Posts by Pacatus

“As a practical matter it seems to me that Epicurus was right that it would be impossible for us to live happily if we did not organize our lives as if we are confident that we have some amount of free agency. … That has to be good enough and I judge it to be good enough - at least for me.”

– Cassius post #4 above.

Yes. And the fact that our agency / ability to choose may be constrained by circumstances or our own abilities at any given moment is no refutation.

Even under a regime of strict determination, that very regime, it seems to me, includes for us the near-universal perception that we have such agency – and the practical necessity that we behave accordingly in order to live happily.

I have always had the most difficulty with that final line of the tetrapharmakos. Not all pain is “easy” to bear – not for me, or likely anyone. The comments about context are, I think, on the mark. And the context, for me, is Epicurean practices (therapies) to alleviate that pain as much as possible – to make it bearable. Epicurus on his death bed provides an example. And that, I think, is the superiority of Epicurean philosophy (therapy) over the Cyrenaics: recognition that mental pleasures (e.g., focus on memories) can be called upon to alleviate physical pain. And that is something that I have been able to do.

“Hedonophobia is an excessive fear or aversion to obtaining pleasure. … Hedonophobics have a type of guilt about feeling pleasure or experiencing pleasurable sensations, due to a cultural background or training (either religious or cultural) that eschews pleasurable pursuits as frivolous or inappropriate. Oftentimes, social guilt is connected to having fun while others are suffering, and is common for those who feel undeserving or have self-worth issues to work through. Also, there is a sense that they should not be given pleasures due to their lack of performance in life, and because they have done things that are deemed ‘wrong’ or ‘undeserving.’"

://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonophobia#:~:text=Hedonophobia%20is%20formally%20defined%20as,is%20often%20a%20persistent%20malady.

Today is the first that I heard of such a thing (in some random reading).

But I have known at least one person (who came immediately to mind) who had a fairly strong and insistent version of this. She was a social activist (whom I knew from my own, lesser, participation in some of the same issues), who is a lay-member of a Roman Catholic Benedictine group.

Anyone else have any experience with this?

Happy Birthday, Cassius!

I’ve been muddling over this thought experiment since Kalosyni presented it. I think that the way it is presented – particularly the liberating vacation metaphor – cuts right to the bone in terms of how we make decisions today in the face of our impending (no matter our age or what we might expect) death and dissolution (including our memories). Maybe my age resonates with how I think about it.

Don ‘s dementia take is not so far off the mark I think, but I look at it the other way round from what I understood his perspective to be: suppose I were diagnosed with an early-stage but progressive dementia which is likely to be total at the end of a year (and I might not even recognize those friends, or what they are talking about).

I’m still “muddling” – especially since Kalosyni’s experiment is cast in Epicurean terms, rather than some radically presentist Cyrenaic frame. Let’s just say that, for me, it is seriously thought-provoking.

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And it reminds me of an old (1965 - 1968, when I was in high school ) TV series called "Run for Your Life," starring Ben Gazzara. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run_for_Your_Life_(TV_series).

Quote from Cassius

I would expect any of our readers in GA or NC or DC or the Florida panhandle might be without power - at least that's our situation!

Here's hoping all remain well.

Don

If it were not for librarians – and other free researchers – such as yourself, I long ago would have been lost in the closely closeted (or corested?) strictures of those professors, philosophers and priests who permitted no thinking outside their – corsets. (“Why are you reading that?!”)

From my academic student days till now. Thank you.

Quote from Cassius

He was setting the playing field so we can *begin* the analysis of how we spend our time,

That just struck me. "Setting the playing field!" Yes!

We still have to play. Nothing in this life around that.

Julia,

I relate to your question. Even in my elder years, I seem to spend too much time in the lower region of your diagram. I have learned (a lot of it on here! but elsewhere as well) perspectives for dealing with that. But, as Ram Das once quipped: “The most difficult thing is to remember – to remember!”

So – eventually (in my ADH[D] labyrinth*) I remember to come back. And sometimes I do find myself in the upper region of your diagram.

A sports analogy: Athletes want to get into “the zone” – where all they do seems easy, even effortless. But that “zone” does not always seem accessible, let alone permanent – then the athlete deals as best they can.

So: I’ve had those moments. I expect to have them again. But, till then, I’ll deal with the “Epicurean calculus” as best I can – and move on.

I doubt any of that is helpful. So I’ll just wish you well and all wellness, for what that might be worth.

+++++++++++++++

* As I have noted before, I reject that final “D” – it’s not a disability, just the way my hypertexting brain works. Sometimes for the better …

Quote from Cassius

When I am in those moods, the thing that works best for me is to do something to remember that the clock is ticking (even something like looking at a clock!), that I will never get lost time back, that I have a very limited time to do what I want to do before I die.

I wear a bracelet inscribed with "memento mori." It was Don who pointed out to me that this could be taken as much (maybe moreso) in an Epicurean vein as a Stoic one (where it seems to usually show up).

Also PD 16 (unless I missed it):

PD16. In but few things chance hinders a wise man, but the greatest and most important matters, reason has ordained, and throughout the whole period of life does and will ordain.

βραχέα σοφῷ τύχη παρεμπίπτει, τὰ δὲ μέγιστα καὶ κυριώτατα ὁ λογισμὸς διῴκηκε καὶ κατὰ τὸν συνεχῆ χρόνον τοῦ βίου διοικεῖ καὶ διοικήσει.

Cicero obfuscating and arguing out of both sides of his mouth?! Say it ain’t so!

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Although the main matter here may have to do with mortality, the following struck me:

“‘Cicero’ conflates both argumentative strategies. On the one hand, he shows (i) that also according to non-virtue single-good schools, the goods required for happiness are available even under adverse circumstances, while conditions regarded as bad are no bads or at least not so bad that it would be impossible to obtain the goods constitutive of happiness. On the other hand, (ii) he attributes to virtue an instrumental function for guaranteeing happiness.

…

“All types of real non-virtue goods are sufficiently available for a person to be happy, and there is no reason to suffer from apparent bads that one can despise and disregard (strategy i). However, a person also needs the ability to assess goods and bads correctly, must assume the right attitude toward them and make the right choices. This ability is virtue, understood here as a mind educated to assess correctly what is good or bad so that it does not value what is worthless or fear what is harmless (strategy ii).”

As I recall, the primary practical (instrumental) virtue for the Stoic Epictetus was what we today would call agency: exercising our ability to choose among options.

It seems to me that this virtue is precisely what Epicurus emphasizes in our practical ability to choose among (1) the three categories of desires, and (2) pleasures that may lead to pain and pains that, if endured, lead to greater pleasure.

Possession of this virtue itself does not guarantee happiness (eudaimonia – with due recognition of problematic translation), but only its astute application. Virtue cannot be the only thing necessary for happiness (let alone, as the author mentions earlier, being happiness!) – but rather its instrumental application toward what is happiness: pleasure.

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There, at bottom, seems to be a kind of vicious circularity in the Stoic notion of virtue being the sole necessary and sufficient “good” for eudaimonia – let alone constituting eudaimonia. Virtue is either instrumental or not. Cicero seems to want it both ways.

Welcome MaiTaiNye.

An off-point attempt at some humor, in terms of examples of "god":

Sorry ...

Happy B'day!

Quote from Don

recognition of meaningful patterns

I just want to add (perhaps redundantly, having just blundered in here ) that such pattern recognition is (most?) often intuitive, rather than the result of any (time consuming) discursive analysis of all the elements forming the pattern. That is something that chess masters have often have relied on, rather than complicated calculative iterations. The intuition does rely on memory, of course.

And by “intuition” here, I mean something like “immediate apprehension or cognition” (per Webster’s).

Welcome, David!

BTW, could you (or anyone else here who has read it) comment further on the Jones book? It is pricey enough on Amazon to give me pause, but if it's worth it ...?

Quote from Little Rocker

I admit that I feel like I've reached a point where every time I hear a passionate argument about altruism I cry a little on the inside, even though I recognize that the possibility of altruism really matters to a lot of people. I think I've just lost sight of why it does.

Just some off-the-cuff thoughts:

For me, altruistic acts – from an Epicurean view – can be important from two different points of view: (1) they give me pleasure (the Stoics might deny that as a criteria, but I think they tend to delude themselves with regard to their own pleasure/satisfaction on this score – as Don said); and (2) both in terms of local community and friendship, and in terms of a more extended social fabric – based on a social contract to prevent harm by means of preserving an amenable social context in which we perforce live – as instrumentally choiceworthy, even if any reciprocity is not immediately expected. In today’s world, that social fabric likely includes at least some global considerations.

And perhaps pleasureable feelings of empathy are evolutionarily derived, supporting humans ability to live in any sense of community – and are still valid pathé today in that sense.

None of that relies on some abstract ideal of virtue or “command-morality” (as in the Stoics and Kant, say), which I heartily reject. And, it seems to me, it is the practical instrumentality that those idealists find objectionable.

It does, of course, depend on how narrowly or broadly one thinks of that term “altruism.” But Epicurus did say that one might reasonably die for one’s friends.

At least that’s my personal reflection …

I have just finished Wilson’s Epicureanism: A Very Brief Introduction. It is, indeed, very brief: the text being 120 pages.

As I read, I realized that the books we talk about here fall generally into two categories (though one might often “bleed” into the other): (1) the pragmatic – in terms of how one might live as an Epicurean in our modern times (and why that is worthy of consideration); and (2) the more straightforwardly “philosophical” – in the contemporary sense of that term. In the first category are such as Emily Austin, Hiram Crespo, Haris Dimitriadis and Wilson’s How to Live as an Epicurean (which I need to revisit). In the second category are DeWitt’s Epicurus and His Philosophy, Epicurean Philosophy: An introduction from the “Garden of Athens” (Christos Yapijakis Editor) – and Wilson’s Very Brief Introduction.

What one might recommend as an introduction thus ought to consider where a given person’s interest and prior exposure might be. (I tend to return more to those in the first category.) With that said, Wilson’s Very Brief Introduction might be considered as a sort of “outline primer” to, say, DeWitt.

Her treatment of Epicureanism is what I might call “critically fair” (fair as in evenhanded). She often skillfully sets up the arguments of Epicurus' critics (such as the Stoics and – especially -- the Christians and Kant), only to effectively dismantle (or at least diminish) them. Where she herself offers criticism (or affirms those of others), it was generally in the manner of “it seems” – to her, or to majority contemporary thought. In other words, she seems to leave room (at least implicitly) for cogent criticism of her criticism. [And that has been accomplished, without direct reference to Wilson, on here many times.]

In sum – and, as I said, contingent on my revisiting of her How to Live as an Epicurean – I am revising my opinions recorded above in this thread to a more affirmative view.

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On reflection of my thoughts in the 2^nd paragraph above, I searched my (much diminished) philosophy shelf, and found a book I had forgotten: Atoms, Pleasure, Virtue: The Philosophy of Epicurus by Avraam Koen (1995). Has anyone else read it? The book was drawn from his PhD dissertation. It seems to be out of print but available: the Amazon price for the paperback is a hefty $61.75.

My copy is riddled with highlights, underlines and marginal notes – some of which I started to skim. If I find anything I think worth discussing here, I’ll post it.

An article on recent research into the importance of friendship. (I’m an introvert, but I’m fortunate to live with my best friend.)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2024/05/28/in-person-friendships-health-benefits/