Posts by Don

Thanks, Kalosyni !

For completeness, I'm going to post the maza recipe that author links to in that article too:

The significance is that that is the *exact* word Epicurus uses in the (in)famous "bread and water" statement in the letter to Menoikeus.

PS: I'm still trying to find barley flour to be able to try the maza recipe

Quote from DavidN

To me that sets the whole philosophy up to be a kind of psychological math problem. Which is why I like it so much, the idea that there's a formula for happiness.

Yes, I'd agree up to point but I don't think we need to go the whole Utilitarian way of adding hedons and dolors.

Just wondering if this is the/a source:

The Epicurean Doctrines on Wealth | Society of Friends of Epicurus

Quote

Philodemus makes frequent appeals to the authority of Metrodorus, one of the founders of the School, who promoted the idea that hedonic calPhilodemus makes frequent appeals to the authority of Metrodorus, one of the founders of the School, who promoted the idea that hedonic calculus must be employed in the management of one’s household and economic affairs, making the point time and again that we must run certain risks and go through certain inconveniences in order to avoid greater ruin and gain greater advantages.

He disagreed with the destitute life of the Cynics, and appears to have made this point while arguing against them and in favor of a doctrine of the natural measure of wealth. This corresponds to that which is needed to secure the natural and necessary pleasures, and to have the confident expectation that we will be able to secure them in the future.

Quote from Cassius

I strongly suspect that the bread and water reference was one of his regular in-your-face hypotheticals that he COULD live perfectly well on such fare if he needed to do so

I don't think it was merely a hypothetical. I think he probably did live perfectly well and pleasurably and intentionally from time to time on simple, everyday fare. Maybe even most of the time. To prove he could. Not hypothetically but empirically. He was surrounded by friends and students. He taught that your eating companions are as or more important than what you eat. He didn't need extravagance, but certainly wouldn't have gone out of his way to avoid it and wouldn't have struggled to put out a large extravagant banquet every day.

If I remember, there's a text that talks about Epicurus from time to time experimenting to see how little would still give him pleasure. He probably did try fasting do see what was absolutely essential to his finding pleasure in living. From Porphyry, at least, we read the Epicureans had "simple, available food" but we have to add fruit to the bread/maza and water at the very least. And cheese, we know there was cheese from time to time. So, the menu grows.

Porphyry, On Abstinence, I.48-: For most of the Epicureans, starting with their leader, appear to be satisfied with barley-bread and fruit, and they have filled treatises with arguments that nature needs little and that its requirements are adequately met by simple, available food. Riches in accordance with nature, they say, are limited and easy to get; riches in accordance with empty beliefs are unlimited and hard to get.

We also have Philodemus dinner invitation poem:

To-morrow, dearest Piso, your friend, beloved by the Muses, who keeps our annual feast of the twentieth invites you to come after the ninth hour to his simple cottage. If you miss udders and draughts of Chian wine, you will see at least sincere friends and you will hear things far sweeter than the land of the Phaeacians. But if you ever cast your eyes on me, Piso, we shall celebrate the twentieth richly instead of simply.

This implies to me we're going to get a hearty but simple, frugal meal on the 20th. Not meagre or stingy, but we know we're not getting udders and expensive wine. It's not a banquet. People will leave satiated not stuffed. Piso will celebrate "richly" because of his friendship with Philodemus not because of the food being served.

I was curious about the "simple" words:

αὔριον εἰς λιτήν σε καλιάδα, φίλτατε Πείσων,

ἐξ ἐνάτης ἕλκει μουσοφιλὴς ἕταρος,

εἰκάδα δειπνίζων ἐνιαύσιον: εἰ δ᾽ ἀπολείψεις

οὔθατα καὶ Βρομίου χιογενῆ πρόποσιν,

ἀλλ᾽ ἑτάρους ὄψει παναληθέας, ἀλλ᾽ ἐπακούσῃ

Φαιήκων γαίης πουλὺ μελιχρότερα:

ἢν δέ ποτε στρέψῃς καὶ ἐς ἡμέας ὄμματα, Πείσων, ἄξομεν ἐκ λιτῆς εἰκάδα πιοτέρην.

καλιάδα = "simple" cottage; hut

λιτῆς = litēs = simple, inexpensive, frugal; of style, plain, simple, unadorned

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

Philodemus was also clever in his word choice because λιτήν = litēn = entreaty, prayer, invitation echoes the λιτῆς = litēs = simple, inexpensive, frugal in the last line.

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.