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Most of our attention in this forum is directed towards the past, the texts from antiquity. This poses a challenge: do the social constructs present back in Epicurean times still exist? The recipes provided by philosophy have to be useful in daily life. But if the necessary social constructs are not there any more, the body of knowledge existing back then needs to be augmented to work in today's or tomorrow's environment. Case in point is friendship, which plays a central role in the Epicurean p…

(Quote from Kalosyni) Thank you Kalosyni , I would place myself firmly in the "camp" of pleasure as the goal. But my logic in this post is based on my understanding of pleasure (always open for being corrected): 1. Fulfilling natural and necessary desires is the basic way to get pleasure from life. 2. In most societies (e.g. Athens, when Epicurus arrived there), social structures are in place to make sure that satisfying those natural and necessary desires is easy. Friendship (or community) is a…

(Quote from Cassius) Any model has a limitation and I am sure Epicurean philosophy as a model of life has too. But I don't think this specific subject is a limitation of the philosophy - I agree with you, Cassius. And indeed, sometimes periods of anxiety are unavoidable and even desireable for the likelihood of future pleasure.

Don, I believe the difficulty with "remaining calm under fire" that I have (possibly the others too) is the proximity of this position to stoicism and it is important that I "come clean" about it. As Cassius mentioned ones, just because something is supported by the "other side", doesn't mean it has to be wrong. We tend to emphasize a lot the differences between the schools, but there are also similarities (plenty to be found in Cicero and Seneca texts). In the end, certain knowledge/understand…

I am still having second thoughts here though. Consider two ways of addressing the anxiety: external and internal. External: you avoid anxiety by doing or not doing certain things (e.g. avoid politics, since power and fame are unnatural and unnecesarry, while the likelihood of being stabbed in the back is very real). Internal: if you are for whatever reason in politics (e.g. to help a friend), don't panic: uou cannot lose anything worth living for (basic pleasures of life, friends & family). I t…

(Quote from Cassius) That would be my understanding too.