Posts by Pacatus

From the Letter to Phytocles (just as a textual addendum to the parts of this discussion that reflects on modern science, and uncertainties in our knowledge of the natural world – as we all agree on “no supernature”

“[86] We must not try to force an impossible explanation, nor employ a method of inquiry like our reasoning either about the modes of life or with respect to the solution of other physical problems: witness such propositions as that ‘the universe consists of bodies and the intangible,’ or that ‘the elements are indivisible,' and all such statements in circumstances where there is only one explanation which harmonizes with phenomena. For this is not so with the things above us: they admit of more than one cause of coming into being and more than one account of their nature which harmonizes with our sensations.

“[87] For we must not conduct scientific investigation by means of empty assumptions and arbitrary principles, but follow the lead of phenomena: for our life has not now any place for irrational belief and groundless imaginings, but we must live free from trouble.

“Now all goes on without disturbance as far as regards each of those things which may be explained in several ways so as to harmonize with what we perceive, when one admits, as we are bound to do, probable theories about them. But when one accepts one theory and rejects another which harmonizes as well with the phenomenon, it is obvious that he altogether leaves the path of scientific inquiry and has recourse to myth. Now we can obtain indications of what happens above from some of the phenomena on earth: for we can observe how they come to pass, though we cannot observe the phenomena in the sky: for they may be produced in several ways.” EF version, based on Bailey; my emphases.

I just found that "niggling" in the back of my mind as I read through the thread. It really is, it seems to me, an early paean to empiricism -- and keeping open-minded about plausible hypotheses and theories that might fit the known facts (have not been falsified), with whatever uncertainty that might entail.

BTW, here is a link to David Konstans' chapter, "Epicurus on the gods," in Epicurus and the Epicurean Tradition, edited by Jeffrey Fish, Baylor University, Texas, Kirk R. Sanders, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign:

https://www.academia.edu/48868154/Epicurus_on_the_gods.

I know it's been discussed on here before. (Maybe I'm just catching up ... )

Quote from Cassius

Many people seem to take it for granted that Epicurean gods equate to Zeus and his crowd, and I doubt very much that that is a good assumption at all.

Color me – totally unsure at this point, one way or the other. At least in terms of archetypes that Epicurus would have been familiar with.

But some abstracted notion of “blissful divinity” (again, whatever that might mean?!) seems – to put it mildly – unsatisfying and unrelatable. From either a realist or idealist perspective. Absent specific associations, merely pluralizing “divinity” would seem to be a semantically empty “difference without distinction.”

Don : I've been following this, but posted some thoughts on the old thread below. I think they relate to what you just said here.

Post

RE: "The Polytheism of the Epicureans" by Paul T. M. Jackson

I just revisited the essay linked by Godfrey in the opening post.

One of the considerations that seems to get shunted aside in discussions of the Epicurean gods (especially from a realist perspective, but also from an idealist one) is that the Athenian gods that Epicurus venerated (like the gods of other polytheisms) “embodied” (or at least represented) various, specific associations in their personae. Dionysus was the god associated with wine, viticulture and theater (especially comedia);…

Pacatus

December 14, 2024 at 3:28 PM

I just revisited the essay linked by Godfrey in the opening post.

One of the considerations that seems to get shunted aside in discussions of the Epicurean gods (especially from a realist perspective, but also from an idealist one) is that the Athenian gods that Epicurus venerated (like the gods of other polytheisms) “embodied” (or at least represented) various, specific associations in their personae. Dionysus was the god associated with wine, viticulture and theater (especially comedia); Hestia was guardian of the hearth, hospitality and home fires (and public fires maintained for religious purposes); Gaia personified this earth; and on and on …

If they become no more than muddled signifiers for some vague notion of blissful divinity (whatever that is!), living in the intermundia – they become little more than blurry abstractions, far removed from either the Greek pantheon (even with superstitious flaws removed by Epicurus) or psychological archetypes.

Personally, I am in the idealist camp – but I am hesitant to project that back onto Epicurus. In any event, ghostly “divinities” – with little even metaphorical “flesh” – abiding in some intermundia seem thoroughly uninteresting. I wouldn’t even know how to consider them from a psychological/archetypal/meditative point of view, absent those very specific associations.

Archetypal personae, with specifically defined associations – whether physically real or not – are another story …

Quote from Don

Case in point: I'll disagree with people who don't see the need for the Oxford comma!

Uh oh!

Quote from Cassius

Yes you need them to live, but that does not mean necessarily that they are "most pleasant." Epicurus clearly states in his letter that the wise man is not going to seek the longest life, but the most pleasant.

I’ve often wondered, in that context, if “necessary” is supposed to mean what is simply necessary for bare survival (as it sometimes seems taken to be – again, by proponents of the “bread-and-water” ascetic wing) or necessary for the most pleasant life. I think you’ve answered that question here. And (if I read you right) I agree: it has to be that.

Welcome, Henrique.

Welcome!

Quote from Kalosyni

I hope this shows that Epicureans are actually embracing many desires by fulfilling desires, and that we need not fear the feeling of desire, but instead turn towards the ones that nature gives us with joy.

Well said – and bears repeating! Thank you.

You mentioned PD08: “No pleasure is a bad thing in itself; but the means which produce some pleasures bring with them disturbances many times greater than the pleasures.” [Also VS50]

That also means, to me, that no desire is a bad thing in itself. Desire is what awakens and guides the pursuit of pleasure (from your Torquatus quote: "pleasure is matter for desire" ). It’s not the desires that are a problem, but – sometimes – how we act, or refrain from acting, in their pursuit; and the consequences of their fulfillment. That is the guardrail exception – not the rule. (As you once said so succinctly: “There are no rules, only choices.” My sage therapist, when I was going through a hard time, said much the same thing. I have not forgotten your reminder! )

People who gravitate toward an “ascetic Epicureanism” often cite Epicurus’ criticism of profligacy in the Letter to Menoceus: “ … When, therefore, we maintain that pleasure is the end, we do not mean the pleasures of profligates and those that consist in sensuality, as is supposed by some who are either ignorant or disagree with us or do not understand, but freedom from pain in the body and from trouble in the mind.

“For it is not continuous drinkings and revelings, nor the satisfaction of lusts, nor the enjoyment of fish and other luxuries of the wealthy table, which produce a pleasant life, but sober reasoning, searching out the motives for all choice and avoidance, and banishing mere opinions, to which are due the greatest disturbance of the spirit.” [131, in part, and 132]

But, I would read that as a caution that needs to be seen through the lens of (contextualized by) PD10: “If the things that produce the pleasures of profligates could dispel the fears of the mind about the phenomena of the sky, and death, and its pains, and also teach the limits of desires (and of pains), [then] we should never have cause to blame them: for they would be filling themselves full, with pleasures from every source, and never have pain of body or mind, which is the evil of life.” [My emphasis and brackets]

Epicurus’ breakdown of desires into (1) natural and necessary, (2) natural and unnecessary and (3) unnatural is a wise guide to healthful and beneficial choosing. But “No pleasure is a bad thing in itself.”

Some thoughts triggered by the following comment by Don from the discussion of the Monday Zoom meeting: “One of the benefits of this forum is it gives a chance to read Epicurus and his school with fresh eyes and lets the texts, all of the available ones, speak for themselves.”

I think discussion on a forum like this can support a kind of perspectivist process of learning, viz. “the epistemological principle that perception of and knowledge of something are always bound to the interpretive perspectives of those observing it. While perspectivism does not regard all perspectives and interpretations as being of equal truth or value, it holds that no one has access to an absolute view of the world cut off from perspective.” No one has a “god’s-eye-view” – or a “view from nowhere” – from which to analyze reality.

Perspectivism - Wikipedia

Nietzchse is considered to be the first major developer of this principle:

“Nietzsche's perspectivism begins by challenging the underlying notions of 'viewing from nowhere', 'viewing from everywhere', and 'viewing without interpreting' as being absurdities. Instead, all viewing is attached to some perspective, and all viewers are limited in some sense to the perspectives at their command.”

The Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset also took a perspectivist view (is there a pun there? ).

“From different positions two people see the same surroundings. However, they do not see the same thing. Their different positions mean that the surroundings are organized in a different way: what is in the foreground for one may be in the background for another. Furthermore, as things are hidden one behind another, each person will see something that the other may not.”

– José Ortega y Gasset (some years back I read almost all of Ortega’s work).

I agree with the principle – with the following proviso: from an Epicurean perspective, such perspectivism must be properly grounded in and constrained by the κᾰνών. Otherwise, it could collapse into the kind of relativism that Nietzsche, for example, eschewed – or skepticism -- while refuting Nietzsche’s error: “There are no facts, only interpretation.”

[Remember, though, that The Will to Power is a collection of Nietzsche’s philosophical notes, not the final declaration of his thought.]

Happy Thanksgiving!

I had a chess acquaintance some years back (I recall he was a mathematician) who argued that the universe is finite but unbounded: unbounded because there isn’t anything else (including space) – hence the notion of a boundary is incoherent; finite because its expanding means that, at any moment, it is of a certain “size” (dimensionality?).

I might not be putting that well – and I have no competence re physics/cosmology. It might just reflect an overly pedantic parsing. I just thought it was interesting.

I don’t recall anything about eternality, but definitely there was no notion of genesis ex nihilo (which I also think is incoherent).

Quote from Kalosyni

The antidote to this situation is that folks ought to create an outline of what they believe are the Epicurean tenets, and include the sources in the texts.

For me (just myself) that would be a lot of busy-work that would just distract from my attempts (and sometimes struggle) to apply Epicurean thought – as best as I interpret it at the time – to my daily living. The test of those interpretations (mine) is how they work to enhance my eudaimonia (hedone, aponia, ataraxia) – without regard to whether they are “heterodox” or “orthodox,” or who judges that. That's not to say that such a practice might not be helpful to someone else.

Sometimes I share my interpretation. Sometimes (often) feedback may cause me to reconsider and revise that – but always, for me, it will come back to personal practice and experience: that, for me, is the ultimate canon.

I do not criticize – let alone dismiss! – the scholarly work that goes on here (translation, analysis, interpretation, etc.). It has helped me.

___________________________

Addendum (sorry): I did do a personal outline when I first came here; I've revisited it a couple times. Maybe will again, if I think it will be helpful on my journey.

Just to note, Lampe is author of The Birth of Hedonism: The Cyrenaic Philosophers and Pleasure as a Way of Life, which I read.

One of the interesting things that I recall is that, on what are often taken to be the major differences between the Cyrenaics and the Epicureans – i.e., the Cyrenaics’ emphasis on physical, as opposed to mental, pleasures; and a strict “presentism,” as opposed to including future considerations in building a life of eudaimonia – Lampe argues that, although they are differences, they are more differences of degree than of substance. For the rest, ask me no questions!

Disclosure: I’ve never been a big fan of didactic poetry (no real justification: de gustibus non est disputandum). But I am getting some renewed interest here in the role that lyric verse might play in that context. Partly, I have Kalosyni to thank for that: her introduction of Omar Khayyam into Epicurean consideration a while back led me to 1) buy new copies of the Rubaiyat (kindle and paperback) to keep by my side, and 2) to explore, just a bit, Fitzgerald’s steadfast belief that Khayyam – far from being a Sufi – was really an Epicurean (at least in spirit).

So now I may be finding new ways to look at Lucretius …

I also found this review of another overly-expensive book: https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/1997/1997.02.12/

I think this might have been the thread: Introduction---Joshua's Notes on "The Good Poem According to Philodemus", by Michael McOsker

Here is a link to a PDF copy of the full Yapijakis and Chorousos article quoted by Patrikios above:

https://societyofepicurus.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Yapijakis-Chrousos_Epicurean-Eustatheia.pdf

Here is a link to a PDF of the Christos Yapijakis article quoted by Patrikios above: https://www.epicuros.gr/arthra/23_filo.pdf