Posts by TauPhi

Julia Thank you for taking time to write such a thorough post. From Epicurean perspective, I don't think there is much material regarding time available, but I want to mention two, maybe not so obvious, sources which I find particularly interesting.

1) Sextus Empiricus "Outlines of Pyrrhonism", Book 3, 137 (I provide two translations for comparison):

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Epicurus (according to Demetrius the Laconian) [defines time] as "a concurrence of concurrences, concomitant with days and nights and seasons and affections and nonaffections and motions and rests." - R.G. BURY - "OUTLINES PYRRHONISM" (1990) p. 235

Epicurus, according to Demetrius the Laconian, [defines time] as an event made up of events, accompanying days and nights, seasons, pathe and the opposite, motions and rests. - BENSON MATES - "THE SKEPTIC WAY Sextus Empiricus’s Outlines of Pyrrhonism" (1996), p. 195

2) Epicurus, On Time (PHerc. 1413/1416)

If I remember correctly, someone has already mentioned this Herculaneum scroll in the forum (sorry, I don't remember exactly where I've seen it). I don't think there's English translation of the scroll available, but there's a summary of a talk from 2022 by Alessia Lavorante in the pdf linked below (pages 7-10) where a lot of information about the scroll is provided. Definitely worth a read.

http://www.herculaneum.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2022-12/HercArch_27_2022%202nd%20version_web.pdf

Quote from Cassius

I've now read through most of the material and I don't see any of it that brands Aetius as a raving anti-Epicurean, so I wouldn't think he would be tempted to misrepresent Epicurus generally (or at least, not more than seems commonly the case).

I don't think it is possible to know anything about Aetius' position on anything. It's not even certain if such person ever existed. Take a look here (I just skimmed through the text so I can't vouch for its quality nor factual reliability).

Did the doxographer Aëtius ever exist? [the original 1983 paper, now see the detailed 2016 refutation of Diels's Aëtius hypothesis and of Mansfeld and Runia's attempt to save it: "The origin and transmission of the doxographical

The original 1983 manuscript of the paper "Did the doxographer Aetius ever exist?" published in microfiche form in: Philosophie et Culture,…

www.academia.edu

Never mind the author of 'Placita', the work seems very interesting. Thanks, Bryan for mentioning it.

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'Destiny, which some introduce as sovereign over all things, he laughs to scorn, affirming rather that some things happen of necessity, others by chance, others through our own agency. For he sees that necessity destroys responsibility and that chance or fortune is inconstant; whereas our own actions are free, and it is to them that praise and blame naturally attach.' [Letter to Menoeceus, 133]

Recently, this fragment has caught my attention as it made me think about The Three Sisters of Fate for some reason. I never paid too much attention to them before, but this time I started to see them in more favourable light. I started to play with the idea of the Moirai as allegories for foundations on which our lives happen instead of a simple idea of our lives being determined by the Fates.

Let's call our theatre 'the Universe'. Atropos (Ἄτροπος) - The Sister of Necessity, the Inevitable, builds the theatre and sets universal laws which are not to be crossed, bent or dismissed. Theatre 'The Universe' is where everything is. Next comes Lachesis (Λάχεσις) - The Sister of Distribution, the Alloter. She builds the stage for our play called 'The Life'. She gives us our chances - our genes, health, environment where we operate etc. Finally, Clotho (Κλωθώ) - The Sister of Choice, the Spinner. She weaves the thread of our lives. She employees us as actors in 'The Life' play where we make the choices which are ours despite the fact that they are limited by the chances and necessities of the stage and the theatre.

Epicurus tells us to laugh at the idea of The Three Μοῖραι literal existance ([...] sovereign over all things, he laughs to scorn [...]) and treats the myth as the myths should be treated - as allegories ([...] affirming rather that some things happen of necessity, others by chance, others through our own agency. [...]). This is one of the reasons I find Epicurus' words attractive. He basically says: Dude, stop with this silly business of putting your life in the hands of imaginary builders, scenographers and booking agents and use what you have to be a good actor in the 'The Life' staged in 'The Universe'.

BTW, this post was inspired by the latest Pacatus poem 'Way of the Seasons'. I love all of it but the 'fate' part is absolutely brilliant.

Relevant to the above discussion (with translation of the tetrapharmakos I personally like much better than the common 'wikipedia' one).

Laudator Temporis Acti: The Epicurean Tetrapharmakos

I came across this short but interesting article on the topic of Epicurus' appearance:

'How the portrait of the Athenian philosopher Epicurus became known to us' by Takis Panagiotopoulos:

https://www.epicuros.gr/pages/en/Panagiotopoulos_EpicurusPortrait.pdf

Eric My thoughts are similar to yours on the majority of topics mentioned in your post so I don't think you will benefit much from a fork praising other fork for being a fork. However, I do want to say that I had a big smile on my face reading your latest post. Not because I kept nodding to myself in agreement but because your clarity of thoughts is a pleasure to experience. Loved it. Thanks for sharing.

Looks to me that an indivisible limit applies only to matter but I never came across anything in Epicureanism touching on the smallest unit of length in void. As Martin pointed out, minima of length in void would lead to interesting problems like resolution of reality and atoms "teleporting" from one place to another.

All these "meaning crisis" people strike me as "gummy bear prophets". They try to find people who never had gummy bears in their lives, convince these poor folks that their lives suck and it's absolutely crucial to eat gummy bears to make their lives better. When the bait is taken, "gummy bear prophets" will conveniently reveal themselves as "gummy bear suppliers" and will stuff their victims with gummy bears until obesity takes its toll.

When ungrateful victims prove themselves to be incompetent enough to find a way to consume more gummy bears from six feet under, "gummy bear prophets" will announce to the world that another crisis is due but luckily for only $21.99 they are willing to share a solution. You'll get 50% discount if you share, like and subscribe and further 25% if you use their promo code: gummybearsrulez within the next two hours.

Quote from Cassius

[...] it is very tricky to identify just exactly what an "injustice" is. [...]

In the book I'm currently reading - Bertrand Russell "A History of Western Philosophy" (1946) - I found an interesting passage about Greek notion of justice and injustice. When Mr. Russell discusses Anaximander, he provides his words that caught my attention:

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'Into that from which things take their rise they pass away once more, as is ordained, for they make reparation and satisfaction to one another for their injustice according to the ordering of time.'

Mr. Russell continues:

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'The idea of justice, both cosmic and human, played a part in Greek religion and philosophy which is not altogether easy for a modern to understand; indeed our word 'justice' hardly expresses what is meant, but it is difficult to find any other word that would be preferable. [...] This conception of justice - of not overstepping eternally fixed bounds - was one of the most profound of Greek beliefs. The gods were subject to justice just as much as men were, but this supreme power was not itself personal, and was not a supreme God.'

[pages 45-46]

In the above passage 'cosmic justice' is discussed, but 'human justice' would probably be understood in antiquity as 'not overstepping fixed bounds'.

A few of the recent conversations got me thinking and as a result a new perspective on ancient Epicurean worldview emerged in my mind. I'm curious how viable you think the perspective is, my dear EpicureanFriends.

Firstly, the required Epicurean foundations:
1) The universe is infinite. (both is geometry and duration)
2) Atoms and void are infinite (atoms in quantity (but not quality!) and duration, the void in geometry and duration)
3) Compounds of atoms are finite in quality (there are limits to what can exists due to quality limits of the atoms), duration (they decompose over time) and quality (they are bound to the worlds they create and freed again from the worlds when disintegrated into individual atoms). Examples of compounds: a flower, a planet, a TauPhi.

Secondly, few conclusions I drew from Epicurean physics that I hope don't violate any Epicurean doctrines:

1) Passing of time is irrelevant to what is infinite but relevant to what is finite (time might not even exist to what is infinite but the safer conclusion will suffice here).
2) Epicurean worlds are bubbles of finite amount of compounds of atoms. Each bubble contains a fraction of realised reality (of what is possible in the universe).
3) There are infinite amount of such bubbles in the universe, they are completely independent of each other (compounds of atoms cannot pass from one world to another) and they all contain some fractions of realised reality.
4) I call these fractions of realised reality: classes of compounds of atoms. (class of flowers, class of planets, class of TauPhis).
5) Classes are infinite in quantity (all that can exist must come to existence infinite numbers of times on infinite Epicurean worlds in the infinite universe). Classes are infinite in duration (they exist always, infinite amount of times). The only limits classes have is the limit of quality (as atoms themselves are limited in quality - what can exist in the universe is limited by possible arrangement of limited types of atoms).

From the above, the crucial is to keep in mind the nature of time, compounds and classes of compounds. Is it possible that the Epicureans came up with something like what follows?

Every class is godlike in nature. Classes are immortal (they exist always) and blessed (they can't experience passage of time due to their infinity in duration and therefore cannot be disturbed in their blessedness). Separation from other bubbles (the collapse into a singular Epicurean world) removes all infinite 'class' proprieties from compounds of atoms and give them singular, distinctive existence as perishable compounds of atoms that can experience time until they reach complete disintegration.

This perspective, more or less, elevates some of the problems I personally have with the Epicurean philosophy:

1) Gods. They no longer have to be something to aspire to (idealistic view) or some super advanced species bending the laws of mortality through technology (realistic view). Gods are neither. They are classes of things that exist infinitely in the universe. The class of TauPhies is godlike. It doesn't make me personally a god at all, however. I am TauPhi that is simply the singular manifestation of what is possible in this world. I don't have a bird's-eye view, nor experience, of the class of TauPhies (or any other class for that matter). All I have is a worm's-eye view, and experience, of the compounds of atoms called TauPhi. All the infinite TauPhies out there are incapable of experiencing the class of TauPhies, the continuity breaks within a singular world and there's no way for any individual TauPhi to become a god whereas the class of TauPhies don't have any choice but to be godlike forever.

2) The principle of isonomia. The balance of things in the universe is preserved. Even if there are no immortal things in any of the infinite worlds that can be experienced directly from worm's-eye view, there's equal amount of immortal classes of things from bird's-eye perspective of the universe.

3) I always liked the 'discontinuity' passage in Lucretius. Especially 'immortal death' and 'mortal life' in book 3 (line 869). I always thought of it as a nice poetic description but now I think 'immortal death' (mors inmortalis) taking 'mortal life' (mortalis vita) can be literal description of Epicurean physics. Please read lines 843-869 in book 3 for the context.

This post is getting way too long. Please mind that the above is not my personal worldview. I just tried to glue the pieces of what was transmitted to our times with my limited reasoning and recreate a possible worldview of ancient Epicureans. Let me know what you think about this attempt.

I'm always happy to exchange knowledge with others so count me in.

Quote from Cassius

At the moment I am thinking mainly of a discussion of research and writing tools that we use in the study of Epicurus, but that's something to discuss.

This can be useful not only for Epicureans but for everyone who uses computers in their research. Great topic for a start.

Quote from Cassius

If you're going to wrestle people out of the jail of supernatural religion you're going to need to replace "god" with something, and "atoms" is only a part of the picture. The rest of the picture as a whole requires "infinity" to be plausible and persuasive to people of normal intelligence - and people of normal intelligence shouldn't be asked to accept "trust the scientists" or "trust the mathematicians" any more than they accept "trust the priests" as an explanation.

I don't think it's fair to make such generalizations about people. I got myself out of the jail of supernatural religion as a teenager and I don't recall I've ever felt a need to replace "god" with anything particular. I seem to live my life, try to understand what's it about but I don't have irresistible need to fill myself with any absolutes. I'm ok with the realisation that I probably will never know what's it all about and I still find joy in trying to know. I don't think I'm noticeably less or more intelligent than a normal person and yet I don't want to be persuaded into anything by anyone. I want to grasp what I call reality the best I can based on my learning and understanding and not on trust or persuasion.

Quote from Cassius

In fact, I would say that the implication of what Epicurus has stated that we should do - MOST OF ALL -- is that we should study the principles of infinity and take them to be correct. We should not consider them to be "mind-blowing' at all, but they should be second nature and taken to be as obvious and easy to understand as anyone for the past 2000 years has taken the incorrect "In the beginning GOD created the heaven and the earth..."

Epicurus was a dogmatist after all, so I guess the above claim is reasonably true.

Personally, as an Epicurean friend (not an Epicurean), I'm not convinced we should take anything to be correct on "believe me, dude" argument. Before we take something to be correct I find it more reasonable to focus on study and suspend definite judgements until we figure out a way to prove or disprove something (Pyrrho pays me to say this every Tuesday).

As of now, infinity of the universe (among other infinities) is neither obvious nor easy to understand (or prove) to humanity.

Quote from Joshua

Have fun chewing on all of that!

I had so much fun chewing on all of that, I chewed it all up twice. Thank you, Joshua . Amazing research.

I'm mentioning it here because I don't want to pollute Joshua 's post on translation of Lucretius as it is shaping to be something special, but for those interested, Joshua mentioned 'The Satires of Juvenal' at the end of his first post. Take a look at satire X (starting at page 260 in Joshua's link). You'll find a lot of Epicurean influences in this satire including, once more, the theme of 'lathe biosas'.

Satire X is not strictly Epicurean as the gods there are painted as the 'standard' ones but I think you'll find a lot of interesting points there, nonetheless.

Direct link to Joshua's post:

Thread

Authorship of the 1743 Prose Translation of Lucretius

Introduction

In a forum thread from 2018, @Cassius raised the question of authorship as to the translator of the prose edition of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura that was printed in London "for Daniel Brown (sometimes Browne), at the sign of the Black Swan without Temple-Bar." Cassius has prepared a copy of the text for the forum, derived from the PDF version at Internet Archive (archive.org).

The translation in question was printed with facing Latin and English text in two volumes, octavo size,…

Joshua

July 14, 2024 at 9:37 AM

'De Bono Vitae Humilioris' is an anonymous poem from Codex Vossianus Q 86 published in 'Anthologia Latina'. Translation comes from John Colin Dunlop's 'Selections from the Latin Anthology: Translated into English Verse' (1838). It is considered to be an Epicurean poem praising 'Lathe Biosas' lifestyle. The date of creation is unknown but it's suspected to be around 1st century AD.

Small are my treasures, my domain is small;
But quietude makes that blameless little, great:
My tranquil mind no tremors agitate—
Heedless if men my days should slothful call.
Go! Seek the camp—ascend some curule throne—
All the vain joys that sway the bosom taste!
Mean though I am, by no distinctions graced,
Still, (while I live,) I call the hours mine own.

Est mihi rus parvum, fenus sine crimine parvum,
sed facit haec nobis utraque magna quies.
pacem animus nulla trepidus formidine servat
nec timet ignavae crimina desidiae.
castra alios operosa vocent sellaeque curules
et quicquid vana gaudia mente movet.
pars ego sim plebis, nullo conspectus honore,
dum vivam, dominus temporis ipse mei.

Relevant links:

Isaac Vossius - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Codices Vossiani Latini — Brill
Latin Anthology - Wikipedia
Laudator Temporis Acti: Dominus Temporis Ipse Mei

Anthologia latina sive poesis latinae supplementum, ediderunt Franciscus Buecheler et Alexander Riese : Buecheler, Franz, 1837-1908 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

26

archive.org

Quote from Cassius

Tau Phi and several others are firmly in what I will call the - "What the heck was Epicurus doing messing with the definitions of words?!?#!&^????" camp.

When people start to mess with the definitions of words which are generally accepted, they mud the waters, cause communication breakdowns and create incomprehensible mess. Epicurus created a system of philosophy, not an incomprehensible mess so I don't think I am in the aforementioned camp.

I think Epicurus tried to convince people to think about the ideas behind some words from different perspective and prove how this new perspective is more beneficial. This is one of the reasons I don't consider myself an Epicurean. It's not because I don't like unnecessary redefinition of words (which I don't). I don't agree with some Epicurean ideas - like the idea of gods. When Epicurus talked about gods, he tried to explain how the accepted idea of gods is ridiculous (to great success, I may add) but he still thought about them as gods in generally accepted meaning of the word. He wasn't an atheist in disguise. He was a pious man honestly believing Epicurean gods exist. And this IDEA is what I don't agree with.

Quote from Cassius

Maybe somebody can convince me that the above chain reasoning is not a fair summary of Epicurean theology, but to the extent it *is* a fair summary, I am personally 100% convinced of its validity!

I never thought I would say it, due to our differences in this subject matter, but I like your post Cassius . Thank you for not using 'gods' when writing it. Now, if I could convince you to drop 'theology' in favour of something like 'cerebration of nature' just to make sure we don't have anything supernatural in the equation, I'm sure we could go for a beer, or a barrel of it, and talk and think about what is possible in this universe and how to get where we want to get using nothing more magical than our good friends: matter and void. Maybe it wouldn't be strictly Epicurean conversation, but having an Epicurean and an Epicurean friend talking sounds good enough to me.

Quote from Cassius

I know that Tau Phi speaks for a significant group here, but because I have interacted so much with him personally I also feel sure he would not want his post to be interpreted as stifling free discussion of the topic.

I only speak for myself and you're absolutely right Cassius - I'm not trying to stifle the discussion. Quite contrary - I clearly present my point on trying to translate 2.5 thousand old physical theory into modern times but it's only my point of view. Nothing more. I don't reserve the right to be correct and I wholeheartedly encourage others to join the discussion and present their ideas. There are a lot of insightful minds in the forum and I believe some interesting points could be raised here.

Quote from Cassius

I will probably re-title this and perhaps move it to physics, but we need at least one thread to discuss possible physical mechanism by which Epicurus' theory of images is treated as possibly containing at least a grain of truth and possibly much more.

Epicurean (well, technically Democritean) physical mechanism of images is wrong at the core. Two millennia back nobody could possibly come up with the concept of electromagnetic radiation, photons reflecting off of objects and optical mechanism of eyes. The objects constantly emitting eidolas which move through the air and which are directly interacting with us is a theory all right, but saying 'it has a grain of truth and possibly much more' is like saying that when a caveman blew the dust off a rock he discovered how a pneumatic press work. There is a grain there in the form of air pressure but linking it to a pneumatic press several thousand years later is stretching a point a tiny bit.

I would even argue that Epicureans should have figured out by themselves that the theory of images was flawed. If I can come up with below scenarios, I'm sure much brighter minds of the past should have thought about it as well.

If every object constantly emits eidolas, what about objects that are made up with 2 atoms only? Two atoms combined already make an object and according to the theory, that object should start emitting constant flow of eidolas. But if it does, one of two things happen (probably more, but I don't want to think about it for too long):
1) the object disappears instantly
2) the object is instantly replenished by exactly the same 2 atoms (which would require conscious assembly abilities of atoms and atomic theory would be proven wrong)

Another problem is eidolas pushing though the air. If everything emits eidolas in every direction all the time, it's impossible to use air as medium of transportation due to infinite conflicts of direction resulting in some sort of 'eidola tornadoes'.

I guess Ancient Greeks were perfectly capable of raising such concerns and if there are Epicurean solutions to the above concerns, feel free to point them out as I'm not aware of them.

My point is, let's appreciate ingenuity of Greek philosophers who were capable of extraordinary though experiments without access to almost any scientific knowledge, but let's not try to paint them as pneumatic press operation experts.