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Great post! My only fine tuning on what is posted so far is this: (Quote from Joshua) I think the second clause is almost exactly correct, but I would say that what Epicurus saying is that the whole the pleasure of having a friend is great, and such relationships are actually or at least virtually essential, I do not think that there is an absolute ranking of pleasures that would allow us to call friendship "the greatest pleasure." A fine point I easily grant, but given our focus on explaining t…

(Quote from Scott) I agree with Don's "yes." I will also say that it is important to keep in mind that given the logical foundation of Epicurus, which characterizes the ONLY two guides given by Nature as pain and pleasure, the two terms at that "logical" level are largely interchangeable: Pursuing Pleasure IS Avoiding Pain, and vice versa. Those are the only two guides given by Nature, so if you are motivated by feeling, you are doing one or the other. But having made that observation, I agree t…

Can you summarize the situation on "hope" and/or "pity" Don, as you understand it?

I see that Elli commented earlier on Pandora and Hope here: RE: Reverence and Awe In Epicurean Philosophy but it was only a passing comment: (Quote) Other references to hope: Why Did Zeus Put Hope In Pandora's Box? https://wikilivre.org/culture/…put-hope-in-pandoras-box/ Hope and Pandora's Box: https://reasonandmeaning.com/2…11/hope-and-pandoras-box/ Nietzsche - Human, All Too Human: 71 HOPE.—Pandora brought the box of ills and opened it. It was the gift of the gods to men, outwardly a beautiful…

As to Pity. I suspect that what is going on here is that there are significant differences between "pity" and "compassion" even though we tend to use them interchangeably - or at least I do myself. After googling I see there are a lot of articles that allege a difference between the two, for example: https://www.chopra.com/article…tween-compassion-and-pity Again, this is all Nietzsche, but I seem to recall (or else this is my memory failing again) there are at least reflections of this in Aristo…

https://aporia.byu.edu/pdfs/ob…n_pity_and_compassion.pdf

I think Don is coming from the perspective I assumed to be true, that pity and compassion mean pretty much exactly the same thing. I need to read the etymology of pity But after reading some of the Nietzsche material and hearing Scott and Kalosyni say that they consider them to be different as informed by their Buddhist reading, there seems to be more going on than I understood. We're probably going to have a situation where our goal of articulating the proper view of compassion, or the role of …

so ok pity is related to PIETY - and that probably helps explain its mixed implications.

Is it fair to say that compassion derives from something more closely akin to "with feeling"? That would be easier for me to understand as a word that is more uniformly to be endorsed than "piety"

For me the subject of empathy always comes down to: The "empath" episode of Stat trek the original series is virtually unwatchable and the very worst of the episodes as far as I am concerned. It is also the only episode that, as soon as the episode selection becomes clear, requires changing the channel to something else. I've neve liked that weird French style of white face painting either. Pantomime - is that related to this topic? Sorry for the tangents there..... It is interesting how this su…