Recent Updates From Across EpicureanFriends.com

I've already had some preliminary background conversation with Demstar555 and he sounds very much like the type of person we target to participate with us here at EpicureanFriends. Please welcome him when you get a chance. And @demstar5555 please don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions or need any help. We have a standard "getting to know you period" before you can post in other threads, but we look forward to having you join our other conversations and in the meantime raise…

Welcome @demstar5555 ! Demstar tells us: 1: demstar5555 2: I agree. 3: I am a classical studies/philosophy undergraduate student. Currently, I am in a seminar reading Diogenes in the Greek with Dr. Mike Pope. I have been quite fond of Epicureanism as long as I've known it. I also participated in a seminar earlier this year, learning from various scholars, who brought Herculaneum papyri to the US for us to see. I consider myself Epicurean to a high degree, although I wouldn't consider myself…

It is unexpectedly difficult to find videos illustrating the operation and capabilities of vortices. Here's a basic one but I am sure there are much better. Do most of us here really need them? No. Would the great majority of people who are persuaded of intelligent design profit from them? Yes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnbJEg9r1o8

Welcome to Episode 360 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts, and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where we discuss this and all of our…

Pending a better analysis article I have reviewed the following material collected by Claude on the role of Vortices in the formation of worlds. Combined with the role of infinity / isonomia this is a major component of Epicurean physics in explaining how worlds come into being. I recommend treating the following as a collection of citations on which to build further analysis. The following is a collection of passages in the Epicurean texts, and in the earlier atomists whom Epicurus…

As to the monkeys and typewriters hypo, Just making a note here now, but I see that David Sedley has considerable treatment of this issue in his "Creationism And Its Ancient Critics" book. I will update this thread with what I've picked up there because he makes some important points on how Democritus and Epicurus likely differed on this issue. The ultimate point has to do with whether there are infinite numbers or types of atoms, as Democritus apparently held, or only a limited number of…

Summary: Cassius and Joshua begin Section 20 of Book Two of Cicero’s Academic Questions, where Cicero at last answers Lucullus and starts his defense of Academic skepticism. Cassius opens by noting how much of Lucretius is canonics, about how to take confident positions when we don’t have all the evidence we would like. Joshua recalls Lucullus’s charge about the Catilinarian conspiracy and Catulus’s advice to ignore it, and reads Cicero’s reply. Cicero says he is “inflamed with a desire of…

Lucretius Today Podcast Episode 359 is now available: "According To The Skeptics, Why Aim For The Truth When You Can GIve Up Trying To Be Right And Never Have To Admit That You're Wrong?" https://www.spreaker.com/episode/76319356/media

Here is a link to a chapter [URL:https://www.ancientportsantiques.com/wp-content/uploads/Documents/AUTHORS/Arnaud-PublGenerales/Arnaud-Geography2014.pdf] from a booklet about ancient navigation. This is focused on Lucan's Pharsalia (the war between Caesar and Pompey) so the time frame is close to that of cicero's discussion. […]

In this episode part of what we discuss is Cicero's defense of himself that he is not simply being quarrelsome, but that he is motivated in his arguments by a desire for truth -- even though in Cicero's mind the conclusion is that truth is impossible to find. In this context here is what Sextus Empiricus said about the "main principle of the skeptic system - with the end not being truth - but ceasing to look for or suggesting that anything is truth, […]

Last night @Godfrey said that he had listened to the podcast linked below and become aware of the book which is in the title of the thread. He brought it up mostly for discussion of use of "Joy" as term for introducing someone to concepts similar to Epicurus' views of pleasure. If you click over to the Amazon page you can see the table of contents. It's not a philosophy book and it's not clear how much it addresses the deeper issues on whether or why pleasure or joy should be one's goal,…

It's worth also documenting here according to the Tobias Reinhardt background article that the Stoic founder Zeno of Citium was reputedly of Phoenician descent - ... Zeno of Citium, who formulated the definition of the cataleptic impression (Luc. 77), was famously of Phoenician descent, 8 8 See Cic. Fin. 4.46: Postea tuus ille Poenulus ‒ scis enim Citieos, clientes tuos, e Phoenica profectos ‒, homo igitur acutus ...; D.L. 7.1, 7.3. Zeno was of eastern Phoenician descent, and the use of the…

So far I am not finding in this discussion something I think is probably the most important part: Why should a pole star be a reliable means of navigation. There are going to be generic answers to this which should be fleshed out such as: Stoic - We can rely on it because it was created by divine forces to be that way. Stories like Zeus turning his nurses into stars may be true or may be allegory but in the end the universe is governed by providence and all is as it was meant to be. Academic…

We need something labelled better than this to illustrate Cicero's allusion, but here we see the big and little dipper and their relation to Polaris. Chatgpt - The Big Dipper and Little Dipper are not separate constellations from the Great Bear and Little Bear. They are recognizable groups of seven stars, called asterisms, within the larger constellations. Big Dipper: Seven bright stars forming part of Ursa Major (the Great Bear). The dipper's handle corresponds approximately to the bear's…

Good - the article most directly on point dissecting the Navigation analogy is free in full at this link. From the abstract, the writer seems friendly to Cicero and Academic skepticism, but probably the information contained here will be useful in constructing what the Epicureans would have said in reply. […] Random notes: "Finally, Augustine’s Contra Academicos engages closely with Cicero’s Academici libri, including with parts of that work which have not come down to us, but does so in a…

Here is a good website on the topic of savoring... Within modern psychology, savoring is attending, appreciating, and enhancing positive experiences that occur in one’s life. Article excerpts: […] You can read the full article: https://positivepsychology.com/savoring/

I was looking up about scrapbooking and collaging and came across this phrase used on a scrapbook page: "Remember the days that made your heart full" Which then made me think of the song "Auld Lang Syne": Article excerpts: […] https://www.rd.com/article/what-does-auld-lang-syne-mean/

Welcome, @DevinH As a biologist, you might find the writings of Christos Yapijakis of interest. In his work, Epicurean Biological Psychology, Yapijakis discusses the mammalian brain, with his focus is on how our biological architecture—specifically the systems we share with other mammals—is fundamentally designed to seek pleasure and avoid pain. He bridges the gap between ancient Epicurean ethics and modern biological science, showing that our pursuit of aponia and ataraxia is not a…

There's a lot to unpack in Cicero's star guidance analogy, and it's interesting enough that I want to read further. I wouldn't trust this ChatGPT summary except for its intended purpose - to point the way to scholarly articles where those who are interested can find more reading material. Here it is: (Hidden Content)

Cicero's metaphor invites us to undertake a fascinating literary and mythological journey, and we should begin by noticing that Cicero is quoting from his own partially-extant Latin translation of the Phenomena, a poem by the third-century Greek didactic poet Aratus [URL:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aratus]: […] In the three or four lines of this poem quoted by Cicero in section twenty of Academica book two, he abjures the method of the 'Phoenician Sailor', a somewhat odd thing to do given…

One of the issue we came across in this Episode was the Cicero stating early in his own defense of Academic Skepticism that he himself was "not a wise man." (See quote below) Combined with other statements we've come across already, and more we expect to confront, it's pretty clear that the question of "whether knowledge is possible" is closely related to the question of the existence of a wisdom - or of the wise man. Socrates of course said something to the effect that he was the wisest of…

I want to throw this into the mix as well: It seems clear that the question of identifying a "heap" (the sorites issue) was known to Epicurus, and his statement that he would not know the good if you subtracted the various specific pleasures that he listed (in the saying recorded by Cicero) is a restatement of how "the good" does not exist apart from specific things which we find to be good, just as the heap does not exist apart from the grains that compose it. In discussing heaps of sand,…

I would think that the following from Diogenes Laertius is relevant to this question of how Epicurus looks at conceptual terminology and how concepts can vary in degree but still be essentially the same. […] So even though most of us would readily say that some actions are "more wise" than are others, Epicurus can still say that "to be wise" means that one wise man is not wiser than another. Similarly most of us would probably agree that faults have a common unity in being faults, and yet…

Separating out "pleasure in the abstract" into practical decisionmaking involving "specific pleasures" probably requires us to face a number of questions, including these: Is it true that some pleasures are "more pleasurable" than others? If this is NOT true, then is it appropriate to stop and say the answer to the question is "Never," because pleasures are totally interchangeable and even the "simplest pleasures" are just as pleasurable as "complex pleasures"? If this IS true, thenDoes that…

Welcome, @Devin! PDs 19 and 20 tend to arouse lots of interesting discussions. I don't disagree with Cassius or Kalosyni , but I do have a different interpretation of these PDs. My take is reasoned like this: our human lives are by nature finite, in which case it makes no sense to wish for infinite time or infinite joy. The philosophy has established that there is no afterlife. Since our time and our pleasure are both finite, it makes sense to maximize them to the best of our ability. Once…

[…] I need to add that this is in regard to physical pleasure. As for mental pleasures -- joy, satisfaction, gratitude, learning a skill or exercising a skill, social connection, etc. -- these arise when psychological needs are met. If you are regularly getting your psychological needs met and actively aware that they are getting met, then your life will be full of these kinds of pleasure, regardless of how long your life is.

[…] Here is my take on this: Another way to think about this is as a remedy. This mental remedy would be useful for those who became ill in mid-life and due to lack of medical knowledge it was uncertain if they would soon die. At mid-life they would have already experienced a lot of pleasures in life. Yet their internal thoughts might have been: "I'm too young to die." As for how this deals with the limits of pleasure: many of the most intense pleasures that result in feeling "full vitality"…

[…] This is an area where it is particularly helpful to expose yourself to what the various types of skeptics had (have) to say. I find that people have a hard time accepting that the various leaders (Pyrrho, Carneades) were as extreme as they were. And people today tend to view skepticism in a "loose" way (viewing it as "challenging authority") rather than in the philosophical way of being committed to the view that knowledge is effectively impossible no matter how much evidence one has. So…

[…] Your read is spot on. I touched on it above, but yeah, life, its length as a factor, and death, are areas I'm looking for guidance on, and discussion around!

[…] Cassius, thanks for such a thoughtful welcome! The canonics around reality is an area I find really interesting, and more than a little bit tricky. One area where I wonder how far off I am from the community is the blending of my scientific non-absolutism with a pragmatic need to find a way to live a content life. In science we avoid the word "proven" at all costs. For much of my life I have been certain that nothing is ever formally proven, not even evolution, yet I live my life by…