Posts by TauPhi

Quote from Cassius

Tau Phi I will think you have adequately stated your position as to any AI in this thread here. If you have some substantive criticism of the article please add it too.

I still think the content of the article is very good. Nothing has changed and I have no criticism in this regard whatsoever.

I retract my praise for the article because I was misled to think you wrote it which is not entirely the case. As I said before, I have no problem if you, or anyone else, choose to delegate creative processes to AI. I'm interested in doing philosophy with humans. That's my goal here. I'm not interested in AI summaries. If you have different goals, that's perfectly fine as long as you are clear about them.

However, if you intend to present AI creations as yours in conversation with me without notifying me about it, please refrain from doing so as I'm not interested in having conversations about AI algorithmic simulacrum of philosophical ideas, no matter how clear or accurate. I'm only asking about clarity in this respect when it concerns me personally. Nothing more.

Unfortunately, I have to retract my praise for this article as I found out it was AI assisted creation. Cassius , please add information about AI usage in your publications when AI is used. Signing such creations with your name only is misleading as you're not the sole author of such works. I have the utmost respect for you as a person and your vast knowledge of Epicurean philosophy but I have zero intention of publicly praising your ability to give prompts to LLMs. To be perfectly clear, I have no problems with people using AIs if they choose to do so. I just don't want to be unknowingly involved in AI generated content.

Quote from Eikadistes

... weirdly, I am missing page 259 in my copy of Obbink's translation of On Piety, which includes an English translation of column(s) 77A/77B, and after scouring the web, was lead here...

Haha. It's official then. EpicureanFriends site has every resource on Epicurean philosophy in the universe. Including missing pages from books in form of its members!

Eikadistes I can see on your web site that you managed to find the missing English translation of 77A/77B. Footnotes need a little more work, though.

Here are correct footnotes:

1 Pleasures.
2 Literally 'exchangeable for'.
3 The pleasures that come from the satisfaction of necessary desires.
4 SC. desires, ἐπιθυμίαις ἀναγκαίαις (2209/12), i.e. those that derive from freedom from fear of harm.
5 Namely, escaping detection all their lives.
6 The gods.
7 Literally 'cause no trouble' or 'bother', particularly in this world.
8 The gods (2232 αὐτούς).

Here's what needs correction on your webpage:

2) missing quotation opening and it should be 3)
3) should be 2)
4) Greek provided instead of Latin transliteration, missing 'ἀναγκαίαις' and 'fear'
8. Greek provided instead of Latin transliteration

ADMIN NOTE BY CASSIUS -- I don't have the ability to create my own post so as to explain this thread so I am doing so in this ADMIN edit. I am moving all discussion of issues of the use of AI in two blog posts I generated in late March 2026 (of course it's applicable far beyond those) to this thread. I am posting in those original threads links to this thread. The original discussion threads for those articles should be used for discussing substantive comments, criticisms, changes, etc. Issues of the use of AI apply to both and should be made here in this thread entitled "Revisiting Issues of The Use of AI in Epicurean Philosophy"

I usually avoid philosophical skirmishes because they tend to lead to 'my god is better than your god' scenarios but I want to give credit where credit is due. I really enjoyed your response Cassius . This is a very well written article and the quality of Mr. Pigliucci's work pales in comparison with yours.

This is cool. I didn't know about its existence. Thank you Eikadistes . It reminds me of something I wrote to myself some time ago. I rarely share my personal scribblings with anyone but I'll make an exception on this occasion:

Radiate, pulsate and be alive.
Face your fears and smile.
Embrace the passage of time.
It is worth your while.

The best online resource on Cyrenaics I'm aware of:
The Cyrenaics Resource [The Lucian of Samosata Project]

Quote from Cleveland Okie

As we seem to read a lot of the same things, here is a list of Epicurean books I have read so far, is there anything I have missed that you (or anyone else) would like to recommend?

Hi Cleveland Okie. Good to hear from you.

You've read a lot of secondary material on Epicurean Philosophy already so recommending you another contemporary book would make you read the same, rehashed ideas all over again. I'll try something more interesting. May I interest you in a book written in 1866 by Frederick Albert Lange called 'The History of Materialism and Criticism of its Present Importance'? It's a huge volume dedicated to the development of philosophical materialism over the past 2 millennia but you absolutely don't need to read the whole thing. Antiquity is covered within the first 150 pages or so and this material will allow you to put Epicurean Philosophy in context to better understand what made the philosophy possible at the time it was conceived. If you chose to continue reading past the first section, you probably won't be disappointed. The history of materialism is quite intriguing after the classical period as well. And since the book was written in 1866, it's in public domain and freely available on archive.org:

The History Of Materialism : Frederick Albert Lange : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Book Source: Digital Library of India Item 2015.221554dc.contributor.author: Frederick Albert Langedc.date.accessioned:…

archive.org

Thank you Eikadistes . To read something completely new so close to the source is a real treat.

I especially like this part: 'and [we will] forever [live] having remembered [them] exactly as during [their] time living, [thoughtful] of the natural end, [...]' but this line also made me pause when I first read it. I know 'forever' here is not to be understood literally and it's just an expression but taking into consideration the context of a dead friend, this 'forever' made me stop and ask: 'wait, what?'. If I may suggest something, I think translating ἀεὶ as 'always' instead of 'forever' might be more fortunate here. 'Always' retains permanence but is free from implying infinite amount of time dedicated to living and remembering.

Anyway, thanks again for sharing this translation. I appreciate it.

Aristippus' anecdotes about sea voyages he took. Both come from Gnomologium Vaticanum (link below).

Aristippus the Cyrenian philosopher was shipwrecked sailing into Athens, and having been taken in by the Athenians and asked what he intended to tell his friends back home after returning to Cyrene, said: “to procure the sorts of travel provisions, which will float together with a shipwreck.”

[Aristippus] had taken a lot of money from Dionysius when sailing back and because of this the sailors were plotting against him, so he moved from the middle of the boat to one side and ordered them to empty the money out onto the benches as though they could immediately count the money, but instead he turned around and threw it into the deep; and with the sailors being furious at this, he said: “Better to lose the money because of me than to lose me because of the money.”

Source:

Quote from Cassius

The reason I agree that the article was needed is that I perceive many articles about Epicurus by Academics in the last hundred years tend to go exactly in the direction of holding Epicurus to be trying to solve every problem by thought ALONE.

Correct me if I'm wrong Cassius but I think it's widely accepted position that Hellenistic Philosophy was largely practical. And this applies not only to Epicureanism but to all main philosophical schools of that period. The main focus was how to live the Good Life and not how to think about the Good Life.

That's why I find the claim somehow strange that many articles were published in the last century which paint Epicurus as someone focused exclusively on theory ('solving every problem by though alone', as you put it). In fact, it's hard for me to recollect any publications making such claims. If such works exist, please point me to them because I am very curious how such position could be defended.

Instead of repeating my slightly incoherent attempts to discuss this topic, I'll leave you with Ricky Gervais' quote which sums up the thing pretty neatly:

Quote

… Science is constantly proved all the time. You see, if we take something like any fiction, any holy book… and destroyed it, in a thousand years' time, that wouldn't come back just as it was. Whereas if we took every science book, and every fact, and destroyed them all, in a thousand years they'd all be back, because all the same tests would [produce] the same result.

Quote from Cassius

Ok so you're focusing on the title rather than the content.

I couldn't care less about the title. I'm trying to make people aware that calling fear of dying and fear of death the same thing is misleading. I'm not saying Emily Austin wrote a bad article - she didn't. It's a very interesting article but for people who are new to Epicurus' concepts it will not be as clear as it is to you, Cassius .

The conclusions like that:

Quote

I have argued that Epicurus does not believe all forms of the fear of death are irrational and eliminable. At least one fear – the fear of violent death caused by others – is brute and must be managed politically. [...]

or that:

Quote

In sum, I argue that Epicurus believes there is a fear of death that does not disappear, which we can control with due care and with close attention to the social environs. Though my thesis might render Epicurus less of a radical with regards the fear of death than heretofore believed, and though it may even make him seem a bit less than perfectly brave, I maintain that it is a good way to make sense of the text. [...]

are perfectly fine when you understand she's talking about fear of dying and not fear of death. There are no different forms of the fear of death in Epicurus' system. Epicurus was as radical about fear of death as it's humanly possible - we can't experience death so there's nothing to be afraid of. This radical claim is crucial to his system because it slams the door shut on supernaturalism, heaven, hell, eternal punishment, reward etc., and it leaves no backdoor option to get back to such concepts.

Quote from Cassius

So you are agreeing with her? Or are you saying that her article is what is misleading?

What is misleading is calling fear of dying and fear of death the same - fear of death. This article should be called 'Epicurus on the Politics of Fearing of Dying'

This article conflates and equates two different concepts: the fear of death and the fear of dying. Emily Austin provides four varieties of the fear of death at the beginning of the article but only the first one is an actual fear of death. Remaining three are variations on fear of dying.

(1) the fear of being dead;
(2) the fear that one will die, that one’s life is going to end;
(3) the fear of premature death; and
(4) the fear of the process of dying.

She then proceeds with her article and continuously describes fear of dying as fear of death.

I find it quite misleading because to my understanding Epicurus tried to remove (1) the fear of being dead. He never tried to remove fear of dying (2), (3), (4) because process of dying and everything connected with it belongs to the living and is painful and human beings can't switch off pain at their will. If they could, the whole Epicurean philosophy would make no sense and pain and pleasure could no longer be considered canonical. People can, however, minimise the fear of dying by the means described in the article. People can also be unafraid of being dead. These two things shouldn't be put in the same basket under 'fear of death' label.

Quote from Joshua

I think a similar model of the human perception, experience, knowledge, and intimation of nature can be useful in the study of Epicurean physics. In the Epicurean view, this Middle World is defined by the limits of what we can perceive with our senses. When we venture into the lower or higher levels of reality, it becomes apparent that a veil has fallen over our eyes, and that the methods by which we attempt to penetrate that veil must necessarily be limited, too.

Fascinating post, Joshua . I would argue, and it's partly a speculation on my behalf, that ancient Epicureans suggested a way to get to the truth behind the veil by introducing what some call a fourth criterion of truth - image perceptions of the mind. I tried to explain the purpose of these to Little Rocker some time ago by describing image perceptions of the mind as 'the ability to know truth about our surroundings outside of the direct contact.'

Here's the link to my post (#65), if someone is interested. I gave an example of distance there but it can easily be changed to scale to reflect indirect levels of reality. As I mentioned above, it's just me thinking out loud about the forth criterion so I give no guarantees that anything there is correct but here it is, nonetheless:

Post

RE: Episode 234 - Cicero's OTNOTG - 09 - Dealing With Marcus Aurelius And The Canonical Basis For the Epicurean View Of Divinity

[…]

Image perceptions of the mind are 'senses at the distance', so to speak. According to Epicureans every object (most likely with the exception of singular atoms and the void - but let's not go there right now) emits images - εἰδωλα. That's why we have two ways of detecting objects:

1) direct contact - eidolas do not make any difference as we have exposure to the objects themselves. In this scenario, the senses are criterion of truth (take precedence) for image perceptions of the mind, which in…

TauPhi

June 30, 2024 at 10:55 PM

Quote from Cassius

Side-by-side translations of Lucretius created by TauPhi

This needs to be corrected. I've only created side-by-side Laertius' Book X. Lucretius was prepared by Cassius , as far as I know, and his book/intermediate/detailed views added on top of all the translations makes this resource spectacular. Do yourself a big favour and bookmark this page if you haven't already:

Markdown Side-by-Side

Quote from Cassius

The formatting looks excellent as well. Do you mind sharing what intermediate programs you used to produce the final PDF? did you use some kind of Latex generation or something else that is accessible to others. I can imagine that others here might tackle similar projects in the future and it would be good to know if you've got a particularly useful methodology that others can duplicate.

Programs:

pdftotext - extracting a text layer from pdfs
neovim - text processing and spellchecking
typst - typesetting and pdf compiling (similar to Latex but I prefer this markup system)
zathura - pdf viewing

Methodology:
I instruct Neovim to send the file I work on to Typst to generate pdf and show the end result in Zathura. This way I can instantly see the end product with one press of a button.

This is an obscure book but it can be valuable for anyone interested in the studies of Epicureanism. On top of that, the book is historically interesting as it was published at the very end of the 17th century when Epicurus' philosophy was being introduced into the English-speaking world.

Until now, there were two ways of reading the book:
1) 200MB pdf scan of a 300-year-old book printed with a typeface containing an archaic, long s via archive.org - not much fun there
2) digitized but unformatted and incomplete transcription containing random OCR conversion artifacts - even less fun there

I decided to remedy the situation so I cleaned the transcription, filled in the missing bits, corrected any errors I could find and typeset the whole thing creating a new edition of the book.

During the process of typesetting I tried to be as faithful to the original as possible. Every chapter, paragraph and even inline text highlighting is exactly as in the 1699 edition of the book. I just got rid of an archaic, long s. so the text is easier to read by modern audience. That said, I'm just one guy and this is a 400 pages long book, so it's highly probable that I missed some errors or even created some of my own during typesetting. If anyone notices anything off, please let me know and I'll make sure to fix the problem.

I also added a new title page and an interactive Table of Contents which can take the readers directly to every section of the book.

Cassius Every resource used in the creation of the document is in Public Domain. I listed the sources at the very end of the book. My work is also in Public Domain as indicated at the end so if you find this worthwhile, feel free to add the pdf to the 'Files' section of the forum so the book is easily accessible to anyone interested.

Without further ado, after a short period of 325 years or so, here's the unofficial, second edition of Bernier's "Three Discourses".*

[*) The third edition is scheduled for release in year 2350 - stay tuned.]

Quote from Cassius

So this little exercise indicates well of the paraphrase but also indicates the hazards of following Gassendi too closely.

Pierre Gassendi lived and worked in the 17th century. This is historically very important period for the revival of Epicureanism as the philosophy started to get some traction again but at that time everything got filtered through Christianity. Gassendi, Le Grand and Charleton are Epicurean heroes in disguise. They tried to put Epicurus back on the map but the map was still firmly stomped by a Christian boot. Their works are really interesting and they should be investigated closely even if they can't be treated as authoritative sources for the study of Epicureanism. I'll make separate post about Le Grand in few days as I'm currently restoring one of his works.

Proper English translation from 1699 containing 'Happiness':

Three discourses of happiness, virtue and liberty. 1699 : Gassendi, Pierre. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Three discourses of happiness, virtue and liberty. 1699..Digitized from IA40313015-80.Previous issue:...

archive.org

Transcription of the book (not perfect but workable - click 'View entire text' to see the whole book):

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo2/A42442.0001.001/?view=toc