My paternal grandmother Mae, who has been a bit of a hero-character for me, especially in my older years, lived to one month shy of 99 – by living pretty much a-day-at-a-time for pleasure and personal happiness. She would grub by hand in her beloved garden all day – and then don evening attire and an emerald ring (the gems of which she herself smuggled out of a Central American country!), etc., to play bridge with “the Ladies” (all of whom were of higher social status than Mae). Mostly, she enjoyed simple fare – but on holidays could conjure a gourmet feast. [Like me, she tended, when she could afford it, more toward the indulgent pole of the continuum, rather than the ascetic pole.] She was both earthy and elegant, feisty and gracious. I’ve been working on a revision of an older poem I dedicated to her, and may post it on my wall here if and when I finish.
Posts by Pacatus
Listen to the latest Lucretius Today Podcast! Episode 224 is now available. To mark the 20th of April, here is a special episode - a reading of the 1429 letter of Cosma Raimondi.
-
-
From the article Don referenced: “It seems to me that the only people who really want to live forever are those who are unable to find joy in the lives they’re living now.”
Daniel Klein, in his book Travels With Epicurus, addresses these issues from a personal perspective (often with congenial self-deprecating humor) as he enters his 70s – eschewing both the frantic (and often cosmetic) “forever-youngness” of some of his friends and the countervailing attempt by some to grind toward a longevity that promises a severely diminished quality of life, by paradoxically foregoing enjoyment now. Klein may not always be a “strict” Epicurean, but I thoroughly enjoyed (and related to) his book – through two readings now.
-
Particularly interesting in this context is a scene from the life of King Pyrrhus. When Pyrrhus was preparing a military campaign against Italy, his collaborator and friend Cineas asked what the king would do if he should be able to conquer the Romans. Pyrrhus replied that at that moment, he should get control of the whole of Italy. Sicily would soon follow, and then Libya and Carthage, so that in the end Pyrrhus would triumph over all his enemies. Cineas insisted:
“But when we have got everything subject to us, what are we going to do?” Then Pyrrhus smiled upon him and said: “We shall be much at ease, and we’ll drink bumpers, my good man, every day, and we’ll gladden one another’s hearts with confidential talks.” And now that Cineas had brought Pyrrhus to this point in the argument, he said: “Then what stands in our way now if we want to drink bumpers and while away the time with one another? Surely this privilege is ours already, and we have at hand, without taking any trouble, those things to which we hope to attain by bloodshed and great toils and perils, after doing much harm to others and suffering much ourselves.”
Oxford Handbook of Epicurus and Epicureanism, Oxford University Press, Philip Mitsis, Editor: “Politics and Society” by Geert Roskam.
-
Don How does tagathon relate to telos?
-
Aegean islanders like to tell a joke about a prosperous Greek American who visits one of the islands on vacation. Out on a walk, the affluent Greek American comes upon an old Greek man sitting on a rock, sipping a glass of ouzo, and lazily staring at the sun setting into the sea. The American notices there are olive trees growing on the hills behind the old Greek but that they are untended, with olives just dropping here and there onto the ground. He asks the old man who the trees belong to.
“They’re mine,” the Greek replies.
“Don’t you gather the olives?” the American asks.
“I just pick one when I want one,” the old man says.
“But don’t you realize that if you pruned the trees and picked the olives at their peak, you could sell them? In America everybody is crazy about virgin olive oil, and they pay a damned good price for it.”
“What would I do with the money?” the old Greek asks.
“Why, you could build yourself a big house and hire servants to do everything for you.”
“And then what would I do?”
“You could do anything you want!”
“You mean, like sit outside and sip ouzo at sunset?”
– Daniel Klein, Travels with Epicurus: A Journey to a Greek Island in Search of a Fulfilled Life
-
Artists' renderings can certainly evoke a mood. Here is a painting of Zeno of Citium (I couldn't find the artist) and Genevra Catalano's Epicurus:
-
There seem to be SO MANY specific Greek and Latin words that get chopped down to just "happy" in English.
An interesting anecdote on translation: I read once that Martin Buber’s and Franz Rosenzweig’s translation of the Torah from Hebrew into German was much longer than the original – because they wanted to capture all the nuances of the highly polysemous Hebrew! No "chopping down" for them!
-
"In the Latin Vulgate, each of these blessings begins with the word beātī, which translates to "blessed" (plural adjective). The corresponding word in the original Greek is μακάριοι (makarioi), with the same meaning. Thus "Blessed are the poor in spirit" appears in Latin as beātī pauperēs spīritū. The Latin noun beātitūdō was coined by Cicero to describe a state of blessedness and was later incorporated within the chapter headings written for Matthew 5 in various printed versions of the Vulgate."
I recalled having seen English translations that rendered μακάριος as “happy” – including in the beatitudes. The two I found are Young’s Literal Translation (1898) and the Good News Translation by the American Bible Society (1976).
"Beatitudo" from Wiktionary: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/beatitudo.
-
"Happiness" is not incorrect, but well-being is better.
For myself, I find "happiness" to be fine -- and something I understand (for myself). If I want to clarify, I say "happy well-being." I don't think that's entirely redundant.
-
People, were talking the late 1700s here. Grammar is not what it used to be.
Absolutely. Not to flog a trivial point to death, but Latin also has/had comparative and superlative forms of perfectus:
https://www.latin-is-simple.com/en/vocabulary/adjective/6667/?h=perfectus
-
I haven’t gone back through the thread, so I might be rehashing a bit. My last impression was that “perfect” is generally taken as an absolute abstract ideal, an attachment to which could easily deter one from pragmatically seeking the attainable “merely good” or “good enough.” But then I recalled the words from the preamble to the U.S. Constitution: “in order to form a more perfect union.” It turns out that “perfect” has not necessarily been confined to that absolute sense –
“A few usage guides still object to the use of comparison words such as more, most, nearly, almost, and rather with perfect on the grounds that perfect describes an absolute, yes-or-no condition that cannot logically be said to exist in varying degrees. The English language has never agreed to this limitation. Since its earliest use in the 13th century, perfect has, like almost all adjectives, been compared, first in the now obsolete forms perfecter and perfectest, and more recently with more, most, and similar comparison words: the most perfect arrangement of color and line imaginable. Perfect is compared in most of its general senses in all varieties of speech and writing. After all, one of the objectives of the writers of the U.S. Constitution was ‘to form a more perfect union.’” https://www.dictionary.com/browse/perfecter
And : https://strategiesforparents.com/is-it-correct-…-perfect-union/
And Wiktionary includes the understanding of “excellent” for the Latin “perfectus”: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/perfectus#Latin. Similarly from https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=perfect.
Just for interest …
-
“Serenity isn’t granted; it’s practiced.”
From a daily meditation book by an anonymous author (“Joe C.”).
Serenity (as a state of unruffled calm, to borrow from Merriam-Webster) is one of the words I entertain to render ataraxia.
-
"The 'perfect' of a thing is a concept that we use to visualize what the 'best' of that thing would be, and by visualizing that concept of the 'best' of that thing, we can more easily work toward our target of approximating it. And even though we know from the start that the 'perfect' is not attainable for us, it still serves as a very valuable tool for us in calculating out actions, because there is no way we can hope to come close to a goal unless we start out knowing what the goal is."
I like that. I would see it then as an "ideal" not in the sense of Platonic idealism but more like:
Ideal
2: one regarded as exemplifying an ideal and often taken as a model for imitation
3: an ultimate object or aim of endeavor : GOAL
Definition of IDEALof, relating to, or embodying an ideal; conforming exactly to an ideal, law, or standard : perfect; existing as a mental image or in fancy or imagination only;…www.merriam-webster.comEpicurus’ living as a god?
Or a telos -- a la eudaimonia?
-
From the review cited by Kalosyni in post #50:
“To be clear, Mitchell does not believe our choices are absolutely free from any prior causes. We are all constrained by our genes, our histories, our psychological traits, and our developed characters. Instead of radical metaphysical freedom, Mitchell persuasively develops a more modest conception of free will that entails the evolved ability to make real choices in the service of our goals—that is, to act for our own reasons.”
Thus, Mitchell is not advocating for so-called “libertarian free will.”
From the review cited by Don in post #60:
“Organisms are not passively driven by outside signals, they interpret them, they are “meeting the world halfway, as an active partner in a dance that lasts a lifetime” (p. 217). This is the kind of academic poetry that blows my mind.” Mine too!
“Ultimately, he thinks the question of free will is a red herring and takes a pragmatic view: ‘If free will is the capacity for conscious, rational control of our actions, then I am happy in saying we have it’ … Rather than all-or-none, we have degrees of freedom, and not all people are equal in that regard.”
Thus, we can recognize mitigating circumstances with regard to personal and ethical responsibility -- without denying responsibility altogether.
-
The same happen with belief in free will.
The word “belief” has become increasingly suspect for me over the years. If someone means what appears to me to be the case, or makes sense, based on my experience and observation and study, then fine (emphasis on “appears”). But that is all I will ever mean by it.
-
-
I don't believe hard determinism can be reconciled with Epicureanism, but to be fair lets say it can. You would need to tackle the swerve, because as long as the swerve exists a cause or set of causes can lead to a number of effects or none at all, thus determinism cannot exist. Without the swerve you effectively render epicurean physics Democritean.
The Epicurean swerve is an event in an otherwise causal universe (and one in which, as you pointed out, there can be multiple causes for any identifiable effect, and multiple effects from any identifiable cause). Therefore, it seems to me, it does not entail a universe of total indeterminism either.
-
-
I will go to dinner tonight (our weekly dinner out) with the (possibly erroneous) assumption that I will make a choice of what to eat – constrained, surely, by the menu, my wallet, my personal tastes and preferences of the moment, etc. – but, nevertheless what seems like a choice, considering all such factors. Whether those factors are rooted in determinism or indeterminism. If that is an illusion, it is a deeply embedded one (and very pervasive across centuries and different cultures of humanity – some survival function?). I will still act as if I am actually doing some intentional hedonic choice and avoidance decision-making.
Nor does it matter if I am a compatibilist in the sense described by Dennett. That makes more sense to me in terms of my day-to-day engagement with circumstantial reality – but if it’s incorrect, it’s incorrect.
I want to add that I do not think of “justice” in any metaphysical sense. If someone wants to torture children (to take a deliberately harsh example), I will act to prevent that – without considering their motivations, or even the practical Epicurean social compact to “neither harm nor be harmed” (it does not matter that the child, or her parents, may not be signatory to that compact). In that sense, whilst I affirm the Epicurean idea of social justice, I am – at bottom – more of a moral non-cognitivist (let’s say that Epicurean philosophy here might provide some cognitive “fencing” around that).
Since I obviously have been interested in this discussion, thank you Onenski for bringing it to us.
-
But, again, this is a metaphysical question.
Following TauPhi , I would suggest that any "answers" to that question would, perforce, remain thoroughly speculative, even if intellectually interesting. Empiricism, always subject to evidentiary change (even Kuhnian paradigm shifts), cannot address such metaphysical questions.