all costs" when death is imminent or there is no viable way to ameliorate constant, severe pain. I see a difference in actively taking one's life and not prolonging one's life. I don't believe VS47 nor the episode with Epicurus' drinking unmixed wine and taking a bath are talking about suicide.
(PLEASE NOTE: I am NOT making any moral argument against suicide or those who take their lives. This is an extremely complicated topic, including people dealing with deep mental health issues, including celebrities like Robin Williams and Anthony Bourdain. This is not a topic to be taken lightly or flippantly, and I don't want anyone to take this discussion that way.
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I would say Epicurus' and the school's general advocacy of cultivating gratitude comes close to a modern idea of positivity.
However, don't be lured into the trap of toxic positivity either:
Toxic positivity - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org -
"[Arcesilaus] died in a fit of madness, as Hermippus says, after drinking a good deal of unmixed wine, he had by then reached the age of seventy-five, and no man was more highly regarded by the Athenians."
Hicks translates that section as (my emphasis): He died, according to Hermippus, through drinking too freely of unmixed wine which affected his reason; he was already seventy-five and regarded by the Athenians with unparalleled good-will.
"My own verses about him run as follows: Why, Arcesilaus, did you draw unmixed wine so unsparingly as to take leave of your sense? I pity you not so much for your death..."
And Hicks in 4.45 (again my emphasis): [45] I have written upon him as follows: Why, pray, Arcesilaus, didst thou quaff so unsparingly unmixed wine as to go out of thy mind? I pity thee not so much for thy death as because thou didst insult the Muses by immoderate potations.
There's also Diogenes chapter on Chrysippus:
QuoteOn one occasion, as Hermippus relates, when [Chrysippus] had his school in the Odeum, he was invited by his pupils to a sacrificial feast. There after he had taken a draught of sweet wine unmixed with water, he was seized with dizziness and departed this life five days afterwards, having reached the age of seventy-three years, in the 143rd Olympiad. This is the date given by Apollodorus in his Chronology. I have toyed with the subject in the following verses5 :
Chrysippus turned giddy after gulping down a draught of Bacchus ; he spared not the Porch nor his country nor his own life, but fared straight to the house of Hades.
[185] Another account is that his death was caused by a violent fit of laughter ; for after an ass had eaten up his figs, he cried out to the old woman, "Now give the ass a drink of pure wine to wash down the figs." And thereupon he laughed so heartily that he died.
Drinking unmixed wine is certainly frowned upon since it brings on giddyness and takes away reason, but I'm still skeptical of seeing it as a metaphor for committing suicide, although it was deemed dangerous it appears. Barbarians were known to drink unmixed wine which is one reason they were "barbaric." There is an interesting article I found online:
QuoteYet more dramatically, Alexander himself – according to one account – brought on his early death at 32 by drinking a separate toast to each of his twenty dinner guests one by one, and then finishing off a twelve-pint pitcher of unmixed wine.
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Unmixed wine was deemed dangerous: many a Greek poem lamented it as the cause of an untimely death. Even Cleomenes (died 490 BC), the hardman King of Sparta, couldn’t handle wine “in the Scythian fashion”, i.e. without water, instead tippling his way into lunacy. Given such risks, unmixed wine was reserved only for drinking forfeits.
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So next time you find yourself knee-deep in unmixed wine, toast the drink of the uncouth and ungodly – and steel yourself for the madness that must follow…
Unmixed wine brought on dizziness, lunacy, etc., but it was also a potent remedy to feeling pain. That would be my suggestion as to why Epicurus called for akraton "unmixed wine" on his last day. He was in severe pain, not to hasten his death. He knew his death was already imminent from the amount of pain he was in.
Additionally, I continue to maintain that VS47 is not talking about suicide. As a reminder for anyone:
Vatican Saying 47 - Epicurus Wiki
Epicurus Wiki does a good job of giving a literal translation of Metrodorus' saying: "...shall we give ourselves in surrender but when that which is necessary extracts [us] (from life)..."
When death comes eventually for all of us, we should not "rage against the dying of the light" but look back on life with satisfaction and not cling like fearful superstitious children, wishing for immortality or a life after death.
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I did something similar to the m Epicurus' nicknames for others in Diogenes Laertius a couple years ago:
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about savoring a pleasure, and not growing disgusted by or otherwise ruining a pleasure
VS35. Don't ruin the things you have by wanting what you don't have, but realize that they too are things you once did wish for. οὐ δεῖ λυμαίνεσθαι τὰ παρόντα τῶν ἀπόντων ἐπιθυμίᾳ, ἀλλʼ ἐπιλογίζεσθαι ὅτι καὶ ταῦτα τῶν εὐκταίων ἦν.
The word translated here as "ruin" (λυμαίνομαι) means, at root, to mistreat. The implication is that not honoring the good things you have achieved is a sign of disrespect and shows a lack of appreciation.
~ Saint-Andre, https://monadnock.net/epicurus/vatican-sayings.html#n35
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I agree Don....
Cicero seems to equate pathē with ταραχή (tarakhē) "disturbance of mind; dis-ease" which is the opposite of αταραξία (a-taraksia) "lack of disturbance."
Which is not to say that Cicero was wrong as to the general usage of the term, if indeed that is what the other philosophers besides Epicurus were doing. I gather Cicero was correct about that, unless there is some reason in other literature to disbelieve him (?)
Agreed. As Joshua pointed out in the episode, there are two general connotations for that word. Cicero doesn't like Epicurus' expansive use of the word pleasure (ηδονή hēdonē) as pathē and so just defaults to his (ie, Cicero's) preferred connotation of pathē from πάθος (páthos "pain, suffering") instead of the general more basic sense from pắskhō, “I feel”.
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For me, there is no doubt that Epicurus used πάθη (pathē) in the sense from πᾰ́σχω (pắskhō, “to undergo”) + -η (-ē): "(in neutral sense) what is done or what happens to a person"
*Everything* that we experience falls under one of two pathē: pleasure or pain. All other "feelings" fall under those broad categories of pleasure or pain.
Cicero seems to equate pathē with ταραχή (tarakhē) "disturbance of mind; dis-ease" which is the opposite of αταραξία (a-taraksia) "lack of disturbance."
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Welcome aboard!
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Quote from Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus
[51] "For the presentations which, e.g., are received in a picture or arise in dreams, or from any other form of apprehension by the mind or by the other criteria of truth, would never have resembled what we call the real and true things, had it not been for certain actual things of the kind with which we come in contact. Error would not have occurred, if we had not experienced some other movement in ourselves, conjoined with, but distinct from, the perception of what is presented. And from this movement, if it be not confirmed or be contradicted, falsehood results ; while, if it be confirmed or not contradicted, truth results. [52] "And to this view we must closely adhere, if we are not to repudiate the criteria founded on the clear evidence of sense, nor again to throw all these things into confusion by maintaining falsehood as if it were truth.
A test of "truth" cannot and I would say therefore does not mean a test of "absolute" or "true for everyone" truth...Absolute Platonic idealist truth does not exist and it is a false standard to act as if it does.
While I agree "idealist truth" doesn't exist in the form of some Platonic ideal, truth as in the truth of existing things does exist. I would call that objective truth. The difference is "Is it true pigs exist?" Vs "Is it true that ice cream tastes good?" The first is the objective truth Epicurus was concerned with in using his Criteria. The second is subjective and contextual. If one starts questioning the truth of the existence of pigs, one rapidly devolves into a Socratic nightmare: "What do you mean by a 'pig'?" To my understanding, Epicurus stands on it being true that there is an objective reality with which we interact with our sensations.
From my perspective, those last two posts from Patrikios and Cassius blur the line between the objective truth conveyed by reality to us through our senses and canonic faculties and the relative "truth" of subjective opinions and concepts derived from the objective truth of reality.
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