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Listen to the latest Lucretius Today Podcast! Episode 225 is now available. Cicero Argues That A Commitment To Virtue Is A Bar to Pleasure.
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Godfrey
April 28, 2024 at 12:40 PM Replied to the thread What Epicurus Offers To The Modern World As Of April, 2024?.Post[…]
So apparently feasting and sacrifices were part of birthday celebrations for Plato and Socrates. Does this make them cultish? If it makes the Epicureans cultish, they're not alone.
Great cite Joshua ! -
Don
April 28, 2024 at 9:01 AM Replied to the thread What Epicurus Offers To The Modern World As Of April, 2024?.PostYa'll have been active while I was asleep Some great posts.
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Completely agree. Without the everyday cultural context, it's almost impossible to put ourselves fully in the mindset of an ancient person. As one example, what did Epicurus feel and think… -
Cassius
April 28, 2024 at 5:51 AM Replied to the thread What Epicurus Offers To The Modern World As Of April, 2024?.PostLot's of good comments above but to comment on only two:
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I think it is important (for me at least) to be clear that the areas where he would change his mind involve relatively insignificant speculations on operations of nature which he knew were open… -
Joshua
April 28, 2024 at 2:20 AM Replied to the thread What Epicurus Offers To The Modern World As Of April, 2024?.Post[…]
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I was somewhat interested to learn, after reading Cicero's condemnation on this point, that Plotinus--the founder of Neoplatonism in the 3rd century AD--was adamant that his birthday not be celebrated, and that his portrait not be carved or… -
Godfrey
April 28, 2024 at 1:29 AM Replied to the thread What Epicurus Offers To The Modern World As Of April, 2024?.PostA quick thought prompted by Don 's post: did Epicurus create a cult around himself?
Did Plato? Aristotle? Epictetus? (&c) They were all the commanding personalities of their schools. Was Epicurus perhaps making his school friendlier, less intimidating?… -
Don
April 27, 2024 at 11:39 PM Replied to the thread What Epicurus Offers To The Modern World As Of April, 2024?.Post[…]
I think you raise some interesting and valid points, TauPhi . I appreciate your willingness to share your thoughts and to give anyone interested a chance to add to the discussion.
My first thought as I read your post was: Although we can see… -
Bryan
April 27, 2024 at 8:07 PM Replied to the thread What Epicurus Offers To The Modern World As Of April, 2024?.PostOne of the tricks of "modern thought/education" is to make the student think they are coming up with the ideas themselves individually (and therefore hold those ideas more deeply) when in reality they really end up only believing and repeating what they… -
Twentier
April 27, 2024 at 1:31 PM Uploaded the image The One Who Errs.Image/Video -
kochiekoch
April 26, 2024 at 9:02 PM Replied to the thread Purpose of this Subforum - Explaining How Illusions Are Corrected By The Senses Themselves.PostMy very superstitious mother was always VERY CONCERNED when Mercury went into retrograde.
It was BAD NEWS. -
TauPhi
April 26, 2024 at 8:58 PM Replied to the thread What Epicurus Offers To The Modern World As Of April, 2024?.Post -
Cassius
April 26, 2024 at 5:24 PM Replied to the thread What Epicurus Offers To The Modern World As Of April, 2024?.PostWhat you've just described Don is the major theme of Lucian's "Hermotimus" dialog. We've got to find some time at some point to make a recording of that and promote it.
I cannot recommend it highly enough. It is witty and fun to read and extremely… -
Don
April 26, 2024 at 5:18 PM Replied to the thread What Epicurus Offers To The Modern World As Of April, 2024?.Post[…]
Epicurus started teaching philosophy because he thought he had a system superior to all the others that were teaching during his time. He no doubt felt he had 'figured it out." I get the impression that one didn't join a school - did not seek out a… -
Don
April 26, 2024 at 11:57 AM Replied to the thread What Epicurus Offers To The Modern World As Of April, 2024?.Post[…]
Well said, Cassius ! I see the αρχη "authority" as expressed in πειθαρχησομεν as more like "authoritative" in this case, like an "authoritative" research source. Even in Sic Fac Omnia Tamquam Spectet Epicurus "Do all things as if Epicurus were… -
Kalosyni
April 26, 2024 at 10:33 AM Replied to the thread Episode 226 - Cicero's On The Nature of The Gods - Epicurean Section 01 (Not Yet Recorded).PostI found this on how Athenian Ephebeia were religiously educated:
https://brill.com/display/book/9…xml?language=en -
Don
April 26, 2024 at 10:29 AM Replied to the thread Episode 226 - Cicero's On The Nature of The Gods - Epicurean Section 01 (Not Yet Recorded).Post[…]
Well... That should be interesting. -
Joshua
April 26, 2024 at 10:07 AM Replied to the thread Episode 226 - Cicero's On The Nature of The Gods - Epicurean Section 01 (Not Yet Recorded).PostAnother thing I'd like to discuss during this series is John Mason Good's introduction to his translation of Lucretius. He genuinely makes the claim that Lucretius believed in an intelligent creator, someone who set the atoms into motion. I'll post more… -
Cassius
April 26, 2024 at 9:01 AM Replied to the thread Episode 226 - Cicero's On The Nature of The Gods - Epicurean Section 01 (Not Yet Recorded).PostLet's continue the discussion of arguments in favor of supernatural gods here:
Organizing Epicurean Responses To Arguments In Favor Of Supernatural Gods We can eventually split that thread too down into separate subthreads by argument, but let's start a… -
Cassius
April 26, 2024 at 9:00 AM Posted the thread Organizing Epicurean Responses To Arguments In Favor Of Supernatural Gods.ThreadAs part of the series we're going to present on the Epicurean sections of Cicero's "On The Nature of the Gods," we will want to be sure to at least mention the major arguments that might be of interest to modern readers, even if they are not explicitly… -
Cassius
April 26, 2024 at 8:51 AM Replied to the thread Episode 226 - Cicero's On The Nature of The Gods - Epicurean Section 01 (Not Yet Recorded).PostI haven't refreshed my reading recently enough to know if Cicero includes a similar argument in "On The Nature of The Gods," but he might. We can discuss this in the same way that we can include Epicurus' "riddle," even though it is not explicitly in the… -
Kalosyni
April 26, 2024 at 8:46 AM Replied to the thread Episode 226 - Cicero's On The Nature of The Gods - Epicurean Section 01 (Not Yet Recorded).PostIs it possible that Cicero and others in ancient times used similar thinking as Anselm to decide that there are gods?
https://iep.utm.edu/anselm-ontological-argument/ -
Cassius
April 26, 2024 at 8:34 AM Replied to the thread What Epicurus Offers To The Modern World As Of April, 2024?.PostMy preliminary comments are:
At the very least one observation that goes along with the discussion is that Epicurus was long dead even when that was written, so he was not around to give orders, nor does there seem to have been a strict passing of… -
Don
April 26, 2024 at 8:26 AM Replied to the thread What Epicurus Offers To The Modern World As Of April, 2024?.PostThe word specifically used by Philodemus is πειθαρχησομεν and translator of "On Frank Criticism" translates it as "obey (one in authority)" which is in line with the LSJ definition. However, the word is related directly to:
πείθω
to convince, persuade
to… -
Kalosyni
April 26, 2024 at 8:19 AM Replied to the thread What Epicurus Offers To The Modern World As Of April, 2024?.Post[…]
I think that the main problem for us now is that half of the pages of the "cookbook" are missing.
We can see that people turned to Epicurus for answers about living a happy and good life. It seems unlikely that the "Epicureanism" during the life of… -
Kalosyni
April 26, 2024 at 8:08 AM Replied to the thread What Epicurus Offers To The Modern World As Of April, 2024?.Post[…]
Now if you think about it, the original authority was "God". In current modern times many people do not believe in God, or perhaps they believe in a God which is only remotely involved with humans (more like "new-age" spirituality). So there will be… -
TauPhi
April 26, 2024 at 7:08 AM Replied to the thread What Epicurus Offers To The Modern World As Of April, 2024?.Post[…]
I'm thinking about this sentence for few minutes now and I can't see how obeying someone in authority is not 'blind faith'. To me, that's exactly it. If I give someone authority over my own life and obey them, that means I acknowledge someone else is… -
Don
April 25, 2024 at 11:45 PM Replied to the thread What Epicurus Offers To The Modern World As Of April, 2024?.PostThanks, Twentier !
It makes sense that there was a demarcation point in ancient Greece and Rome when someone declared themselves a member of the Garden and declared themselves an Epicurean and follower of Epicurus's philosophical School. There are… -
Twentier
April 25, 2024 at 10:56 PM Replied to the thread What Epicurus Offers To The Modern World As Of April, 2024?.Post[…]
In a fragment, Philodemus writes, "...we shall admonish others with great confidence, both now and when those {of us} who have become offshoots of our teachers have become eminent. And the encompassing and most important thing is, we shall obey… -
Don
April 25, 2024 at 10:31 PM Replied to the thread What Epicurus Offers To The Modern World As Of April, 2024?.Post[…]
The more I think about this, I think it could be possible to be an "accidental Epicurean." There are so many "common sense" beliefs today with science and all that one could maybe carry on a substantially Epicurean lifestyle and outlook without… -
Kalosyni
April 25, 2024 at 3:01 PM Replied to the thread Purpose of this Subforum - Explaining How Illusions Are Corrected By The Senses Themselves.Post -
Pacatus
April 25, 2024 at 1:52 PM Replied to the thread What Epicurus Offers To The Modern World As Of April, 2024?.Post[…]
Or who gets to declare if the proper and necessary criteria are met to be an Epicurean – and what those criteria are for anyone/everyone? It’s for questions like these that I am loath to call myself an Epicurean (or a/an anything along those lines). I…