Posts by Pacatus

There are a number of versions of the so-called “golden rule” across cultures. In the Judeo-Christian tradition there are two:

The first is by Rabbi Hillel (died circa 10CE) “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour.”

The second is attributed to Jesus of Galilee in the gospels of Matthew and Luke: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

The first (Hillel’s version) is negatively formed – and I have often preferred it, sometimes wishing to tell some well-meaning person: “Please stop trying to do unto to me!” But I really view them as complimentary – each from a different perspective, and each sometimes being, perhaps, a salutary check on the other.

It seems to me that PD 31 can be analogous to Hillel’s version (with further explication in the following PDs):

“Natural justice is a covenant for mutual benefit, not to harm one another or be harmed.” (St. Andre translation)

Michel Onfray incorporated a somewhat more positively formed dictum in his Hedonist Manifesto: “Enjoy and have others enjoy, without doing harm to yourself or anyone else; that is all there is to morality” – especially if one takes that “have” in an active, rather than passive, sense.

I am wondering if the more scholarly on here can identify a similar positively-formed version in the Epicurean corpus? VS13 perhaps? VS15? VS44? Something in Philodemus or Lucretius?

Thank you.

Quote from Cassius

then I can easily productively and praisingly call you a "fundamentalist," in the best sense of the word!

How about a "fundu - mentalist"?

"fundu" in the sense of the English/Indian slang definition here: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fundu#English

My crazy-quilt wordplay brain also immediately thought of "fondue mentalist" -- again, in the best sense!

Thank you, Godfrey.

I will add that, in his book, Gendlin really loosens up the specificity of the “six steps” – in order to encourage people to develop more variety in their personal style. But I don’t think you need the book to play around with it: the basis is really consulting the body and the “felt sense.”

Also, I can get lost in my head working a more rationalistic approach (thinking, thinking, thinking … !) – and this is one way (for me!) to get out of that “hedonic calculus” concept that a number of us were recently grousing about.

Also (how many “alsos can I play? ) it seems to get back to the ground of the senses (αἰσθήσεις, following Don).

Years ago, I read a book by meditation teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn, who taught mindfulness meditation to patients plagued by chronic pain. Because they all had different physical abilities (and disabilities), he struggled with questions of meditative posture. In the end, he gave up and just said: “Just sit with dignity.”

He was amazed as he saw them all simply and naturally adjust their postures – within their diverse physical limitations – in a way that expressed that concept. He didn’t define the word for them or draw pictures. They just seemed to feel it.

The philosopher/psychologist Eugene Gendlin developed and taught a simple, effective therapy based on what he called a “felt sense,” in which one inquires of their body what’s going on with them, and noticing how that changes in response to various insights (what he called a “felt-shift”). He wrote a well-received – both among professionals and a popular audience – book about it titled Focusing (available from Amazon.) I have been, over the past few months, refamiliarizing myself with the practice.*

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Years ago (again) my wife and I read a book called Elegant Choices, Healing Choices by Marsha Sinetar – which I just recently recalled.

And so I am experimenting with just asking the question (in the sense of Epicurean hedonic choice and avoidance): “Where is the elegant choice?” And noticing what kind of “felt sense” (πᾰ́θος–αίσθηση perhaps? Don?) comes in response. This far, it seems fruitful (without attempting any further definition of that word “elegant” – ala Jon Kabat-Zinn above). So I thought I would share it …

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* Here is a (very) simplified description of the basic focusing process – but it was enough to help me get started again, till I could reacquire the book: https://focusing.org/sixsteps. It really is subject to multiple variations, which one can develop personally for themselves.

I would say that “atoms” (subatomic particles, energy, space, etc. – the basic physics of the universe and the combinations that define our world: emerging molecules, neuro-chemical processes, etc.) are the fundamental facts of the case. Such facts are neither good nor bad – they just are.

Such things as consciousness, pathe, the ability to choose, etc. are emergent phenomena from those fundamental facts that are facets of what it means to be a human being.

Talk of “the good” is ethical discourse (which is not the same as Stoical/Kantian/Christian moralistic discourse). And so, the “highest good” remains eudaimonia – which, from an Epicurean perspective, is defined by hedone/aponia/ataraxia.

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I realize there are a number of etcs. in this post: I am not a scientist. ... etc. ...

Quote from Nate

those "fundamentalists" who (according to Philodemus) over-relied on an unnecessarily-literal interpretation of Epicurus' vocabulary

Unfortunately, this reminded me of another “book fundamentalism” – and prompted this satirical doggerel:

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By the Book

By the Book, by God, by the big black Book

I do vow – by the holy Word, I vow –

no tittle or jot will a free thought blot.

I bow, my God, with bended head I bow …

To intrude a couple of mixed metaphors: For me, the Garden (and this place) is not so much like going to or joining a church (or the Stoa, or the like) – as it is like going to the grocery store for a variety of food and drink that are both tasty (pleasurable) and healthful. Or our local co-op with its emphasis on organic, local and natural products. (“No, I don’t think I’ll have an avocado with dinner tonight – maybe tomorrow. But I will take a bottle of this wine.” )

Or, what I find in Epicurus is – to quote a phrase from Kalosyni that I’ve never forgotten – “tools, not rules.” Finally letting go of that (ingrained) struggle to find (and clutch hard in a mental fist, so to speak) “the right rules” (rules as commandments -- commanded by whom?) just makes things a bit easier. “Easy does it.” (It does ... . )

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Note: I am aware that “canon” can be translated as “rule” – but I take it more in the sense of a measuring (or weighing) tool, a set of guiding principles to make life easier and more enjoyable.

Quote from Little Rocker

the second language is always in your head, even if you never speak it

An excellent and apt description!

I grew up (and through my formative years) a certain kind of black-book Lutheran for whom the standard Sunday recited confession was "I confess that I am by nature sinful and unclean" -- week after week after week, year after year. (I don't think that harsh a language is still used, even in the most conservative Lutheran churches.) Again, despite rational rebellion, there can still be that Pavlovian residue, buried in the subconscious.

Eoghan Gardiner

Sounds right.

Eoghan Gardiner

Maybe his play "No Exit" (from long-ago memory) gives some clues about being with friends (in the Epicurean vein?) aa opposed to just "other people" who might see you as an object in their world?

Eoghan Gardiner:

What about "existential angst" and Sartre's "hell is other people"? (I'm sure you are far better read than I am here, and I don't intend these as argumentative questions.)

What the existentialists get right (in my view):

1. Existence precedes essence. That is, there is no “view from nowhere” (no “god’s-eye view”) from which anyone (e.g., Plato) can confidently declare some universal ideals.

Better called “perspectivism” perhaps, the Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega-y-Gasset made this painstakingly clear in his (painstaking) lectures that made up his book What is Philosophy. His aphorism expressing this is “Yo soy yo, y mi circumstancia” – “I am I, and my circumstance (situation/existential reality).”

2. The universe does not disclose meaning, only evidence, facts and patterns. It was the expectation of finding such disclosed meaning, in the face of empirical/existential reality, that Camus labelled “the absurd.” (Though Camus later denied he was an existentialist.)

We are the ones responsible for deciding “meaning” – and that always within the limits of our existential perspectives.

Well, that’s it for me and the existentialists …

[EDIT FROM CASSIUS: I am copying this post into a new thread to address the topic now listed as the thread title: "How Does An Epicurean Feeling Overwhelmed Or Depressed Overcome That Feeling?" The first three posts are from another thread entitled "Does the Philosophy Change You?" but these posts set up the topic very nicely. We're not talking here about clinical depression or generalized anxiety but the normal ups and downs of everyday life, when the obstacles (real and not imagined) seem overwhelming. Maybe at some point we can set up a wiki-like summary - or I can just use this first post in that way - to bring together the major categories of responses, such as:

- Get back to / study Nature;

- Consult your friends for support;

We also need something to the effect that we're not talking "Pleasure" in the abstract as an antidote to pain, but the real feelings of pleasure that are particular to the individual concerned, such that we focus on seeking out things that are pleasurable to person feeling overwhelmed.

end of edit]

I was raised in a milieu of Christian/Stoical/Kantian “virtue moralism” that I liken to a Pavlovian programming that leaves an array of reactive triggers in your subconscious – that can grab you decades later (at least for me). All of that was in continual struggle with my inherent tendency toward hedonism (as opposed, here, to asceticism); and an unchecked, rebellious hedonism led to borderline addictive tendencies.

Unfortunately, all of the philosophical/spiritual avenues that I explored and studied seemed arrayed on the side of that latent moralistic programming. And so, life remained a struggle most days, well beyond my midlife years – even with help from friends and a wise therapist. (I am nothing if not stubborn! )

Epicurus has finally given me some ease in all that – with a rational therapy that goes beyond mere intellectual philosophy (in the modern academic sense) and offers the practical means for a healthier hedonism (without the old guilt). 1/

I still struggle: those subconscious triggers still rear their hooded heads. But the old reactions are short-lived. Life is easier, serenity is more readily available on a daily basis.

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1/: I am reminded, in my random brain, of some lines by Rumi:

“As always, we wake anxious and afraid.

“Don’t go into the library!

“Take down your lute and play …”

I was raised in a milieu of Christian/Stoical/Kantian “virtue moralism” that I liken to a Pavlovian programming that leaves an array of reactive triggers in your subconscious – that can grab you decades later (at least for me). All of that was in continual struggle with my inherent tendency toward hedonism (as opposed, here, to asceticism); and an unchecked, rebellious hedonism led to borderline addictive tendencies.

Unfortunately, all of the philosophical/spiritual avenues that I explored and studied seemed arrayed on the side of that latent moralistic programming. And so, life remained a struggle most days, well beyond my midlife years – even with help from friends and a wise therapist. (I am nothing if not stubborn! )

Epicurus has finally given me some ease in all that – with a rational therapy that goes beyond mere intellectual philosophy (in the modern academic sense) and offers the practical means for a healthier hedonism (without the old guilt). 1/

I still struggle: those subconscious triggers still rear their hooded heads. But the old reactions are short-lived. Life is easier, serenity is more readily available on a daily basis.

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1/: I am reminded, in my random brain, of some lines by Rumi:

“As always, we wake anxious and afraid.

“Don’t go into the library!

“Take down your lute and play …”

For this Elli –

“Conclusion: Epicurus is a genuine rebel of his era, and YES, he DOES POLITICS. A fruitful rebellious politics that is considered timeless … Epicurean philosophy cares for the “eudaemonia” of the Human being in reality of life, and it points out all the timeless phenomena of life as (social, political, religious, finance etc etc) that are against humans' eudeamonia, and pleasurable living. Epicurean philosophy is real as it gives and real solutions on every issue that concerns every real relationship among the people.”

– I simply say, “Thank you!”

"No, I am too firm in my consciousness of the marvellous to be ever fascinated by the mere supernatural, which (take it any way you like) is but a manufactured article, the fabrication of minds insensitive to the intimate delicacies of our relation to the dead and to the living, in their countless multitudes; a desecration of our tenderest memories; an outrage on our dignity."

Wow! Thanks for sharing that. ( Joshua, the depth of your erudition never ceases to amaze me -- especially in literature and poetry, but not limited there.)

In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa

Arching under the night sky inky

with black expansiveness, we point

to the planets we know, we

pin quick wishes on stars. From earth,

we read the sky as if it is an unerring book

of the universe, expert and evident.

Still, there are mysteries below our sky:

the whale song, the songbird singing

its call in the bough of a wind-shaken tree.

We are creatures of constant awe,

curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom,

at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow.

And it is not darkness that unites us,

not the cold distance of space, but

the offering of water, each drop of rain,

each rivulet, each pulse, each vein.

O second moon, we, too, are made

of water, of vast and beckoning seas.

We, too, are made of wonders, of great

and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds,

of a need to call out through the dark.

– Ada Limón, U.S. Poet Laureate

Quote from Don

I'm pinning my hopes on the Europa mission

“All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landing there.” (A Space Odyssey, 2010: The Year We Make Contact)

Quote from Don

The construction of the two phrases is very similar:

1. τὰς τῶν ἀσώτων ἡδονὰς

καὶ "and"

2. τὰς ἐν ἀπολαύσει κειμένας

which Epicurus seems fond of doing in pairs.

Just some speculative thoughts:

κεῖμαι has apparently also been used to mean “ to lie sick / lie in misery / lie in ruins” – in context that could refer to the profligate, who take pleasures beyond the limits, and [καὶ] as a result lies in misery. That would support Elli’s interpretation. But, since the profligate would already be understood as one "in the enjoyment of pleasures out of limits”, that particular phrasing would seem redundant.

Both in light of fragment 211 and the pleasure that I take in a sweet afternoon nap, I would not take to κεῖμαι simply meaning the enjoyment of sleep!