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Cassius
May 19, 2026 at 12:34 PM Replied to the thread New Epicurean Substack: Untroubled.PostAlso (and there are many other arguments) it is not proper to take a single sentence and not consider it in the context of the full analysis of pleasure as to whether it has a limit, which is what Plato had argued in Philebus . The main reason to… -
Cassius
May 19, 2026 at 12:05 PM Replied to the thread New Epicurean Substack: Untroubled.PostBecause he is ignoring the well documented point, stressed by Torquayus as well, that there are only two feelings, pleasure and pain, and that the absence of one is the presence of the other.
He is talking as if less pain is something different and… -
Patrikios
May 19, 2026 at 10:38 AM Replied to the thread New Epicurean Substack: Untroubled.Post -
Eikadistes
May 18, 2026 at 9:16 PM Replied to the thread Superstition Ain't the Way.Post[…]
You're reading me perfectly.
They told me to completely bail on the first 80%, and then amp up my hyper-political examples for the latter 20%. When I realized that I ran past their word limit with reckless abandon (and was just going to re-present it… -
Cassius
May 18, 2026 at 7:34 PM Replied to the thread Sidgwickianism - Henry Sidgwick and Utilitarian Analysis vs. Epicurus.Post -
Cassius
May 18, 2026 at 7:29 PM Commented on the file No Politics*.Comment (File) -
Cassius
May 18, 2026 at 7:27 PM Posted the thread Eikadistes Article Discussion - 'No Politics'.Thread -
Eikadistes
May 18, 2026 at 6:25 PM Added the file No Politics*.FileI was inspired to dig deeper into fragments on law, justice, and society.
In particular, I'm tried to summarize Philódēmos' advice in On Frank Criticism and Hérmarkhos' observations about law and the function of legislation in Against Empedoklḗs. I… -
Eikadistes
May 18, 2026 at 6:04 PM Posted the thread Did People Naturally Want to F—k Deities?.ThreadI know. It’s something you’ve been asking yourself for a long time. I’ve only recently come across this consideration.
Here are a few points the Boys considered in the extant works:- They are natural beings.
- Their form is human.
- Their image is human.
- They are
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Kalosyni
May 18, 2026 at 2:16 PM Replied to the thread Welcome RoseQuartzAxolotl!.PostWelcome to the forum! RoseQuartzAxolotl -
Cassius
May 18, 2026 at 5:19 AM Posted the thread Sidgwickianism - Henry Sidgwick and Utilitarian Analysis vs. Epicurus.ThreadSince the terms psychological hedonism and ethical hedonism are of great interest to some, and those terms appear to originate with Henry Sidgwick, it's probably helpful to have a thread on who Sidgwick was and what he was doing with his categories, and… -
Martin
May 18, 2026 at 1:47 AM Replied to the thread Welcome RoseQuartzAxolotl!.PostWelcome RoseQuartzAxolotl! -
wbernys
May 17, 2026 at 7:54 PM Replied to the thread Welcome RoseQuartzAxolotl!.PostHappy to have you here RoseQuartzAxolotl ! -
RoseQuartzAxolotl
May 17, 2026 at 4:56 PM Replied to the thread Welcome RoseQuartzAxolotl!.PostThank you Cassius, I am glad to be here. -
Cassius
May 17, 2026 at 4:53 PM Replied to the thread Welcome RoseQuartzAxolotl!.PostThat's a great opening email. You are very welcome here! -
Cassius
May 17, 2026 at 4:53 PM Replied to the thread Welcome RoseQuartzAxolotl!.PostRoseQuartzAxolotl (that's quite a user name!) tells us this:
Hello Cassius and all!
I'm 34 and I live in the Chicagoland area with my husband and our Shetland Sheepdog. I work on the systems side of education.
I grew up fairly conservative and fundamental… -
Cassius
May 17, 2026 at 4:51 PM Posted the thread Welcome RoseQuartzAxolotl!.ThreadWelcome RoseQuartzAxolotl
There is one last step to complete your registration:
All new registrants must post a response to this message here in this welcome thread (we do this in order to minimize spam registrations).
You must post your response within… -
Raphael Raul
May 17, 2026 at 12:23 PM Replied to a comment by TauPhi on the image The Nature of Existence is Atoms and Void..Reply (Image/Video)Thank you, Tau Phi, for the information on the quantity of Epicurean writings we have: it amounts to only 1-2%, or about 10,000 words. In comparison, of the 38 plays that Shakepears wrote, it would be like only having half of "A Midsummer Night's Dream",… -
Cassius
May 17, 2026 at 12:20 PM Replied to the thread Episode 334 - Not Yet Rcorded.PostI cross-posted with Bryan and just now see his #12
[…]
This sentence covers a lot but I would think it would be true thaL
"judgment is ESTABLISHED in the senses" means more like "judgment is validated by or is tested against the perceptions of the senses ,… -
Cassius
May 17, 2026 at 11:32 AM Replied to the thread Episode 334 - Not Yet Rcorded.PostOk we just finished recording and I am not sure that we hit your precise point Patrikios but I think you will be pleased with this episode and we can come back to that next week. The section we are in is very deep and what you are raising is definitely… -
Bryan
May 17, 2026 at 11:32 AM Replied to the thread Episode 334 - Not Yet Rcorded.PostWe can review Zeno of Citium's "Analogy of the Closing Hand" for contrast (from Academica 2.145):
1. An open hand represents φαντασία (an appearance)
2. Partially closed fingers represent συγκατάθεσις (assent that the appearance is true)
3. A closed fist… -
Patrikios
May 17, 2026 at 11:06 AM Replied to the thread Episode 334 - Not Yet Rcorded.Post[…]
Cassius ,
I was trying to better understand the difference between katalepsis and prolepsis. I recall reading this paper from David Glidden on Epicurean Prolepsis. Glidden researches Diogenes Laertius and Cicero, when he explains this aspect.
[…]
… -
Cassius
May 17, 2026 at 7:54 AM Replied to the thread Episode 334 - Not Yet Rcorded.PostSo it seems I've been repeating the Epicurean formulation " all sensations are true " for many years without fully appreciating that some people (the Stoics) say that some sensations are true and others are false.
I think I've tended to flip back and… -
Cassius
May 17, 2026 at 7:49 AM Replied to the thread Episode 334 - Not Yet Rcorded.PostI can't find a good authoritative page I can screen clip but at the hazard of it being wrong here is chatgpt:
VII.46 is where Diogenes is summarizing Stoic epistemology. The Greek wording varies slightly by edition, but the key line containing katalepsis… -
Cassius
May 17, 2026 at 7:37 AM Replied to the thread Episode 334 - Not Yet Rcorded.PostHere's the Perseus link from which we can look for variations of katalepsis:
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?do….perseus-grc1:7 -
Cassius
May 17, 2026 at 7:30 AM Replied to the thread Episode 334 - Not Yet Rcorded.PostApparently katalepsis is in here somewhere:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lives_of_…ers/Book_VII#45
45. The study of syllogisms they declare to be of the greatest service, as showing us what is capable of yielding demonstration; and this contributes much… -
Cassius
May 17, 2026 at 7:23 AM Replied to the thread Episode 334 - Not Yet Rcorded.PostThanks Don. By the time of DL he'd have been inundated by the Stoic v Skeptic debate and surely would have compared Stoic vs Epicurean views on prolepsis. "A sort of" presumably indicates parallels but not exactly the same (?)
I want to go looking for… -
Don
May 17, 2026 at 7:10 AM Replied to the thread Episode 334 - Not Yet Rcorded.PostFWIW, katalepsis shows up in Diogenes Laertius:
33] By preconception they mean a sort of apprehension or a right opinion or notion, or universal idea stored in the mind ; that is, a recollection of an external object often presented,
Τὴν δὲ… -
Cassius
May 17, 2026 at 6:39 AM Replied to the thread Episode 334 - Not Yet Rcorded.PostFor comparison, the key section of Diogenes Laertius 12:
https://handbook.epicureanfriends.com/sbsdlx/#31
I'll quote here the HICKS version just to highlight how the underlined part is a very critical section to look at closely. Bailey and Yonge say here… -
Cassius
May 17, 2026 at 6:30 AM Replied to the thread Episode 334 - Not Yet Rcorded.PostThis short section from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy on "Ancient Greek Skepticism" is also right on point:
ii. Attack on the Stoics
In general, the Stoics were the ideal target for the skeptics; for, their confidence in the areas of… -
Cassius
May 17, 2026 at 6:23 AM Replied to the thread Episode 334 - Not Yet Rcorded.PostIn today's episode I want us to take the time to read Wikipedia's definition of "kataleptsis" as I think it's going to help us to keep this in mind as we proceed further:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katalepsis
The current version is relatively short and… -
Cassius
May 16, 2026 at 9:22 PM Replied to the thread New Epicurean Substack: Untroubled.PostI just realized that I forgot to include something that I always try to mention when the subject of Tim O'Keefe or any other professor comes up.
I try not to judge Tim O'Keefe or really even Emily Austin as primarily advocates for Epicurean philosophy. As… -
TauPhi
May 16, 2026 at 4:58 PM Commented on the image The Nature of Existence is Atoms and Void..Comment (Image/Video)Based on David Sedley's 'Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom' (1988), one book of 'On Nature' was equivalent to 80 pages of modern book. That's around 20k words. 'On Nature' in total would be around 3000 pages today. Meaningful fragments of… -
Todd
May 16, 2026 at 4:56 PM Replied to a comment by Raphael Raul on the image The Nature of Existence is Atoms and Void..Reply (Image/Video) -
Raphael Raul
May 16, 2026 at 3:56 PM Commented on the image The Nature of Existence is Atoms and Void..Comment (Image/Video)Here is an illustration using a segment of a painting of mine that depicts the statement, "The Nature of Existence is Atoms and Void," a citation from Plutarch, taken from either of two lost texts of Epicurus: "On Nature" or "On atoms and the Void."… -
Cassius
PostMay 16, 2026 at 3:53 PM -
Raphael Raul
May 16, 2026 at 3:33 PM Uploaded the image The Nature of Existence is Atoms and Void..Image/Video
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Cassius
PostMay 16, 2026 at 2:24 PM […]
OK now I see what you are saying for sure - that clarifies it.
I'm going to have to think about this before responding further. I'm definitely under the influence of recent reading in Academic Questions.
The point i want to reflect about is this: As… -
Todd
PostMay 16, 2026 at 12:35 PM […]
To elaborate a bit more (still following DeWitt here)...
Thetwo most well-knownonly positive examples of anticipations from Epicurus himself are justice and the gods. Do we get a prolepsis of justice from repeatedly seeing examples of it (maybe… -
Don
PostMay 16, 2026 at 12:19 PM My possibly idiosyncratic position on Epicurean prolepsis, filtered through possibly a modern lens, is that prolepsis is the faculty that allows us to make sense of the ever-flowing flood of sense perceptions coming into our physical and mental senses.… -
Todd
PostMay 16, 2026 at 12:10 PM […]
This is the thing that jumps out at me.
To summarize my understanding of DeWitt, the anticipations must anticipate something. That something can only be experience. To say that they result from past experience removes them as an independent criterion. -
Cassius
PostMay 16, 2026 at 12:03 PM To add more there the recent podcast episodes on Academic Questions Book 2 are causing me to focus for maybe the first time on this kataleptic impression issue. So if I am reading all this correctly the Stoics seem to have made that the centerpiece of… -
Don
PostMay 16, 2026 at 12:01 PM […]
Agreed, but I believe Epicurus thought that the mind/soul could receive images/eidolon directly as a sense like taste, touch, etc. Reason then have meaning to those perceived images. That's why, according to Epicurus, we can have a prolepsis of… -
Cassius
PostMay 16, 2026 at 11:51 AM […]
Well that's the three-criteria vs four-criteria debate as I see it, and I'm still firmly with DeWitt in the three camp on that. In fact given my new reading on the stoic view of kataleptic impressions i am more firmly with Dewitt on that than ever.
… -
Don
PostMay 16, 2026 at 11:46 AM […]
Doesn't Epicurus also include grasping concepts with the mind as a sense, too? -
Cassius
PostMay 16, 2026 at 11:37 AM Good to hear from you and I really appreciate your drilling down on the specifics:
If you ask that then it's possible I need to revise that because I didn't really mean to break any new ground from my prior posts.
I recognized while writing that that I was… -
Todd
PostMay 16, 2026 at 10:46 AM I've noticed in this article, and at least one of your previous ones, you (or the AI) are treating *prolepsis* as preconceptions, following DL, and contra DeWitt.
I assume you must have seen this and chosen to let it stand. Have you changed your views on… -
Don
May 16, 2026 at 10:39 AM Replied to the thread New Epicurean Substack: Untroubled.Post[…]
Agreed. Well stated. -
Don
May 16, 2026 at 10:23 AM Replied to the thread New Epicurean Substack: Untroubled.Post[…]
I don't know whether I'd say I'm encamped. That sounds like I'm queueing up for battle. But yeah that appears to be my current (checks watch) perspective.
[…]
As aligned with the natural goal of seeking pleasure. The way you stated it seems more of a… -
Cassius
May 16, 2026 at 10:18 AM Replied to the thread New Epicurean Substack: Untroubled.Post[…]
Ok well now if I understand you that, that would be to consider nature as "aligned with the goal of nature" and NOT "inborn with us at birth." Presumably there could be something destructive inborn in us at birth that is NOT aligned with the goal of…
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