Dillahunty but he sure seems to be on the right side.
I've been a fan of his for awhile now.
If this is the way Peterson generally talks then he's insufferable
Yep (in my opinion)
‘I feel: therefore I exist.’
I think a better formulation would be "I exist, therefore, I feel." Existence comes before feeling.
I have found this excerpt of a debate between Matt Dillahunty and Jordan Peterson interesting where Peterson tries to defend the premise that death is preferable to life. Cards on the table: I'm in agreement with Dillahunty here:
Skip ahead to 49:30 for the discussion of life vs death.
To say that we enjoy pleasure when we feel it without intervening step (thinking about it) is possible, but to me that is so obvious as to not likely be the meaning. To my knowledge no one contends that you have to think about pleasure before you feel it.
However, it would assert the primacy of feeling over reason. Reason is subordinate to the immediate feelings of pleasure.
I don't know that 42's sequence in the list tells us much, but it seems to be in a section of very practical advice.
I would be skeptical of an interpretation using the Vatican Sayings sequence. This list is never mentioned in the ancient sources. On the other hand, Principle Doctrines is mentioned by name.
42. At the very same time, the greatest good is created and the greatest evil is removed.
I think we need to throw out any translations that add "the greatest evil." That's not in the manuscript and adding things just to make a convenient translation seems disingenuous to me. The manuscript has:
ὁ αὐτὸς χρόνος καὶ γενέσεως τοῦ μεγίστου ἀγαθοῦ καὶ ἀπολύσεως
with that last word being open to discussion.
Something like:
(At) the same time the greatest good (is) both created and ἀπολύσεως/ἀπολαύσεως.
If we go with ἀπολύσεως, we have to go with a meaning like to do away with, to remove, to set free, to release from.
Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, ἀπολύω
If we accept ἀπολαύσεως, we get to take pleasure in, enjoyment, delight. It's literally one letter difference!
The HUGE issue here is that the saying is completely divorced from its original textual context. Was Epicurus arguing against a specific point? Was he speaking generally? Here's an out of the box: if we take ἀπολαύσεως, was he using it as an argument against a virtue argument that you can't say you're only doing the act of virtue for itself; you do the virtuous act (create) and immediately enjoy it, you get satisfaction and joy the moment it is created. You can't separate the two.
Bailey: “The greatest blessing is created and enjoyed at the same moment.”
I agree with DeWitt that this statement is counterintuitive, not true, and therefore in DeWitt's word nonsensical.
I don't agree, other than to say Bailey's unfortunate choice of "blessing" for ἀγαθοῦ agathou "good" is unfortunate. And I think you know my position on Dewitt calling something nonsensical 
I think the meaning of Bailey's translation is almost too obvious. We enjoy pleasure "the greatest good" at the moment we feel it. There is no intermediate step. There is no intervening rational intrusion. Pleasure feels good at the moment it is created.
I am conscious that many people probably read my exchanges with Don on this and think we are arguing with each other for no reason other than stubbornness.
On the contrary, I think it is not really an "argument" but an exploration of the details, and the discussion is highly useful because it is going to lead to a lot of beneficial results. If we weren't having this back and forth it would be highly tempting just to drop the subject before the implications are fully brought out.
Okay, here's VS42 in the manuscript:
starting with the big red Ο. It's just one line. There's a lot of abbreviation and ligatures going on in that last pivotal word! It's almost like the scribe didn't know what to copy either
απολ... is uncontroversial. That's right there.
The loopy "Nike swoosh" after that also has a dot above it. It looks like an exaggerated upsilon υ, but why exaggerate it? Idiosyncratic handwriting? Have to think more about that, but there's your data.
And there is NO <τοῦ κακοῦ>! That doesn't appear in the manuscript. So whatever interpretation one does, it shouldn't involve that addition.
Torquatus does not seem to be as clear and successful in explaining Chrysippus' hand or the equation of pleasure as the absence of pain in a way that Cicero finds persuasive
Remember, "Torquatus" is simply Cicero's Epicurean mouthpiece. Cicero isn't taking dictation. "Torquatus" is a character created by Cicero loosely based on a real person who is dead at the time of the composition. Cicero can conveniently pick and choose exactly what he wants "Torquatus" to say.
I am also very interested in your comment on whether Vatican Collection 42 is being emended by translators. We may have covered it already but I don't recall.
For reference, this is VS42 from Saint-Andre:
42. At the very same time, the greatest good is created and the greatest evil is removed.
ὁ αὐτὸς χρόνος καὶ γενέσεως τοῦ μεγίστου ἀγαθοῦ καὶ ἀπολύσεως <τοῦ κακοῦ>.
I would have to check the manuscripts, but the brackets around <τοῦ κακοῦ> leads me to believe that's added. In fact, Bailey had "XLII. The greatest blessing is created and enjoyed at the same moment." So he doesn't amend. Here's his comment:
I think the manuscripts have απόλαυσεως instead of ἀπολύσεως which completely changes the import of the saying and eliminates the need for <τοῦ κακοῦ> "the evil" to be added.
Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, ἀπό-λαυσις
This is also directly related to the word used in the letter to Menoikeus in verse 132 when talking about "enjoying."
So, I think Bailey has the upper hand on this one.
Life isn't the "greatest good", but...
Having stated that...
Live is everything to us because life
I think you and I will have to disagree on that one. When I say something is "everything" to me i pretty much mean to myself that it is the most important thing that I have, and I have no issues with thinking that the most important thing i have is my "greatest good."
I'm using "greatest good" in the strict literal sense of a translation of "summum bonum."
My take is that there is nothing apart from life.
I've been down this road before, ad nauseum, so apologies to those who have had to suffer though this polemic of mine previously.
As I understand it, in philosophical discourse, the summum bonum "the greatest good" is that to which everything points, that which answers "Why do you do what you do?" For Epicurus, that is pleasure. We do everything for the sake of pleasure, to move toward a more pleasurable existence. And I like Epicurus's expansive, all-encompassing definition of pleasure. But, one can't answer the question "Why do you do what you do?" by saying "Life" or "I do everything because I'm alive." Well, of course you do! You don't exist after you die! There's no alternative. Saying "life is the greatest good" doesn't really say anything to me ... as opposed to what? Death? Death is nothing to us. "We do everything for the sake of life" doesn't seem to me to make any sense either. Yes, we protect our life, but, as Metrodorus says, when it's time to go, go out singing and celebrating. Dewitt's shot himself in the foot on this argument when he tries to make hay out of "Latin doesn't have a definite article." But more than that, calling living, existing, being alive, "the greatest good" doesn't get us anywhere. "Life is everything" in contrast gets at the fact that your life that you're living right here and right now is literally the totality of what you will experience ever in the expanse of the universe.
And, let me state for the record - ad nauseum at this point - that I find Dewitt's formulation that "life is the greatest good" to be worded nonsensically. I did not, do not, and don't plan to accept his argument in his "summum bonum fallacy" paper. I don't think his argument holds up. He's trying to make a point but making it in a convoluted and erroneous way in my opinion. Life isn't the "greatest good", but...
Having stated that...
Live is everything to us because life, right now, here, is the only way of experiencing pleasure (and pain). Feeling has no meaning as a word, as a concept, as a thing, apart from a living being. Death is literally nothing to us. No feeling. No existence. Nothing. When someone dies, we cannot say "She is dead." She doesn't exist after she dies. There is no "she" apart from the memories others have of her. That's why experiencing life right here and now is so important. It's not a dress rehearsal for something else!! It's not a proving ground to show your worthiness for something else! This is it.
Good catch, Joshua...
when it is time for us to go, spitting contempt on life and on those who here vainly cling to it,
I'd offer the following: The key phrase in that translation isn't the spitting on life, it's the "when it is time for us to go." I don't think VS47 has anything to do with having the option to "exit the stage" if we're in pain as above where Cassius implies (and states that outright).
VS47 is attributed to Metrodorus:
And the Epicurus Wiki does a really nice job parsing the Greek:
Vatican Saying 47 - Epicurus Wiki
This saying of Metrodorus hammers home that we *are* mortal. We are going to die. When it's time - when it's necessary - to shuffle off this mortal coil - an Epicurean should acknowledge that and not cling to life as if struggling against some offense to them. I'm thinking of the saying that pneumonia used to be called "the old man's friend."
The term is attributed to William Osler, who in the first edition of his book The Principles and Practice of Medicine (1892) wrote:
In children and in healthy adults the outlook is good. In the debilitated, in drunkards and in the aged the chances are against recovery. So fatal is it in the latter class [i.e. the elderly] that it has been termed the natural end of the old man
If one has a terminal illness with no prospect of recovery or quality of life, one can, of course, take advantage of medical science but at some point all the medical intervention isn't going to change the outcome. And severe pain doesn't necessarily have to be a part of that; the body is just wearing out. The spitting in VS47 is directed at life (time to go!) BUT ALSO those who cling to it. Many have the anguish of seeing a family member hooked up to tubes and machines with no hope of regaining consciousness. Let them go. The last line is the attitude Metrodorus is advocating. When it's time to die - as it will be for everyone! - go out with a victory song!! Celebrate the life that was lived. The word in Ancient Greek is παιᾱ́ν (paiā́n, “a chant or song, especially a thanksgiving or victory hymn, to Apollo under the name Παιᾱ́ν (Paiā́n)”), from the phrase Ἰὼ Παιᾱ́ν (Iṑ Paiā́n, “O Paean!, Thanks to Paean!”). According to Homer, Paián or Paean was the name of the physician of the gods. (Source)
See also
Recognizing all non-painful feelings as pleasure is exactly right.
From my (admittedly unoriginal) perspective, that was Epicurus's innovation that set him apart from the Cyrenaics. Cicero, on the other hand, seems to want to put Epicurus back into the same box as the Cyrenaics and argue against his strawman and not deal with the complexities that Torquatis puts forward.
I also look at the work in psychology that calls this positive and negative affect. You're either feeling positive or negative affect, there is no neutral state. If you're feeling neither positive or negative affect, you're dead... Literally, not figuratively btw.
Oh, and by and large I agree with Cassius et al direction in this thread.
I am becoming more convinced that the three contiguous PDs 9, 10, 11 all express counterfactuals the way they're are grammatically structured in the ancient Greek, the way they are grouped together, and just the way PD11 reads. Each doctrine is stating an If.. statement that expresses a situation that is counterfactual, "it is not the case that..."
If every pleasure were condensed and were present at the same time and in the whole of one's nature or its primary parts...
But every pleasure cannot be condensed.
If the things that produce the delights of those who are decadent washed away the mind's fears about astronomical phenomena and death and suffering, and furthermore if they taught us the limits of our pains and desires,...
But those things do not wash away the mind's fears.
If our suspicions about astronomical phenomena and about death were nothing to us and troubled us not at all, and if this were also the case regarding our ignorance about the limits of our pains and desires...
But we are troubled by our suspicions ...
Those "If..." statements are setting up that first segment of an argument which is resolved in the "then..." statement. To rephrase...
Every pleasure cannot be condensed, so pleasures do differ from each other.
Things that produce the delights of those who are decadent don't wash away the mind's fears, so they are not filled with every joy and would contain not a single pain or distress.
We are troubled by our suspicions death and we are ignorant of the limits of pain and desire, so we have a need for studying what is natural.
In each of those, the second argument (then...) of switched to its opposite (negative > positive; positive > negative) in reparaphrasing the full doctrine. This is reinforced for me in looking at PD11.
For reference:
PD09 If every pleasure were condensed and were present at the same time and in the whole of one's nature or its primary parts, then the pleasures would never differ from one another.
PD10 If the things that produce the delights of those who are decadent washed away the mind's fears about astronomical phenomena and death and suffering, and furthermore if they taught us the limits of our pains and desires, then we would have no complaints against them, since they would be filled with every joy and would contain not a single pain or distress (and that's what is bad).
PD11 If our suspicions about astronomical phenomena and about death were nothing to us and troubled us not at all, and if this were also the case regarding our ignorance about the limits of our pains and desires, then we would have no need for studying what is natural.
We've been on a history of letter writing tangent on this thread; so, in an effort to get back on track, I'm copying and reformatting in the form of a list the initial questions that Peter Konstans posed in the first post. Feel free to respond to any or all of the individual questions:
- Has anybody ever experimented with the idea of Epicureanism as a formal spiritual identity capable of defining entire communities? What would Epicureanism look like if it wasn't merely a brotherhood of friends discussing philosophy but was also a sort of quasi religious worldview with its own intricate rituals, symbols and ceremonies covering every aspect of life?
- Could Epicureanism ever assume a form where it would be able to successfully compete with well-established religious traditions for the hearts and minds of huge numbers of people?
- What would a 'holy book' of Epicureanism look like and what would it contain other than the letters of Epicurus and the poem of Lucretius?
- To what extent can the views and advice of brilliant therapists or educators like John Gottman, Gigi Engle or Dan Buettner be thought of as Epicurean and admitted in some form in the 'scriptures' and literature of Epicureanism?
- How would an Epicurean society raise and educate its kids? Since school is so horrendously boring, tedious and unpleasant to children (school is also the only place other than prison where people are quite likely to be bullied and tortured) how would an Epicurean society deal with the problem of educating the new generation?
- Given that modern Western hyper-liberalism presents society and individuals with many obvious problems that are impossible to deny today what laws, customs and institutions would hypothetical Epicurean lawmakers create to avoid them?
FYI
(Full book)
I found this excerpt interesting, putting Epicurus and Paul in a wider context, noting both similarities and differences within that context:
Early literary letters were probably collected and edited by students or readers after the death of their authors. The main common characteristic of these letters is that they bear only the external characteristics of letters; in fact, they are rhetorical or philosophical treatises, and can only be placed at the borderline of the epistolary genre. The letters of Plato and the letter of Thucydides are rather συγγράμματα (treatises), in accordance with Demetrius’s understanding of the proper style of a letter.124 In imperial Roman and late antique times, philosophical doctrines continue to be written in epistolary form, in the style of the Epicurean letter. Such are, for example, the didactic letters of Seneca,125 the Stoic letters of Musonius Rufus (1st
c. AD), and the philosophical letters of the neopythagorian Apollonius of Tyana (1st c. AD). To the same type may be classified the letters of Saint Paul, although the latter were sent not only for the purpose of teaching, but also for the spiritual support and practical organisation of newly-established churches. In Late Antiquity, letters that include philosophical doctrines are those of the emperor Julian the Apostate and the church fathers, especially the Cappadocians Saint Basil and Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, also, a large collection of letters (about 1600), including correspondence with Saint Basil, has survived from the teacher of rhetoric, Libanius (AD 314–393). (p.25-26)
An interesting paper on the topic of ancient letter writing theory:
Some quotes:
The oldest preserved letter that contains the epistolary formulas typical for the subsequent epistolographic practice is the letter of Cyrus to Cyaxares, inserted in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia (Κύρου παιδεία) (Xen. Cyrop. 4.5. 27-33). Cyropaedia was written around 370 BC. The letters that the manuscript tradition assigns to Plato are also dated to this period approximately.
In the Second Philippic, Cicero calls letters аmicorum colloquia absentium ‘conversation between absent friends’ (Cic. Phil. 2.4).
Interesting to me, the paper also includes numerous types of letters written in the ancient Greek world.
Here's another one:
The study of epistolography and Paul is a vital undertaking if we are to understand Paul•s relationship to the Greco-Roman world of letter writing. Paul did not write in a vacuum, but was rather trained in the letter writing principles of his day.
Personal letters constitute the most common letter tradition of the ancient world, whose general format remained fairly constant from the third century B.C. to into the third century A.D.1
Most openings are short, direct and with very little expansion, with the overwhelming number of letter openings having the following formula: A to B, Greetings with an occasional health wish.
It is clear from his letters that Paul's standard greeting is not the traditional χαιρειν, but rather he employs his now signature "Grace to you and peace" with the additional !from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."
It is interesting to evaluate the nature of χάρις υμίν και ειρηνη. It is clear that there is a relationship between χαρις and χαιρειν, in that they both are derived from the same root.44
This similarity is beyond chance and suggests that Paul was adapting his letter greeting from the traditional χαιρειν form.45 Furthermore, Paul•s use of peace is parallel to the Hebrew letter form. As mentioned above, Ezra 4:17-22 and 5:7-17 both utilize the "To Y, Shalom" formula. However, in the LXX the word used toto translate "shalom" is ειρηνη. It appears that Paul was incorporating the Hebrew greeting into his letters and combined it with the noun form of the verb χαιρειν to create his letter greeting.
I'll stop quoting there, but it seems to me that Paul is simply part of a letter writing tradition within the larger Greco-Roman and Jewish culture in which he lived. I see no reason to try to establish a link specifically between Epicurus's letter writing and Paul's activity.
Discussions like this always lead me back to how much we've lost.
Paul founded probably 20 churches, conceivably wrote letters to each maybe once a year over 10 years. That's potentially 200 letters.
We have 7 undisputed letters left.
Epicurus had communities of friends in Asia Minor and probably wrote regularly.
We have 3 whole letters plus fragments of a few others.
And the numbers get worse for older civilizations or those not deemed worthy of transcribing or transmitting.
I would want to see more resources, but per this Wikipedia article, letter writing dates back at least to ancient Egypt:
