Posts by Eggplant Wizard

It is of course a common and effective rhetorical device to frame oneself as divulging information they don't want you to know- quite a few bestsellers are made this way. But there is no concerted effort today to bury Epicureanism. Both scholarly and popular treatments of the philosophy are readily available and work continues to be done on the Herculaneum papyri and other material. I don't really see how the moneyed rulers of society really care about one philosophy over another. The primary enemy of Epicureanism, from a PR standpoint, is indifference, as it is with a great many beautiful things.

I would also question the treatment of Plato's Republic as a literal and dogmatic blueprint for how society should be formed. The subtleties and difficulties of Plato's work really don't justify broad statements like "Plato is a proto-fascist." One can find much to critique in his work without doing that. The one very committed, self-declared neoplatonist I know is an anarchist labor activist. The story of Plato wanting to burn Democritus' books is just gossip like so much of the philosophers' biographies.

Lastly it's unfair to say "their notion of atoms... falls far, far short of today’s knowledge" because what modern chemistry/ physics calls "atoms" are by definition not the atoms that Democritus et al were talking about. Maybe we should call them "toms" instead.

I would be avoid taking at face value any claims of Jewish ritual cannibalism or blood-drinking or inferring that the metzitzah b’peh is a vestige of this.

Anyway the attitudes of Greek philosophers to Judaism is an interesting subject. Their dogged adherence to their own traditions was a cause both of exasperation and admiration. Among some middle and late Platonists the Jews were numbered among the wise ancient peoples like the Egyptians, Babylonians, Brahmins, etc. Numenius of Apamea (a major influence for Plotinus and Porphyry) thought that Pythagoras learned from Moses and famously remarked that that Plato was Moses in Attic Greek. Porphyry was very familiar with the Jewish scriptures and one of his sharpest criticisms of the Christians is that they abandoned the venerable Jewish wisdom tradition for a ridiculous novelty.

I do wonder how later Epicureans might have appraised Jewish tradition. I imagine the initial assessment would have found little of value in it but they also initially rejected Homer and the Greek poetic heritage and I think later generations were reassessing that.

Quote from Peter Konstans

Has anybody ever experimented with the idea of Epicureanism as a formal spiritual identity capable of defining entire communities? What would Epicureanism look like if it wasn't merely a brotherhood of friends discussing philosophy but was also a sort of quasi religious worldview with its own intricate rituals, symbols and ceremonies covering every aspect of life?

Like I talked about at length in another thread, I think if Epicureanism had persisted through late antiquity, it could easily have developed overtly "religious" tendencies rivaling the theurgic neoplatonism of Iamblichus, Emperor Julian, Proclus, etc. This is because Epicurean piety already had certain concepts that anticipated the theurgists: understanding that the gods do not exhibit favor or wrath toward mortals, but that mortals' own attitudes toward them can engender good or bad effects; that the gods are not pleased by sacrifice but that this benefits the worshiper by drawing them closer to the gods; that popular religious rites are in fact appropriate expressions of piety; that only a purified mind can receive accurate impressions from the gods. And while the theurgists' gods, unlike the Epicureans' gods, did actively govern the world, they did so in a detached, effortless way, like the sun shining. If one takes seriously the idea that the Epicurean gods are constantly emitting a stream of subtle images that reach earth, then it could easily be inferred that these images are all-pervasive and that various means can be sought to perceive, channel, or embody them.

Quote from Peter Konstans

Still, it would be possible to imagine Epicureanism as a sort of atheistic 'religion' in the same sense that for example Confucianism or the Church of Satan founded by Anton LaVey may be branded as such.

As an aside, I would argue that, apart from a few exceptions like Xunzi, the Confucian tradition is theistic. I suspect the presentation of Confucianism as an atheistic or secular ethical system has chiefly to do with a) modern proponents wishing to appeal to post-enlightenment westerners; b) Jesuits and other westerners with an interest in presenting the Confucian rites as devoid of objectionable religious content.

Quote from Peter Konstans

What would a 'holy book' of Epicureanism look like and what would it contain other than the letters of Epicurus and the poem of Lucretius?

That's basically what remains to us but we also know that the letters, PD's, etc are all epitomes aimed at beginners and that the full works of Epicurus and his successors were huge, and probably had a lot of subtle and complex material. We are unfortunately left with a stunted tradition. As it is, it demands elaboration and commentary; with elaboration and commentary comes differing interpretations and disagreements.

Quote from Peter Konstans

To what extent can the views and advice of brilliant therapists or educators like John Gottman, Gigi Engle or Dan Buettner be thought of as Epicurean and admitted in some form in the 'scriptures' and literature of Epicureanism? How would an Epicurean society raise and educate its kids? Since school is so horrendously boring, tedious and unpleasant to children (school is also the only place other than prison where people are quite likely to be bullied and tortured) how would an Epicurean society deal with the problem of educating the new generation? Given that modern Western hyper-liberalism presents society and individuals with many obvious problems that are impossible to deny today what laws, customs and istitutions would hypothetical Epicurean lawmakers create to avoid them?

I'm not a doctrinaire Fourierist by any stretch but I do think Fourier was on to something in proposing communities driven by pleasure and free association rather than coercion and hierarchy. I would say school is tedious and unpleasant because our society is tedious and unpleasant.

I remember Epicurus.net being the major online resource in the 1990's. I kept checking to see when the "Beliefs" section would be updated- in 2024 it's still under construction! I think Epicurus.net kind of set a tone for a lot of the online discussions, including the belief that modern egoism/libertarianism/Austrian economics were natural successor movements to Epicureanism. I was one of the few dissenters there.

Quote from Nate

Quote from BrainToBeing

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So, the question: How does this devotion lead you to life perspectives for today that you could not derive from similar effort to examining the world today?

[...] it is a question about how the philosophical frameworks of two millennia ago are the same or different from today.

For me, the answer is theology.

Regarding physics, we are all (in my not so humble opinion) already Epicureans, whether we realize it or not. As long as we carry universal miniature computers in our pockets that triangulate our positions with respect to the curvature of spacetime, and as long as we are relying on technologies like MRIs to diagnose brain disease, then, without question, we have, as a culture, adopted Indeterministic Atomism.

Regarding epistemology, I make an argument in a paper published by the Society of Friends of Epicurus that suggests that (with our without Epicurus), we would still be navigating the waters of reality with raw sensations, with sensual impressions, and with a sense of feeling. Our scientific enterprise is fundamentally grounded in Empiricism: https://epicureandatabase.wordpress.com/2020/01/17/on-…leasure-wisdom/

Regarding ethics, we might (culturally) sway between uncompromising declarations of moral purity and fleeting devotion to popular virtues, but, at the end of the day, whether it's national defense or just a consumer trying to live on a budget, we are pursuing the pleasant life. We might be influenced by Puritans, but even the Puritans had to submit to the natural will of Winter that required an ethics of Consequentialism.

Theology, however, was a chasm for me, and the teachings of Epicurus provided me with the tools I needed to cross that chasm (if you'll excuse the clunky metaphor). For most of my life, I was, first and foremost, a critic of Christianity; by extension, Abrahamic religion; and, specifically (as I came to find) a critic of the very unique proposition of an immanent, benevolent, omnipotent, omniscient creator. Overall, I identified as an atheist.

Through a study of Epicurean Philosophy, I came to acknowledge that the human impulse to practice piety is natural, and that the idealization of role models as deities is an equally natural practice that we observe in disconnected human societies. As a result, my position of atheism only really addresses the Judeo-Christian-Islamic god, but failed to engage the idea of non-Immanent, non-Creator (and other conceptions).

So, without Epicurus, I would still be a critical atheist that reduced anyone's expression of religiosity to a delusion of the mind, or an uneducated misunderstanding of psychology. Now, I accept that theism (when grounded in atomism) is a perfectly coherent and useful position.

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I'm happy to see that the religious aspect of Epicureanism is taken seriously on this forum, even if not everyone subscribes to it. It was clearly important to the classical Epicureans. I remember when I was on that Epicurean email list in the late 90's, Epicurean theology was dismissed by almost all the participants as a ruse to avoid persecution and attempts to talk seriously about it mostly ran into scorn.

Setting aside Hegel's own peculiar terminology (world-spirit, Notion, etc- I'm not here to promote or defend Hegel's philosophy) I find Hegel's summary of Stoicism, in Phenomenology of the Spirit, to give a pretty good insight into its allurements and its ultimate flaw, ie its sterility.

...whether on the throne or in chains, in the utter dependence of its individual existence, its aim is to be free, and to maintain that lifeless indifference which steadfastly withdraws from the bustle of existence, alike from being active as passive, into the simple essentiality of thought. Self-will is the freedom which entrenches itself in some particularity and is still in bondage, while Stoicism is the freedom which always comes directly out of bondage and returns into the pure universality of thought. As a universal form of the World~Spirit Stoicism could only appear on the scene in a time of universal fear and bondage but also a time of universal culture which had raised itself to the level of thought.

The freedom of self-consciousness is indifferent to natural existence and has therefore let this equally go free: the reflection is a twofold one. Freedom in thought has only pure thought as its truth, a truth lacking the fullness of life. Hence freedom in thought, too, is only the Notion of freedom, not the living reality of freedom itself. For the essence of that freedom is at first only thinking in general, the form as such [of thoughtJ , which has turned away from the independence of things and returned into itself. But since individuality in its activity should show itself to be alive, or in its thinking should grasp the living world as a system of thought, there would have to be present in thought itself a content for that individuality, in the one case a content of what is good, and in the other of what is true, in order that what is an object for consciousness should contain no other ingredient whatever except the Notion which is the essence. But here the Notion as an abstraction cuts itself off from the multiplicity of things, and thus has no content in its own self but one that is given to it. Consciousness does indeed destroy the content as an alien immediacy [Sein] when it thinks it; but the Notion is a determinate Notion, and this determinateness of the Notion is the alien element which it has within it. Stoicism, therefore, was perplexed when it was asked for what was called a 'criterion of truth as such', Le. strictly speaking, for a content of thought itself. To the question, What is good and true, it again gave for answer the contentless thought: The True and the Good shall consist in reasonableness. But this self-identity of thought is again only the pure form in which nothing is determined. The True and the Good, wisdom and virtue, the general terms beyond which Stoicism cannot get, are therefore in a general way no doubt uplifting, but since they cannot in fact produce any expansion of the content, they soon become tedious.

I also think Hegel's note on the historical context of Stoicism is relevant to explaining its relative popularity today- a time of universal fear and bondage. A general feeling of isolation, alienation, and powerlessness can be addressed a number of ways; what Stoicism offers is a kind of deliberately induced dissociation. And as others have noted, the Stoic asceticism does seem well-attuned to the present social orthodoxy, where work, family, fitness, "the grind" etc are exalted at the expense of pleasure.

The Epicureans offered, among other things, a community. They were not monks withdrawn from society but they did offer a certain breathing space free of society's pressures. The practical difficulties of establishing and maintaining such a community today are no doubt enormous. I understand that Philodemus wrote some guidelines for running a Garden, I'll have to see what he has to say.

Quote from Nate

Quote from Eggplant Wizard

I'd be interested to see the evidence for a direct link from Vedanta to neoplatonism. I am skeptical but all ears.

Plotinus studied under Ammonius Saccas, whose name possibly suggests that he originated from the Shakya clan (from which Siddhartha Guatama originated seven centuries earlier). If he was not literally a member of the Shakya clan (modern-day Nepal), his biography indicates that he was subject to the philosophies of the Classical Period of India, between the Maurya and Gupta Empires (elsewhere called the "Golden Age of Hinduism"). According to Porphyry, "From [his twenty-eight year] that day [Plotinus] stayed continually with Ammonius and acquired so complete a training in philosophy that he became eager to make acquaintance with the Persian philosophical discipline and that prevailing among the Indians." From this, I expect that he would have at least some familiarity with the Upanishads and some exposure to either orthodox or heterodox Indian philosophies.

It is still somewhat speculative, but he was at the right place at the right time. The attestation might be fragmentary, but the consistency of the ideas, and the coherence between concepts like the The One (seemingly Brahman), Henosis (seemingly Moksha), the framing of evil as ignorance, the goal as liberation over ignorance and enlightenment over darkness through the light vis-a-vis truth vis-a-vis goodness ... it sounds alarmingly similar to the extent that I think that Ammonius Saccas and his followers did the same thing that Pyrrho did to earlier "gymnosophists". (As it seems to me, Pryhho adopted the philosophy of Ajñāna (or his understanding and/or adaptation of Ajñāna and others) and re-branded it at Pyrrhonian Skepticism.)

Thanks Nate. I'd forgotten about the case of Ammonius Saccas. Interestingly he was also the teacher of Origen, who proved a major influence in orthodox Christianity, particularly in the field of spirituality and hermeneutics, even if many of his theological speculations came to be proscribed (I think there are some who argue that Origen might have studied under a different Ammonius Saccas, but it seems unlikely to me that there would be two Platonic teachers named Ammonius Saccas teaching in Alexandria at the same time).

But yes, the possibility of Indian influence can't be ruled out. On the other hand, I think it's also possible to trace Plotinus' One, Henosis, etc. as logical developments of the Platonic tradition.

Some have also noted parallels between Plotinus' doctrine of the undescended self and the Zoroastrian fravashi. However, this concept was largely rejected by the later Neoplatonists.

Neoplatonists often did declare an Eastern pedigree for their ideas, as those civilizations were more ancient than the Greeks and the basic assumption was older= wiser. How profound these encounters and influences actually were is very hard to establish.

Actually, in terms of Epicurean influence in Neoplatonism, I did notice one detail recently when I read Synesius’ On Dreams (https://tile.loc.gov/storage-servic…/2020715155.pdf) where he talks about eidola streaming off of bodies and entering minds during sleep.

Quote from Nate

One thing that left an impression on me in recent research was the similarity (and coherence) between Pythagoreanism and neo-Pythagoreanism, Platonism and neo-Platonism, Gnosticism, Heterodox Christianity, Orthodox Christianity, and the emerging schools of Hindu Vedanta. The similarities are not simply parallels between compatible traditions. Rather, there are direct historical links between each tradition that lead me to believe that it is educationally helpful to group these Idealisms into a single branch that considers numbers and logic to be more real than food and water. For example, the first neo-Platonists were either Indian "gymnosophists" themselves, or they were the direct students of Indian gurus. It seems to me that Vedanta is directly responsible for the resurgence of Platonism as a competitor against Christianity and Mithraism in the 2nd-4th-centuries.

It was standard for religious movements to construct lineages for themselves extending to various historical or legendary figures- Pythagoras, Zoroaster, Hermes-Thoth, Moses, etc. Even today various Masonic, Rosicrucian, and new agey groups announce such lineages to anyone who will believe them. Iamblichus (himself an Arab writing in Greek) castigates the Greeks for chasing after novelties while various wise foreigners (Babylonians, Egyptians, Indians, etc.) retain the primordial teaching inviolate, albeit colored by local traditions.

The problem with Pythagoreanism is that all our sources for it come from people writing centuries after Pythagoras. What exactly Pythagoras was about is very murky. It is very possible that Plato was inheritor to a Pythagorean tradition but our only real source for that claim is the Platonists themselves. Once we do get writers identifying as Pythagoreans we are looking at post-Plato thinking that sounds a lot like Platonism.

The philosophical hermeticist texts have a lot of Platonizing language but I've seen it persuasively argued that they also contain genuine Egyptian stuff.

The origins of gnosticism are also very murky. There is some borrowing of Platonist cosmology for sure and also some stuff that seems more to do with Jewish apocalyptic literature. I don't know if their peculiar brand of mythologizing has any parallels among the Platonists though. The thinkers usually identified with the Platonist tradition all reject the notion that the Demiurge is evil or that the material world, however imperfect, is evil (even if Plato provides some ammunition for such a position).

I believe Paul had some definite affinity with the gnostics. Far from consigned to the underworld, he sees Satan as "archon of the power of the air" and Christ as our liberator from "forces of evil in the heavenly places." I don't know if that means Paul was one of the gnostics or if he and the gnostics had some common inheritance that is later phased out in orthodox Christianity.

I'd be interested to see the evidence for a direct link from Vedanta to neoplatonism. I am skeptical but all ears.

I think it's true though that all of these western currents had a lot of affinity for each other, a lot of convergence in terms of their basic worldview, so that differences were easy to paper over for later synthesizers. For a variety of reasons Epicureanism could not be integrated and was snubbed from the party of western esotericism.

I'm going to indulge in some wild and weird speculation here, so if it doesn't interest anyone else I understand. I imagine that if Epicureanism had persisted as a robust school into late antiquity it would have seen some very creative and controversial developments, in response to the new Platonism and other currents, that might be interesting to speculate about. For one thing, I imagine that, like with other schools, the Epicureans could well have branched into competing tendencies of interpretation, so that any response by one set of Epicureans might well be rejected as flawed or compromised by another set. Philodemus witnesses to some nascent divisions in the Epicurean movement though the differences don't seem to have hardened into rival factions.

Theurgy

Iamblichus aligned his Platonism with popular rites through his theurgic interpretation. Whereas Plotinus took a largely aloof attitude to popular cults and material piety, Iamblichus countered that, as fully embodied souls we must make use of material means to re-ascend to the gods. He said that the gods have sown synthemata- tokens or signatures- of their power throughout the world, so that various stones, plants, animals, sounds, etc. carry the influence radiating from specific deities. The gods did not descend to earth but by means of these tokens humans could ritually "participate" in the gods. Worship did not benefit the gods and accounts of gods' wrath or favor were interpreted as figures for the blessings or sufferings that man experienced based on the degree he aligned with the divine order. The gods did not actively order the cosmos; rather the cosmos was formed and ordered through the effortless overflowing of divinity. I believe this conception developed partly in response to Epicurean critiques of traditional religion.

On the matter of theurgy I think some Epicureans would have seen an opening to assert and expand on their own piety, as certain parallels of the theurgic idea are already present, at least implicitly, in the Epicurean theology. Like the Platonic theurgists the Epicureans saw worship as a way to emulate the gods, which was of benefit only to the worshipper. Like the Platonic gods the Epicurean gods radiated influence through the cosmos that reached earth. I don't think it would be a radical leap to further interpret the eidola radiating from the gods' bodies as inhering not only in human minds but in particular materials which were therefore especially helpful in attuning a ritual to a particular gods' influence. What might such an Epicurean theurgy look like? I imagine something comparable to Tantric Buddhist deity yoga where meditators chant, employ ritual implements, sing hymns, and either visualize a deity sitting before them, contemplating their various attributes, or even visualize themselves as the deity situated in that deity's Pure Land. (To be clear I am not trying to suggest that Epicureanism and Buddhism are very similar).

This leads to one clear advantage I think the Epicureans could have had over the neoplatonists in the religious marketplace- while the Platonists were trying to present their philosophy as the inner truth of traditional religion, their conception of deity would have been quite foreign to the average polytheist of the Greco-Roman world. The Epicureans' gods, in their distance and non-interference, were also quite different but, crucially, they were anthropomorphic. You could actually picture them and this picture was held to have a reasonable semblance to the original. Confronted with a statue, say, of Venus, an Epicurean would say to a worshipper, "Yes, that's pretty much what she looks like," while a Platonist would have to say, "Well, it represents her attributes in terms communicable in this gross material plane, but really she's a sphere." Huh?

Epicureans, with their thorough materialist account of the universe, could remove the terror of the gods without elevating them into inhuman abstractions, and without positing a complicated hierarchy of gods and intermediate beings, with matter at the bottom. They did not have to engage in agonized theorizing about how matter is actually good since the idea of matter as some kind of prison or obscuration didn't arise for them to begin with.

Perennial Tradition

The Platonists liked to position themselves not just as followers of Plato but the exponents of a universal wisdom tradition, found not only in the Greeks but traceable to various wise "barbarian" peoples (Egypt, Babylon, India, sometimes the Jews were included here). As far as I can tell, Epicureans never claimed that Epicurus was following any tradition. Insofar as he had influences/ teachers he improved on them and his philosophical system was altogether new. However "tradition" was very much in vogue- to the point that simply saying, "it's new" was enough to discount any system for some people (one of the sharpest points made by anti-Christian polemicists like Porphyry was that Christianity was innovation). In this context I wonder if some Epicureans would have been tempted to position their school as also embodying a primordial tradition. Saying Epicurus had a teacher from Egypt or India would probably be too implausible but the Epicurean doctrine of the gods as models for Epicurean living could position the teaching as a divine revelation. Moreover the conception of an infinite, eternal universe with infinite worlds could be made to support a doctrine of Epicurus-like sages appearing periodically throughout the universe and inspiring successors in other worlds by means of their god-like simulacra flying through space. Pretty far out but not any crazier than the doctrines Buddhism developed about infinite Buddhas pervading the universe.

Esoteric Hermeneutics and Poetics

Something the middle and late Platonists took up from the Stoics was the interpretation of traditional myths as veiled allegories of natural processes or higher philosophical truths. Plato himself made selective use of myths as teaching tools, but rejects many others and was suspicious of poets and rhetoricians for teaching untruths in sweet language. Reading myths as veiled philosophy allowed later Platonists to take a different approach which allowed them to read some high philosophical meaning in even some of the most unpromising material. Eventually you get Proclus make a full-on defense of Homer, reading Homer as a Neoplatonist in disguise. Proclus gives a remarkable theory of symbols- because everything in the universe has a single source, everything is somehow deeply connected, so that not only can things be represented by like symbols, but the more unlike its referent a given symbol is, the more powerful is their connection, so that good poets will draw correspondences between apparently very disparate things (such as, say, depicting the gods as vengeful adulterers, murderers, drunks, etc.)

Epicurus rejected Hesiod and Homer and was reportedly suspicious of figurative language in general. There's the bit in Diogenes Laertius about Epicurus saying that sages are best able to discuss poetry but don't write it themselves (or don't write it very actively, depending on how it's translated). I think it's safe to say that Epicurus would have thought Proclus' approach to be ridiculous or insane- in fact I'm not sure if Plato would have been keen on it.

But as every school of thought develops nuances or even contradictions as its adherents apply its principles in varying times and places, I think the Epicureans might have also developed some novel ways of using myth and poetry. When Lucretius used an epic poem to expound Epicureanism he was already overturning the understanding that poetry was unsuitable for imparting philosophy. The opening invocation of Venus as a supreme goddess, and the petition that she lull her lover Mars, are not of course in accordance with Epicurean theology and demand to be read allegorically. I think for one thing, at this stage, the myths had been discussed and interpreted by philosophers enough that the danger of an educated person credulously deriving dogmas from them was significantly lessened than maybe in Epicurus' day.

Could the Epicureans have found their own use of the highly creative hermeneutics like the Neoplatonists employed? The Stoics and Platonists for one thing are heavily invested in an analogical reading of the cosmos and the foundational principle for this is some sense of the unity of all things. As far as I know Epicureanism rejected any unifying principle like Logos or the One, so on what foundation could an Epicurean poetics emerge that sees the interpenetration of all phenomena? Some possible candidates...

Matter. Epicurus rejects the possibility that all things could be made by combinations of a single type of atom, so there must be an incalculably large variety of atoms. Nonetheless everything shares in this material character and in an infinite eternal universe it's possible that every atom has existed in combination with every other one.

The void. The atoms are infinitely many but the void is fundamentally one. The void which allows for the differentiation of bodies also unites them. However different or far apart the bodies are, they move in the same void, which could be conceived as a single principle on which all existence rests.

Pleasure. Pleasures vary but are one in their foundation. Or, since the chief pleasure of the mind is the contemplation of nature all phenomena are joined in this pleasure.

...

Whew, I wrote a lot. That's a long post. If I bored anyone, I'm sorry.

Anyone interested in a very interesting epitome (some might call it a catechism) of late Platonism should read Sallust's little book On the Gods and the World, here translated by England's indefatigable arch-neo-platonist Thomas Taylor: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Sallust_O…s_and_the_World

Here we see the fully flowered Platonism developed from Iamblichus and the Chaldaean Oracles, which underpinned the polytheist state religion Emperor Julian attempted to forge. It attempts to synthesize the most rarefied doctrines of Plato and his successors with the diverse cults of Greco-Roman religion.

Hi everyone! I first got into Epicurean philosophy back in my teens, in the late 90's, when I came across the Epicurus Reader in a bookstore and loved what I read there. I find the ethical and religious dimensions of Epicureanism equally fascinating. At the time I was heavily into Daoism and I saw some kinship between the philosophies (though, to be clear, there are important differences). I joined an Epicurean email list (run by Erik Anderson I believe) and learned a lot, argued a lot on there. I've gone through many changes and studied widely since then. Among my ongoing interests are surrealism and the history of western esotericism. But in the course of my studies I often think of Epicurus' school, how it stood quite unique in the ancient world, admirably concerned with genuine happiness and not chasing abstractions and lofty virtues for their own sake. I think what a shame that, for whatever reason, Epicureanism reached a historical dead end while Platonism (and the Stoicism and Aristotelianism it absorbed) went from strength to strength. I often find myself speculating how the Epicurean school would have developed through late antiquity in response to the likes of Iamblichus or Proclus. Anyway, I look forward to interesting discussions of Epicureanism and relevant topics. Thanks!