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Thanks to Eikadistes for his latest graphic:

This calls to my mind that at least as for me personally I have never come to terms with all the ink that has been spilled in philosophy over the apparent conflict between Apollo and Dionysus or what the controversy is even about apart from very basic allusions about drunkenness.

Apollonian and Dionysian - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy: Apollo and Dionysus

It’s more complicated than just order and chaos. . .

gregorybsadler.substack.com

I could probably dig into those two articles and come up with something that was satisfactory, but given that there is so much attention paid to this I think it might be worthwhile to discuss what would have been Epicurus' attitude about this controversy. I suspect that he would end up finding something good in both and something also to revise.

If anyone here has

This is an interesting video:

Aristarchus of Samos proposed a heliocentric model, but this idea did not find wide acceptance among ancient philosophers, due to a lack of observable stellar parallax.

"Clinamen Vitae - The swerve toward lived experience, where life is worthy of being lived"

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Clinamen Vitae - The swerve toward lived experience, where life is worthy of being lived.

Between night and day lie twilight and dawn - moments that belong neither to light nor to darkness, yet honor both as complementary shades of our natural, tangible, and shared reality. These moments transcend - or rather, refute- the Aristotelian logic of the excluded middle, which leads to dilemmas and false necessities. Nature does not operate this way; it does not exclude, does not oppose. It discerns, measures, and allows - and it is best described through Epicurean philosophy when that…

Elli

October 27, 2025 at 10:31 AM

When Science Returns to the Hellenic Worldview: Empathy and Consciousness Redeemed

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Duty, Evolution, Neuroscience, Attic Tragedy, and Epicurean Philosophy

An Analysis of a Father’s Death Sentence Against His Own Son - Torquatus and the Roman Recasting of Epicurean Philosophy.

Titus Manlius Torquatus, as portrayed in Cicero’s De Finibus, appears as a defender of Epicurean philosophy. Although many of his arguments echo core Epicurean principles, his rhetorical strategy and moral framework reveal a distinctly Roman reinterpretation - shaped by the ethos of duty, authority, and military discipline.

This portrayal seems to serve Cicero’s rhetorical…

Elli

November 18, 2025 at 2:34 PM

“When Science Returns to the Hellenic Worldview: Empathy and Consciousness Redeemed”

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“When Science Returns to the Hellenic Worldview: Empathy and Consciousness Redeemed”

Friedrich Nietzsche, in his work The Antichrist, denounces Paul as the inventor of Christianity and an enemy of Rome’s grandeur. But perhaps Nietzsche himself misunderstood what Paul truly fought against. Rome may have been the aching tooth, but Greece was its root. And Paul - not as a scientific dentist (for he knew nothing of science, of course) - but more like the last illiterate barber in the neighborhood, he grabbed the pliers and performed a full extraction on the tooth that tormented…

Elli

November 18, 2025 at 2:39 PM

Starting this thread for textual excerpts that express upbeat, optimistic, and/or joyful feelings...

Diogenes Laertius, book 10, excerpt:

"Also that in his letters he wrote to Leontion, "O Lord Apollo, my dear little Leontion, with what tumultuous applause we were inspired as we read your letter." Then again to Themista, the wife of Leonteus : "I am quite ready, if you do not come to see me, to spin thrice on my own axis and be propelled to any place that you, including Themista, agree upon" ; and to the beautiful Pythocles he writes : "I will sit down and await thy divine advent, my heart's desire."....It is observed too that in his treatise On the Ethical End he writes in these terms : "I know not how to conceive the good, apart from the pleasures of taste, sexual pleasures, the pleasures of sound and the pleasures of beautiful form."

De Rerum Natura, book 2, excerpt:

Will add soon [sunshine, birds-song in forests]

...More to be added soon

Feel free to post any other upbeat, optimistic,

Hello everyone.

Recently, I've come across some terrible news from my region. I'll spare you all of the details, but it consisted of some truly vile crimes committed by a group of thugs. When I read this, my blood began to boil as never before. I started shaking with anger. Obviously, due to the naturally anxious nature of our species, I already started anticipating scenarios in which I or people close to me would be victims of similar crimes.

The thugs had already been arrested for similar crimes in the past, but got out early due to the failing criminal system in my country. As such, trust in the law for protection is not an effective option. I understand that building a strong community can be helpful(as I believe this is one of the many forms of security that can be increased with the help of friendship), but what else can I and other people do to deal with anger, resentment, and especially anxiety in scenarios like this? What would Epicurus and his followers advise?

We've just had this video submitted by a participant at the Facebook group. It was originally produced in French but there's been an English overlay added, and it's very understandable. I've prepared a very negative review of it which I will post next, but as I told the poster, this is something I definitely recommend watching. Any long and professional treatment of Epicurus is good for publicity, and as I wrote in my review even though I find lots to object to, the video is very thought-proving. To say the least, this is NOT the view of Epicurus I advocate, but it certainly does dramatize many of the issues in dispute!

(I should also warn you that the video is kind of weird in incorporating an actual commercial (for Infomaniak, apparently a cloud provider) into the flow of the discussion.

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Hi, friends! I just watched this funny yet very interesting and well-researched video about Epicurus and his philosophy on a really great philosophy channel called

I came across this observation from Numenius of Apamea who wrote the passage some 500 years after Epicurus and I thought it may be interesting topic for us to discuss. Epicurean school in antiquity was uniquely resistant to any change or innovation. When other schools went through distinct periods in their development - Middle Platonism, Neoplatonism, Early Stoa, Middle Stoa, 1st Academy, 2nd Academy, umpteen academy etc. - Epicureanism had never developed. No new ideas were introduced, nothing was really questioned or corrected, there were around 10 scholars in succession that we know of who run the school and yet no-one really deviated or influenced in any significant way the teachings of the school.

So what do you think? Why was Epicurean school like a tardigrade in a state of cryptobiosis? Was the school's stagnation a feature or a bug?

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On the contrary, there was no great necessity that the Epicureans should have preserved the teachings of their

Edward Abbey was an iconoclast, a contrarian, a gadfly, and a radical. He was a desert ranger, a poet, a novelist, a student of philosophy, and a keen observer of nature and human life. He was an aesthetic, a sensualist, an atheist, a materialist, and in general terms an antagonist. A provocateur.

In a list of his favorite poets, he names first Anacreon and then Lucretius . He is, after Thoreau, my second favorite essayist.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes:

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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. from his journal; (cf. Diogenes of Oenoanda)

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Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I