Posts by Don

As Cassius pointed out on the announcements, Thanksgiving is this week in the US. I feel this is the most Epicurean of holidays with its emphasis on expressing gratitude. In celebration, I share two Vatican Sayings that emphasize this point. Have a safe and joyful holiday to our US friends and for those not in the US, don't forget to take a moment to remember and to take pleasure in the good things you've experienced.

VS 17. It is not the young man who is most happy, but the old man who has lived beautifully; for despite being at his very peak the young man stumbles around as if he were of many minds, whereas the old man has settled into old age as if in a harbor, secure in his gratitude for the good things he was once unsure of. οὐ νέος μακαριστὸς ἀλλὰ γέρων βεβιωκὼς καλῶς· ὁ γὰρ νέος ἀκμῇ πολὺς ὑπὸ τῆς τύχης ἑτεροφρονῶν πλάζεται· ὁ δὲ γέρων καθάπερ ἐν λιμένι τῷ γήρᾳ καθώρμικεν, τὰ πρότερον δυσελπιστούμενα τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἀσφαλεῖ κατακλείσας χάριτι.

VS 19. He who forgets the good things he had yesterday becomes an old man today. τοῦ γεγονότος ἀμνήμων ἀγαθοῦ γέρων τήμερον γεγένηται.

Oh, I have no qualms about Epicurean aliens! I think this is one philosophy that wouldn't even blink if life on another planet was found. "Duh," said the Epicurean. "That's cool, but we expected that all along." Plus any alien could understand, I'd bet, pleasure and pain so we'd just have to get past the language barrier to explain it.

The gods, on the other hand, are supposed to "live" in the intermundia/metakosmia between worlds. There *may* be beings who could maintain their atomic integrity and live lives of total pleasure, but *personally* I think it more likely that the gods are mental archetypes of the completed Epicurean life.

Lucretius does a good job of conveying that we can talk about Ceres, Bacchus, et al as long as we know we're personifying metaphorically grain and wine etc. Which, in my opinion, bolsters an idealist conception of "the gods" writ large in Epicureanism.

Quote from Susan Hill

Quote from Godfrey

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It's not my personal experience of “the Other”...

Susan would you be comfortable elaborating on this? I'm wondering if that could be helpful in defining what exactly we're discussing.

It gets a bit more complicated if you are talking about Eastern philosophies where you can realize your self (atman/ jiva) as being one with God/Brahman/Perusha etc., but in most cases, an experience of the divine is of something not identical to oneself. It is of a separate consciousness, being, or intelligence.

I've always found Eastern philosophies intriguing, especially their contrast to traditional Western religions. And what you said in some ways strikes at the idealist vs realist debate within Epicureanism. Two essential elements, however, are (1) There is no supernatural creator of the cosmos (The cosmos began and is sustained by the interplay of atoms and void), and (2) The gods have no interest in "governing" the cosmos nor in having interaction with humans. If a realist position is favored, humans can have a prolepsis of the gods, the divine, but it's not a two way street. If idealist, we can use the gods as exemplars of the potential of the Epicurean path. That's a very boiled down summary but those 2 elements, in my understanding, are essential to any form of Epicureanism.

Ah! I see we can react to posts and not just like them. But you have to click on them to see who reacted. Still that's kind of cool

I think the risk is to start to believe you actually are a god. That would certainly be using your imagination!

Just to be clear: I am NOT advocating Epicurean Deity Yoga! I am not going down that kind of syncretic rabbit hole! Just trying to contextualize that peak experience in an Epicurean framework.

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I'm curious why you would say "even you have experienced" peak experiences-- why the "even"? Aren't these just part of being human? I guess there are some people who don't have them but I thought most of us did.

Elayne , I certainly didn't mean any insult or anything derogatory. I sincerely apologize if that was conveyed! That was not my intention!

That "even" was put in for emphasis to show that this is a widespread - possibly universal - phenomenon. One doesn't need to be religious or spiritual.

I now realize I should have used different verbage to get that idea across.

Elayne , I honestly can't tell whether you're open to what I posted or not. Sorry.

Just to clarify:

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It baffles me why imagination is seen as somehow insulting or inferior, vs having a literal image from a literal being.

That's what I was trying to convey, possibly clumsily. In my contextual reinterpretation here of "religious experiences", there are no literal beings. The "idealist" approach honors Epicurus's "there are gods" in the sense of imaginative archetypal concepts of blessedness and incorruptibility. The "images" are generated by humans "toward" the gods.

Those peak experiences - and as you say even you have experienced them - need to be accounted for and placed in a context once one "comes down" from them. "What was that all about?" My offering here is to say those experiences are what it would feel like to be a "god" - the ineffable sensation of pleasure during such an experience is what it would "feel" like to be a god. You're not God or a god, but that's a genuine experience of what it might feel like to embody the blessedness and incorruptibility of what Epicurus wrote. It's a physical manifestation of an archetypal concept using an Epicurean "theological" vocabulary.

I might even go so far as to suggest that that experience itself is the prolepses Epicurus talked about since those experiences seem so widespread.

In re-reading this thread, I began to wonder if the experiences referred to as peak, religious, spiritual, etc. are one way that people can geta taste of the gods' existence.

I am *firmly* in the Sedley "idealist" camp when it comes to Epicurus's gods. I am (mostly) convinced by his arguments, so i do not believe there are actual beings living in the intermundia. But I come back to 2 points:

1. "There are gods" but "they are not as the hoi polloi believe them to be"

2. BUT people *do* have religious, blissful experiences.

How to reconcile these? Maybe those experiences allow some to actualize the existence of those idealized gods in a physical manifestation and literally, for a short time, to feel as if they live as gods. While experiencing the pleasures of blessedness (makarios) one also experiences a sensation of timelessness which feels like incorruptibility. I fully realize this could be going well beyond the opposit pale, but i wanted to at least throw it out there. It's *one* way to reinterpret those real experiences in an Epicurean context.

Quote from Cassius

At first I was thinking that taking the original seemed a little overboard, but I suppose in that day they were actually doing the owner a favor by giving them a newer version that might last longer?

Oh no, just the opposite. The copy would be more prone to scribal errors. especially since they were probably hastily copied.

The owners would not have been happy, but what were they going to do about it.

Quote from JJElbert

Crosspost; thank you Don!

You used a primary source though, so this point goes to you!

Oh, it actually happened. Here's the section getting the Wikipedia article and the article has multiple references. I've always enjoyed the idea of library agents stomping onboard a ship:

According to the Greek medical writer Galen, under the decree of Ptolemy II, any books found on ships that came into port were taken to the library, where they were copied by official scribes. The original texts were kept in the library, and the copies delivered to the owners. The Library particularly focused on acquiring manuscripts of the Homeric poems, which were the foundation of Greek education and revered above all other poems. The Library therefore acquired many different manuscripts of these poems, tagging each copy with a label to indicate where it had come from.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_o…ria?wprov=sfla1

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(For a gross example, attempts to study claims of "ESP" or "gravity waves" or "cosmic rays"

I would not under any circumstances include ESP with gravity waves and cosmic rays.

ESP is repeatedly debunked, including failure of anyone to win the $1,000,000 prize from the Randi Foundation. If you're using this as shorthand for intuition, then maybe. But not ESP as a parapsychology phenomenon.

Gravity waves and cosmic rays are verifiable and verified physical phenomena. In fact, cosmic rays can be viewed in a homemade cloud chamber.

https://www.herculaneum.ox.ac.uk/papyri/online-resources

Quote from Susan Hill

I recently finished reading "The Significance of Worship and Prayer among the Epicureans" by George Depue Hadzsits. (Was it you who recommended that to me?? If not, have you read it?) It definitely takes things a little farther in suggesting that the pious can achieve a certain familiarity with the divine... I will go through it again and select some edifying excerpts for the Divinity forum.

It wasn't me. I just finished reading the Hadzsits article. Very intriguing. He does seem to provide more concrete motivations for the ancient Epicureans to take part in the standard rituals and prayers of the time. I think I'll have to read it again to get all the information from it. I get the impression that the gods - Venus, Athena, etc - could literally embody individual qualities of the Epicurean gods and so be an object of prayer and worship. That would lead one to emulate and embody those qualities oneself on a deeper personal level. No benefit flowed from the gods, but that didn't preclude gaining benefit from the practice. Is that part of what you got? Or am I misunderstanding?

I would agree awe is more complex. Looking at the babies in studies, their rapt attention certainly appears like awe from the outside. But the sustained nature of it makes it appear to me more than an emotion. I was going to say just an emotion. But my jury is out on awe.

I also think we have to distinguish among feeling (for which I personally am reserving only pleasure or pain and equating to reaction for purposes of Epicureanism) and emotion and prolepses. I think some or all 3 are connected but they're not equivalent. I personally equate "feeling" as in our other thread on "facts don't care..." with emotions. I "feel" emotions are more cognitive as in "I feel angry" "I feel sad" etc. and we can think about how we "feel." Whereas the pathē "feelings" of pleasure and pain are immediate. We don't get to "feel" whether we react with pleasure or pain. We react! It's immediate. There are no mitigating factors. Nothing between us and the reaction. We are repelled or attracted. We sense pleasure or pain. No in between.

I keep going back to those experiments with infants and toddlers on fair play, "justice", etc. We humans seem too have an innate sense of justice and fair play as well as awe and amazement. That's where my analysis of the prolepses starts.

While others may be aware of this, I just discovered this week (listening to the Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics podcast) that an alternate story of Helen of Troy has her living out the war in Egypt while an image or είδωλον is sent by a god to Troy. After the city falls, the Helen είδωλον simply fades away in the wind.

I find it fascinating that this is the same word Epicurus uses for "images". Granted, words can evolve in meaning but I thought that was an interesting etymological trivia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_of_Troy?wprov=sfla1

Quote from Susan Hill

Quote from Don

Quote from Susan Hill

I apologize, Don. I didn’t mean to suggest that I was the only one with a desire to have Epicurean practices. I was thinking of things like practicing piety, worship, meditating on the gods, receiving “images” of them, and trying to emulate them.

Oh! No apologies necessary! I didn't want you to feel alone I continue to find your topics you mentioned there very interesting especially "meditating on the gods" and "trying to emulate them" and to tease out exactly what Epicurus, Philodemus, Lucretius, et al had to say in this area.

Quote from Cassius

However to bring this back to base I think a large part of what Epicurus was thinking about was the benefit of contemplating what "the best life" might entail, as a means of inspiration and aspiration and motivation, all of which are necessary at least to some degrees for some people to ward off the ultimate evil of "nihilism."

I think you're onto something there. Epicurus does say we can live a life worthy of the gods (or was that Lucretius?), so the gods serve a purpose just not a favor-seeking, punishment-dealing purpose.

I heard my name

The "clear vision" translates enargēs εναργής in the Greek. Here's an excerpt from my rough draft on that section of the letter. Enargēs is in verse 123f:

123d. πᾶν δὲ τὸ φυλάττειν αὐτοῦ δυνάμενον τὴν μετ᾽ ἀφθαρσίας μακαριότητα περὶ αὐτοῦ δόξαζε.

Remember δὲ "and, so" comes second in Greek but first in English.

The imperative verb comes last again: δόξαζε πᾶν = doxaze pan "You think, believe, imagine everything!" Believe what about everything?

τὸ φυλάττειν αὐτοῦ δυνάμενον τὴν μετ᾽ ἀφθαρσίας μακαριότητα περὶ αὐτοῦ = to phylattein autou dynamenon tēn met' aphtharsias makariotēta peri autou

φυλάττειν = to phylattein "to guard, maintain, preserve, etc." δυνάμενον = "being able, capable, strong enough to do, can"

Bringing all 123d back together: "Being able to preserve its own imperishability and blessedness for itself"

"(You, Menoikeus,) Believe everything about which a god is able to preserve its own imperishability and blessedness for itself."

123e. θεοὶ μὲν γάρ εἰσιν. θεοὶ μὲν γάρ εἰσιν. = theoi men gar eisin.

If we take out the μὲν (and look for the inevitable δε in the next phrase) and move γάρ "because, for" out of the way, we can pare this down to:

θεοὶ εἰσιν. "Gods exist." "There are gods."

The implications of those two words have had entire essays (if not books) written about them. We looked at this a little in 123b with ζώον. But Epicurus is not equivocating here: Gods exist. What he means by this we simply have to discover from his extant works and fragments.

123f. ἐναργὴς δέ ἐστιν αὐτῶν ἡ γνῶσις: Here's our δέ "on the other hand."

ἐναργὴς [δέ] ἐστιν αὐτῶν ἡ γνῶσις: = enargēs estin autōn hē gnōsis. "And the knowledge (ἡ γνῶσις) of them (θεοί "gods") is ἐναργὴς." But what does ἐναργὴς mean? It has two primary definitions:

- visible, palpable, in bodily shape, properly of gods appearing in their own forms (in Homer); so of a dream or vision; ex., ἐναργὴς ταῦρος "in visible form a bull, a very bull"

- manifest to the mind's eye, distinct

This fits right in with our problem with puzzling out how the gods are ζώον. Are they physically-existent material beings? Are they existing only as mental perceptions manifest merely to the mind's eye? We still don't have a clear idea of Epicurus's meaning!

123g. οἵους δ᾽ αὐτοὺς <οἱ> πολλοὶ νομίζουσιν, οὐκ εἰσίν: = hoious d' autous <hoi> polloi nomizousin, ouk eisin.

LSJ has this to say about οἵους: "Especially in Attic often stands for ὅτι τοῖος, τοία, τοῖον, so that the relative introduces the reason for the preceding statement… "if it is to be intimated that the reason is self-evident, and the assertion is beyond doubt, then δή is added…" (Note: Which it is here! δ' is ellided but is actually δή.) <οἱ> πολλοὶ is exactly what it means in English: "hoi polloi" the common people, the masses. It literally translates as "the many." Paraphrase: "The gods 'do not exist' (οὐκ εἰσίν) in the way that the 'hoi polloi' believe them (i.e., the gods) to."