Posts by TauPhi

I'd like to present my view on gratitude among gods and their nature (Were/are the god(s) animal(s)?). I'll attach two quotes from Letter to Menoeceus and elaborate on them. All criticism is welcome as I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to understand the nature of gods from a perspective of Epicurean philosophy and I'm still not sure if I got it right.

(1) On gratitude:

[...]And the impious man is not he who popularly denies the gods of the many, but he who attaches to the gods the beliefs of the many.[...]

We cannot treat gods as reflections of humans, therefore gratitude, as any other human feelings, must be alien to gods.

(2) Were/are the god(s) animal(s)?:

[...]For gods there are, since the knowledge of them is by clear vision.[...]

Immortality of individual gods is not permitted by Epicurean physics (as there are only 3 things that are eternal and indestructible: individual atoms (not compounds of them); the void and the universe itself as an infinite container of infinite number of everlasting atoms)). Epicurean gods have no names. There are no individual gods mentioned anywhere and for good reason. There are infinite visions of gods, however, that we can perceive because in eternal universe there must be infinite number of gods and our minds are capable of detecting some of the visions.

Epicurean gods can be viewed as immortal only when seen as collective of infinite number of blessed beings. On individual level they must be creatures that reached the state of blessedness but they are alive, created from compounds of atoms and therefore mortal and destructible.

So, were/are the god(s) animal(s)? The answer is yes if gods are considered as separate beings (blessed but created from compounds of atoms and therefore mortal and destructible living beings). The answer is no if we treat Epicurean gods as everlasting visions and ideals of blessedness to which human should aspire.

My money in on Hermarchus as well. I found very detailed 3D model of Epicurus and Metrodorus double bust here:

Epicurus and Metrodorus - 3D model by Flyover Zone (@FlyoverZone)

Name: Epicurus and Metrodorus Material: Cast Format: Double Herm Museum: Abguss-Sammlung Antiker Plastik Museum of original: Capitoline Museums, Rome,…

sketchfab.com

On close inspection, the dude on the cover of the book is clearly not as handsome as Metrodorus.

Jokes aside, check out that 3D model. It's quite impressive.

This book may also be helpful:

LAMPE, KURT. “Knowledge and Pleasure.” The Birth of Hedonism: The Cyrenaic Philosophers and Pleasure as a Way of Life, Princeton University Press, 2015

I don't have access to it but I found detailed review of it here:

Kurt Lampe, The Birth of Hedonism. The Cyrenaic philosophers and Pl...

The monograph by Kurt Lampe is the first systematic attempt in any modern language to deal with the ethics of the Cyrenaics, in particular with their…

journals.openedition.org

Paragraphs 7-9 deal with Cyrenaic epistemology.

Don Interesting topic and I appreciate the work you put in to compile all the info. Your presentation is top notch as well. Thanks for all this.

I remember watching some documentary on Epicurus some time ago and the presenter standing in a car park in Athens saying that this might have been the location of the Garden. I got the same feeling when you showed Marathonos 61 on Google maps. The Garden turned into solid concrete. It got me sad for a moment but then I thought: Well, things change. Good ideas, however, seem to be rather resistant to concrete. And here we are now. Over 2 millennia later talking about what was conceived in the Garden and good luck pouring concrete on that!

I'll try to participate as well.

Considering determinism as harmful or destructive is giving it too much power. I don't think it's such powerful concept. If this is fallacy on my behalf, feel free to point it out but let me explain how I see it.

From Epicurean perspective, wouldn't it be more accurate to consider determinism similar to death? These should be nothing to us as we simply cannot experience them.

You mentioned that '[...] the world revealed to us by our senses / feelings / prolepsis is the only one we have, and the only one we are ever going to have [...]'. I see it exactly the same way. As humans, we perceive time linearly. There's no other way for us. Therefore, it doesn't make any difference if the world is deterministic or non-deterministic. We always experience it in non-deterministic way. Whether free will is objectively true or not, it is true to us. Even if we are automata, we're not able to experience autopilot mode.

To be clear, I'm not advocating for determinism. Not in the slightest. I'm just making a point that determinism seems to be like death. These concepts can be harmful only if we allow them to be by thinking about them in a way that make our lives unpleasant. In reality, we all experience free will in our lives. Then we die and we don't.

Don It is, indeed. There's no good story behind it, I'm afraid. I needed a name when registering and that's what came to my mind. I thought it was good enough so I went with it.

Hello, Fellow Lovers of Wisdom.

Allow me to steal some of your time by introducing myself. I apologise in advance if some of my thoughts are not clearly formulated. I'm not native English speaker.

Philosophy was always something close to my heart. Especially practical philosophy. I guess I can't resist possibility of putting beautiful ideas into practice and see if they work for me. Around two years ago I was reading about Hellenistic age and I discovered a dude with ideas that looked interesting at the first glance. It didn't take me many glances to realise that these interesting ideas were truly beautiful. And so my acquaintance with Epicurus began.

I started to study Epicureanism. The more I studied, the more I loved it. I got to know few other interesting people on the way. Democritus blew my mind with his ideas. Lucretius made me pick up my jaw from the floor more times than I can count (and I can count to ten or so pretty well, most of the times).

Epicurus, Democritus, Lucretius are dead. You are alive. So here I am. Hoping to get to know few more interesting people before we all end up in the Sixth Circle of Hell with smiles on our faces knowing we'd make substantial savings on heating.

Warmly,

TauPhi