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Matt is one of our regular participants here, but he's been preoccupied lately by adding to his family (birth of a child yesterday). Just wanted to say congratulations on adding to the world someone who will no doubt be introduced to Epicurus at an early age, and who will never have to paraphrase Torquatus later in life and say that she "will have to go on studying til old age the subjects that she ought to be ashamed not to have learnt as a child."

We already have a list of links to other Epicurean websites, but it occurs to me that our regular users may have personal hobbies or websites that they would like to let other users know about. Probably the best place for that would be to mention it in your individual user profile, but it might be a good idea for us to have a central list of links for such sites. As a test I am going to pin this post to the top of the General Discussion forum. If you have website that you'd like to have listed, please add a note to this thread and I will add it here in the first post. I'm thinking primarily of sites like music, poetry, general writing, etc, and it may be that if the very name of a site violates our "no politics" rule it might not be appropriate here, but we'll deal with that issue if and when it arises.

I received an email from a reader of epicuro.org who prefers to remain anonymous with an original proposal that immediately thrilled me. Here is his email:

Epicurean philosophy is among the greatest movements of thought in history, on a par with the most common religions.

Unlike religions (e.g. Christianity) and other more recent movements (e.g. Communism), it does not have a symbol with which it can be identified around the world.

I therefore thought of a symbol that could condense the main points of Epicurus' thought, in a graphic that is as minimalist as possible.

The result is this: ⟐

A rhombus with a dot inside.

The four sides of the rhombus represent the quadrifugaco, the way to happiness according to Epicurus.

The point, on the other hand, represents the Democritean atom at the basis of Epicurean physics and the key concept of clinamen, the random movement of atoms.

This symbol corresponds to the UNICODE U + 27D0 standard so it is copyright free.

What do you think?

Simbolo

Admin Edit 080620 - It appears that some of the linked photos in the post below have disappeared over time. I will try to relink them, but in the meantime, ultimately what this post is about is the question of the proper identification of Epicurus in "the School of Athens," with Elli questioning the identification of Epicurus as the chubby wreathed figurein this page at wikipedia.

Elli Pensa     (as of 080620 the original post is still available on Facebook at this link:  

February 23 at 9:20am

The famous fresco in the Vatican.

Issue: "How we find in Raphael’s fresco entitled, "The School of Athens“, the familiar figure of our teacher and philosopher Epicurus".

In Epicuru's epistle to Herodotus we read the following passage : "And besides we must keep all our investigations in accord with our sensations, and in particular with the immediate apprehensions whether of the mind or of any one of the instruments of judgment, and likewise in accord with the feelings

Here is a quick note that my thoughts are beginning to clarify as to what I'd like to target for my own activity in 2021 in addition to the ongoing projects.

Most of my thoughts revolve around continuity and stability, and I continue to see two things that I really want to accomplish:

(1) I want to get back to developing a completely free and open set of core texts that will always be easily findable and downloadable. What I mean here is I want to take the work I've already done in compiling digital text versions of the core documents and get those better organized for further editing and organization. Being the computer geek that I am, I continue to play with the idea that Epicurean philosophy is closely akin to a computer's "operating system," and I know the way that people collaborate to refine operating systems and computer software is to use facilities like "github" to publish into the public domain core material that others can "fork" and use however they see fit. I think

Quote

For anyone who is not completely submerged in the spirit of our age, who feels instead like a spectator as the world goes past him, especially, from time to time, vis-à-vis the intellectual attitudes of his contemporaries — on him will Lucretius’s poem work its magic

I don't know anything more about this quote than can be found here, but it might be worth looking in to!

Has anyone here heard of the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce? The attached article showed up in my inbox and explores how Peirce studied Epicurus and used the idea of the swerve in some of his thinking. It would seem that his acceptance of Epicurus' ideas was very limited, but it was a pleasant surprise to come across a new name relating to Epicurus!

This comes from Facebook - I hope we can encourage him to post here as well:

I am very pleased to announce the publication of my book: Epicurus in the Underworld. Heresy, atheism and hedonism in the Middle Ages, published by Fayard, Paris (in French). Here is the link to the publisher's website, where you can read a few pages and buy the book (with links to many bookshops online). With a lot of pleasure!

https://www.fayard.fr/histoire…-aux-enfers-9782213711744

Cassius: This looks like an interesting book, but unfortunately for most of us here, it is in French. Here is the opening blurb through google translate:

Aurélien Robert
Cassius Amicus
thanks a lot! I’ll try to post a more detailed overview in English very soon!

Please do, Aurelien! I wasn't sure whether it was a good idea for the group for us to post this, but if you are actively following along the thread and you can comment here, then that will be great.

I am coming to the conclusion that if I had to randomly

Good morning all!

I'm running a Twitter account focusing on philosophy, self-improvement, and spirituality and I'm wanting to follow others with such interests.

In looking for ideas to share and discuss (as much as a tweet allows) I've come across a severe lack of Epicurean philosophy on the site. There's a plethora of Stoic accounts and practitioners, but almost nothing for Epicureanism. I will be upfront and let anyone with interest know that I am an eclectic and post/retweet as such, but Epicurean teachings have had a huge influence in my personal philosophy and I want to find similar minds so that I may connect and promote them as well.

If anyone has any interest, or know of any public accounts I can follow, I look forward to hearing from you and about them!

I see it was a year ago today that I joined the forum. So, 799 posts later, it appears time certainly flies! On this day, I want to express my gratitude for @Cassius's efforts in maintaining this platform, and to all my Epicurean Friends for pleasurable intellectually-stimulating conversation this past year. Here's to another year of Epicurean exploration! Carpe annum! Ευ πράττειν και σπουδαιως ζην!