Posts by TauPhi

Godfrey Thanks for your post #27. I loved it and it's hard not to agree with you but I'd like to comment on this sentence:

Quote from Godfrey

Neurochemistry is the mechanism of pleasure but, to my way of thinking, doesn't supercede pleasure.

When we talk about neurochemistry, we venture into the world of molecules and atoms. To me, atoms will always have precedence over everything. This is how I understand objective way of looking at things. Trying to understand objective truth about our existence gives us a chance for subjective, pleasant life as humans because objective knowledge removes subjective fears and destroys subjective superstitions. When I was talking about dopamine I didn't mean to suggest that it replaces pleasure. By saying that pleasure might not be the highest good I was coming from objective perspective. Objectively atoms and void are the highest good as they are building blocks of everything else.

That said, I'm not sitting now in front of the screen thinking 'a combination of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen was just released by my neurons therefore I am capable of doing x and y'. I'm not a Spock. I'm purely human and from my subjective, human perspective I do find pleasure the ultimate motivator. I also fully realise that philosophy is a discipline invented by humans and is intended to be practiced from human perspective. I'm perfectly capable of thinking, talking and experiencing pleasure, feelings, friendship and everything else human but I try to remind myself that I live in the universe that is not created for me and all my subjective experiences most likely have objective truth behind them.

I'll approach katastematic/kinetic pleasure from slightly different perspective. This is something I was entertaining myself with on one of my midnight walks. One day I was reading something about dopamine and its function as a neurotransmitter and it occurred to me that pleasure might not be the highest good, in fact. Technically, pleasure may be just an emergent phenomenon caused by release of dopamine in animals' brains. Dopamine makes us want to pursue (or avoid) things. Without it, we wouldn't be even talking about pleasure and pain. We simply wouldn't know what these are.

To illustrate the power of dopamine, imagine yourself in front of a tasty looking burger. Next to the burger there are two pills. Let's make them red and blue for dramatic, Matrix-like purposes. Blue pill contains a chemical that completely blocks dopamine release in the brain. Swallow the pill and you would be staring at the burger until you die of hunger. You would have no motivation to eat it. You would not know what pleasure is. The red pill is cocaine-like chemical. Swallow it and you would find yourself devouring the burger is a state of ecstasy due to dopamine release flood. That would be the most pleasant burger in your life.

My point is, katastematic pleasure is a healthy, constant release of dopamine in our brains which allows us to feel pleasure anytime we're not in pain. This, to me, is the actual state of ataraxia. Enough dopamine to experience the pleasure of existence and to evoke the will to sustain that existence for as long as it's pleasurable.

Kinetic pleasure is a temporary spike of dopamine that makes us pursue imminent but short-lasting pleasures. I also consider it the main source of variety in experiencing pleasures discussed in PD18.

Count me in as well.

This post may be slightly off topic but all the talk about Latin pronunciation and Ranieri's work made me write this entry. It probably will only be useful for people considering learning Latin. I started with the intent of being able to read 'De Rerum Natura' in its original form one day. I didn't go far as yet but here's something to get people started if they are in similar position to mine.

Quote from Don

If you're interested at all in Latin and Ancient Greek, I **highly** recommend Ranieri's YouTube channels Scorpio Martianus and PolyMathy (and now there's a PolyMathy+).

I completely agree with that recommendation. I'll just add that Ranieri's video on book 'Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata' convinced me to go with it as my main study book and I have no regrets. It's quite brilliant.

Another YouTube channel I find very helpful is called: latintutorial

Quote from Don

Personally, I prefer the Restored Classical pronunciation.

I also agree with the choice of pronunciation. That's the main reason I decided to write this post. I've created few pages long all-I-need-to-know about Classical Latin Pronunciation guide for myself. It's a complication of stuff I found online and stuff from several grammar books presented in a form digestible to me. I never had intention of sharing it but I decided it may be of use to some of you here. Feel free to use it and I hope you find it helpful.

classical_latin_pronunciation.pdf

Quote from Godfrey

Also understand that duty is subservient to pleasure, not the other way around. This may be the most difficult as well as the most important.

Godfrey This has to be one of my favourite passages I came across here since I've joined the forum. In the Western World we're all collectively spoon-fed the importance of duty pretty much since day one. Breaking this indoctrination in favour of pleasure would take a gargantuan effort. Personally, I'd probably need an imaginary friend the likes of Tyler Durden from 'Fight Club' if I truly wanted to succeed.

Anyway, if I'm ever in charge of preparing 25th century anniversary album of Principal Doctrines, I'm putting your thought on second LP with outtakes and I'm making it the single to promote the whole thing. I really enjoyed that thought. Thanks for sharing.

Having definitive proof of extraterrestrial life would change our perspective on how we see the Universe and our place in it. Waking up one day from dead universe into alive universe would be yet another nail in the coffin of religions which build their business model on human desire to be special.

We know very little about the Universe but we already have some understanding of how big it is how some of its laws work. Now, imagine a situation that there's a civilisation out there advanced enough to conquer the vastness of space and break out from the iron fist rule of time just to travel to Earth to crash their spaceship here or, worse, to get randomly captured by species that can barely get their feet off the ground. That idea, to me, is laughable at best.

For that reason I put publications like the one above in my mental library in the same section I store religious publications. I named that section 'Delusions and Wishful Thinking'.

Quote from Cassius

So yes Greg Sadler's article is a good list of sources - I just don't recommend you follow him too closely on his views on Stoicism.

I've already did my research on Stoicism in the past and I can confidently say it's not for me. I don't regret doing the research, though. And even if Greg Sadler were the incarnation of Lucifer himself, I'd still recommend his article as he did a great job there.

On topic of which book to read first, I found this article by Gregory Sadler and I think it can be very beneficial for anyone looking for Epicurean reading list to start their study of the philosophy. Mr Sadler not only gives comprehensive list of ancient texts but also explains what these texts contain in regard to Epicurean philosophy.

Epicureanism Reading Recommendations

what books and authors are key for studying this classical philosophical school?

medium.com

Don I really like your last idea about the Cyrenaics. Epicurus could, indeed, be addressing them in this passage. Your post got me wondering if I could come up with something that simultaneously captures most of the arguments and translations in this thread:

• the Cyrenaics who trapped themselves in a nightmare of a limitless pursuit due to their failure of capturing the substance of pleasure

• Peter Saint-Andre's 'the enjoyment of sleep'

• @Elli's 'those in the enjoyment (that lie out of limits)' - which I personally agree with

• Pamela Mensch's 'the self-indulgent' - which I personally find the simplest and best translation

• multiple translations of 'sensuality'

• Don's latest attempt of 'those who are lying in sensual delight'

My proposition is rather more poetic than literal translation; more in the style of Lucretius than Epicurus and purely for entertainment purposes.

Here it is: 'those who are sleepwalking in boundless, sensual indulgence'.

What other schools of philosophy are close to your heart? Which schools you find worth studying in detail?

Quote from Cassius

Kalsoyni asked me about that and every other translation I can find (Bailey, Hicks, Yonge, Epicurus Wiki) focuses on prodigal and sensuality.

There's a new translation of 'Lives of the Eminent Philosophers' by Pamela Mensch which was published in 2018 by Oxford University Press. I find her translation of the fragment in question much more on point then all the 'sensuality' attempts or 'the enjoyment of sleep' one.

[...] But when we say that pleasure is our goal, we do not mean the pleasures of the prodigal or the self-indulgent, as the ignorant think, or those who disagree with or misinterpret our views. [...] (page 535)

I don't know any Greek so I can't add much to the argument but taking into consideration context of the whole paragraph of the letter, 'the enjoyment of sleep' translation makes as much sense to me as 'the enjoyment of collecting snails by the river on Sunday afternoon'.

Quote from ThinkingCat

“what does it mean to you personally to be epicurean in 30 words or less?”

To be wise enough to know what I need and strong enough to avoid the rest. To live pleasurably among people I love and be pleasant to live with.

Quote from ThinkingCat

Wow, these responses are very inspiring, a treasure trove! I’m off to read dewitt!

After introductory text like DeWitt's book I highly recommend going to the source material which Eikadistes listed above. This way you'll have general idea what's what and your own, unfiltered exposure to Epicurean texts. And if you find yourself liking all that, there's plenty more to enjoy later on. Have fun.

Quote from Cassius

And that's a vastly different approach to which many who come looking for help in "gaining control" to be worse than their current situation.

I'm not an expert on Stoicism so I may have it completely wrong but aren't you a bit harsh here? I don't think Stoics wanted to gain control over things out of control. They rather focused on how to deal best (in their understanding of the word) with things in control and not to care too much about things out of control.

Trying to gain control over things out of control would make Stoics look like Don Quixote fighting the windmills. They were already busy enough fighting vices so I doubt they had time for windmills as well.

I haven't used Git much but based on my limited knowledge of it I think it can be a great tool for collaboration. As far as Jupyter is concerned, it wouldn't be my first choice. Not that I have anything against it (I don't know it at all) but I think markdown would be far better to work with for these reasons:

• simplicity - markdown is basically plain text so it's super easy to work with and integration with Git version control would be easier as well

• versatility - markdown files can be edited on any platform using any editor so collaborators are not tied down to one, single option

Regarding Git server, I'd choose something like GitLab over GitHub. This is solely based on my aversion to software corporations (and GitHub belongs to Microsoft as far as I'm aware). I'm sure GitHub is fine but I wouldn't be myself if I didn't try to convince people to use alternatives.

Quote from Cassius

Well that list shows how hard core you really are, and far advanced ahead of me.

I have heard of most of those and occasionally tried them, but I still use mostly GUI - based programs on an XFCE desktop.

I'm not really that hard core. I just try to use programs which best allow me to achieve what I want. There are areas where I would never use terminal based programs as that would make my life unnecessarily complicated, i.e. all graphics related tasks, web browsing etc.

Cassius makes great points about FOSS (Free and Open Source Software). I'll add few more points to encourage people to give it a go:

-) FOSS gives its users freedom of usage, adjustment and modification that is absent from close source software

-) It's easy to combine different pieces of software to get required results, i.e. get output from program A and give it as input to program B for further processing. It may sound unimpressive and quite alien to people who haven't been exposed to Linux but I promise it opens gateway of limitless possibilities.

-) FOSS does what it was designed to do instead of pretending to do something when in actuality its main purpose is to collect user data, send it to a producer who sells it to the highest bidder.

And here's a list of the software I use most often. A lot of these programs are terminal based but I prefer them to GUI programs because of their extensibility and speed.

Arch Linux - operating system

i3 - windows manager

Neovim - text editor, both for general purpose writing and light coding, combined with Groff software for document formatting

sc-im - spreadsheet editor

Firefox - web browser

Newsboat - RSS reader

MPV - media player

CMUS - music player

Sxiv - image viewer

Zathura - document viewer

Xournalpp - pdf editor

nnn - file browser

Syncthing - synchronization

Quote from Cassius

Thank you TauPhi!

Here's that list of works from Google translate:

Unfortunately, most of these are not attainable. I tried to find Epicurus related works but beside the books I've mentioned (which are also out of print) I couldn't get my hands on any of these works.

Quote from Cassius

Thanks for the translation!!

As to this:

Quote from TauPhi

He called for the sacrifice of the most precious gift that human can make, namely the act of understanding, and to this call he remained faithful throughout his entire life.

"Called for the sacrifice of....?" Meaning more like dedication to?

It's an opposition to the act of blindly sacrificing everything to gods out of fear (referring to Oxyrhynchus Papyri quote above). Sacrificing the act of understanding might not be the best wording (though Krokiewicz uses just that) but it's the act of giving everything one has intellectually to achieve fearless blessedness instead of fearful submission (at least that's how I understand it).

BTW, Adam Krokiewicz gives in this paragraph very interesting source. Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 215 is suspected to be potentially written by Epicurus himself. Here are some links if anyone cares to investigate further:

General info about Oxyrhynchus Papyri:

Oxyrhynchus Papyri - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Specific info about Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 215:

Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 215 - Wikipedia

And lastly, the source material and its translation:

The Oxyrhynchus papyri : Grenfell, Bernard P : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

xii, 358 pages, plates : 27 cm

archive.org

Quote from Cassius

So it is always interesting to me if we come across new names to add to the list of scholars who seem fundamentally in support of Epicurus without this kind of hedging that we have from Bailey.

This is the last paragraph from the first chapter of 'Nauka Epikura' (1929 book) where Adam Krokiewicz describes Epicurus himself before going into Epicureanism in detail. This can give you better understanding of Krokiewicz assessment of Epicurus and his philosophy. I transcribed it, run through Google Translate and corrected the translation so it's as close to the original as possible.

Adam Krokiewicz, 'Nauka Epikura' (1929), page 62:

The teaching of Epicurus, intended for all humans and pointing the way to happiness in life, ultimately becomes a religious denomination, and its founder one of the religious geniuses. Because of the position of the gods as the natural ideals of human perfection and the position of humans as beings with natural duty to liberate their spirit and attain perfection during their lives, this religion may be called earthly in contrast to otherworldly mysticism. Because of the primacy of reason, the religion can be called intellectual as opposed to religions based on feelings, which violate reason. Epicurus did not recognize the piety of people who said: "I fear and worship all gods, I want to sacrifice to them all that I have" etc. (see Oxyrhynchus Papyri II, 215). He preferred them in truth to indifferent people, but he considered only the effort of rational thought to be the essential basis of piety. He called for the sacrifice of the most precious gift that human can make, namely the act of understanding, and to this call he remained faithful throughout his entire life. The teaching of Epicurus was as compact and uniform as the man himself. It deserves not only general, but also detailed understanding.

Quote from Cassius

Very interesting!

Quote from TauPhi

I based my views on books by Polish author called Adam Krokiewicz.

A Polish Cyril Bailey is very interesting. I am not a big fan of Cyril Bailey's take on Epicurus but I feel sure you mean his scholarship more than has personal impression. I am curious about how Krokiewicz fits in that regard in terms of his ultimate assessment of Epicurus. Do you find him to be a supporter of Epicurus' ethics and general worldview who looks for reasonable constructs where the texts are unclear (sort of like DeWitt), or more scholastically neutral?

Cassius Yes, by comparing Adam Krokiewicz to Cyril Bailey I meant similarity of their scholarship.

My impression is that Adam Krokiewicz personally valued Epicurus and his philosophy. It looks to me as Krokiewicz always tried to do Epicurus justice and presented his philosophy as a consistent system. That said, Krokiewicz was a full-blooded scholar and it shows especially in his 1929 book. It's an academic treatise which can be difficult to read sometimes. His 1960 book, however, is written with broader public in mind and definitely more accessible.

I cannot compare Krokiewicz to DeWitt as I've never read the latter. I know his work is highly valued here and it's on my reading list but for now I can't say much more.

Quote from Cassius

Tau Phi just for background I am curious as to how many of the texts you have reviewed in this. Have you gone into the Dirk Obbirk (sp?) material in On Piety as well as the Velleius section of "On the Nature of the Gods"? I really haven't done an exhaustive review of what is out there. Have you done that because just having a list of things to check would be helpful to people studying this.

Cassius I'm afraid I'm going to leave you a bit disappointed regarding sources for my previous entry. I based my views on books by Polish author called Adam Krokiewicz. He was a university professor who published several works on ancient Greek philosophy including two books on Epicurus. The first one was called 'Nauka Epikura' (transl.: Teachings of Epicurus) published in 1929 and the second one called 'Hedonism Epikura' (transl.: Hedonism of Epicurus) published in 1960. He was Polish equivalent of Cyril Bailey, more or less. I don't believe these books were ever translated into English. If there are any Polish speaking members here, I can refer you to the second book (pages 172-194) for discussion on the nature of gods.

Not to leave you completely disappointed Cassius , I list below main sources Adam Krokiewicz quotes in his discussion on the nature of gods (I didn't study these myself):

Cicero - De Natura Deorum

The scholia attached to PD01 (also mentioned by Don above)

Philodemos On the Gods

Sextus Empiricus - Adversus Mathematicos IX

W. Scott - The Physical Constitution of the Epicurean Gods - Journal of Philology XII 1883, p.219

Don I appreciate your addition of grist in this mill. I like the idea of infinite, individual and mortal gods vs eternal eidola of blessed beings because it's the best idea I found that is consistent with Epicurean physics (atomism), epistemology (eidola) and ethics (blessedness) at the same time.

I don't particularly like to talk about gods in general as I almost always feel like a blind man talking about the beauty of yesterday sunset but I'll add one more thing that I came up with on that topic. It's just my personal opinion and may be as accurate as the description of that sunset, though.

I like to think that human perception of Epicurean gods is similar to our perception of rainbows. Please mind I don't equate rainbows to gods. Rainbows aren't sentient and are perceived by us by the sense of vision whereas Epicurean gods are sentient and experienced directly by our minds through eidola. I'm just trying to show the essence of these perceptions.

So are rainbows real? They are because we can see them. At the same time they are just refraction of light in water droplets. We can admire their beauty briefly if the conditions are right. Rainbows like Epicurean gods cannot, however, influence anything. Individual rainbows are not immortal but we can be entirely sure that we'll observe rainbows for as long as light, rain and the Earth exist. In that sense rainbows are immortal. Visual refraction of light in water droplets are like mental perceptions of atomic layers of divine blessedness. If that makes any sense.