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Examination of Letter to Menoeceus, using Bailey and other translations, and with a commentary --by Kalosyni -- and including relevant PD's, VS's, etc.Sections of Ancient Greek text in the commentary come from: https://monadnock.net/epicurus/letter.html*** This is currently a work in progress***

We always recommend that readers consult the original works of Epicurus, and we maintain here at the forum a collection of Ancient Epicurean Texts, including Diogenes Laertius Book 10 (which contains all of Epicurus' Letters), Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, and many others.

If you are brand new to Epicurus and only read one thing before anything else, read Torquatus' Presentation of Epicurean Ethics (also available in a more compact, cross-referenced format at EpicurusToday.com). Most people meet…

Introduction

Thomas Jefferson chose to pursue a life of active involvement in politics. Unlike his friend Thomas Paine, Jefferson did not publish philosophical and religious treatises for his political enemies to use against him. As a result, Jefferson’s views on many controversial issues can only be discerned through study of his private letters. Several of the most important of these letters are collected here.

It is well known that Jefferson possessed multiple copies of Lucretius’ On The…

To start off this page, thanks to Don for the following:





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionia?wprov=sfla1

This listing will be expanded with additional detail over time.

Based on information originally put together by Don and Nate, this is an effort to "pretty it up" into a Table form which we can reference more easily and update collaboratively. If you have suggestions please place them in the comments below. If you'd like to do more extensive editing and don't have write access, please contact Cassius.Green is for Epicurean. Red is for non-Epicurean. Blue is for "events."

Click here for the multi-column side by side page.

For purposes of inclusion in our regular 20th meetings, the following is a list of prominent Epicureans with notations of their accomplishments. Each month - in addition to Epicurus and Metrodorus - we can remember two others so that each year we rotate through the complete list. The goal for each month would be:To memorialize Epicurus and Metrodorus every month as per the directions in Epicurus' will.To memorialize two other prominent Epicureans from a list of 24 names that everyone ought to know.To memorialize one from a list of "lesser-known" Epicureans about whom we may not know much but which we know enough to make for an interesting mention.To prepare this we can use Nate's list of "Epicurean Philosophers."Full discussion thread for this project.

This is a collaborative page for developing pamplets on Epicurean Ethics suitable for handing out at an in-person meeting. The goal is to keep this both simple and practical.

LIGHTNING 🙝

"It has pleased God in his Goodness to Mankind, at length to discover to them the Means of securing their Habitations and other Buildings from Mischief by Thunder and Lightning."

--Benjamin Franklin; Poor Richard's Almanac; 1753

❧ This entry is titled Lightning, and will be a good place for quotations on thunder, the armaments of Zeus, and the causes of stormy weather.

Horace; Odes; 1;34: "Once I wandered, an expert in crazy wisdom, a scant and infrequent adorer of gods, now I’m…

DEATH 🙝

"Death has this much to be said for it:

You don't have to get out of bed for it.

Wherever you happen to be

They bring it to you—free.”

-Kingsley Amis

❧ This entry is titled Death, and will be a good place for quotations on fear, dying, and what happens--or doesn't--after.


Dawkins, Richard; Unweaving the Rainbow; 1998: "We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here…

EARTH 🙝

"My loyalties will not be bound by national borders, or confined in time by one nation's history, or limited in the spiritual dimension by one language and culture. I pledge my allegiance to the damned human race, and my everlasting love to the green hills of Earth, and my intimations of glory to the singing stars, to the very end of space and time."

-Edward Abbey, Confessions of a Barbarian, 1994

❧ This entry is titled Earth, and will be a good place for quotations on the third planet…

SYNOPTIC VIEW 🙝

"Many a man, when I tell him that I have been on to a mountain, asks if I took a glass with me. No doubt, I could have seen further with a glass, and particular objects more distinctly--could have counted more meeting-houses; but this has nothing to do with the particular beauty and grandeur that an elevated position affords. It was not to see a few particular objects, as if they were near at hand, as I had been accustomed to see them, that I ascended the mountain, but to see…

ATHEISM 🙝

"It has been very well said, that if triangles were to make to themselves gods, they would give them three sides. My dear Usbek, when I behold men, mere crawlers on this atom, the earth, which is but a point in the universe, proposing themselves as exact models for Providence, I know not how to harmonise such extravagance with such littleness."

--Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, "Persian Letters", 1714, transl. John Davidson

❧ This entry is titled…

ASTRONOMY 🙝

"We are star stuff harvesting star light. Our lives, our past and our future are tied to the sun, the moon and the stars. Our ancestors knew that their survival depended on understanding the heavens. They built observatories and computers to predict the changing of the seasons by the motions in the skies. We are all of us descended from astronomers."

--Carl Sagan, "Cosmos", 1980

❧ This entry is titled Astronomy, and will be a good place for quotations on the stars, the phenomena of…

ATOMISM 🙝

"Knowing this, be wise, and leave Epicurus to enquire in vain

where is the void and what are the atoms."

--Automedon, Book XI of the Greek Anthology, transl. W. R. Paton

❧ This entry is titled Atomism, and will be a good place for quotations on the atoms, the void, and the swerve.

Santayana, George; Three Philosophical Poets; 1910; "This double experience of mutation and recurrence, an experience at once sentimental and scientific, soon brought with it a very great thought, perhaps the…

TRAVELS 🙝

"Be it understood, then, that I am writing about things which

I have neither seen nor had to do with nor learned from others--which,

in fact, do not exist at all and, in the nature of things, cannot exist."

-- Lucian of Samosata , A True Story, transl. by A. M. Harmon

❧ This entry is titled Travels, and will be a good place for quotations from or about Histories, Travelogues, adventures,

and whether the map is the same as the territory.

Jefferson, Thomas;  Letter to Peter Carr; August…

QUOTATIONS 🙝PASSAGES FROM A WORLD WHERENOTHING COMES FROM NOTHINGA TOPICAL REFERENCE SOURCE❧ COMPILED BY JOSHUA ELBERT

The purpose of this page is to present a table of major passages from the core texts for which there are translation controversies and as to the real meaning. In many or most cases, the issue involved is controversial, and the choice of words used to translate the text assumes that one among various possibilities is correct. The purpose here is to highlight the ambiguity and the various possibilities so as not to obscure the difficulty, but make it possible to explore the difficulty more deeply, in the spirit of PD24.PD24. If you reject any single sensation, and fail to distinguish between the conclusion of opinion, as to the appearance awaiting confirmation, and that which is actually given by the sensation or feeling, or each intuitive apprehension of the mind, you will confound all other sensations, as well, with the same groundless opinion, so that you will reject every standard of judgment. And if among the mental images created by your opinion you affirm both that which awaits confirmation, and that which does not, you will not escape error, since you will have preserved the whole cause of doubt in every judgment between what is right and what is wrong.Edits and contributions to this table by Level 3 or above participants at EpicureanFriends.com are welcome. If you attempt to edit and do not have access, please message a moderator.This lexicon entry replaces the old entry located here: Table of Texts With Translation or Corruption Difficulties

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