Posts by Pacatus

An interesting recent article on Stoicism in El Pais:

Why Stoicism will always be in vogue

The popularity of books on Stoicism reflects a widespread search for values in a world where we often feel powerless. However, its philosophical ideas have…

english.elpais.com

The author has some positive commentary on Epicureanism, and questions why Stoicism has had a better survival:

“Stoicism is not the only school of thought that offers practical wisdom for navigating a changing world. Yet, it has proven to be the most popular, even more so than Epicureanism, despite the influence it also had. The French philosopher Michel Onfray wrote in EL PAÍS that “without Epicurus, there would have been no Renaissance, no Montaigne, no libertine thought of the 17th century, no philosophy of the Enlightenment, no French Revolution, no atheism, no philosophies of social liberation.”

"However, during the early centuries of Christianity, followers of Epicureanism were often misrepresented as people who organized banquets and orgies. This was a not true. In reality, the Epicureans advocated for a life centered around friendship and the thoughtful consideration of the consequences of everyday choices. They favored present moderation — such as having just one glass of wine — to avoid greater misfortunes in the future, like a hangover. But they proposed a life far removed from politics, which harmed the school’s influence, as Méndez Lloret points out.”

And: “Sellars points out another key factor contributing to Stoicism’s success: the texts of its leading thinkers are well-preserved and easy to read. Works like The Enchiridion of Epictetus, the letters and treatises of Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations are both accessible and engaging. In contrast, Diogenes left no written records, only fragments of Epicurus remain, and On the Nature of Things by the Epicurean Lucretius is more of a scientific treatise than an ethical or political one.”

[The comment about “far removed from politics” might be a bit overly strong – especially considering the adaptations of Roman Epicureans; viz. the essay “Caesar the Epicurean? A Matter of Life and Death” by Katharina Volk, recently shared by Cassius.]

My wife eats little meat, and would likely be completely vegan except that her doctor (following a heart attack) cautioned her against totally excluding any macronutrient from her diet; so she occasionally has a bit of fish or meat.

I basically eat anything. I do have a bit of a gluten issue, and so try to do more to minimize refined grains (bread, pasta)* in favor of intact grains (brown rice). But I am not very disciplined – and that is the main reason I am a bit overweight.** Following my wife, I try to eat more “beans and greens.”

With age, I find that eggs have become problematic. The old three-egg omelet is out: one egg, whether poached or scrambled, is usually all I can tolerate.

I still eat for pleasure – but try to balance the immediate “kinetic” pleasure with predictable “katastematic” feelings after. In terms of cultural cuisine, I have a motto in Latin: Sapores mundi gusta … de domo. (“Taste the flavors of the world … from home.” ) Tonight we are having some vegan minestrone soup, with added garlic, rice and some finely chopped kale. (I will have a bit of leftover pork tenderloin in mine.)

I do “intermittent fasting” – that is, three or four days a week I fast for 12 to 15 hours, and break my fast with some light “tapas” in mid-afternoon.

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* Even “whole grains” refined into flour.

** Based on personal observation.

Quote from Cassius

So those who wish to can save this post and use it against me in the future,

Quote from Don

For ancient languages, consider how hard it is to get the jokes in a translated play by Aristophanes or to understand the "oldest joke" - “A dog walks into a bar and says, ‘I cannot see a thing. I’ll open this one.’"

Maybe not just ancient languages:

“A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes." Ludwig Wittgenstein

I’ll let it there – except to say that Wittgenstein was a serious philosopher of language, so I’m not sure if he was joking!

Another article on the importance of friendship, from El Pais:

Robin Dunbar, anthropologist: ‘A good network of friends increases your life expectancy’

The British researcher defends the validity of his most famous theory, 30 years after formulating it. Despite social media, he explains that humans can only…

english.elpais.com

Quote from Don

While the "then's" could be taken as hierarchical, they could also just be identifying three co-equal kinds of desires: for eudaimonia, for freedom of disturbance for the body, and for life.

That seems reasonable. But still: is there a hierarchy of necessary desires? The Stoics would, e.g., dismiss those necessary for survival (let alone bodily comfort), in favor of their emphasis on virtue as the only thing necessary for eudaimonia (although they did allow for “preferred indifferents”). But if I am not first able to satisfy those desires necessary for survival, how am I to pursue [further] pleasure?

Quote from Don

So, this category should catch those between eudaimonia and those necessary for life. This is an interesting category.

For sure. For example, while some minimal amount of clothing and shelter may be necessary for survival (Maslow’s “base”), that may not be sufficient for “freedom from disturbance for the body” – i.e., some minimal comfort? (Very much a question mark there.)

“And of the natural ones [i.e., desires], on the one hand, are the necessary ones; on the other, the ones which are only natural; then, of the necessary ones: on the one hand, those necessary for eudaimonia; then, those necessary for the freedom from disturbance for the body; then those necessary for life itself.” Letter to Menoikeus, 127; Don Boozer translation. [https://www.epicureanfriends.com/wcf/filebase/download/97/]

On the one hand, it is clear here that “necessary” does not mean strictly required for survival, but for eudaimonia (the proper translation of which is oft-argued – e.g. well-being / the feeling of well-being / happiness / a well and happy life …).

With that said, I find the order here interesting: one might normally think that “for life itself”, being the most basic, would be the first one to consider in an ascending order (viz. Don ‘s reference in his notes to Maslow’s hierarchy). But the first one brought to mind by Epicurus is eudaimonia; then a body free from disturbance; and only then “life itself.”

I suspect this is not accidental, Epicurus being a careful writer. Thoughts?

[Note: I skimmed the other thread here, and didn't see anything on this particular -- overly pedantic? -- question.]

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Peter St. Andre translation, for comparison:

“ … among the necessary desires some are necessary for happiness, some for physical health, and some for life itself.” With this note, re “physical health”: “[5] Literally the Greek text says ‘to keep the body untroubled’ (in fact ‘for the untroubledness of the body’), which might mean keeping the body healthy or perhaps even relaxed or stress-free.”

Letter to Menoikos, by Epicurus

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BTW: Wishing a well and happy holiday season to all!

Quote from Cassius

At risk of getting drawn in too far when I should be doing other things (which I suspect is the real objection), what are "issues 1 and 2 in Section 2".....?

On a quick look-back, I think it is here:

“For example, when someone proves that the number √ 2 is irrational, i.e., that it is not a fraction, this particular piece of knowledge, as well as the methods that produced it, lead to two important conclusions, one general and one specific: (1) Mathematics does not in principle depend on sensory experience. (2) Incommensurability gives support to the idea of infinite divisibility of line segments.”

[My brain is becoming creamed corn at this point. Never great even at the maths that I had to know and apply in economics. ]

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Note: I used the example of π rather than the √ 2. Both are irrational numbers (as is e). The reason I latched onto π is that I think it is useful to be able to estimate the circumference of a circle, even if there is no "perfect" circle.

Quote from Cassius

What I will say is that my gut tells me that people who go down the rabbit whole too far in mathematical theory are never going to accept that no matter how internally consistent their systems might be

I remember years ago wading through a book – The Mystery of the Aleph: Mathematics, the Kabbalah, and the Search for Infinity, by Amir D. Aczel – in which it was suggested that single-minded pursuit down that very “rabbit hole” contributed to the mental collapse of mathematicians Georg Cantor and Kurt Gödel. (It was a difficult but engaging read, as I recall.)

Eikadistes I just came across this on your site:

"We pluck the night from the vine of time so we might forever savor the memory of its flavor."

That, my friend, is pure poetry!

Having read, as best I could , through the essay shared by Don in post #10 (which brought back vague but painful memories from my student days ), I offer the following only as an aside:

I always have a niggling unease at even the hint that anyone would reject, or even delimit, modern science (e.g. physics), either the empirical or the theoretical, based on adherence to any philosophical system – just as I do when people reject science based on religious beliefs. [Stressing that I don’t think that’s what anyone here is about.]

That is not to deny the relevance of “philosophy of science” – e.g. Popper’s contribution of the principle of falsification. Nor is it to deny the validity of investigating what Epicurus and Epicureans thought – e.g. re physics, mathematics, logic* – based on the knowledge base available.

With that said, I surely can’t think it would be “un-Epicurean” to estimate the circumference of a circle using π. (Sedley, however, based on the quote in the essay, would seem to think so … )

[However, I do tend to agree with those economists of the post-Keynesian schools – e.g. Steve Keen – who reject the traditional marginal analysis (based on differential calculus) in favor of more empirical discrete analysis.]

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* I have stated my opinion before on what appears to be a lack of clear distinction between deductive logic and inductive logic on the part of the ancients. Thus, the Stoics seem to have thought that deductive logic can yield empirical “truth” rather than just propositional coherence (e.g. modus ponens). Epicurus was, it seems to me, better on that score: rejecting the notion that (deductive) logic could yield empirical truth, whilst also rejecting the skeptical notion (whether Academic or Pyrrhonian) that real knowledge is thereby impossible.

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!