Posts by Don

Wow! You dove right in!

I'm honored that you think my ramblings are interesting enough to comment on and to think about how to make it easier for others to comment on. This really started as a personal investigation to assuage my own curiosity. I was initially reluctant to go public, but then figured why not. The Google Sites don't allow for comments. As I mentioned previously, I'm just fitting this into my day as I can/want/am able, so I'm not sure how long it'll take to complete all 10 books. But I'm encouraged by your interest and am open to your ideas on how to point to it or allow people to comment on it on this forum.

With that, I have some comments on your comments...

Quote from Cassius

Why is it not objectionable to seem to presume, without proof, that such a thing as "THE good" ("it has been well said that the Good is That at which all things aim.") is not only NOT well said, but stupidly said? And why is not Epicurus' response ("I know not how to conceive....") best understood as a statement that such a thing as a single good does not really even exist at all except as a construct of the mind useful for debate but not as something which truly has an independent existence?

Hmm... Unfortunately, I don't agree with your general point in this excerpt and your other general comments in this direction. My perspective and interpretation of the Epicurean position as I see it laid out by, at least, Epicurus, Metrodorus, and Philodemus, was that the discussion of the good ταγαθον (tagathon < ton agathon, literally "the good") appears to have been a question every Greek philosopher wanted to answer at least as far back as Eudoxus of Cnidus (c. 400-350 BCE). Aristotle was 384-322 BCE. And they all used that word ταγαθον, including Epicurus, Metrodorus, and Philodemus, to drive home their point. I don't see the Epicureans denigrating the idea of "the good" or thinking it was a silly or meaningless discussion. My perspective is that the Epicureans, starting from Epicurus himself, felt that they had answered the question "what is ταγαθον 'the good'?" once and for all. They all used that word ταγαθον deliberately and purposefully to drive the point home that they had answered that question decisively, finally, and there was no need - had never been a need! - to "stroll around endlessly prattling on about the good." The answer had been staring everyone in the face for at least 100 years since the whole discussion began. *Pleasure* is that to which every action and thought points. We experience pleasure for itself and not as a means to an end. And it is pleasure writ large, including *every* pleasurable feeling, both katastematic and kinetic.

So when you say...

Quote from Cassius

it is very important from the beginning to establish that Epicurus was drawing a bright line of warning against the entire endeavor of obsessing over the discussion that such a thing as a single good applicable to everyone even exists at all.

I don't think Epicurus was doing that at all. I think Epicurus *was* in fact saying there is a "single" good - "the good" ταγαθον - and that good is pleasure. But importantly, it is NOT an abstract or idealized good like virtue, or an unattainable good open to only a select few. It is the concrete, physical feeling of pleasure as felt by human beings, pleasure in ALL its multifariousness. THAT is the good. THAT is "That at which all things aim." Epicurus felt he had definitively answered the question that had vexed Eudoxus, Plato, Aristotle, and all the rest. To me, he's saying, " Quit your endless prattling and simply acknowledge that feeling of pleasure is that at which all things aim."

I'll have more to say (and I'm thinking you might as well, Cassius ) but that's it for now. The day calls.

Okay, I got a little side-tracked with the Plutarch quote this evening. I didn't get any further in commenting on Aristotle, but thought I'd share the "work-in-progress" which is Book 3, Part 3:

I really went down the rabbit hole with Plutarch, looking for alternative translations and tracking down the Greek I wanted. I think it fits where I put in the Aristotle commentary, but I need to get back on track soon. But... I was getting pleasure from the endeavor, so I suppose I shouldn't apologize

Hmmm .. maybe I'll have to tackle Plutarch after the 10 books of Nichomachean Ethics.

Got it!

[ U423 ]

Plutarch, That Epicurus actually makes a pleasant life impossible, 7, p. 1091A: Not only is the basis that they assume for the pleasurable life untrustworthy and insecure, it is quite trivial and paltry as well, inasmuch as their "thing delighted" – their good – is an escape from ills, and they say that they can conceive of no other, and indeed that our nature has no place at all in which to put its good except the place left when its evil is expelled. … Epicurus too makes a similar statement to the effect that the good is a thing that arises out of your very escape from evil and from your memory and reflection and gratitude that this has happened to you. His words are these: "That which produces a jubilation unsurpassed is the nature of good, if you apply your mind rightly and then stand firm and do not stroll about {a jibe at the Peripatetics}, prating meaninglessly about the good."

btw, I'm trying to find the exact quote from Epicurus about "prattling on endlessly about the good" (to paraphrase).

Who knows that exact citation?

Okay, commentary for up through section 1112b.20 (Book 3, section 3.20) is now available:

Epicurean Sage - Book 3 Part 2 Nichomachean Ethics (google.com)

Book 3 is very long... longer than I realized. So, if Godfrey has thoughts on parts I haven't posted yet, please feel free to share them here. I'm reading forward, but it just takes longer to write up notes and get them published on the website. I'm finding his deliberations on deliberation more enjoyable than the previous parts, BUT there's still a LOT of hair-splitting. I'll be very interested to read Godfrey 's take!

Quote from Don

Yeah, I'm going to need to go in and take that out of the Wikipedia article with a "citation needed" if someone's going to say "Epicurus called life a "bitter gift.""

Done. And I've added a note to the article's Talk page that someone's going to need a citation to add it back in.

Quote from Pacatus

Don

Thanks! Yeah, I go to Wiktionary first (mostly I work with the Latin), and sometimes just start Googling. I forgot about LSJ -- thanks for that!

Sounds good! And Wiktionary gives direct access to Lewis and Short for the Latin entries: ex.,

Charlton T. Lewis, Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary, semper

All the Wikimedia Projects are great examples of the work that can be done by committed volunteers. We don't always agree with some WP articles (looking at you, Epicureanism article) but the non-profit, volunteer editors provide great benefits for us all. And editing can be fun and rewarding!

Quote from Pacatus

my raw grappling with the Greek

I applaud your grappling with the Greek!!

I'm not sure of your process, but my go-to first stop is often Wiktionary:

ex., https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%B1%E1…%AF%CE%BA%CE%B1

Which then gives you direct access to LSJ (not in the case of this word, but)..

μάντις - Wiktionary

and

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, μάντι^ς

Quote from Cassius

I could see Epicurus holding that for individuals who do in fact find their greatest happiness in being part of a particular group of people, then for those people they are pursuing pleasure by pursuing their collectively defined interests.

I would agree with that.

Aristotle goes all in with his "The human is a 'political animal' (Zoon politikon, ζῷον πoλιτικόν)." And, again to flog the deceased equine animal, he's not talking political as in serving in government, running a campaign, etc. He's talking about being an integral cog in the social, cultural milieu of the city-state, the polis (hence "politikon"). Here's where he says it again in his Politics:

Quote from Aristotle Politics Book 1 Section 1253a

From these things therefore it is clear that the city-state is a natural growth, and that man is by nature a political animal, and a man that is by nature and not merely by fortune citiless is either low in the scale of humanity or above it （like the “ clanless, lawless, hearthless "man reviled by Homer, for one by nature unsocial is also ‘a lover of war’) inasmuch as he is solitary, like an isolated piece at draughts. And why man is a political animal in a greater measure than any bee or any gregarious animal is clear. For nature, as we declare, does nothing without purpose; and man alone of the animals possesses speech. The mere voice, it is true, can indicate pain and pleasure, and therefore is possessed by the other animals as well （for their nature has been developed so far as to have sensations of what is painful and pleasant and to indicate those sensations to one another）, but speech is designed to indicate the advantageous and the harmful, and therefore also the right and the wrong; for it is the special property of man in distinction from the other animals that he alone has perception of good and bad and right and wrong and the other moral qualities, and it is partnership in these things that makes a household and a city-state.

Thus also the city-state is prior in nature to the household and to each of us individually.

So, I doubt Epicurus would advocate for someone to be "citiless" but not necessarily for the reasons outlined by Aristotle. Diogenes Laertius says that the Epicurean sage will love the countryside, but the countryside is STILL part of the city-state/polis. The polis provides protection, security, a sense of identity. Epicurus was, after all, an Athenian citizen and had certain privileges and protections (as well as responsibilities! like his compulsory military service) that came from that citizenship. But we have to balance that along with his disdain for the paideia/education/acculturation/indoctrination that was advocated by Aristotle.

Quote from Godfrey

Inspired me to finally delve into the NE, and I'm finding it quite fascinating. I'm working my way through Book 1...

Glad to hear! I'm going to have to increase my progress if I want to keep up then!

Quote from Godfrey

the greatest good must relate to the polis (politics)

Yeah, my take on Aristotle's position is that the individual is subservient to the polis, the city-state. Humans are social animals but social in support of the state. "political" animals means not our political in the sense of campaigns etc but that we belong in a "polis." Epicurus on the other hand seems to have had more respect for the individual , still social in that friendship and smaller communities were important, but Epicureans "love the countryside."

BUT epicurus still taught that people should actively participate in the state festivals and religious rites that bound a city-state together.

So, yeah, I found book 1 both intriguing but frustrating in Aristotle's insistence on the subservience of the individual's "good", goal, telos being subservient to the state.

But is that my modern, Western bias or is that coming from a genuine Epicurean perspective?

Quote from Pacatus

comments from the far bleachers

All comments always welcome! We're all learning.

Quote from Pacatus

First, while we might agree on the failings of Aristotle (and certainly Plato), I think we are well-served to remember that Epicurus did owe them an intellectual debt – and that his project was of a different order, even as it required him to jettison errors of his predecessors and, in the interest of therapeía, to simplify (at least in the limited Epicurean corpus available to us).

I'll admit that my impatience with Aristotle is sometimes - let's say - overly enthusiastic. I need to remind myself that he's basically making things up as he goes along - *literally*! His is some of the - if not *the* - first attempts to systematically examine these ideas. For all my, pooh-poohing in my notes, I do have respect (but not unquestioning awe!) for his place in Western intellectual history.

I also need to read that paper you referenced again (I've skimmed it in the past), but - at this time - I'm not sure I would phrase it that Epicurus owed Plato and Aristotle "an intellectual debt." It seems to me that Epicurus owed much, much more to the Democritean strain of Greek philosophy than he did to Plato & Aristotle. However, all the schools - and there were a myriad of them - all knew of each other, sparred with each other, responded to each other. Several of Epicurus's and Metrodorus's works were responses to other schools.

We I write this post, I see Epicurus as more of a reactionary against the Socratic lineage than owing a debt to it, other than the debt a knife owes a whetstone.

So, one of my goals for this reading of Nichomachean Ethics (NE) is to get an idea of what Epicurus would have had access to, what was the intellectual background like in which he was formulating his own ideas. Epicurus claimed he was "self-taught" but that's never, of course, entirely true.

Quote from Pacatus

Aristotle (as I recall in my thickly mist-shrouded memory), did at least define telos in terms of a fully lived life.

That's one of the areas I'd say Epicurus disagreed with Aristotle. My reading of NE is that Aristotle didn't think you could call anyone "happy" - no one could be said to have "well-being" (eudaimonia) - until they had lived their entire life and were dead. "Oh, she lived a happy life." Epicurus taught that we can have eudaimonia here and now.

Quote from Pacatus

Second, with regard to telos and the summum bonum, DeWitt (under the heading “The Summum Bonum Fallacy in Chapter XII “The New Hedonism,” beginning on. P. 219) thought it was an error to conflate the two: “To Epicurus pleasure was the telos and life itself was the greatest good. … The belief that life itself is the greatest good conditions the whole ethical doctrine of Epicurus.”

DeWitt goes on to unpack how he thought the error of conflation came about.

I've posted elsewhere on this forum that I reject Dewitt's "Epicurus said life is the greatest good" assertion. I see no evidence for this in the extant texts, and, to me, DeWitt's evidence doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

Now, pass me that popcorn and hand me a beer

As far as virtual environments, I don't think they include the Garden (game is set earlier) but the YouTube channels that provide tours of ancient Greece via the game Assassin's Creed: Odyssey are pretty cool:

Open in YouTube for the full playlist.

I'm not a player myself but from what I understand they've done a good job of reconstruction.

This whole virtual environment thing has been talked about as the "next big thing" and "we'll all be meeting and working and playing in [fill in the big virtual world system]" for at least 20+ years. I remember when everyone was going to be meeting and working and playing in Second Life:

Second Life - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

There were going to be conferences and libraries and exhibits and who knows what else in Second Life. Evidently, it's still a thing according to Wikipedia but I never hear about it.

Now, it's Meta and Zuckerberg's Metaverse.. and that's evidently hemorrhaging money and credibility.

I agree with Onenski . Stick with online dedicated meetings, YouTube, and (if there was actually a dedicated infrastructure and staff) social media. But social media takes consistent content creation and engagement... and there aren't enough "staff" in the Garden to keep that up.

Quote from Cassius

I am sorry I am slow in reading the commentary

No reason at all to apologize... And keep your expectations low

This is a little of track but I had to share this while I was poking around:

CHANCE (τύχη), FATE (εἱµαρµένη), 'WHATDEPENDS ON US' (τὸ ἐφ' ἡµῖν) AND PROVIDENCE (πρόνοια) IN PLUTARCH'S QUAESTIONES CONVIVALES

ABSTRACT One of the many philosophical issues discussed throughout Plutarch's Quaestiones...

www.scielo.br

Quote

When, during a discussion on the use of flowers during the symposium, it is argued that their only natural purpose is to produce visual and olfactory pleasure, it is not implied the Epicurean doctrine of ἡδονή as τέλος.17 According to Erato (a friend of Plutarch), flowers produce pleasure only because they were created with that particular purpose:

[...] ἕν γὰρ αὐτὸ δοκεῖ τοὐναντίον, εἰ µηδὲν ἡ φύσις, ὡς ὑµεῖς φατε, µάτην πεποίηκε, ταῦτα τῆς ἡδονῆς πεποιῆσθαι χάριν, ἃ µηδὲν ἄλλο χρήσιµον ἔχοντα µόνον εὐφραίνειν πέφυκεν. (646C3-5)

[...] for I think, on the contrary, that if nature has made nothing in vain (as you claim, I believe), it is for pleasure’s sake that she has made what by their nature only serve to delight us and possess no other useful quality.

That is a VERY narrow view of the natural world from Plutarch.

Quote from Godfrey

At first I was thinking that hekousion and akiusion might have become what the Stoics call giving assent and not giving assent (I can't remember if those are the exact terms) but, reading on, maybe not. Any thoughts on that?

Excellent observation. I think both your initial thought and subsequent rethinking are on the right track. I'll admit that I was unfamiliar with Stoic "assent." I think there is something in Stoicism similar to voluntary/involuntary but assent doesn't seem to be it. I found the excerpt from Stanford below helpful on assent.

Stoic assent appears to be connected with accepting sense impressions or not (from my 15 minutes poking around the Internet!). Voluntary/involuntary would seem more about taking responsibility - or being held responsible - for our actions. Virtue - in Aristotle - seems like it will be bound up with this idea.

And thanks for reading my notes, Godfrey !!

Quote

Though a person may have no choice about whether she has a particular rational impression, there is another power of the commanding faculty which the Stoics call ‘assent’ and whether one assents to a rational impression is a matter of volition. To assent to an impression is to take its content as true. To withhold assent is to suspend judgement about whether it is true. Because both impression and assent are part of one and the same commanding faculty, there can be no conflict between separate and distinct rational and nonrational elements within oneself – a fight which reason might lose. Compare this situation with Plato’s description of the conflict between the inferior soul within us which is taken in by sensory illusions and the calculating part which is not (Rep. X, 602e). There is no reason to think that the calculating part can always win the epistemological civil war which Plato imagines to take place within us. But because the impression and assent are both aspects of one and the same commanding faculty according to the Stoics, they think that we can always avoid falling into error if only our reason is sufficiently disciplined. In a similar fashion, impulses or desires are movements of the soul toward something. In a rational creature, these are exercises of the rational faculty which do not arise without assent. Thus, a movement of the soul toward X is not automatically consequent upon the impression that X is desirable. This is what the Stoics’ opponents, the Academic Skeptics, argue against them is possible (Plutarch, 69A.) The Stoics, however, claim that there will be no impulse toward X – much less an action – unless one assents to the impression (Plutarch, 53S). The upshot of this is that all desires are not only (at least potentially) under the control of reason, they are acts of reason. Thus there could be no gap between forming the decisive judgement that one ought to do X and an effective impulse to do X.

Commentary for Part 1 of Book 3 is now available:

I found some of Aristotle's observations interesting in this section, but still aggravated about his being obstinate with respect to the role of pleasure in decision-making. I don't expect that to change.

You already have your Filebase/Library here:

Filebase - Epicureanfriends.com

www.epicureanfriends.com

for PDFs.

Are you/we looking to expand that? Make it more "accessible"? Promote it other places? Include that link in pamphlets?