Posts by Don

Welcome aboard, Al-Hakiim von Grof !

You've hit on a fascinating topic. It seems undeniable to me that Jefferson's Epicurean leanings influenced his political thought. However, the final draft of the Declaration went through a committee as well as revisions from the whole Congress before being accepted. A large part of Jefferson's original draft remained intact through the process, but there were significant changes made nonetheless. Here's a history of the creation of the Declaration from the US National Archives:

The Declaration of Independence: A History

Nations come into being in many ways. Military rebellion, civil strife, acts of heroism, acts of treachery, a thousand greater and lesser clashes between…

www.archives.gov

There's also this from Monticello stating that "pursuit of happiness" could have clearly been influenced by George Mason's "Virginia Declaration of Rights"

Pursuit of Happiness

Find out what we know about what Thomas Jefferson meant by "pursuit of happiness".

www.monticello.org

There's also

Pursuit of Happiness - Creating the Declaration of Independence - Creating the United States | Exhibitions - Library of Congress

Historian Peter Moore appears to have written an entire book on "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness"

How Jefferson’s ‘pursuit of happiness’ phrase came to be

Historian Peter Moore examines six Enlightenment thinkers who influenced Thomas Jefferson’s drafting of the Declaration of Independence.

www.csmonitor.com

So, Jefferson's phrase doesn't appear to be unique to him or *wholly* a result of his personal Epicureanism, but Epicurus's ideas were percolating throughout the Enlightenment era.

Epicurus in the Enlightenment

Eighteenth-century Epicureanism is often viewed as radical, anti-religious and politically dangerous. But to what extent does this simplify the ancient…

www.voltaire.ox.ac.uk

Personally, I'm torn on how I feel about Jefferson. He was a fascinating man of science and invention, a pivotal Founder, a heckuva writer, but many of his actions make him difficult to like and from many accounts he was not an inspiring speaker.

That's probably a more lengthy response than you wanted! I'm glad you found our little Garden here online.

The case for laying emphasis in the episode on "lower case s 'skepticism' vs upper case s 'Skepticism'" is a good one. *BUT* there's one thing to note about Lucian's Alexander the Oracle Monger when the translation says "It was an occasion for a Democritus, nay, for an Epicurus or a Metrodorus[1], perhaps, a man whose intelligence was steeled against such assaults by scepticism and insight, one who, if he could not detect the precise imposture, would at any rate have been perfectly certain that, though this escaped him, the whole thing was a lie and an impossibility."

The Greek doesn't use the word for skeptic (σκέψις skepsis, "inquiry") or a similar word. The word used is ἀπιστέω. The whole phrase is:

ἢ καὶ αὐτοῦ Ἐπικούρου (Epikourou) ἢ Μητροδώρου (Metrodorou) ἤ τινος ἄλλου ἀδαμαντίνην πρὸς τὰ τοιαῦτα τὴν γνώμην ἔχοντος, ὡς ἀπιστῆσαι καὶ ὅπερ ἦν εἰκάσαι, καὶ εἰ μὴ εὑρεῖν τὸν τρόπον ἐδύνατο, ἐκεῖνο γοῦν προπεπεισμένου, ὅτι λέληθεν αὐτὸν ὁ τρόπος τῆς μαγγανείας, τὸ δ᾽ οὖν πᾶν ψεῦδός ἐστι καὶ γενέσθαι ἀδύνατον.

The key words are:

• ἀδαμαντίνην (adamantinen) = adamantine, of steel
  • For those of you who are Marvel superhero fans, yes, that's like Wolverine's adamantium skeleton. So Epicurus and Metrodorus aren't simply "steeled" they have knowledge like adamantium
• γνώμην (gnomen) = knowledge, intelligence, judgement
• ἀφεστήξω (aphestexo) = disbelieve, distrust; doubt; to be incredulous

PS. I want to add (to be clear) that the skeptic/Skeptic distinction is valid and an important one due to the idiosyncrasies of English. Lower case skeptical is a decent translation of ἀφεστήξω, but looking at the ancient Greek itself - from my perspective - always provides additional nuance.

One thing that seems to be coming up in my research is that meat-eating was not nearly as prevalent in ancient Greece as we think of it now. That's one reason religious/civic festivals were so popular. Everyone got meat from the sacrificial animals roasting on the altar. The gods got the "choice" bits (fat, entrails, etc. - See here for a fascinating article) and the roasted meat was shared among all the celebrants. The ancient Greeks were not a "meat and potatoes" kind of people; more generally-speaking like a "bread and vegetables" people.

Quote from Joshua

The plural of anecdote is not data

I had not heard that before. That's a good one to remember. That'll show up in a future presentation for me at some point!

Here's an excerpt from Alan Watts' essay "Murder in the Kitchen"

Oh, and I just want to add here that I don't give out too often, and Cassius got two three in a row

Quote from Cassius

"An example of this sort of thing would be a flock of sheep. A flock of sheep is a real entity with real attributes, just as the individual sheep are real entities with different attributes. Just as the individual sheep are made of atoms, the flock is made of individual sheep."

I like this. That's well done.

I'm not sure I'm entirely ready to embrace the last paragraph, but the reasoning is sound it seems to me. I'm assuming you're aiming for a mechanism for the existence of the (physical) gods.

Quote from Bryan

For raw text, I just mine the p.herc section of the Digital Corpus of Literary Papyri.

I do loves the papyri.info. A great place for images of the papyri themselves, too (for anyone perusing this thread).

"An example of this sort of thing would be a flock of sheep. A flock of sheep is a real entity, but it is nothing above and beyond the group of sheep gathered together."

I see this as illustrating the points at hand, maybe a lttle ham-handed but analogous nonetheless. The sheep** are the atoms; the field, the void. But there is a real thing called a "flock" that has its own qualities and movements. I'm seeing the real qualities and phenomena that we deal with in this way. The individual elementary particles and molecules of the sweetener I put in my tea are not "sweet," but I experience a real sensation of sweetness in my tea. I sense that, it influences my experience of the tea, and that experience is real and has a causal effect on how I respond to the tea. Likewise, the mind. Taking a leap, I realize, but it's still applicable to me. The individual "atoms" allowing me to reason and to even write these words are not individually capable of reason; and yet I can experience my mind as existing and having causal impact on the universe (and if I play my cards right, influence on other beings' minds). Our minds emerge temporarily in the cosmic flow of atoms, *really* exist, but will eventually get recycled over and over like they did before I was born.

**PS: I'm also including the sheepdogs as essential parts of the "flock." I do NOT want anyone to analogize the sheep as the atoms and the dogs as some kind of non-physical cause of the flock's behavior. They're all part of what I am calling the "flock." The sheep and dogs act in concert giving rise to the emergent phenomena I'm referring to as the "flock."

Okay, I (mostly) read Sedley's and O'Keefe's articles and believe I get the gist of each. I will freely admit that I'm more of a Sedley-leaning Epicurean than an O'Keefe-leaning, but they both have provided volumes of helpful materials. With that...

Quote from Cassius

If all someone has time for is the big picture, I'd suggest that page 34 of Dr. Sedley's article.

...in which Sedley posits that:

Quote from Sedley

It was to reject reductionist atomism. Almost uniquely among Greek philosophers he arrived at what isnowadays the unreflective assumption of almost anyone with a smattering of science, that there are truths at the microscopic level of elementary particles, and further very different truths at the phenomenal level; that the former must be capable of explaining the latter; but that neither level of description has amonopoly of truth.

From my reading, both Sedley and O'Keefe would agree on this point. Additionally, I think both would agree that Epicurus posited that all material phenomena are the result of atomic motion and interactions between atoms.

I personally like O'Keefe's distinction between reductionism and eliminativism and although it may be splitting hairs, they are two hairs benefit from splitting. I'll admit I don't like the academic-sound of the terms. But to reduce something to an explanation of atomic interaction in the void is not to eliminate the very real experience of phenomena at our level of perception. O'Keefe provides some examples:

Quote from O'Keefe

First, the mind is a real thing, but it is nothing above and beyond the atoms that constitute it. An example of this sort of thing would be a flock of sheep. A flock of sheep is a real entity, but it is nothing above and beyond the group of sheep gathered together. Second, although the mind has properties and powers which none of its atoms have, it has these only in virtue of the properties of and relationships amongst its constituent atoms, and the possession of these properties can be explained by reference to these properties and relationships. Third, appeals to structural and formal elements are permissible, but only if they are ultimately reducible to relationships amongst atoms, e.g., the tendency of a group of atoms to clump together because of the atoms' hooks getting entangled.

I see no differences Epicurus would have with this explanation. We are physical beings, living in a material universe, and the properties we experience - the sensations we have are real and true and reflect a real reality external to ourselves - are all the result of the interaction of atomic motion. Including our minds! I see no way around the Epicureans holding that view. Atomic motion gives rise to bodies; we are bodies; our bodies react to and sense the world through our sensations and make sense of it through reason; reason is a property of our minds; and our minds arise from atomic motions.

Now, saying all that, while we do NOT know the full processes that makes our "minds" - our brains - work; we can rest assured (like looking at Alexander the Oracle Mongers' snake) that the process is ultimately understandable and has a physical basis (which no doubt includes chemical, electrical, cellular, physiological, environmental and more aspects). There are no woo-woo, magic, metaphysical aspects. This brings me to the unease I feel about Sedley's other arguments in his paper.

On p. 42 of Sedley's article, he talks about volition being a "non-physical cause" for an atoms change in motion or position. On p. 45, he writes:

Quote from Sedley, 42

All this evidence supports the following story. Epicurus dismissed the reductionist psychology of earlier atomism as self-refuting, and thus justified a- non-reductionist psychology which permitted the attribution of responsibility to an autonomous self with volitions, beliefs, impulses, etc., none of these being
straightforwardly reducible to patterns of atomic motion. That was, in my view, his most significant contribution to the crusade against determinism. But his atomic and logical theories still had to be so constructed as not to preempt the self's decisions by determining the animal's behaviour independently of them. Hence the indeterministic swerve, and, parallel to it in logic, the denial of bivalence - both theories being designed not to explain what volition is but to guarantee its efficacy by keeping alternative possibilities genuinely open.

The term "non-physical cause" gives me pause and skirts a little too close to "metaphysical cause" or worse "supernatural (beyond natural) cause."

O'Keefe to my reading (and I realize I need to go back over both articles with the proverbial fine tooth comb... but that probably isn't going to happen) gets around the potential for woo-woo in writing things like:

Quote

When Epicurus says that things "depend on us" because our reasoning is causally efficacious, what this amounts to is still up for grabs: but the crucial point is that it still is up for grabs. Once again, Epicurus' argument is compatible with a wide variety of views about the mind. Annas puts this rightly: "We should note that this argument does not show that Epicurus is not a determinist. It shows that he thinks that, properly understood, determinism must be compatible with our commonsense understanding of ourselves and of the world."34 Epicurus thinks it impossible to abandon our conception of ourselves as agents and be pragmatically consistent about it.35 What we become is not determined by our natural temperaments, since we can reason about what is best and change ourselves. Nor is what we do determined by the environment, since how we respond to the environment depends on our beliefs also, and is up to us.36 And to argue against this thesis already presupposes its truth.

There are hairs to split in both articles: reductionism vs eliminativism; determinism vs fatalism. And these appear to be important hairs.

But, in concluding this post, let address Cassius's concern for addressing the needs of the common person-on-the-street and "big picture" approach:

The brain/mind doesn't work the way Epicurus or Lucretius thought it did many centuries ago. I personally find it of historical philosophical interest to put myself in the mind of Epicurus and to read what he wrote on the topic. I am not mandated to adopt his 2,000 year old ideas as some kind of Epicurean orthodoxy from which I can't divert. We find out more and more every year even more exciting things about how our mind and consciousness and thinking work, including evidently contributions from our gut bacteria. We don't have soul atoms that are spread through our body. We can analogize and make metaphors trying to fit the ancient peg into the modern scientific hole. That's a fool's errand. The primary "big pictures" at this level are:

• The mind is a part of the body and dies with the body.
• The mind - no matter what the processes are at play - is composed of physical processes not some intangible, supernatural, ethereal substance.
• For me, I sense that I have volition and reason to change my own behavior and, therefore, can attempt to influence the behavior of other beings who have their own volition and reason. That is the realm in which I move and live.
• I can understand that lying underneath all that are atoms and void (or elementary particles if we want to go modern); but that doesn't make my lived experience any less real.

There's also the textual evidence that all scholars of Epicurus deal with, including O'Keefe and Sedley. Both are looking at the same fragmentary papyri and making guesses and interpretations on what they read. The differences in these two authors current papers often come down to a difference in what they see IN the ancient texts. Neither can say the the other is absolutely wrong; nor can either one assert that theirs is the ONLY right interpretation. Where there are holes in the texts, neither can say for certain what went there. This is where the "big picture" should come into play as well. Scholars can argue (and I enjoy it!) over whether that's an omicron or an upsilon in the text that completely changes the word. Where there is ambiguity, obscurity, or simply absence of text, we need to step back - if we're going to think of ourselves as Epicureans and try to figure out the big takeaway UNTIL more evidence comes to light. That's where the value of scholarship comes in in this argument. As Epicureans, we withhold final judgement on a thorny problem until more evidence is available. Was Epicurus a reductionist or a determinist or an eliminativist or a fatalist or a compatibilist or a ....? We can be more or less sure on each of those; however, we can be sure that he taught we live in a material universe with no need of supernatural governors looking over our shoulders and that we have the responsibility for making our choices and rejections with the reason we humans have and are expected to exercise.

Quote from Cassius

when good enough is good enough vs when the perfect becomes the enemy of the good.

Sorry, I'll admit I don't understand to what you're referring with that maxim here.

Quote from Bryan

O'Keefe makes it simple when he says: "To explain something is not necessarily to explain it away."

I do like that quote. And the article goes on...

Quote

To explain something is not necessarily to explain it away. Nor does saying that the mind is nothing above and beyond a group of atoms entail that the mind is unreal; it entails just the opposite: if the mind is identified with a group of atoms, and the group of atoms is real, so too is the mind. The reductionist in philosophy of mind need not say dismissively that mental facts are "mere appearances" of atomic facts; it is the
eliminativist who does that. ... A reductionist can accept that wholes have properties that their parts do not. People can cry, while atoms cannot, but if crying is nothing more than the secretion of water from the tear ducts of a living organism, we can explain what crying is, and why people can cry while atoms cannot, in a way consistent with being a reductionist about crying.

Podium Arts is great. Stratakis does an excellent job. I actually purchased the full letter to Menoeceus.

Here's a brief blog post on dynamic vs formal equivalence theories of translation:

Dynamic and Formal equivalence: putting translation theory into practice.

How close should you stick to the meaning of the source text in translation?

thattranslationblog.com

Dan McClellan provides his take on translation (and mentions dynamic/formal theories are outdated):

Great thread. I would add that this doesn't only apply to translations of text from non-English languages. Consider the difficulty people have with reading Shakespeare or even trying to read something in English from the 18th or 19th century. Your point about "familiarity with idiomatic terminology" is applicable there, too. For ancient languages, consider how hard it is to get the jokes in a translated play by Aristophanes or to understand the "oldest joke" - “A dog walks into a bar and says, ‘I cannot see a thing. I’ll open this one.’”

What makes the world’s first bar joke funny? No one knows.

A 4,000-year-old Sumerian proverb about a dog that walks into a tavern has left scholars and thousands of online commenters scratching their heads. The joke’s…

www.wbur.org

It just struck me today that Scots call New Year's Eve "Hogmanay"... If anyone can put the "hog" in Hogmanay, it's the Epicureans in Epicurus' sty!

So, Happy Hogmanay... Lang may yer lum reek! (Long may your chimney smoke!)

I need to go "back to the books" before sharing half-baked ideas!

I've been under the mistaken idea that the Hermarchus/Idomeneus letter was Epicurus' will. Egads! I got that wrong. To cement this in my mind: The will is DL 10.16-21. The letter in question is just a short section of DL 10.22.

The will lays out, in detail, what Epicurus wants done, including (emphasis added):

***

19 And let Amynomachus and Timocrates take care of Epicurus, the son of Metrodorus, and of the son of Polyaenus, so long as they study and live with Hermarchus. Let them likewise provide for the maintenance of Metrodorus's daughter,32 so long as she is well-ordered and obedient to Hermarchus; and, when she comes of age, give her in marriage to a husband selected by Hermarchus from among the members of the School ; and out of the revenues accruing to me let Amynomachus and Timocrates in consultation with Hermarchus give to them as much as they think proper for their maintenance year by year. ... Let them make Hermarchus trustee of the funds33 along with themselves, in order that everything may be done in concert with him, who has grown old with me in philosophy and is left at the head of the School. And when the girl comes of age, let Amynomachus and Timocrates pay her dowry, taking from thep roperty as much as circumstances allow, subject to the approval of Hermarchus. ... And if anything should happen to Hermarchus before the children of Metrodorus grow up, Amynomachus and Timocrates shall give from the funds bequeathed by me, so far as possible, enough for their several needs, as long as they are well ordered. "

***

The letter in question in 10.22 just says: watch over the children of Metrodorus.

Throughout the will, Hermarchus is assigned the care of Metrodorus' son and daughter in the third person: ie, Hermarchus should do this. In the letter in 22, the addressee of the letter is asked "to watch over Metrodorus' children." It seems to me that it would make perfect sense for Epicurus to write a personal message to Hermarchus in the end asking him to watch the kids as a last personal memento for his trusted friend and student to keep.

In my opinion, this points to Cicero having the addressee correct.

There was a letter to Idomeneus, U130 (emphasis added):

***

Plutarch, Against Colotes, 18, p. 1117D: But if, Colotes, you had met with expressions of Socrates’ such as Epicurus pens in a letter to Idomeneus: "So send us for the care of our sacred body an offering of first-fruits on behalf of yourself and your children – so I am inspired to put it;" to what more unmannerly terms could you have resorted? {Traditionally, first-fruits were offered to a god – support for Epicurus’ bodily needs is so depicted.}

Athenaeus, Deipnosophists, VII p. 279F: It was in fact, for the sake of the belly and the pleasures of the flesh in general that this man flattered Idomeneus and Metrodorus. ... Epicurus, in fact, was the teacher of these men.

***

Note that there are children mentioned in the letter to Idomeneus, but they're Idomeneus' children. Diogenes could have mixed up the letters in his piles of documents or a copyist confused them or any number of other misattributions.

For those reasons, I'm giving the point to Cicero... As much as it pains me to do it

PS. Having reread the text of the letters, it seems to me that Diogenes Greek text rings more personal and thus sounds more like a last note to a dear friend. Plus, Diogenes doesn't actually include the salutation to Hermarchus but only says there's also this letter "to Idomeneus". So right now:

1 point to Cicero for the salutation

2 points to Diogenes for a more authentic sounding text

I also just remembered this in my Internet Archive favorites. No idea if it'll be helpful, but here it is:

Quote from Cassius

Cicero probably had superior "knowledge" of Epicurus, on issues like prolepsis and images, given the proximity in time and probably number of teachers.

Ah, but he was also more likely to have access to primary texts through his friends and his personal connections than Diogenes may have had. Remember:

• Epicurus 341–270 BCE
• Hermarchus c. 325-c. 250 BC
• Cicero 106 – 43 BCE (Garden continued to thrive in his time)
• ....~250+ years
• Diogenes Laertius fl. 3rd century CE

Quote from Eikadistes

Then again, upon review, Epicurus directly explains that is is writing the letter to ῡ̔μῖν (plural pronoun in the accusative) meaning "to y'all", so perhaps the letter was to a non-present group (the Garden in Lampsakos vis-a-vis Idomeneus?) It seems unlikely he would have been writing to "y'all" if that group were in his presence, or just sitting in another room, or down the street.

Unless it was literally his last will and testament addresses to "the Garden" with Hermarchus the incoming leader.