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Posts by Don
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"Pleasure Activist" is my new phrase of the day.
The West is a guilt-culture, although some have observed that the Internet is changing it into a shame based culture. If so, I wonder if shame is any healthier than guilt.
I noticed that "title" too
Agree with the guilt. Considering the difference between "guilty pleasure" vs "shameful pleasure" is telling.
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Not sure if this translator is useful, or has already been mentioned:
It seems a little wonky and only gives individual words definition by definition one word at a time. I would recommend simply going straight to Wiktionary.com. I think that's just what akhos is doing, so just bypass the intermediary and go straight to Wiktionary which gives links to LSJ and other sources.
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This thread is for discussion of the list of twelve fundamentals such as suggested by DeWitt or Clay
Just to be clear, if anyone - DeWitt, Clay, Cassius, me, etc., - wants to assemble twelve "fundamentals" they're welcome to do it. There is zero fragmentary evidence for any definitive list of "twelve fundamentals" that Epicurus wrote and circulated. The only place this occurs - the ONLY place as far as I can find - is is the one in Diogenes Laertius (10.44): colour varies with the arrangement of the atoms he states in his "Twelve Rudiments". Δώδεκα στοιχειώσεσί ; further, that they are not of any and every size ; at any rate no atom has ever been seen by our sense.
I think any of us could go through the letter to Herodotus, or to Pythocles, or Lucretius, and pull out twelve random "fundamentals" in Epicurean physics... and it would be just as "authoritative" as the one DeWitt and Clay put together. We have no idea what was contained in Epicurus' "Twelve Rudiments" other than that he said:
- color varies with the arrangement of the atoms
- atoms aren't of any and every size
- no atom has ever been seen by our senses
...according to Diogenes Laertius. And we don't know if those 3 were "rudiments/fundamentals" or if they were describing another fundamental or... anything.
This is a soapbox of mine that I insist on standing on every once in a while. Finis for now.
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' *Still* contentious in the schools in 1994.
Mine was in the early 1980s.
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"But if cattle or lions had hands, so as to paint with their hands and produce works of art as men do, they would paint their gods and give them bodies in form like their own-horses like horses, cattle like cattle."
I used that exact quote in an anti-Creationist editorial written for my high school newspaper after a creationist came to our school and presented during an assembly.
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For German readers:
Gnosis Theon : Kleve, Knut : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive142 pagesarchive.orgThis is the work mentioned at the beginning in Farrington's chapter.
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For what it's worth, here's a section from The faith of Epicurus by Benjamin Farrington (1967)
The faith of Epicurus : Farrington, Benjamin, 1891- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archivexiii, 160 p. ; 22 cmarchive.orgAvailable to read with free account
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doesn't some kind of operation have to be "hard-coded" within us to get that process going from maybe as far back as the moment of conception?
Maybe our individual capacity, but I would say it goes further back than that since other animals have the same or similar capacity.
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You raise some solid points, Little Rocker . I especially find intriguing that statement: a "a 'proleptic' capacity or capacities that produce prolepseis". So, if I understand correctly, you're positing a mental capacity/faculty/process/function that leads to or produces something we can call a "prolepsis." And, since the texts use the plural, there has to be some significance to including it with sensations and feelings (pleasure and pain). For example:
QuoteNow in The Canon, Epicurus affirms that our sensations (plural: τὰς αἰσθήσεις) and preconceptions (plural: προλήψεις) and our feelings (plural: τὰ πάθη) are the standards of truth ; the Epicureans generally make perceptions of mental presentations (τὰς φανταστικὰς ἐπιβολὰς τῆς διανοίας) to be also standards.
The interesting thing (per LSJ) about "sensations" αἰσθήσεις is that it can not only refer to "physical sensations through what we think of as the sense-organs (eyes, ears, nose, etc.) but "also of the mind, perception, knowledge of a thing." The citations are to Plutarch, so maybe that's a later connotation? Although LSJ also references Plato in Philebus (emphasis added):
Socrates: When a man receives from sight or some other sense (αἰσθήσεως) the opinions (δοξαζόμενα doxazomena) and utterances of the moment and afterwards beholds in his own mind the images of those opinions and utterances.
So, the sensations of "the opinions and utterances" received "from sight or some other sense" give rise (according to Plato) to sustainable mental images that we can hold, discuss, etc. in our minds. The prolepsis, as defined by LSJ, are "mental picture or scheme into which experience is fitted." So, the sensations come pouring in, and, are then fit into "mental pictures or schemes" to make sense of them. I'm getting the image of one of those old-time coin sorters that you could put coins into, they'd roll down a little ramp, and then fall into the correct sized slot: pennies (smallest) first, then dimes, etc. The "proleptic" faculty would be like the sorting machine... and the prolepseis would be the tubes into which the coins fell, depending on their size.
But that doesn't move us along from Epicurus's "content" of the prolepsis of the gods being "blessed and uncorrupted", does it?
Long & Sedley in The Hellenistic Philosophers (login with free account to view the link) cite the Letter to Herodotus as showing that prolepseis are necessary to get at the underlying meaning of words. The citation doesn't use the word prolepsis but I can see where they get that it's being discussed:
Quote from Letter to Herodotus, 37-38"In the first place, Herodotus, you must understand what it is that words denote, in order that by reference to this we may be in a position to test opinions, inquiries, or problems, so that our proofs may not run on untested ad infinitum, nor the terms we use be empty of meaning. [38] For the primary signification of every term employed must be clearly seen, and ought to need no proving58; this being necessary, if we are to have something to which the point at issue or the problem or the opinion before us can be referred.
It seems to me that the faculty of the prolepsis is what it is that provides us the ability to "understand what it is that words denote," and ,by reference to this, we can test opinions, etc. I also like that Epicurus literally says that the "primary signification" of every term but be "clearly seen" (φθόγγον βλέπεσθαι)... like that coin dropping into its proper slot.
So, what's the point of these early morning musings? The prolepsis (to me, as of 7:21 am on a Tuesday
) seems to imply both a mechanism of the mind as well as a reference to making sense of sense perceptions. It involves both the sorting of sensations as well as the slots into which the sensations fits in their respective patterns. -
If eyes are processing light and ears are processing sound, what are prolepses processing?
The subtle eidolon/films only able to be picked up by the mind?
It still seems to me that prolepseis are the minds ability to discern patterns - a faculty of pattern recognition - from the cacophony of incoming sensations and to make sense of the senses. We're bombarded by sensations - literally swimming in an abundance of sensations. The prolepseis are the mind's ability to "make sense" of that and pick out.. "Oh, that's significant. I've sensed that pattern before. It must be important because it's repeating. It stands out from the background 'noise'." Same way for visual senses, et al. Same way for the mental sense. It seems to me that Epicurus treats the mind similar to the way he does the other sensation-sensing faculties of the body. The mind just picks up on the most subtle of eidola incoming.
Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, πρό-ληψις
"preconception, mental picture or scheme into which experience is fitted" This would fit the idea of "pattern-recognition."
I *think* Bryan had a good list of all the -lepsis words (pro-, hypo-, etc.) and his interpretation of them.
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I ask that in context of trying to identify what characteristics divinity and justice might have in common with awe that could explain why divinity and justice are the primary examples of where Epicurus thought prolepsis was involved.
I see (well, that's a strong word... I sometimes surmise) that the prolepsis of divinity is connected some way with our innate sense of awe; I see justice connected with our innate sense of fairness (as demonstrated by experiments with human children and other primates). For example: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1220806110
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I would agree with Cassius that the prolepseis have to be (to be part of the Canon) pre-rational and provide "building materials" (best phrase I can do right now) for concepts but not concepts themselves. Prolepsis, it seems to me, is a faculty of the mind like sight is for the eyes, taste is for the tongue, hearing is for the ears, etc... Yes, we know they all flow into the brain now, but Epicurus didn't seem to divide up the senses that way.
I've entertained on this forum that the prolepsis of the gods is our innate faculty to feel awe. This also seems at least *partially* substantiated by the use of σέβομαι "to feel awe or fear before a god". For example:
and
Of course, that "faculty" of a prolepsis doesn't help as much when deciding Epicurus's "blessed and incorruptible" vs the mistaken notions specifically the hoi polloi had (LOL... I just like calling them that to keep the original.. better than "the many" or "the crowds".. I'm assuming the Romans would have used "the mob.").
As for the letter to Menoikeus, I think 124 has to be read in the full context, along with 123:
QuoteThe 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.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.
So, the hoi polloi's first big mistake is that "they don't perceive what maintains the gods." Plus. their fundamental "false, hasty assumptions" are that the gods bestow favors and punishments. The "gods of the hoi polloi" are the ones that demand sacrifice to keep them on your good side. There's every reason to reject those "gods" because all that is assigning false attributes to the gods, like jealousy, anger, beneficence (to humans), etc. All that has nothing to do with Epicurus's inborn faculty of perceiving the gods' nature. It seems to me that the ONLY things Epicurus is willing to assign to the gods, per Menoikeus's letter, are that they are "blessed" (makarios) and they are "uncorrupted, not liable to corruption or decay, imperishable" (aphthartos).
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Welcome, Remus! Salve & χαίρε !
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FYI
The Birth of Venus - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org I didn't even look at the context before I posted this link. Maybe as an Epicurean image, but not as a background. -
Do we have a picture of Fragment 551?
Not to the best of my knowledge. It would just be contained in Plutarch or that letter anyway... Not in an Epicurean source.
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FYI
Tertullian : Adversus Marcionem
and
Marcion and His Critics (for Oxford Handbook on Early Christian Biblical Interpretation, eds. Blowers and Martens)Marcion and His Critics (for Oxford Handbook on Early Christian Biblical Interpretation, eds. Blowers and Martens)www.academia.edu -
These scenarios remind me of the Buddhist saying:
If I were to accidentally fall to my death from a great height, it would be a shame to miss the view on the way down.
That seems very Epicurean to me.
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My comment on the article...
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