Posts by Pacatus

I’ve shared before that my wife and I spent 15 years on 20+ acres in the country. Our cottage sat down a chert lane and across a small limestone creek (called Terrapin Branch), and against a high wooded ridge. We had goats and various fruit trees (my wife made tasty dry country wines from tart cherries and elderberries – and even parsley once). We had a kitchen garden that yielded enough tomatoes, bell peppers, onions and garlic – and herbs such as oregano, parsley and sage -- to last the winter. In the last years, we had a small greenhouse.

To do that, I had to retire early, and we cut our income by nearly half. Let’s say we lived those years in "rich simplicity."

Now we have lived for 10 years as townies in a small apartment. We only grow a few herbs on the deck. We do try to get a lot of groceries and produce from the local co-op. (During the pandemic we had nearly everything delivered – including wine from a discount wine club that supports up-and-coming independent vintners, including a number of women.) We eat out about once a week.

I am not by nature ascetic – quite the contrary! I do intermittent fasting for its health benefits (12 to 16 hours three or four times a week). All in all, as townies on fixed income, I would say that we live in “rich frugality.”

I looked up George Lakoff and realized that I read his book (with Mark Johnson), Metaphors We Live By, years ago. (Sadly, don't have it anymore. )

Joshua: That was how it was expressed in my Lutheran upbringing.

I will add that the lecture was very well received by the synagogue members in attendance (a mixed Reform and Conservative congregation).

Joshua

Re Onan: Some years ago I attended a lecture, at the local synagogue, by a university professor of OT, on the Onan story. He laid out in detail how it was really about controlling property: had Onan impregnated his sister-in-law, she would have controlled the property in question until it was inherited by her child. Onan wanted to keep the property for himself. The larger context was a patriarchal bias (of which, presumably, YHVH was -- again, in the context here -- disapproving). The professor's analysis was that this passage represented a more feminist trope in the Torah.

Note: YHVH, the tetragrammaton, is the name of God that cannot be pronounced. Interestingly, the half that is allowed to be pronounced -- YH: Yah (as in Hallelu Yah) -- is feminine in the Hebrew.

Thanks all.

@Nate: Yes, I like the simplicity of that.

Joshua: That's the kind of stuff I was looking for.

Cassius: I agree with your take. I think all "command moralities" are idealist, Kant no less than the Stoics or other "divine command" types.

Again, thanks all.

We all agree on the prohibitive (negative) formulation – and its importance. (And that is, apparently, the most common type of formulation – not only in ancient Greece but other cultures as well.)

There remains a twofold question:

Are there (in the classical Epicurean corpus) any similar affirmative statements on: 1) where reasonably possible, to prevent or stop wrongful harm from being done to another (particularly someone outside our immediate friendship circle); and 2) to foster social conditions that are conducive to maximizing the possibility for enjoyment/pleasure by most people (including those that may be on the socioeconomic margins)?

Of course, one can strive to do both without drawing on any school’s (or religion’s) ethical philosophy – e.g., as a matter of personal conscience. But I am still curious.

Note: in case 1) above, the perpetrator of harm would be someone who has not embraced the Epicurean social compact.

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Note: I have some other things to attend to, but I’ll try to check in tomorrow. Thanks again, all.

Don: No problem!

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 …