Latest Posts

A very insightful post, Philia ! What you are describing is exactly the process of opening to the Feelings as a guide. Half of the guide is "pain": not avoiding or suppressing the unpleasant, but being guided by that as much as by pleasure.

A pleasant…

Thanks Cassius, Don, JJElbert, Godfrey

Reading all your inputs...lots of pleasures!

I realize I am just going through a phase of "dampened" pleasure right now, so I am needing to mentally clear out my mind in order to open back up to receiving…

Episode Ninety of Lucretius Today is now available. Special treat! Joshua joins us and does a special dramatic reading! But don't worry Don is not going anywhere!

spreaker.com/episode/46701541

A couple of quite pleasurable activities that I've recently begun are restorative yoga and meditation. Although I've done both activities for years at a time in the past (yoga having been far more active than passive), I'm pursuing them free of dogma and…

This is a wide subject! Allow me to narrow it through the lens of a few poems I like.

Romance:

(Quote)


simple hospitalities:

(Quote)


The countryside: (from a much longer poem)

(Quote)


Wine: (from a much longer poem)

(Quote)


Traversing the landscape:

(Quote)


Walking…

If I seem too earnest, it might be because I recently had the pleasure of socializing with two piglets

(Quote)

This is patently false. Pigs provide excellent services. They clear tenacious, thorny and invasive weeds by digging up the roots; they turn and till the soil; they produce manure for fertilization; they are used to establish new ponds, for by…

For me, pleasure encompasses a wide spectrum:

• Walking in the woods and admiring the sun shining through the leaves.
• Looking up at the sky, eyes closed, and feeling the warmth of the sun on my face.
• Partaking in lively conversation.
• Finding an old book on the

…

(Quote)

Rather grim I'm afraid. When you've smelled a burn victim.....

OUTSTANDING - EXCELLENT - THANK YOU!

What's the reference to firefighters and pigs?

I thought I had read somewhere that part of the religious problem with pigs was due to their independent character and that they do not submit to higher rule. Here's the…

(Quote from Philia)

That's funny but a good start!

I was looking for the Metrodorus quote for that but all I found was:


**Plutarch, _Against Colotes_, 2, p. 1108C:** ... those who keep shouting that the _good_ is to be found in the belly and that they would…

Going out beyond the enjoyment of discussion and study of philosophy...for anyone who wants to share...Currently, what are your most pleasurable activities beyond eating and sexuality?

We talked a lot about pigs. This video by the late Christopher Hitchens is an excellent reading from a chapter of one of his books on specifically this subject.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=4LoWVkSyC0o

I started watching just a bit of it...and had some ideas to share...Brooks says happiness is not a feeling...but then goes on to say it is enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose...and then they both reframe "pleasure" as "enjoyment" (they might think…

Episode Eighty-Nine of Lucretius Today is now available. Thanks to Martin for reading this week's text.

spreaker.com/episode/46681924

As I have said before I really like Rolfe Humphries' version. Seems he can be less literal, but he really seems "into" the meaning so his intuition seems reliable.

In reading the Rolfe Humphries translation of this passage I found something interesting. At Loeb line 921, he translates with an emendation;

(Quote)

I was startled by the seemingly unwarranted poetic license, and the Loeb edition did not point to a lacuna…

Here is a reply to this thread on Facebook I want to memorialize, posted by Aaron Smith (author of the article) on 9/21/21:


Rand would disagree that reifying abstractions (e.g., 'capitalism') is part of Objectivism. Her view is Aristotelian in that only…

I agree that is a good location to find some people who are on the same wavelength, and that comment looks great you drafted. Here's my preliminary diagosis for your comment "Part of me thinks it could go off the rails....."

This line of reasoning below…

(Quote from Don)

You're right - very good!

I've thought a good title for an Epicurean podcast or other forum/format would be:
"Pleasure is not a Four-Letter Word"

Here's a possible draft comment... Unless I decide to live unknown
I just came across this program on Instagram (I know! Social media does good!? Shocking!) and look forward to the podcast. The thing that struck me as I watched the video was how…

(Quote from Cassius)

Very well said, thank you. Carpe Diem!

"All we really want in life is pleasure."

I don't think sentence rings Epicurean, and that's a tip-off. I think we (and Epicurus too) are all familiar with people who have convinced themselves that pain and hardship are to be pursued in themselves. From…

Yeah, he definitely seems to be a member of the modern Stoic movement:
http://www.johnsellars.org.uk/popular-writing.html
Okay, if we go back to 2003...
http://www.the-philosopher.co.…-and-ethics-2003.html?m=1

I did a quick search of Sellars at Academia.edu and didn't see anything specifically on Epicureanism. Lots of articles, papers, book chapters on the minutiae of Stoicism, Aristotle, Hadot, Marcus Aurelius, and Hellenistic philosophy in general with a…

Martin after I finish editing this week's podcast I am going to turn to editing this presentation. I want to get it out as soon as possible but there's no deadline or schedule so we will take as much time as we need to get it right. Before we release…

On dialogical logic
C. F. v. Weizsaecker's uses dialogical logic to justify usage of statements on the past in logical arguments in the book which I mentioned as reference in comment #10. (That justification does not work for statements on the future.)

Blunders during my presentation

As mentioned and corrected in my additions and during the presentation, the truth table for OR on Slide 11 of the tutorial is wrong. While presenting, I wrongly mentioned that the examples on Slide 12 were wrong, too, but…

Another point as to the significance of what we are talking about:

It seems to me that a good case can be made that Plato's entire form of argument is encompassed within this term of "dialectic." Epicurus was objecting not just to conclusions, but to the…