Posts by Bryan

This was great all around! The quote from DeWitt on "Epicurus' innovation" is excellent -- as was your treatment of the sorites topic! Thank you.

I always have in mind this quote of Metrodorus (from Plutarch in Non Posse 1091 A):

"This very thing is the good: escaping the bad – because it is not possible for the good to be placed anywhere, when nothing painful or distressing is further withdrawing."

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Full physical contentment is consistently and naturally achieved through our body's internal processes when we have the necessary provisions of food and shelter.

Similarly, full mental contentment can be maintained by recognizing the ease with which physical contentment can be obtained and by cultivating gratitude for this success.

I added a bit of paint, but sticking to gold/bronze/silver turned him into a bit of a ghost, so I'll try again with more realistic colors.

To further support Joshua's argument that starts at 16:00, I wanted to share these two quotes:

Plutarch, Non Posse, 28, p. 1105D: "If then 'The memory of a friend that has died is pleasant from every standpoint' as Epicurus said, indeed already it is possible to understand how much they deprive themselves of joy: believing they [passively] receive and [actively] pursue appearances and films of dead companions – in which neither mind exists, nor sensation – while they are not expecting to be truly united again with them (and to see their beloved father, and beloved mother, and even their helpful wife)."

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 63.7 (apparently quoting Epicurus): "For me, the thought of departed friends is sweet and pleasant: for I had them as though I would lose them – and I have lost them as though I still have them."

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Brilliant juxtaposition about prudence at 37:00! That needed to happen and you did a great job!

I noticed that most of the other statues offered from the same shop have pupils. I have struggled to paint them on other busts, so I asked the shop if they could add pupils to this bust. They said they could and gave this from their program as a sample; so be aware of this option. We'll see how it turns out.

I feel as though a lot of modern psychology, with its focus on problems, makes this error.

Do you have an unpleasant feeling? They will give it a specific name, and focus on its source and ramifications!

Once your own personalized list of problems are labeled -- you can look after those problems more specifically and more effectively make them grow stronger!

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All that is needed is to throw away the TV, and sleep and exercise a lot. Things grow with focus. Focus on the good!

Brilliant! Thank you for sharing! I search etsy occasionally for new busts -- but this one got past me until now.

Quote from Cassius

the philosophers who bear the name of Anniceris

I never think of the Annicerian school!

The Suda says Anniceris was an Epicurean, which is a bit confusing. Link Here

"A Cyrenean, a philosopher, who became an Epicurean despite being an acquaintance of Paraebatus, the student of Aristippus. Anniceris also had a brother by the name of Nicoteles, [sc. also] a philosopher, and his student [was the] famous Posidonius. The sect called Annicerean [sc. originates] from him. He lived at the time of Alexander [sc. the Great]."

Diogenes Laertius says this (2.96):

"The school of Anniceris in other respects agreed with them [sc. The school of Hegesias], but admitted that friendship and gratitude and respect for parents do exist in real life, and that a good man will sometimes act out of patriotic motives. Hence, if the wise man receive annoyance, he will be none the less happy even if few pleasures accrue to him.

The happiness of a friend is not in itself desirable, for it is not felt by his neighbour. Instruction is not sufficient in itself to inspire us with confidence and to make us rise superior to the opinion of the multitude. Habits must be formed because of the bad disposition which has grown up in us from the first.

A friend should be cherished not merely for his utility – for, if that fails, we should then no longer associate with him – but for the good feeling for the sake of which we shall even endure hardships. Nay, though we make pleasure the end and are annoyed when deprived of it, we shall nevertheless cheerfully endure this because of our love to our friend."

The Loeb version of De Officiis says this about Epicurus -- about as accurate as AI.

Quote from Cassius

"The Size Of The Sun Is As It Appears To Be!"

I wanted to share this section of Sextus Empiricus (fl.c. 200 CE), Against the Professions 7 (Against the Logicians/Dogmatists 1) 207-9, where he is arguing from the Epicurean perspective:

"Let us make the reasoning based on visible things in this way: the hard object is not seen as a whole, but only the color of the hard object. Of the color, one part is on the hard object itself (just as in things seen from nearby and from a moderate separation) – the other part is outside the hard object and underlying in the adjacent locations (just as with things envisioned from a distant separation). But this, being completely changed in the intervening space and taking on a particular shape, delivers such an appearance as the kind of thing which it also underlies in truth.

In just the same way, therefore, neither is the sound thoroughly heard in a bronze instrument that is being struck, nor the sound in the mouth of the man who shouted ¬ but rather the sound that is falling upon our sensation.

And in the same way that no one says a person hearing a sound from a small distance hears falsely just because after he has come nearby he instead receives it as louder: in this way I would not say that vision is deceived because from a far separation it sees the tower as small and round, but from nearby as larger and tetragonal.

Vision truly reports. Even when the sensible object is apparent to vision as small and of a certain shape: it really is small and of a certain shape – due to the transmission through the air, as the edges of the films are being broken off.

And when it appears again large and differently shaped, it is again similarly large and differently shaped – since by now both appearances are not established as the same thing. This is what remains of distorted judgment: to suspect that the appearance envisioned from nearby and from far off was the same."

Quote from Don

It's πλειονος.

Although I think that would require adding τοῦ before καλοῦ, giving μετὰ [τοῦ] καλοῦ πλείονος, but even then we would expect μετὰ πλείονος [τοῦ] καλοῦ -- all of which is more of a change than from πλειονος to παιωνος.

In further support of this, we do have "τοῦ καλοῦ πλείονος" used here (which is an Usener Edition). I have not been able to find both adjectives put together (but only καλός being made substantive by adding an article).

Quote from Eikadistes

"to which of the implied subject(s)/object(s) do the articles/pronouns refer?"

I am not seeing a reference to fears. I am seeing "...but whenever what must happen (τὸ χρεών) leads us out: having greatly spat on life and on those who cling to it in vain, we go out of life..."

(Although, of course, τὸ ζῆν is more "living" than "life")

Quote from Cassius

spitting on good (or is it beauty?)

We do have Johannes Stobaeus (_{fl. f.} 450 ^CE) in his Anthology: volume 3, chapter 17, section 24 quoting Epicurus: "I teem with what is pleasant for this little body – using only water and bread – and I spit on the pleasures from extravagances: not because of them, but because of what is difficult that follows from them"

[Ἐπικούρου] "Βρυάζω τῷ κατὰ τὸ σωμάτιον ἡδεῖ – ὕδατι καὶ ἄρτῳ χρώμενος – καὶ Προσπτύω ταῖς ἐκ πολυτελείας ἡδοναῖς: οὐ δἰ αὐτάς, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὰ ἐξακολουθοῦντα αὐταῖς δυσχερῆ"

If we take the sigma, I think we have προσπτύω. Given the active form of προσπτύσαντες, it is difficult to pair with προσπτύσσομαι.

Quote from Cassius

Preuss holds a very unconventional view on Epicurus' view of death. Preuss apparently believes that Epicurus held open the possibility of life after death

To claim that Epicurus in any way accepted the idea of "life after death" is a misapplication of his denial that all statements about the future must be either true or false.

I think we can all agree that Preuss is far off the mark here.

Quote from DistantLaughter

Furthermore, the katastematic/kinetic distinction itself is a later philosophical construct imposed retrospectively on Epicurus’s thought,

Quote from DistantLaughter

a katastematic condition, even if he doesn’t use that term himself.

I am not sure it is possible to say that Epicurus did not use the term, or that it is a later construct, given Diogenes Laertius' direct quote without the use of any indirect speech or an attribution to a secondary source.

10.136: "Epicurus in his book On Choice speaks in this way 'Tranquility and Painlessness exist as established (katastēmatikái) pleasures, but Cheer and Merriment are seen from movement through activity.'"

Quote from Eikadistes

Don demonstrated that the "early tenth" refers to the Twentieth

Great example. I am certain Don is correct, but I just asked GPT and it said the 7th!

Although the robot is not accurate, I think Cassius is leaning into the correct angle:

There are physicists who take fundamentally different basic assumptions.

From their different basic assumptions (of whether everything is physical matter or not) the different sides stack up their evidence.

Quote from Eikadistes

I don't think, for me, comparing ancient physics with modern physics will be helpful to try to improve our understanding of either.

I mostly agree. I think you will also agree that taking the side of the mathematicians who say that elementary particles can be something else but a discrete hard unit with mass and weight is a position that is not based on evidence, but in opinion -- and it is a basic premise that Epicurus considered and rejected.

So, it seems to me, those who say Epicurus is incorrect on this topic, are not "staying up to date" but just choosing a contrary basic premise.

Quote from Don

As far as "seeing" atoms, it depends on your definition

Absolutely -- what we call “atoms” today can be seen with instruments, but of course those are vastly larger than a true atom and they are made up of countless real atoms. I was referring to a true atom in the original sense: an indivisible, solid bit of matter.

Quote from Martin

Electrons and photons are adequately described as elementary particles,

An adequate description of an elementary particle must include that particle always having mass.

Quote from Eikadistes

how reliable of a transmitter he is of Hellenistic philosophy

I would say Diogenes of Oinoanda is accurately transmitting Hellenistic philosophy from our school's perspective. Plato studied Heraclitus "in the garden at Colonus" before joining Socrates (Lives 3.5), and eventually "created a synthesis of the doctrines of Heraclitus, Pythagoras, and Socrates" (3.8); Aristotle did preserve a lot of this synthesis.

We do have:

10.44a. ^[Bailey] "For on the one hand the nature of the void which separates each atom by itself brings this about, as it is not able to afford resistance, and on the other hand the hardness (stereótēs) which belongs to the atoms makes them recoil after collision to as great a distance as the interlacing permits separation after the collision."

stereótēs is "the condition from making stiff" and means firmness or hardness.

"Totally changeable and soft matter" is for the other schools -- it is the exit door out of science and into religion.

"The Stoics together with Heraclitus say that matter is wholly and completely changeable and alterable and mutable and fluid." _{(Aetius 1.9.2)}