Posts by Don

Quote from Cassius

That's because if we start and stop with that letter we are taking Epicurus' words out of context, and not accounting for the circumstance that Epicurus was writing for students who wanted summaries to make things easier to remember, but who were otherwise very familiar and had intimate access to his full views.

That's one reason I wrote My translation and commentary of that letter, to provide some context, both historically and philosophically. I need to give that a thorough reread and maybe do an updated edition. It's been a few years now.

Honestly, it would probably be more accurate for Alexa to be masquerading as an Epicurean student but actually to be listening to only report back EVERYTHING to its Stoic or Academic manufacturers so the info can be used against the Garden.

The more I learn about AI in all its nefarious energy-hogging consumer-facing forms, the more I loathe it. Use it for big data analysis or other academic applications, but stop shoehorning it into everything. Just one example: Google's AI summaries at the top of ALL my searches are intrusive and far and away useless the large majority of the time. I still use Google, but I'm rapidly being more likely to use other search engines for this exact reason.

Any novelty it did have has worn off for me.

Quote from Rolf

antinatalists want to minimise pain

I interpreted it that they want to minimize existence. A non-existent thing/entity/person cannot be said to "not experience pain." The "being" that is not born doesn't exist. Less beings in the world doesn't alleviate the pain experienced by the already existing beings.

Quote from Rolf

“throw the baby out with the bathwater”

I found your choice of metaphor directly on point. Well played!

Quote from Rolf

Besides, it’s not like Epicureanism is an inherently pro-natalist philosophy. Epicurus never told us to “be fruitful and multiply”. As far as I’m aware, it’s fairly neutral on the question of whether or not we should procreate.

Generally true. The philosophy doesn't take a pro or anti stance other than to value existence over non-existence and to evaluate whether to have children in light of acknowledgement of the pleasure and pain involved. It's a very subjective decision.

Not directly relevant to the natalist question, but at least Epicurus was genuinely concerned with the continued well-being of Metrodorus' children, enough to specifically address their care in his will.

I came across this article today:

The Case for Not Being Born

The anti-natalist philosopher David Benatar argues that it would be better if no one had children ever again.

www.newyorker.com

I knew the term anti-natalism but never heard of Benatar or his work. But it struck me as diametrically opposed to Epicurean philosophy.

For example:

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Like a boxer who has practiced his counters, Benatar has anticipated a range of objections. Many people suggest that the best experiences in life—love, beauty, discovery, and so on—make up for the bad ones. To this, Benatar replies that pain is worse than pleasure is good. Pain lasts longer: “There’s such a thing as chronic pain, but there’s no such thing as chronic pleasure,” he said. It’s also more powerful: would you trade five minutes of the worst pain imaginable for five minutes of the greatest pleasure? Moreover, there’s an abstract sense in which missing out on good experiences isn’t as bad as having bad ones. “For an existing person, the presence of bad things is bad and the presence of good things is good,” Benatar explained. “But compare that with a scenario in which that person never existed—then, the absence of the bad would be good, but the absence of the good wouldn’t be bad, because there’d be nobody to be deprived of those good things.” This asymmetry “completely stacks the deck against existence,” he continued, because it suggests that “all the unpleasantness and all the misery and all the suffering could be over, without any real cost.”

Plutarch (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Plutarch was a prominent citizen and even the priest of Apollo at Delphi, being instrumental in reviving and reconstructing the site. He traveled extensively, and was a strong proponent and student of Plato's philosophy.

Plutarch's anti-Stoic and anti-Epicurean writings "are often captious and in many instances betray a less than fair engagement with the views being opposed (see Warren 2011, 290–293 but also Kechagia 2011, 135–294 for a vindication of Plutarch’s polemics in Against Colotes)."

"both Stoicism and Epicureanism were still thriving, mainly in virtue of their ethics. Plutarch wanted to show that Stoic and Epicurean ethics rest on mistaken assumptions about human nature and reality, which render their ethical doctrines useless"

"Two further features of Stoic and Epicurean philosophy appear to annoy Plutarch considerably: first, their dismissal of the aporetic/dialectical spirit that Socrates embodies, and which Plutarch regards as central to Plato’s philosophy and also to his teacher’s Ammonius (De E 385C; see also below sections 2, 3), and second, the Stoic and Epicurean adoption of a corporealist or materialist metaphysics and their rejection of the intelligible realm (that comprises God, Forms, intellects, souls), which was essential to Platonism."

"Ironically, perhaps, Plutarch’s polemical writings are of great value for us today also for the many quotations they contain from Stoics, Epicurus, and other authors whose works were not preserved into modern times, and for his reports and paraphrases of their views drawn from works no longer available to us. Were it not for Plutarch, our grasp of Stoic and Epicurean philosophy would be much less extensive than it is, and our ability to reconstruct and appreciate their ideas much reduced."

Quote from Cassius

14. 14 Given that we have both a mind and a body, it is ridiculous for Epicurus to place the good entirely in the body, and say that the mind has no good of its own.

Plutarch maintains there's a body and there's a soul (mind), σώματος καὶ ψυχῆς, and they have very different desires and pleasure they experience. Epicurus on the other hand acknowledges they are inextricably linked with one relying on the other.

It's obvious too that Plutarch is vehemently against seeing the gods as irrelevant to one's life in the sense of having blessings come from them or to fear being cursed by the gods. Plutarch sees the gods as being indispensable in living properly. Epicureans obviously threw him into apoplectic rage! He must have saw the school as an extreme danger to society and worked hard to stamp out the Gardens influence. Plutarch goes on a while about the Deity both in Nonne posse and Against Colotes.

Quote from Cassius

25. 25 Since Epicurus said that fear of punishment is a bad thing, and it helps men refrain from doing evil if they fear punishment from the gods, men would be better off if they were more superstitious so that they feared the gods and punishment after death even more than they do, and thus refrained from doing evil.

The way Plutarch puts it ...

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And Epicurus is of opinion that the only proper means to keep men from doing ill is the fear of punishments. So that we should cram them with more and more superstition still, and raise up against them terrors, chasms, frights, and surmises, both from heaven and earth, if their being amazed with such things as these will make them become the more tame and gentle. For it is more for their benefit to be restrained from criminal actions by the fear of what comes after death, than to commit them and then to live in perpetual danger and fear.

So religion is a tool to keep people afraid of punishment after death.

Quote from Cassius

27. 27 The belief that we cease to exist at death is demorailzing and dispiriting and thus prevents us from enjoying life.

This one really annoys me. Plutarch says

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Wherefore they must needs cut the very throats of them that shall with Epicurus tell them, We men were born once for all, and we cannot be born twice, but our not being must last for ever. For this will bring them to slight their present good as little, or rather indeed as nothing at all compared with everlastingness, and therefore to let it pass unenjoyed and to become wholly negligent of virtue and action

The emphasized line is aggravating! So understanding that one ceases to exist should not --does not-- slight the present!! It makes it all the more special and precious.

Plutarch also denigrates the memory of loved ones...

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If then (as Epicurus saith) the remembrance of a dead friend be a thing every way complacent; we may easily from thence imagine how great a joy they deprive themselves of who [p. 200] think they do but embrace and pursue the phantoms and shades of their deceased familiars, that have in them neither knowledge nor sense, but who never expect to be with them again, or to see their dear father and dear mother and sweet wife, nor have any hopes of that familiarity and dear converse they have that think of the soul with Pythagoras, Plato, and Homer.

I don't expect to "converse" with my deceased loved ones , but remembering times with them brings me joy. I can accept they're not living in the afterlife, and it doesn't diminish the pleasure of recollection. So, with all due respect, Bite me, Plutarch, you insufferable jerk! Egads!

Dictionaries of the Scots Language :: Grumphie

dsl.ac.uk

A wee grumphie in the heird o Epicurus!

Quote from Kalosyni

γλῠκῠ́ς (glŭkŭ́s, “sweet”)

And that's where we get glucose from in English.

From Etymology Online: name of a group of sugars (in commercial use, "sugar-syrup from starch"), 1840, from French glucose (1838), said to have been coined by French professor Eugène Melchior Péligot (1811-1890) from Greek gleukos "must, sweet wine," related to glykys "sweet" (see gluco-). It first was obtained from grape sugar. Related: Glucosic.

So, is Philodemus saying we shouldn't learn to play or just that we don't have to learn to play?

I'm assuming he'd think someone needs to learn how to play if there are public performances to enjoy?

Quote from Cassius

13. 13 Epicurus was particularly hypocritcal in disdaining the discussion or study of music and poetry, since he himself said that the wise man will love the music of public events.

It seems to me, the epicureans could take pleasure in the performance and not need to listen to critical analysis or music theory. The Epicureans right from Epicurus took pleasure in the festivals, including music and drama as I remember. Plutarch seems to be saying it's more pleasurable to critique and analyze? Hmmm, I don't think I agree with that.

On a separate note: In Against Colotes, Plutarch writes

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And they write in express terms: ‘We are to treat how a man may best keep and preserve the end of Nature, and how he may from the very beginning avoid entering of his own free will and voluntarily upon offices of magistracy, and government over the people.’ And yet again, these other words are theirs: ‘There is no need at all that a man should tire out his mind and body to preserve the Greeks, and to obtain from them a crown of wisdom; but to eat and drink well, O Timocrates, without prejudicing, but rather pleasing the flesh.’

This goes to the lathe biosas issue, but putting here for further comment later so I don't lose it.

Welcome aboard!!

Just curious: Assuming you're a fan of the Hubble Space Telescope and not necessarily the astronomer Edwin Humble?

Cassius really has done a great service in this outline. Kudos to you.

I also think it's important to put Plutarch into context temporally:

• Epicurus 341-270 BCE
• Colotes c. 320 – after 268 BCE
• Cicero (for additional context): 106 - 43 BCE
  • Cicero was writing his philosophical works around 150 years before Plutarch.
• Plutarch c. 40 - c. 120s CE

Plutarch is complaining about a work written by someone (Colotes) who lived around 350 years before him!! Don't forget in all this Colotes has been dead a loooong time before Plutarch started whining about his work. This also shows the stature in which Colotes work was obviously held, likely among the Epicurean school, for it to have survived intact for Plutarch to complain about it. Colotes' work was probably composed around the 270s BCE. Plutarch was writing around the 100 CE.

Quote from Cassius

There are 31 sections in this text, and to help organize the discussion here is a single sentence condensing each one. Links are to the Perseus edition:

1. 1 Colotes has written a book "That It Is Impossible To Live According to the Tenets of The Other Philosophers" and this will be in response.

2. 2 The speakers will respond to the Epicureans' name-calling against the other philosophers, and prove that it impossible to live pleasantly according to the philosophy of Epicurus.

I decided to go over to Plutarch's Against Colotes and see what Colotes actually said (well, said according to Plutarch) and what were some of his responses. I find it amusing that Plutarch says that (Impossible 2) he will show that "it is impossible to live a pleasurable life according to their tenets," but Colotes evidently contended that it was impossible to live, no qualifiers, according to the other philosophers. Colotes was saying one couldn't live one's life. In Against Colotes, Plutarch says "And our parents indeed have, with the assistance of the Gods, given us our life; but to live well comes to us from reason, which we have learned from the philosophers, which favors law and justice, and restrains our concupiscence. Now to live well is to live sociably, friendly, temperately, and justly; of all which conditions they leave us not one, who cry out that man's sovereign good lies in his belly, and that they would not purchase all the virtues together at the expense of a cracked farthing, if pleasure were totally and on every side removed from them."

I don't think Epicurus or Colotes would deny that living pleasurably entails law, justice, sociability, friendliness, temperance, and acting justly. Heck. One of the PDs says this outright. Plutarch (and Cicero) have to set up a straw man to "take down" Epicurus.

In Against Colotes (AC, from here on out), Plutarch says "the Epicureans reproach the other philosophers, that by their wisdom they bereave man of his life; whilst the others on the contrary accuse them of teaching men to live degenerately and like beasts." Again, straw man.

Colotes appears to be going hard against the Skeptics. Plutarch quotes him as saying ‘These deny that there is a man, a horse, a wall; but say that they themselves (as it were) become walls, horses, men,’ or ‘are impressed with the images of walls, horses, or men.’ Colotes is striking hard at those who say a man, a horse, a wall don't exist. If they take that position, they literally can't live.

Quote from Cassius

3. 3 The Epicureans base their claim to pleasure in the body, a "poor, rotten, and unsure" thing that experiences more pains than pleasures, both in terms of intensity and duration, and yet Epicurus has made "the removal of all that pains the common definition of pleasure."

4. 4 Epicurus' emphasis on mental pleasure is of no avail to him, because when he talks about mental pleasures he focuses on memory of bodily pleasures, and these are only an empty shadow - a dream - a fume - of the body's pleasure.

5. 5 Mental pleasures cannot rid us of bodily pains, as we see from the fact that the Epicureans themselves suffered diseases such as strangury, gripes, consumptions and dropsies; and life in this condition cannot really be pleasant, as they claim.

No Epicurean ever said mental pleasures rid one of bodily pains. The strangury etc are obvious jabs against Epicurus. Epicurus never said his pain went away. He said he could do battle with it with his memories of, basically, a life well-lived. His memories gave him joy in the midst of pain. Plutarch's being a jerk.

Quote from Cassius

6. 6 Just like the Epicureans claim that the unjust man lives in fear of punishment, they too must live in fear of bodily pain.

7. 7 It is ridiculous for the Epicureans to argue that when all pain is driven out there is no further room for pleasure, and that to be without pain makes them equal to the gods -even the brute animals sing and fly about after they have satisfied their longings, and Epicurus would deny us even that!

Epicurus doesn't deny us anything. While we need to make prudent choices of what to pursue and from what to flee (and I use 'flee' on purpose just to poke Cassiusa little ), pleasure is good and Epicurus doesn't deny variations in pleasure.

Quote from Cassius

8. 8 Those things that we require for life do not deserve the name of good, nor even the name of pleasure, any more than does a rogue's freedom from being in jail, and even brute animals are free from the worries of hell or gods - and yet Epicurus praises such freedom so highly!

9. 9 The bodily pleasures and memories of them are but slight, and have nothing in them that is great and considerable like that which comes from the contemplative and active and heroic aspects of life.

10. 10 The pleasures of the body, or memories of our dead friends, are nothing in comparison with the pleasures of the mind that come from contemplating Homer or Xenophon.

LOL!! "And who could take greater satisfaction either in eating when a-hungry or drinking when a-dry amongst the Phaeacians, than in going over Ulysses's relation of his own voyage and rambles? And what man could be better pleased with the embraces of the most exquisite beauty, than with sitting up all night to read over what Xenophon hath written of Panthea, or Aristobulus of Timoclea, or Theopompus of Thebe?" Personally, I'd take eating and drinking among the Phaeacians and the embraces of beauty... unless one is in the mood for Ulysses or Xenophon. Epicurus doesn't lay down dictates on this kind of choice. Whichever would lead to more pleasure.

Quote from Cassius

11. 11 The Epicureans chase away the pleasures of mathematics and history and geometry and music and the like, and these are far more pleasurable than the pleasures of the body.

"The bare contemplating and comprehending of these now engender in the learners both unspeakable delights and a marvellous height of spirit." Plutarch, my man, you're describing taking pleasure in something! LOL "comparing with these the fulsome debauchees of victualling-houses and stews" Straw man alert!!

Quote from Cassius

12. 12 Epicurus bids us to set sail and fly from these greater pleasures of liberal arts, mathematics, poets, and especially history, which was derided by Metrodorus, in favor of grosser pleasures of the body.

Plutarch quotes Metrodorus: "Wherefore let it never disturb you, if you know not either what side Hector was of, or the first verses in Homer's Poem, or again what is in its middle." If one knows or doesn't know what's in the Iliad, it need not disturb them... Don't worry about a cadre of snooty elite philosophers who want to look down their nose at you for not knowing it.

That's enough for now. I'll come back and put some notes in for the other sections possibly later. I'm just getting a bunch of sour grapes from Plutarch and his ilk, setting up straw men and knocking them down.

Inwood and Gerson are solid translations.

Wow! Well and passionately said! Are you sure you even need me for the Plutarch episode? I feel like we could just wind you up and let you go.

In 7, Plutarch goes on about Epicurus' quote (and it is a quote) that "The very essence of good arises from the escaping of bad, and a man's recollecting, considering, and rejoicing within himself that this hath befallen him. For what occasions transcending joy (he saith) is some great impending evil escaped; and in this lies the very nature and essence of good, if a man attain unto it aright, and contain himself when he hath done, and not ramble and prate idly about it." [ U423, source: This section of Plutarch ]

An alternative translation:

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."

Ibid., 8, p. 1091E: Thus Epicurus, and Metrodorus too, suppose {that the middle is the summit and the end} when they take the position that escape from ill is the reality and upper limit of the good.

Plutarch whines about this "escape from evil" and the memory of this being the Epicureans' "highest good" and then turns around in other sections (13) to castigate the Epicureans for taking joy in festivals (but not in engaging in critical arguments about music and poetry):

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Epicurus saith, when he pronounceth in his book called his Doubts that his wise man ought to be a lover of public spectacles and to delight above any other man in the music and shows of the Bacchanals (ἀκροάμασι καὶ θεάμασι Διονυσιακοῖς); and yet he will not admit of music problems or of the critical enquiries of [p. 177] philologists, no, not so much as at a compotation. Yea, he advises such princes as are lovers of the Muses rather to entertain themselves at their feasts either with some narration of military adventures or with the importune scurrilities of drolls and buffoons, than to engage in disputes about music or in questions of poetry. For this very thing he had the face to write in his treatise of Monarchy, as if he were writing to Sardanapalus, or to Nanarus satrap of Babylon. For neither would a Hiero nor an Attalus nor an Archelaus be persuaded to make a Euripides, a Simonides, a Melanippides, a Crates, or a Diodotus rise up from their tables, and to place such scaramuchios in their rooms as a Cardax, an Agrias, or a Callias, or fellows like Thrasonides and Thrasyleon, to make people disorder the house with hollowing and clapping.

Plutarch is all over the place, in Section 16-17 he rails against Metrodorus:

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And are not Metrodorus's words something like to these when he writes to his brother thus: It is none of our business to preserve the Greeks, or to get them to bestow garlands upon us for our wit, but to eat well and drink good wine, Timocrates, so as not to offend but pleasure our stomachs. And he saith again, in some other place in the same epistles: How gay and how assured was I, when I had once learned of Epicurus the true way of gratifying my stomach; for, believe me, philosopher Timocrates, our prime good lies at the stomach. In brief, these men draw out the dimensions of their pleasures like a circle, about the stomach as a centre. And the truth is, it is impossible for those men ever to participate of generous and princely joy, such as enkindles a height of spirit in us and sends forth to all mankind an unmade hilarity and calm serenity, that have taken up a sort of life that is confined, unsocial, inhuman, and uninspired [p. 184] towards the esteem of the world and the love of mankind.

You can't have it both ways, and both Plutarch and Cicero seem to ascribe both debauchery and ascetism to the Epicurean school. It can't be both, and so it comes across as stereotyping, hyperbole, or caricature.

Great outline, Cassius . This will be VERY helpful.

Quote from Patrikios

But a review of that book by DeWitt may be a discussion in another thread.

Epicurus And His Philosophy - Norman DeWitt

I've made a number of posts here:

Epicurus and His Philosophy - Chapter Specific Threads

Quote from Eikadistes

I'd like to get one and experiment, but it's not in my cards at the moment.

Try your local public library. They'll often have them in their maker spaces and print files for patrons.

Quote from DaveT

First, not too many people are going to read this book. On Amazon, it has 27 reader reviews, and it’s been out since last January.

Good perspective... albeit still aggravating they get away with it. Discussing in a wider forum could just call more attention to it.

Quote from Rolf

it’s a shame because it represents the vast majority of discourse around Epicurus.

Agreed.

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

This is the word the Epicureans used, including Epicurus:

φεύγω • (pheúgō)

(intransitive) to flee, run off, go a certain direction with haste (often with prepositions)

(transitive) to flee, escape, avoid, get away from (danger or trouble)

(transitive or intransitive) to leave the country, go into exile

(intransitive) to be exiled, banished, driven out of the country [with ὑπό (hupó, + genitive) ‘by someone’]

(intransitive, present and imperfect) to be in exile, live in banishment

(perfect) to have escaped, be safe from

(law, chiefly present and imperfect) to be accused of a crime; often with δίκην (díkēn) and genitive of the crime

Usage notes

The present and imperfect often have a conative reading: to try to get away, intend to leave.

Quote from Cassius

It's not reason that is to be distrusted, but Stoicism.

I would even say that it's not even "but Stoicism" it is" but reliance on reason alone separate from the physical material world experienced by your senses."