Posts by Don

By Zeus! I knew that "bread and water" had done damage but I had no idea how much damage!!

Quote from Cassius

whether Epicurus himself was restricting himself to "ordinary food" on all occasions, much less "bread and water.

Even that phrasing - "restricting himself" - strikes me as a slippery slope. If maza and wine (or watered wine as was customary) were just what you ate at a midday meal, you're not"restricting" yourself. That's just your expectation. I see Epicurus as being frugal but not ascetic. And frugal in the sense of the old Frugal Gourmet, "Frugal doesn't mean cheap. It means you don't waste your money." I could see Epicurus making sure the maza was well prepared: fresh, warm, maybe with some honey in the dough. Good fresh spring water for drinking maybe kept in the shade in pottery to keep it slightly cool.

We're told that in the diatribe against Epicurus that "he spent a whole mina daily on his table, as he himself says in his letter to Leontion and in that to the philosophers at Mitylene."

"Is this the Doctors vertuous Epicurus, who spent every day a Mina, which was an hundred Drachma's, that is 3.l.2.s.6.d. every Drachma being 7.d.ob." (Note: That's £3 2 shillings 6 pence in 1652. That's over $700 a day in 2022 $s according to this website)

Arcana Microcosmi, II:16

PS. I wonder if there's a nugget of truth and that's $700 for the household or something like that.

I need to read Nussbaum's whole book. I have a copy. One of the first I bought and then read the Epicurean parts but it has been several years.

I always took the title to mean "using desire as therapy." So, obviously I've missed out on her larger context. Add it to my infinitely growing list of "to be read."

Quote from Godfrey

the author uses "affections" in place of "emotions"

Looks like the reason the author uses affections is because Aristotle uses our old friend pathē πάθη there. I double-checked both citations.

Pathē means "that which one experiences, that which happens to a person, that which affects a person." So it's not affection like "He has an affection for his dog" but affection instead of using feeling (something one feels) since it appears Aristotle is using it to refer to everything that can be contained under pleasure and/or pain. So Epicurus and Aristotle both use pathē to refer to the large categories of pleasure/pain.

Quote from Cassius

Excellent quote Godfrey! That is one we do not talk about much but looks very relevant.

Quote from reneliza

Really just what I've been saying - that I have no conception of desire that is without any pain

And maybe that is exactly an artifact of the corruption of the modern monotheistic world and misrepresentaton of Epicurean philosophy - that you and a lot of people DONT have such a conception(?). And for that reason that may be why this point needs to be pounded home in modern Epicurean discussion.

Were you by chance raised Catholic?

I can understand where reneliza (and Joshua) are coming from with the desire / pain paradigm. I think the perspective issue is an intriguing one: the urge to move toward pleasure vs the urge to move away from pain. They really are two sides of the same coin or mirror images or similar metaphors. The glass really is half full AND half empty at the same time.

I do want to dig into Aristotle and his emotion feeling classifications to get a handle on Greek thought at the time.

Quote from Cassius

VS34. It is not so much our friends' help that helps us, as it is the confidence of their help.

I was expecting elpis "hope" for confidence here but it ends up being pisteōs "trust" (related to "epistemology" ie, study of what you can trust)

I'm getting hung up on the differences and shades of meaning of:

Desire

Anticipation

Hope

Want

and all the similar words both in English and Greek that have to do with looking forward to something pleasurable (or wanting to escape something painful)

It seems to me at least that there's a distinction that should be important. What does it mean to desire something as opposed to just wanting or anticipating or having confidence in something.

Desire has such a sexual connotation now in English it's hard to disassociate it from that.

Anyway, that's where my head is currently.

Quote from reneliza

Confession: I don't know Greek like AT ALL so reading Don's posts is usually me trying to brute force my way through Greek words by applying what I remember from college math/engineering classes.

Quote from reneliza

It's important to be really careful when talking about DA in the context of motivation

Okay, D probably stands for dopamine since we're talking about that. But the A must be an abbreviation for something...

See, it can work both ways

Quote from Cassius

I don't know if we have the original Greek of the phrase that Martin Ferguson Smith translates as "desires that outrun the limits fixed by nature,"

DCLP/Trismegistos 865216 = LDAB 865216

πρὸς δὲ̣ [τοῦ-]

το̣ι̣ς̣ ἐπιθυμίαι το̣[ὺς]

φυσι̣κ̣οὺς ὅρους [ἐκτρέ-]

χουσαι̣.

The part in brackets is filled in but makes sense [ἐκτρέ-]χουσαι̣ and the word does mean outrun or run away from.

The όρους is the familiar "boundary stone" used elsewhere in Epicurean texts:

- boundary, limit, frontier, landmark

- marking stones, stones used for inscribing legal contracts

Quote from Cassius

a desire for the latest iphone or a new Tesla is not "unnatural" even though the ancients never envisioned them.

Yes, that would be natural but unnecessary IF acquiring those things were within reach of one's financial and life situation. But I still think you'd have to ask yourself why you wanted them: for the Tesla, as a mode of travel, for environmental reasons, as a status symbol, etc.

The "nearby" is misleading in that translation. As always, Eikadistes 's compilation is helpful but here's two:

Hicks translation

25If you do not on every separate occasion refer each of your actions to the chief end of nature, but if instead of this in the act of choice or avoidance you swerve aside to some other end, your acts will not be consistent with your theories.

Saint-Andre translation

25If at all critical times you do not connect each of your actions to the natural goal of life, but instead turn too soon to some other kind of goal in thinking whether to avoid or pursue something, then your thoughts and your actions will not be in harmony.

Plus, here's the Epicurus Wiki commentary:

Principal Doctrine 25 - Epicurus Wiki

It seems to me that this PD is just saying "walk the walk, don't just talk the talk." If you're going to profess following the "natural goal of life" (pleasure) but you don't make your choices and rejections based on that, your actions will not "be in harmony" with your beliefs.

In reading the last few posts on desire being associated with pain, I personally find it disturbing to think my life would be motivated by pain. Desires are motivating factors. Maybe not the only ones and I admit I need to think about this more. But desires motivate us to take action. If desires are initiated by pain, then is my life motivated by pain?

I would rather think my life is motivated by an appetite to move toward pleasure. I realize that could simply be rephrased as "to move away from pain" to me it's a matter of emphasis and/or perspective. Am I concentrated on the pleasure or the pain?

All that said, Epicurus did write:

By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul.

I'm still not convinced that desire (epithymia/ orexis) necessarily involves pain but I'm not saying I have a cogent alternative at this point.

Quote from Godfrey

Sadly, I don't. But I hope that it does.

Well played there

Quote from Godfrey

do I desire world peace or hope for it?

Excellent question! Hmmm...

I guess I would ask if you actually expect world peace to happen. Do you have an expectation that will actually occur? Or do you want it to happen with no real expectation that it will occur? If the former, I would call that hope/expectation/confidence. If the latter, I would call that a desire.

Here may be an interesting paper:

Emotions in Plato and Aristotle

Emotions in Plato and Aristotle

www.academia.edu

Sigh... It seems it may be instructive to read Aristotle's 2 Ethics: Nichomachean and Eudemian. It may need interesting to see how he categorized the pathē and what subdivisions he came up with. Even if Epicurus didn't agree with him in all things, Aristotle and Plato had a huge impact on Greek thought.

Quote from Godfrey

I'm inclined to think of hope and desire as degrees of the same thing

I agree they're related, but I'm thinking they're not degrees but species of the same genus.

But of course that begs the question: What genus?

Quote from Cassius

As to the arising of desires (thoughts?) there is of course also the Epicurean theory of images:

You bring up an interesting question with that parenthetical "thoughts?"

As to "images," yes, that would substantiate an external stimuli for most/many of our desires (thoughts?). So maybe modern Epicureans can take that idea of external stimuli affecting our thoughts, memories, etc. as canonical?

As to the actual mechanism of the external stimuli, I take the concept of the images/eidolon/spectres as an historical curiosity and pre-scientific idea. We know there aren't streams of atoms being generated as films impacting our minds. I'm pretty confident saying "know" there, too. But the idea of external stimuli impacting our thoughts, vision, hearing, smells, etc., etc. Oh, yeah. That's definitely a thing.

Quote from Cassius

But per the letter to Menoeceus do we not also to some degree choose our own desires, consistent with our free will, and indeed to the events arising from those choices praise and blame do attach?

Oh, agreed. But I would re-word your statement to say:

"We choose which of our desires we will fulfill, consistent with our free will"

We don't necessarily choose which desires arise within us. Many - most? - of our desires arise from things outside of ourselves. Of course, we have desires to drink, eat, etc., that arise from bodily interoception. We may also have desires that arise naturally from within our memories of past pleasures we'd like to repeat. But we also have desires that arise from outside influences - people talking, commercials (in the modern world), reading, etc. Desires we may not have thought of without those outside influences.

So, I'm not entirely convinced that we "choose" our desires entirely. But I am completely onboard with the fact that we "choose" to follow or avoid desires which arise.

And this is exactly why we can attach praise or blame to the consequences of the act of fulfilling those desires which we choose to act upon. We have the free will to act on desires or not to act on desires. We are responsible for our actions, and, in some senses, ALL actions are the result of fulfilling certain desires.

Here's my translation of that Menoikeus section:

For that person, even though some things happen by necessity, some by chance, and some by our own power, for although necessity is beyond our control, they see that chance is unstable and there is no other master beyond themselves, so that praise and its opposite are inseparably connected to themselves.

Those things that happen "by our own power" are our responsibility. We can be praised for some things that we do, and we can get the opposite of praise for other things that come about "by our own power." If some action is detrimental to our own well-being or harmful to society at large, we can be held responsible for that if it was indeed "by our own power" that it came about. We can't be held responsible for someone's boat being wrecked at sea. We CAN be held responsible if we were the one to forget to tie it off at the harbor and it drifted out and THEN got wrecked in a storm. Okay, that's maybe a weird example but I'll let it stand.

For those interested:

Letter To Menoikeus: A New Translation With Commentary : Don Boozer : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

A new translation of the Letter to Menoikeus (Menoeceus) by Epicurus with commentary.

archive.org

Additionally, we believe αὐτάρκεια is a great good. Not so that we are furnished with the use of a few things; but, if we were to have many things, we would be content with few things. Those in need who are genuinely convinced of this find extravagance more pleasant, and that every natural desire is easily procured, and an empty desire difficult to get. For simple flavors bring equal pleasure to extravagant ways of life when once the pain of body and mind experienced through lack or deficiency is removed. [131] A simple meal of hearty, wholesome bread and spring water delivers the most extreme pleasure whenever food and drink have been brought to bear against hunger and thirst; and, when extravagant experiences do come up every once in a while, they are experienced more intensely by us, and we are better able to fearlessly face the vicissitudes of fortune.

Therefore, whenever we say repeatedly that "pleasure is the τέλος," we do not say the pleasure of those who are prodigal like those who are ignorant, those who don't agree with us, or those who believe wrongly; but we mean that which neither pains the body nor troubles the mind. [132] For it is not an endless string of drinking parties and festivals, and not taking advantage of slaves and women, nor does an extravagant table of fish and other things bring forth a sweet life but self-controlled reasoning and examining the cause of every choice and rejection and driving out the greatest number of opinions that take hold of the mind and bring confusion and trouble.

And so the foundation of all these and the greatest good is φρόνησις, practical wisdom. On this account, practical wisdom is prized more dearly than philosophy itself, and from practical wisdom springs forth all the remaining virtues, teaching us that a pleasurable life does not exist without the traits of wisdom, morality, and justice; nor do the traits of wisdom, morality, and justice without pleasure: because the virtues grow together with a pleasurable life and the pleasurable life is inseparable from these.

Personally, one of the biggest epiphanies for me while doing my translation and commentary on the letter was the "bread and water" section in 131. Realizing that that was NOT an ascetic instruction but rather the basic meal of regular ancient Greeks was eye-opening.

Another eye-opener for me was the vocabulary used in the "not taking advantage of slaves (or boys) and women" section.

Feel free to read my commentary at Internet Archive and let me know if you agree with my conclusions. We're all here to grow.

Quote from Cassius

I almost hate to comment on this because my thought is not major and I don't want to interrupt the stream of the posts from Don.

Quote from Cassius

Sorry for the interruption - please carry on Don!

LOL! Methinks you imbue my stream of consciousness with too much significance, but I appreciate the thought.

Quote from Cassius

So the comment "they just are" may be true in that they are not inherently bad or good, but if there is a larger component of choice attached to desires then that would be a significant difference (which reminds me of the comment later in the letter about attaching praise or blame).

Oh, I agree! My only intent was to get away from moral judgements. Desires arise naturally from our physical needs and from just living our life but they also arise from things we've been inculcated to desire by society and culture. They're not *morally* good or bad but they can be useful to our life and existence or detrimental to our well-being if we choose to follow them. If we choose NOT to follow those that are useful for our life, that's not going to go well for us. Likewise, if we choose TO follow unhealthy or harmful desires, that's not going to go well for us either. But we should leave the morality out of it. "Oh, you did THAT! You're a BAD person!"

Quote from Cassius

I remember and agree with what Joshua said in the episode about how often in the end it does not work to suppress desires.

Agreed! Suppression seems to me to be unnatural. You can deny there's a tiger behind the tree, but it's going to eat you nevertheless. Likewise, you can deny you have desires - "I can suppress my desires! Look at how righteous I am!" - , but those desires are going to well up, frustrate you, and they're going to come spilling out one way or the other.

That said, I think one can learn to recognize desires as they arise in the mind and to choose wisely which ones to follow and which ones not to. That's not suppressing our desires. That's gaining the facility to recognize helpful and harmful consequences more readily, more accurately, more wisely. It may look like suppression to someone unaccustomed to this kind of practice, but I think it is a very different thing.

Quote from Joshua

Also, the word "natural" has become hugely problematic--Natural Law, so called, is something like a 4th revelation in Christianity after the person of Jesus and the two testaments. Montaigne made the odd claim that atheism was 'unnatural', and the claims have only gotten worse since.

Agreed. What I like about "natural" in the context of Epicurus's writings and other Epicureans is that - originally - it wasn't tainted with our cultural baggage. But it's hard to extricate it from all that!! That's one thing I was trying to get at in post #31 above. That natural vs empty dichotomy to me is helpful in getting at the idea that "natural" desires arise within us from our being part of Nature: material, mortal beings living our lives. Some "only natural" (or unnecessary) desires come from acculturation (ex., a desire for a particular kind of food that brings pleasurable memories from childhood), but many - to my understanding - empty desires arise from being "told" by society/culture/media that we should - must! - want power, money, numerous material possessions ("Latest iPhone! Gimme! Gimme!"), etc.

Quote from Cassius

I hope everyone will help us remember - however - that our goal should be to eventually emerge from these details with some high-level conclusions about what we think Epicurus was saying. We'll discuss as much of all this as we can on the podcast, but the goal eventually needs to be something in writing that summarizes the major distinctions between "desire" and "pleasure" in Epicurean philosophy.

Perhaps even a comparison chart with Desire and Pleasure as the column headings and as many lines as necessary for the major points about them and how they differ or are the same as to each point.

Agreed! Without a conclusion, we turn into ever-arguing Sophists! Some distinct points for me:

1. I am fully onboard with Godfrey 's insistence on maintaining the distinction between desire and pleasure. That's important.
2. My current contention is that Pleasure and Pain are the two big categories into which we can categorize everything that happens to us (the literal meaning of pathe).
3. As such, desire as a thing (What kind of thing?) is subordinate to or contained in or a component of one of those two buckets.
4. Observation: We can choose to fulfill a desire. We cannot choose to feel pleasure. I think that's an important distinction between these two categories.
5. Observation: In response to Joshua , I believe there is a distinction between "desiring something" and "hoping for something." I can desire a particular outcome, or I can hope for something (or as an alternative translation of elpis "have confidence in something happening"). I think those are two different things and I would contend that the desire is more basic while hope/confidence is more aspirational. Hmm... Maybe I'm just wordplaying here, but this is the direction I'm heading. Hope/Confidence/Elpis seems to always point toward a beneficial or pleasurable outcome, whereas the consequence of desire is not always beneficial to me. I can't think that an "empty hope" or "empty confidence" is a logical thing to say. Granted, I may "hope beyond all hope" or something like that. I am reminded of the recent Sandman episode where Dream and Lucifer are battling each other in a "Sword in the Stone" type Wizard duel and SPOILER Dream declares, "I am Hope." "Lucifer was left flabbergasted and without a suitable counter because the Devil could not conceive of anything that could best Hope." I don't think it would have had the same impact or result if Dream had declared "I am Desire" (especially because Desire is one of Dream's Endless siblings).
   
   1. I realize I'm going off on a side track, but I just found this link on The Sandman fan forum and it specifically links Desire (of the Endless) with the Greek word Epithumia! Sorry. Fan of the comics and the new Netflix show.

That'll do for now. I'll hold off on streaming any more until more can add their thoughts.

I have no reason to think this is Epicurean inspired but I thought it was cute:

Pig Römisch Germanisches Museum Köln

Visit the post for more.

ancientglass.wordpress.com

I found it online and it appears to be in Köln originally but has been moved according to Instagram:

decimusclaudius A Roman glass depiction of a pig. It was found locally and is normally on display in the Roman-Germanic Museum in Cologne, Germany although due to construction works it is currenly on display with a selection of items in the Belgian House which is also in that city very rich of history.

Quote from Joshua

I'm not sure I can get on board with the underlined part above. Lucian opposes fear to hope, which I think is nearer the mark;

Quote

And from this point, as Thucydides might say, the war takes its beginning. These ambitious scoundrels were quite devoid of scruples, and they had now joined forces; it could not escape their penetration that human life is under the absolute dominion of two mighty principles, fear and hope (ἐλπίδος καὶ φόβου) and that anyone who can make these serve his ends may be sure of a rapid fortune.

Which drives me on to my next (tentative) conclusion--that fear and hope are both kinds of desire. Desire is everything that happens when you see things as they are, and wish that they were different. When unscrupulous scoundrels prey on hope and fear, they prey on desire.

As i mentioned, I'm intrigued by Joshua 's thesis, and additionally I was taken with the idea of hope and fear (ἐλπίδος καὶ φόβου). So, I was really wondering where Epicurus may have used ἐλπίδος (which is the genitive of ἐλπίς) "hope, confidence, expectation"

Fragment 116: I summon you to unceasing joy and not to empty and trifling virtues, which destroy your confidence in the fruits of what you have. ἐγὼ δʼ ἐφʼ ἡδονὰς συνεχεῖς παρακαλῶ καὶ οὐκ ἐπʼ ἀρετὰς κενὰς καὶ ματαίας καὶ ταραχώδεις ἐχούσας τῶν καρπῶν ἐλπίδας.

Fragment 445: We must not blame the body for the greatest evils nor attribute our troubles to mere circumstance. Instead we seek their cause within the soul: for by giving up every trifling and fleeting desire*** we give birth to a confidence perfect (ἐλπίδα ὅλοι) in itself. (For *** see below)

Letter to Menoikeus 134: Because, on the one hand, one can generally hope for the intercession of the gods by means of worship… ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἐλπίδα παραιτήσεως ὑπογράφει θεῶν διὰ τιμῆς

The Strong's Concordance even has this:

G1680 - elpis - Strong's Greek Lexicon (kjv)

G1680 - ἐλπίς elpís, el-pece'; from a primary ἔλπω élpō (to anticipate, usually with pleasure); expectation (abstractly or concretely) or confidence:—faith,…

www.blueletterbible.org

"from a primary ἔλπω élpō (to anticipate, usually with pleasure); expectation (abstractly or concretely) or confidence:—faith, hope"

So, elpis does have sense of "desire for something pleasurable" but it seems to be more of a "confident hope" or "anticipation with the expectation of coming to fruition" whereas "desire" writ large has no sense that it will be fulfilled for sure, it is more a longing for something pleasurable.

Still thinking...

***The "trifling and fleeting desires" referenced in Fragment 445 also shed an interesting light on this discussion. Interestingly, the word epithymia is NOT used here:

πᾶσαν ματαίαν τῶν ἐφημέρων ὄρεξιν (ἐφημέρων = ephemeron)

"Every trifling 'ephemeral' desire"

ὄρεξῐς "yearning, longing, desire"

Even LSJ defines it as opposed to φυγή which is the *exact* word used by Epicurus in "choice and avoidance/flight"

Epicurus also uses this word in Fragment 202:

He who follows nature and not groundless opinions is completely self-reliant. With regard to what is enough by nature, everything he owns is a source of wealth; whereas with regard to unlimited desires (τὰς ἀορίστους ὀρέξεις), even the greatest wealth is poverty.

It shows up in Demetrius Lacon's PHerc831 (Column 16) as "empty desires" κενῶν [ὀρέ]ξεων

DCLP/Trismegistos 59491 = LDAB 591

So, in addition to epithymia we have to take orexis into account:

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