Posts by Don

Imma gonna let some others weigh in before I spout off again... Just in case anyone is waiting for my response to Cassius . So...

Tag! You're it, y'all!

Quote from Cassius

Is a normal person using these words normally and giving them their normal and ordinary meanings expected to understand that a life of 25 years contains the same amount of joy as a life of 50 years?

First, the normal/average person would most likely be included in what Epicurus calls the "hoi polloi" "the many/the masses/the crowd", so their understanding of life - almost by definition - may not coincide with what Epicurus would call "correct belief." So their normal understanding may be beside the point. In fact, he says "The flesh assumes that the limits of joy are infinite." That's the "normal" understanding. Epicurus was there to provide medicine not validate someone's preconceived normal understanding. So there's that.

Second, I don't believe it's a quantity, an "amount" of pleasure, that's being referred to. That seems a Platonic or Aristotelian argument against pleasure being able to be the goal of life. Epicurus fought against this "I need to rack up as many hedonic credits as I can. Then I win!"

Third, I am becoming firmly convinced that we need to do away with bulleted list of Principal Doctrines and begin to read it as it was written. As a prose text, not a list. If read that way, the answer is in the text. How do we "reason" it out? "the mind, thinking through the goal and limits of the flesh and dissolving fears about eternity, produces a complete way of life and therefore has no need of infinite time." We think through what it means for pleasure to have a limit. Well, it seems to me Epicurus is saying that once we have filled every nook and cranny of our minds with peace and pleasure and rid it of fears and anxieties and troubled thoughts and have a sure confidence of not losing that, you're filled up. You can vary your pleasure, but at that point your perspective on life is unassailable, filled with joy, in fact your mind never flees from joy, that is your default mode of being and interacting with the world. Living in that way is what can make one equal to the gods.

If someone thinks they need to try and rack up the hedonic points and need infinite time to do it (which will only end in frustration btw), they're welcome to ring up the Cyrenaics.

Quote from Cassius

[Please remember everyone that I am to some extent playing "devil's advocate" here in an attempt to draw this out more clearly.

Ditto.... In some respects

Quote from Cassius

Personally I think it is absolutely inadequate - and not what Epicurus meant - to try to say something like "The limit of pleasure is met when pain is absent and so therefore once you obtain painlessness for a moment if does you no good to live a longer time."

Your comment "for a moment" is off the mark. It's not experiencing "the limit of pleasure" "for a moment" then going about your day. It's experiencing the limit of pleasure as part of your whole life, you experience life with this pleasure filling your mind and body. That's why ataraxia and aponia are important components of an Epicurean life. Once you are experiencing full pleasure without mental troubles or bodily pain, it doesn't matter if it lasts a moment and you die or you live 100 years then die or live an infinite number of years and die. He says, in this state at the limit of pleasure, "the mind does not flee from joy." There are innumerable ways to vary the pleasure, but you can't increase it once the limit has been reached. That's why - "reasoning it out" - a moment or infinity can conceivably contain the same amount of pleasure. Now, is this achievable for any being other than a god? Epicurus seems to think so because we are told that if we do, we live as gods among mortals.

I don't believe you can read PD20 in isolation. You have to read it as it was most likely written, in context with the surrounding text.

In fact, I took a look at the Arundel MS 531 to try and figure out where the breaks in the text were at least in this manuscript from 1450-1500:

https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=arundel_ms_531_fs001r

(Flip to page f.177r (folio 177 reverse))

In line 9, there seems to be a specific gap right before what we call PD18: Οὐκ ἐπαύξεται... So, we start reading this section from PD18 and read on until we get another gap. I'm using Saint-Andre's translations. The next gap to my eye appears to be in line 3 on the next page (177v)

Lo and behold, that ends with καὶ ταραχῆς ἔσται μεστά. which is the end of PD22.

PD18 through PD22 should then be read as a complete paragraph:

Quote

As soon as the pain produced by the lack of something is removed, pleasure in the flesh is not increased but only embellished. Yet the limit of enjoyment in the mind is produced by thinking through these very things and similar things, which once provoked the greatest fears in the mind. Finite time and infinite time contain the same amount of joy, if its limits are measured out through reasoning. The flesh assumes that the limits of joy are infinite, and that infinite joy can be produced only through infinite time. But the mind, thinking through the goal and limits of the flesh and dissolving fears about eternity, produces a complete way of life and therefore has no need of infinite time; yet the mind does not flee from joy, nor when events cause it to exit from life does it look back as if it has missed any aspect of the best life. One who perceives the limits of life knows how easy it is to expel the pain produced by a lack of something and to make one's entire life complete; so that there is no need for the things that are achieved through struggle. You must reflect on the fundamental goal and everything that is clear, to which opinions are referred; if you do not, all will be full of trouble and confusion.

This makes sense in that it begins talking about "thinking through these very things.." and ends with "You must reflect on..."

Those are my initial contributions to the topic: Don't try to parse it in isolation.

I'll no doubt have more to say as the thread continues, but the day calls me and I must answer (if I want to get paid ya know ).

Quote from Joshua

and--even worse--"God" with a capital G in Hicks

I agree that that's absolutely a problematic translation. There is NO monotheistic capital-G God implication in the original text at all that I can see.

Sedley does make a point out of the singular vs plural constructions, using that as one argument for "each person creates their own image of god and uses that as a paradigm of the ideal Epicurean life."

Quote from Cassius

So Helen was not even in Troy during the war? But I presume Paris was?

Exactly. Paris and everyone got fooled by Hera 's eidolon. And Hera did it to get back at Aphrodite for Paris awarding Aphrodite the golden apple. At least, according to this version of the tale.

I wasn't sure where to post this but found it fascinating. I recently found out that Euripides' play Helen shows that Helen of Sparta was actually transported to Egypt before Paris carried "her" to Troy and she safely spent the entirety of the Trojan War in Egypt. What got carried to Troy and what got blamed for being the cause of the war was an eidolon created by Hera. That IS the same word Epicurus used to describe the images emitted by bodies that we perceive. Fascinating!

Introduction to “Helen and her Eidolon” - Classical Inquiries

2016.05.01 | By Donna Zuckerberg Donna Zuckerberg, editor of the online journal Eidolon, introduces the Helen-focused collaboration between two publications…

classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu

Euripides’ Helen – an Alternative View of Helen of Troy

by Sean Kelly, Managing Editor, Classical Wisdom She’s probably the single most famous woman from all of Greek mythology. We think we know the tale – the…

classicalwisdom.com

PS. I'm not saying Euripides' (and others' telling the Helen eidolon story) and Epicurus' use of the word eidolōn are synonymous. However, I did find it very interesting that both could use the same word for (maybe) parallel concepts. Epicurus would have known this story and still used the word. Do we know if the eidolon theory is extant from other Greek philosophers?

For those with enough stamina (I myself have not read the entire paper), this paper by Sedley may prove thought-provoking on the Epicurean gods

Epicurus' theological innatism

Epicurus' theological innatism

www.academia.edu

Quote from Cassius

PD01 The blessed and immortal nature knows no trouble itself, nor causes trouble to any other, so that it is never constrained by anger or favor. For all such things exist only in the weak.

I'm adding in PD01 along with its ancient scholia commentary:

Τὸ μακάριον καὶ ἄφθαρτον οὔτε αὐτὸ πράγματα ἔχει οὔτε ἄλλῳ παρέχει, ὥστε οὔτε ὀργαῖς οὔτε χάρισι συνέχεται: ἐν ἀσθενεῖ γὰρ πᾶν τὸ τοιοῦτον. [ἐν ἄλλοις δέ φησι τοὺς θεοὺς λόγῳ θεωρητούς, οὓς μὲν κατ᾽ ἀριθμὸν ὑφεστῶτας, οὓς δὲ καθ᾽ ὁμοείδειαν ἐκ τῆς συνεχοῦς ἐπιρρύσεως τῶν ὁμοίων εἰδώλων ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτὸ ἀποτετελεσμένωι ἀνθρωποειδῶς.]

Perseus Project translation: 1. A blessed and eternal being has no trouble himself and brings no trouble upon any other being ; hence he is exempt from movements of anger and partiality, for every such movement implies weakness [Elsewhere he says that the gods are discernible by reason alone, some being numerically distinct, while others result uniformly from the continuous influx of similar images directed to the same spot and in human form.]

Quote from Cassius

So neither extreme of relativism or absolutism is correct, but on the other hand it doesn't help much to say that the truth is "in the middle."

Oh, I wasn't even going the absolute/relative track in my mind. I just meant that one "feels" eudaimonia. And eudaimonia is, by definition, a pleasurable feeling.

You're going deeper than I was

So, both Kalosyni and Joshua are right, depending on one's perspective. While eudaimonia is a feeling, and - in analyzing it - the feeling is pleasure.

If I may be so bold as to add in my contribution to the discussion of the letter:

Quote

[123] And, Menoikeus, I was continuously exhorting you to practice, to study, and to meditate on those things which I state distinctly to be the essential elements of a noble, beautiful, and virtuous life. First, believe that the god is a blessed and imperishable thing as is the common, general understanding of the god. You, Menoikeus, believe everything about which a god is able to preserve its own imperishability and blessedness for itself. Do not attribute anything foreign to its incorruptibility or incongruous with the blessedness of the god! Gods exist, and the knowledge of them is manifest to the mind's eye. The gods do not exist in the way that the 'hoi polloi' believe them to, because they do not perceive what maintains the gods. One is not impious who does not take up the gods of the hoi polloi; but the one who attributes the beliefs of the hoi polloi to the gods. [124] For what they believe are not prolepses, but rather the judgements of the hoi polloi concerning the gods which are false, hasty assumptions. So, they believe the greatest evils are brought to the wicked from the gods as well as the greatest aid to the good, because the hoi polloi are believing that the gods accept those who resemble themselves who are similar through all excellences and goodness; all those not of their sort are strange and alien.

Here also is a link to the full commentary to these sections as well:

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

Quote from Joshua

Always for a Tolkien meme

So... "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." Gandalf (JRR Tolkien), The Fellowship of the Ring.

GREAT episode! I even stayed up late listening Excellent thought-provoking, conversation! Well done!!

The word used in the first section is φιλοσοφείν , the infinitive of the verb φιλοσοφέω 'philosopheō'

The word literally is composed of:

φίλος philos φιλιά philia "love/friendship" (deeper than this but we'll let it stand for now)

+

σοφια sophia "wisdom"

Philos/philia is the same component in Philadelphia "love + brotherly"

As well as things like anglophile "England-love"

& philanthropy "love (of) human beings ('anthropoi')"

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, φι^λί-α

The word philia has more of a connotation of friendly love, affection, friendship, distinct from ἔρως erōs "erotic, romantic love"

So, to be philosopheō had the sense to me if having an affection for wisdom, being close friends with wisdom.

And here are the definitions of sophia:

σοφία

1. skill in handicraft and art, Il., Xen., etc.:— ς. τινός or περί τινος knowledge of, acquaintance with a thing, Plat.

2. sound judgment, intelligence, practical wisdom, such as was attributed to the Seven Wise men, Theogn., Hdt.; in not so good a sense, cunning, shrewdness, craft, like δεινότης, Hdt.

Quote from elli

the latter word "mēnis" had to do with the anger of gods

... and Achilles, too

μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος

Of the wrath of Achilles, Peleus' son, sing, O goddess...

(Iliad, Book 1, line 1)

Quote from Kalosyni

From Tufts website:

"Writings that urged young men to study philosophy formed a distinct literary genre among the ancients under the name “protreptics.” The Epistle to Menoeceus of Epicurus is an extant example."

And this article: "Ancient Philosophic Protreptic and the Problem of Persuasive Genres"

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/rh.1986.4.4.309

Quote

"The protereptic has as its explicit aim the winning of a student for philosophy. The student must be won at different levels--for the love of wisdom generally, for the choice of a particular school, for full commitment to the rigors of an advanced discipline."

FYI:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protrepsi…sis?wprov=sfla1

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I found this page from the Center for Hellenic Studies at Harvard interesting in explaining the differences and similarities between μένος (menos) and μήνις (mēnis):

Core Vocab: menos | The Kosmos Society

I did not realize there were several characters from Greek mythology named Menoikeus:

Menoeceus - Wikipedia

I also like Elli's alternative etymology using μένω instead of μενος for the first element of the name. That adds a nice twist!

Quote from Kalosyni

Found this on Wikipedia (which lists two ways to pronounce the name):

Menoeceus (/məˈniːsiəs, -sjuːs/;

Ancient Greek: Μενοικεύς Menoikeús "strength of the house" derived from menos "strength" and oikos "house"

Ah, the idiosyncrasies of pronunciation.

The məˈniːsiəs is an English pronunciation of the Latin orthography. (Stress on the NI (nee))

Classical Latin would be something like 'men-oy-keh-oos"

Which is directly parallel with the Ancient Greek pronunciation of Μενοικεύς and my preferred pronunciation.

And Modern Greek or even mid- to late Koine Greek pronunciation would probably be something like 'men-ee-kefs' (yes, that's how much pronunciation has changed in the last several thousand years!)

The Official Wheelock's Latin Series Website

For Ancient Greek pronunciation, there are several YouTube channels including ScorpioMartianus and Podium-Arts.

PS

Μενοικεύς - Wiktionary

Pronunciation starting with Classical to Modern

/me.noi̯.kěu̯s/ → /me.nyˈkeɸs/ → /me.niˈcefs/