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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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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… -
Cassius
April 25, 2024 at 11:14 AM Replied to the thread Episode 226 - Cicero's On The Nature of The Gods - Epicurean Section 01 (Not Yet Recorded).Post- Topics For This Week:
- Cicero says that the greater part of mankind is united in what Nature leads us to suppose, which is that there are gods.
- Protagorus and Diagorus the Melian and Theodorus of Cyrene entirely believed that there are no gods.
- Topics For This Week:
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Cassius
April 25, 2024 at 10:17 AM Replied to the thread Episodes Of Lucretius Today Available At Archive.org.PostToday we updated Archive.org so that all episodes up through the current episode 225 are now available.
https://archive.org/details/lucretiustodaypodcast
Looks like the total download is now up to about 11.2 gigabytes. -
Joshua
April 25, 2024 at 10:10 AM Replied to the thread Scroll Development Relating to Plato's Grave (Related to the Recent AI Work?).Posthttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_…%E2%80%9386_BC)
He encircled the city and the port. This would involve constructing a defensible palisade out of local timber, stone, brick, and whatever else was at hand.
Caesar's seige of Alesia is a… -
Cassius
April 25, 2024 at 8:43 AM Replied to the thread Scroll Development Relating to Plato's Grave (Related to the Recent AI Work?).Post[…]
I am not familiar with this episode. Did he destroy all of the schools or did he play favorites? Sulla has always been an enigmatic figure in my mind. -
Cassius
ThreadApril 25, 2024 at 8:33 AM https://interestingengineering.com/culture/plato-burial-bionic-eye
This article is very ambiguous and unclear as it appears they are talking about scrolls that may be from Philodemus, but the article is about where Plato is buried:
[…] -
Don
April 25, 2024 at 8:13 AM Replied to the thread The Passing of Prof. Daniel Dennett.Postyoutu.be/wFQ4v9BZD8s?feature=shared
This conversation between Dawkins and Dennett hits, probably inadvertently, a number of Epicurean themes. This seems to dovetail with the thread on what Epicurean philosophy offers in April 2024. We live in a time… -
Don
April 24, 2024 at 11:20 PM Replied to the thread What Epicurus Offers To The Modern World As Of April, 2024?.PostThere have been some great responses to your original list of questions, Cassius . Here's my take fwiw:
Don't you have to be rich to be an Epicurean?
No, but... It seems to me you have to have your basic needs met. You don't need to be "rich" (however… -
Cassius
April 24, 2024 at 9:16 PM Posted the thread May 1, 2024 - Wednesday Night Zoom Epicurea Agenda.ThreadJoin us as we study Usener's Epicurea - Every Wednesday night 8pm ET - Via Zoom - running for about an hour.
Open to LEVEL 03 forum members...and LEVEL 01 members can attend after approval by the moderator team.
Each meeting we will take one or more of the… -
Twentier
April 24, 2024 at 6:11 PM Replied to the thread What Epicurus Offers To The Modern World As Of April, 2024?.Post- Don't you have to be rich to be an Epicurean?
Not at all. The Notorious B.I.G. said, Mo Money, Mo Problems, and Epicurus would have agreed. As Lennon-McCartney wrote, "I don't care too much for money, 'cause money can't buy me love." And as Epicurus,
- Don't you have to be rich to be an Epicurean?
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Godfrey
April 24, 2024 at 5:52 PM Replied to the thread What Epicurus Offers To The Modern World As Of April, 2024?.PostTo this question of "meaning" I would add:
The search for "the greatest good" in ancient times is also a question of meaning.
That "the greatest good" is pleasure leads to the question of what pleasure is, which leads to the understanding that it is an… -
Cassius
PostApril 24, 2024 at 4:57 PM Lucretius Today Podcast Episode 225 - "Cicero Argues That Commitment To Virtue Is A Bar To Pleasure" Is Now Available -
spreaker.com/episode/59639738 -
Pacatus
April 24, 2024 at 4:30 PM Replied to the thread Forum Member Poetry to Illuminate Epicurean Philosophy.PostLeontion
Leontion, your treatises are lost
and we are left with mere hints of your wit:
a woman scorned for her acuity,
an affront male ego could not acquit.
Cicero slandered you, as was his wont,
for what he claimed was your effrontery
– putting yourself…