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Kalosyni
October 10, 2026 at 11:30 AM Replied to the thread Good or Questionable Promotion of Epicurus?.Post[…]
Likely they should have said "French Renaissance" not revolution.
Regarding "katastematic and kinetic" - even though we've discussed the problems with these labels through-out the forum, these ideas keep coming back and I think it is because the labels… -
Cassius
ThreadOctober 10, 2026 at 8:06 AM Welcome to Episode 355 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… -
Cassius
October 9, 2026 at 11:21 PM Replied to the thread Episode 354 - EATAQ36 - The "Monstrous Absurdity" of Academic Skepticism.PostSummary
Continuing Book Two of Cicero’s Academic Questions, Joshua reads the full text of Section 18, where Lucullus answers the skeptics’ use of twins, eggs, and Democritus’s identical worlds: the “more refined natural philosophers” (the… -
Cassius
October 9, 2026 at 3:43 PM Replied to the thread Episode 354 - EATAQ36 - The "Monstrous Absurdity" of Academic Skepticism.PostLucretius Today Podcast Episode 354 is now available: "The 'Monstrous Absurdity' of Academic Skepticism."
spreaker.com/episode/75672644/media -
Cassius
October 9, 2026 at 2:53 PM Replied to the thread Episode 354 - EATAQ36 - The "Monstrous Absurdity" of Academic Skepticism.PostMore food for thoughtful comparison:
- The Stoics appear to admit (according to Cicero) that the truly wise man who is able to be confident of separating the true from the false is as rare as a phoenix.... so that the Stoics are vulnerable to the charge… -
Cassius
October 9, 2026 at 12:24 PM Replied to the thread Episode 354 - EATAQ36 - The "Monstrous Absurdity" of Academic Skepticism.PostWe hit on these issues around the twenty minute mark of the podcast. All this emphasis on the relationship of "living things" to each other certainly reminds me of the title given to Lucretius' poem On The Nature of Things.
No wonder at Diogenes Laertius… -
Cassius
October 9, 2026 at 12:15 PM Replied to the thread Episode 354 - EATAQ36 - The "Monstrous Absurdity" of Academic Skepticism.PostI'll note also here that when you hear Joshua quote Seneca saying in his letter that "anything a man does is not necessarily the man himself" it seems to me we are getting very close to Lucretius' discussion of the Trojan war and Helen:1-464
For when the… -
Cassius
October 9, 2026 at 12:09 PM Replied to the thread Episode 354 - EATAQ36 - The "Monstrous Absurdity" of Academic Skepticism.PostAlso, I want to be careful and not get too bogged down in Seneca's letter, but I think it's interesting that the question in the letter was posed by Luculius, who is arguably an Epicurean, and Seneca is also arguably trying to deflect the question, and… -
Cassius
October 9, 2026 at 11:44 AM Replied to the thread Good or Questionable Promotion of Epicurus?.PostThanks for posting that. Indeed it's a good example. However I'd say it's more a good example of superficial reading rather than something I would emulate. In fact, I'd say it's a good example of how NOT to summarize Epicurus especially on the following… -
Cassius
October 9, 2026 at 11:19 AM Replied to a comment by Patrikios on article How Is The Wise Epicurean Always Happy.Reply (Article)Thanks Patrikios! -
Cassius
October 9, 2026 at 10:54 AM Replied to the thread Episode 354 - EATAQ36 - The "Monstrous Absurdity" of Academic Skepticism.PostThis episode will be released later today, and I want to echo something that Bryan raised in a recent live session:
The "four points of academic skepticism" can seem very overwrought and unnecessarily detailed - why don't they say that it's simply… -
Kalosyni
October 9, 2026 at 8:59 AM Replied to the thread Good or Questionable Promotion of Epicurus?.PostParticulary, this section was interesting:
"According to Epicurus, a pleasant life can be achieved with the absence of pain and fear and by leading a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends. He also said that pleasure and pain are the measure by which… -
Kalosyni
October 9, 2026 at 8:50 AM Posted the thread Good or Questionable Promotion of Epicurus?.ThreadI found a website which has a good short overview (in my opinion)...here is an excerpt:
[…]
You can see the source website here.
(Please note: the source website is a "travel to Greece" website, yet they do have interesting pictures and history write-ups). -
Cassius
October 9, 2026 at 7:19 AM Replied to the thread Welcome EpicuriousDavid!.PostGood questions that would take significant effort (listing particular cites and going over them for footnotes as a start) to unwind.
We run into this a lot given the nature of translation. I don't know a better way to deal with it than to compare multiple… -
EpicuriousDavid
October 9, 2026 at 1:22 AM Replied to the thread Welcome EpicuriousDavid!.PostI’ve been looking at the quote from Tusculan Disputations (either 3.41 or 3.18 depending on the numbering) where Epicurus is quoted as unable to find any good outside of taste, music, figures in motion etc. In some translations ‘sex’ is in there as… -
Patrikios
October 8, 2026 at 5:39 PM Replied to a comment by Patrikios on article How Is The Wise Epicurean Always Happy.Reply (Article)There also appears to be an image missing, as shown by the meta data for an image:
[IMG: 18.png] -
Patrikios
October 8, 2026 at 5:36 PM Commented on article How Is The Wise Epicurean Always Happy.Comment (Article)Intro paragraph ends with an incomplete sentence.
"Some say that we should look to religion for happiness. Others say that there are no hard and " -
Patrikios
PostOctober 8, 2026 at 4:54 PM Bravo, TauPhi,
I loved reading this modern English version of the Encounter with Epicurus!
Would it be possible for you to post a version with the intro, just the Modern English text, and your helpful Footnotes?
I think such a modern English version… -
Patrikios
October 8, 2026 at 3:16 PM Replied to the thread What a Healthy Relationship Looks Like (Article).PostThanks for sharing this, Kalosyni 🙏
I like the article, as it outlines the “how” of maintaining the bonds of a healthy relationship (e.g. pleasurable friendship), whereas Epicurean philosophy gives us the “why”, as it positions the cultivation of… -
DaveT
October 6, 2026 at 9:25 AM Replied to the thread Criticism of Dewitt's interpretation of Principal Doctrine 5..Post[…]
The school of hard knocks! -
EpicuriousDavid
October 6, 2026 at 1:28 AM Replied to the thread Welcome EpicuriousDavid!.PostI tried the first two maza recipes in the thread ‘Maza Experiment - Successes? and Failures!’ and found something potentially helpful.
When browning the flour in the pan, keep some raw flour nearby to compare. Without raw flour for reference it’s super… -
Robert
October 5, 2026 at 9:41 PM Replied to the thread Criticism of Dewitt's interpretation of Principal Doctrine 5..Postwbernys we could also approach the question from the opposite direction: "what causes people to make imprudent choices?" Off the top of my head, I would say there's an easy problem and a harder problem.
The easy problem involves people who make choices… -
Cassius
October 5, 2026 at 12:48 PM Replied to the thread Criticism of Dewitt's interpretation of Principal Doctrine 5..Postin fact, how can you be "prudent" unless you have firm knowledge of the consequences of the relevant choices? That's a major problem with talking about any virtue in the first place - unless you can predict the consequences of the actions you don't… -
Cassius
October 5, 2026 at 6:30 AM Replied to the thread Criticism of Dewitt's interpretation of Principal Doctrine 5..PostI think you are right that both prudence and knowledge of the fundamentals are needed. -
wbernys
October 4, 2026 at 10:53 PM Replied to the thread Criticism of Dewitt's interpretation of Principal Doctrine 5..Post[…]
Sure, it seems like DeWitt thinks of Epicurean reason as just prudence only, knowing how to make proper decisions.
While that is an important part, I also think Epicurus count theoretical wisdom as well, like The Nature of the Gods, the nothingness of… -
Cassius
October 4, 2026 at 9:27 PM Replied to the thread Criticism of Dewitt's interpretation of Principal Doctrine 5..Post[…]
If I am reading your post correctly, you're focusing on DeWitt's comment which focuses on justice meaning "obedience to the written laws of the country."
I agree that it's far too narrow to equate "obedience to the written law of a country " with… -
wbernys
October 4, 2026 at 5:45 PM Posted the thread Criticism of Dewitt's interpretation of Principal Doctrine 5..ThreadDewitt in his "Epicurus and his Philosophy" interprets Principal Doctrine 5 "as follows.
[…]
It seems everyone I've seen agrees with this idea, at least if they have commented on it.
For my part, i actually disagree with this interpretation, largely because… -
Cassius
October 4, 2026 at 10:55 AM Replied to the thread Episode 354 - EATAQ36 - The "Monstrous Absurdity" of Academic Skepticism.PostWe are referring today (in part) to Seneca's letter 113:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_let…lius/Letter_113 -
Cassius
October 4, 2026 at 10:06 AM Replied to the thread Episode 354 - EATAQ36 - The "Monstrous Absurdity" of Academic Skepticism.PostAdditional notes - this from Claude:
That cross-reference carries the argument, because in §85 Cicero, replying to Lucullus, names the doctrine's owners himself. He says the claim that everything is in a class of its own and that nothing is the same as… -
Cassius
October 4, 2026 at 9:38 AM Replied to the thread Episode 354 - EATAQ36 - The "Monstrous Absurdity" of Academic Skepticism.PostI see from inital searching that there is an academic consensus that this is Lucullus talking about the Stoics themselves, and that Cicero himself seems to corroborate this later in Cicero's own part of the argument. So likely there are similiarities…
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