New Graphics: Are You On Team Epicurus? | Comparison Chart: Epicurus vs. Other Philosophies | Chart Of Key Epicurean Quotations | Accelerating Study Of Canonics Through Philodemus' "On Methods Of Inference" | Note to all users: If you have a problem posting in any forum, please message Cassius
And Nate thank you again for having a better memory than I do, because this is another thread where we need to suit up Don on one side vs Norman DeWitt on the other (and apparently Archontia Liontaki too) as to whether to read sovereignty / kingship into Epicurus' writings on self-protection.
(But we were talking earlier about PD14 there. RE: PD14 - Alternate Translations Nevertheless a related issue?)
I see it's been upgraded to a "dispute" now 
Get ready to ruuummmble!!!
Display Morebeyond any need for seconds further data or reflection.
This seems to be the sticking point. This goes against the "withhold judgement" ideas of Epicurus's philosophy.
Also
Prolepsis http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?do…entry=pro/lhyis
vs hypolepsis http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?do…Du%28po%2Flhyis
PS: I should add that the "false assumptions" of the hoi polloi about the gods in the Letter to Menoikeus are specifically called hypolepses. As opposed to the true prolepses that Epicurus endorsed.
This is also the trap when we're looking at translations. Prolepsis, hypolepsis, etc. are one word, different words, in Greek, whereas we have to translate them into English with a modifier + noun many times. An X concept, a Y opinion, and if the same noun just gets modified with a different adjective it starts to muddy the water.
I don't have a better solution. But it's a consideration.
beyond any need for seconds further data or reflection.
This seems to be the sticking point. This goes against the "withhold judgement" ideas of Epicurus's philosophy.
Also
Prolepsis http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?do…entry=pro/lhyis
vs hypolepsis http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?do…Du%28po%2Flhyis
PS: I should add that the "false assumptions" of the hoi polloi about the gods in the Letter to Menoikeus are specifically called hypolepses. As opposed to the true prolepses that Epicurus endorsed.
No one has responded yet to my question in this post:. RE: PD14 - Alternate Translations
Anyone? I Want to check my thinking in this issue.
I'll take the bait.
"All killing is wrong" is an opinion about justice. You say that you are "convinced" by " my faculties and life-long experiences." How are you convinced? What convinced you? You use words like convinced and persuaded.
If an animal is trying to eat you, is it wrong to kill it to survive yourself or do you resign yourself to your fate?
Is it okay to kill a virus? Bacteria? Cancer cells are alive. Do you kill them. What scale does your opinion hold? Is it okay to kill a virus but not a multicellular being? Can you kill plants to eat? Or did it just apply to humans? It's okay to kill non-human animals? How non-human?
You can hold this opinion if you want, but it's not Epicurean. Sounds Pythagorean or Jain even. Epicurus talked about the contextual nature of living our lives and that Not killing principle sounds like a Platonic universal you want to apply to all time, all places, all situations.
Well that is interesting. I got the impression that all the action happened on the circle, too.
Even so, I think my original idea on #45 would hold true-ish. Maximum "limit" of x to the right is the maximum possible pleasure to experience according to this model.
Oops - only partly
If you "borrow" it, is the whole book there?
It's just a free account to borrow.
An episode of It's Okay to be Smart.
Gives a whole new shade of meaning to "Death is nothing to us." LOL 
It hit me recently that, in looking at the circumplex diagram, the "maximum" pleasure one can experience is at the intersection of the circle and the x axis to the right. Oddly enough, that's where one would be neutral on the arousal y axis. I'm not sure of all the implications of that but does that coincide with homeostasis, eudaimonia, equilibrium...? I *think* it's significant but I'm not sure what that significance is. So, I'm putting my thoughts here for other ideas.
You're correct. I haven't read this yet, but now I'm more curious.
In many ways it is excellent; in some ways it is disappointing.
As pertains to this idea, I have a whole different perspective on that work now that I know she wrote it when she was a teenager.
Approaching it as "Epicurean fan fiction" written by a teenage fan of Epicurus might allow for some leniency with her writing. With that it mind, too, it's more sophisticated than what I would initially expect from a teenager.
We are, indeed, evidently neither too young nor too old to love and study true philosophy!
She wrote A Few Days in Athens while she was still a teenager? Did not know that!
I agree with that comment, but I also think that Norman DeWitt had read more Greek in his lifetime up to writing that book than any ten of us,
Fully agree without question, but...
I've voiced my misgivings about Dewitt seeing Epicurean shadows behind every Christian tree, and I do not think Dewitt makes a strong case for the majority of them. I see his reference to the New Testament in that clip for PD14 which instantly makes me suspect. It seems he often went in with an agenda of finding New Testament echoes which makes me suspect of this specific "dynastic" translation then, too.
I always presumed he was referring to kings and kingdoms but never investigated the Greek.
Ah! That's the wrinkle when you start looking at the original text.
Wow!! That's a lot of work and much appreciated. Well done!!
I do find several of DeWitt's translations highly idiosyncratic. For example:
14.a “Although safety from the attacks of men has been secured to a certain degree by dynastic protection and abundance of means, that which comes of the retired life and withdrawal from the multitude is the most unalloyed” (De Witt, Epicurus and His Philosophy 189)
14.b “Even though security from the injuries of men may have been established to a certain degree by dynastic protection, the most unalloyed feeling of security is to be found in the retired life and withdrawal from the multitude." (De Witt, St. Paul and Epicurus 188)
I'm unclear on what he means by "dynastic protection." Is he referring to dynasties as in kings? Is he using a neologism to denote something like "dynamic protection" to give something similar to the spelling of the original Greek: δυνάμει (dynamei) "the power to repel."?
All that being said, I wouldn't even be able to raise this question without Eikadistes 's compilation here. Thanks!!
Wow very interesting on amber - now I am confused myself where it comes from!
Wikipedia to the rescue
I was unaware of the Latin and Greek variations on electrum and connection to electricity!
That's some quick turnaround time on the editing!! Wow! Nicely done, Cassius .
You may have addressed this and I may have missed it, but I was intrigued by the similarity of "meteorology" and "meteor." Apparently Greek ta meteōra means "the celestial phenomena, things in heaven above," plural of meteōron, literally "thing high up."
Oh, and we did not bring that up since I'm not sure we were aware of it! Thanks for this, Godfrey !
The Online Etymology Dictionary is great! That's one of my favorite language related resources!
Here's the LSJ http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?do…entry=mete/wros
This is from DL Book 1, Mensch translation:
24 And some, including the poet Choerilus, say he was the first to declare that souls are immortal. He was the first to discover the course of the sun from solstice to solstice, and the first, according to some, to say that the size of the sun is one seven hundred and twentieth part of the solar circle, <and that the size of the moon is the same fraction of the lunar circle.> He was the first to call the last day of the month the thirtieth, and the first, as some say, to reason about nature.
25 Aristotle and Hippias say that he attributed souls even to inanimate objects, arguing from the magnet and from amber.
Unfortunately I can't find ψυχή in any Greek version online but it's likely due to my ignorance
Don do you have a Greek to English comparison to verify that that's the word?
[24] Ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ αὐτὸν πρῶτον εἰπεῖν φασιν ἀθανάτους τὰς ψυχάς: ὧν ἐστι Χοιρίλος ὁ ποιητής. πρῶτος δὲ καὶ τὴν ἀπὸ τροπῆς ἐπὶ τροπὴν πάροδον εὗρε, καὶ πρῶτος τὸ τοῦ ἡλίου μέγεθος <τοῦ ἡλιακοῦ κύκλου ὥσπερ καὶ τὸ τῆς σελήνης μέγεθος> τοῦ σεληναίου ἑπτακοσιοστὸν καὶ εἰκοστὸν μέρος ἀπεφήνατο κατά τινας. πρῶτος δὲ καὶ τὴν ὑστάτην ἡμέραν τοῦ μηνὸς τριακάδα εἶπε. πρῶτος δὲ καὶ περὶ φύσεως διελέχθη, ὥς τινες.
Ἀριστοτέλης δὲ καὶ Ἱππίας φασὶν αὐτὸν καὶ τοῖς ἀψύχοις μεταδιδόναι ψυχῆς, τεκμαιρόμενον ἐκ τῆς λίθου τῆς μαγνήτιδος καὶ τοῦ ἠλέκτρου.
Yep, I've underlined the ψυχή forms in the Greek. Interestingly, the word used for "lifeless, inanimate" in that last paragraph is αψυχοις apsykhois "not-psykhē/un-psykhē"
Cassius may be interested to know that τῆς λίθου τῆς μαγνήτιδος is tēs lithos (rock .. As in Neolithic) tēs magnētidos (of Magnesia)
"Soul" in this sense almost sounds like "life force." I wonder if the concept has evolved over time?
I would assume they're talking about ψυχή psychē in Greek or anima/animus in Latin. Those are slippery terms, and it could be misleading in my opinion for them to just translate those "soul." There's a lot of baggage with that English word.
